Sacco

Sacco surprised us with an awesome performance mode video (see below). What was more surprising to us was that he also has an extensive portfolio of comercial music project under his belt for Film and TV. We caught up with Sacco to find out more about his music and why he uses FL Studio.

Tell us about your music and what motivates you?

I have been using electronic devices for music making since the late 80’s when the only options were expensive samplers, keyboards, modules and tape recorders. At that time I had a KORG i3 and I used it to compose music and FX’s for documentaries back in the days.

I bought my first computer, a really basic PC clone back in 1992, it ran over Windows 95 and it was a real pain to get it to play 12 audio tracks, at that time there were no real time effects so all audio editing was destructive. Yet with that basic setup and some well known software at that time I was so amazed I could record directly to my computer hard disc, which was a complete game changer considering having a sampler that could record a few seconds was something good. Since then I have compulsively composed tons of music non stop.

Later on I studied music composition in the University, I currently have a bachelor’s degree. Yet I never stopped composing music using computers. It was literally a lot of fun as the real time audio technology was in it’s infancy, I could witness how it grew from the very beginning.

I specialize myself into making all kind of music, from orchestral to latin, to electronic, any genre just name it. Particularly making realistic sounding music.

I have developed around 20 VST plugins under the brand “KlangLabs” (Vokko, Stompbud, BackMan among others)

How did you get into FL Studio?

I tried many different software applications, even if I was pretty comfortable with the one I was using the most. Then I came across FL v1.75 (or v1.57?)

Initially what caught my attention was it’s interface, it was very different from any other sequencer yet it was really easy and fun to work with, I used to think it was more like a videogame rather than a DAW, and I later discovered gol was a former videogame programmer so everything made sense, It’s interface was very attractive and slick, much more than any other programs in those days (nowadays too) I loved it’s overall grey color as it was very exhausting to work with the other programs that had mostly a white UI.

Other important factor was the overwhelming amount of new features they added with every new version, I spent quite some time reading and testing what was in each “newstuff” text file. It was also very easy to get information about specific things, the help system/content was laid down very intuitively, by far better than any other software.

In those days FL wasn’t complete compared to other programs, no audio clips for example, but it had so many useful/innovative ideas that I instantly fell in love. I literally used it for almost everything.

 

 

It’s timing engine was perfect compared to any other software back in the days. I remember how terrible was my main DAW timing when comparing side by side and that was one of the main factors to work more in FL and slowly switch to it. I also loved it’s way to handle MIDI data (PianoRoll, CCs)

At version 4, when ImageLine finally added audio clips I fully switched to FL and never looked back ever since. I have yet to find a software that is as cool and has such a fast workflow as in FL and believe me I tried everything.

I have now 17 years using FL Studio, quite a bit huh?

 

Tell us about your production environment?

Back in the days I had bit more hardware modules, a KORG i3 keyboard and a hardware mixer.

Now my system is really simple and consists of a powerful computer (MacBookPro with Bootcamp), the best mouse I can get (Logitec G700), a Presonus Firestudio Project interface, a pair of good Genelec 8040a monitors, an electric Guitar, a couple mics and the rest are controllers like one M-Audio keystation 88es, a few KORG nano toys, a KORG padKontrol, 18 AudioCubes and a FLaunchpad.

My partner and I have now a second studio with proper isolation, a Fatar Studiologic keyboard, an avalon preamp and an RMA Interface plus many instruments and a pair of Technics turntables*Mixer setup.

Do you have any links you would like to share?

SaccoVanzetti Duo House Project

Sacco @ YouTube

Matias.