Tomás Mccann

Self-taught sound designer, located in Italy and part of a sound packs label by the name of "Soundmasters", We are proud to announce @Tomas McCann as this month SoundGym Hero! So how long have you been on SoundGym? 

I've been on SoundGym for four months now, on and off. I've really started grinding it during the last month, or so.

What was your first connection to music?

My first connection to music was listening to "zecchino d'oro" tapes (if you don't know what it is, look it up, it's expertly-written, original songs for children sang by choirs of children) in my little house in London when i was 1-2-3 years old. I used to operate the whole cassette deck apparatus by myself. 

Did you get an official Sound/Production education?

I never got any kind of formal education on anything related to music, except maybe in middle school where it was mandatory for everyone to buy a small battery operated a keyboard and pretend that it was important.

It was captivating for me to browse the 50 sound presets on that keyboard, and I liked playing around with it, so I taught myself to play songs I knew. My technical knowledge snowballed from there and I soon started dabbling in FL studio, around 2010. 

Tell us about Soundmasters project and what you do there?  

Soundmasters is a sound pack label founded by my friend Maarko, a self-made musician and marketer I met about two years ago. He had already set up the website by himself and had a well-established relationship with ADSR and Loopmasters before we knew each other.

I sort of jumped into the action, because I liked Maarko's attitude towards life and we had similar ambitions, so it made total sense for me to learn his job and follow his steps.

After a year and a half spent learning Ableton and serum, I came up with my own product for SoundMasters, "Prog Mouse Complete Synth Collection" a collection of classic deadmau5 presets dor Serum, which was very well received by our audience at the time. I've since made two more packs, now queued for release.

Who have been the biggest influences for you and get you into Sound design?

My biggest musical influence is undoubtedly deadmau5, but what drove me more into sound design rather than music was mostly attention to detail and scientific curiosity, which naturally led me to spend insane amounts of time twisting knobs and doing research. 

Have you made music today?

I have written some music in the past, it's never been a habit, though it is starting to become a necessity for me to develop one, right now, because sound pack demos have such high-quality standards, nowadays, and this is what ultimately decides sales.

What have you been working on lately?

I'm currently working on some dubstep presets for Black Octopus, which I believe will be incorporated into their next big release. 

Tell us a bit about your workflow at the studio?

My workflow essentially consists of saving and recording everything I do in as many ways as I can, while in the flow of consciousness: video, internal audio, project, midi, FX rack, mouse input automation, auto-slice the recording, then truncate silences, normalize and rename the slices, everything in batches. 

About 1000 slices and 30 usable kicks from a 20-minute design sesh. It's much quicker to sketch up a chunk of original material to distill later, rather than making things from scratch or even from templates. I've set up a few scripts to streamline the constant saving, place timestamps, generate pronounceable titles so that my flow doesn't get interrupted.

It basically means I'm "selecting" after the fact rather than during, which makes creation very honest and smooth, and simultaneously gives me spare parts to use in the future, whether for building a sound pack or for writing a song. 

Obviously, I separate unrestricted trash from selected items. Having a good and consistent naming convention also helps to keep things tidy. I use four-letter tags as prefixes for different kinds of content (KIKD kor kicks, SNRD for snares, etc.)

My general objective is to remove as many decisions as I can while also maintaining my files in perfect order (because the other -bad- way "not to think" during creation would mean saving in arbitrary locations, losing files, ineffective file naming and generally having little quality control/separation, which all adds a layer of thick confusion).

It took me a while to theorize, test, and execute all this, but the payoff is worth it, because of all the artistic space and extroversion I now have, thanks to these systems.

Any habits you have before starting a session?

I sometimes practice my mouse aim on 400kgAim before starting sessions. 

What is one of your favorite production techniques?

My favorite production technique is assembling ready-made elements and getting a song done in a few hours.

One free plugin that you recommend?

Filterjam from AudioThing. It's a sort of resonator device with one giant sweep knob, a few different peak combinations and a dry/wet control. It goes well before waveshaping and comb-filtering. The results are exotic. 

Which 3 plug-ins you can't live without?

I can live without any specific plugin, all I need is a noise and Ableton's stock toolset. Though Kick 2 by Sonic Academy has the most sophisticated AND accessible pitch envelope editor I've come across so far, which gives it a certain exclusivity. Edison by image line is also a great editing tool for its drag and drop feature and one-click-normalization.

What does the future hold for Tomás McCann in the music industry?

I plan to open my own sound pack label this year. I'm pretty positive it will work out great and everyone will find good use of my content.

Last question, What is your favorite SoundGym Feature and why?

My favorite SoundGym feature is probably the "better-than" percentage system, which motivates me to carry on practicing, whether the number is 30% or 99.7%.

The way it progresses beyond level 50-70 of any game is extremely well balanced in relation to my training pace.

Another great thing, as of lately, is the School section, at least for the recording course that I'm currently watching. 

Concise, simple to absorb, and delivers plenty of information that I either couldn't find, didn't know, or couldn't understand. Thank you for selecting the videos so well.