eAeon: Only the Essentials

It’s often said that you have to learn the rules in order to break them. In the case of eAeon that meant learning sequencers via Metallica sheet music, studying radio engineering, and starting a one-man band in private. A member of cult bands Mot and Night Off, as well as an influential solo artist and producer of chart-smashing pop hits for acts like RM of BTS, the prolific South Korean musician carries that knowledge into everything he makes, rewriting the rules as he goes.

In this conversation, eAeon talks about his introduction to music, both as a listener and creator, the genesis of Mot, and some of the philosophical and practical techniques he employs in his daily process. From thinking of Bitwig Studio's containers as tree branches to using compression as dynamic EQ, eAeon's holistic approach to music-making explains why more than 20 years into his career he remains as relevant as ever.

You studied Radio Engineering at Yonsei University, which is an unusual academic background for a musician. What led you from engineering into music?

My parents loved folk music – Simon & Garfunkel, Song Chang-sik, Yang Hee-eun – so I grew up listening to a lot of music from an early age. In middle school I started making music on my computer and teaching myself composition. I briefly considered going to music school, but at the time music still felt more like a joyful hobby. I entered an engineering program, but came to realize that being a programmer wasn’t the kind of creative profession I had imagined, and spent much of my university life half-aimlessly. Then, in college, I heard Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979.” Something clicked when I heard that intro – I thought, “I need to make music.”

There’s a story that you were a metal kid when you were younger.

I listened to a huge amount of metal in middle school. The reason I started composing in the first place was because I bought a Metallica scorebook at a bookstore. I didn’t even know who Metallica were – I just thought the cover looked really beautiful. We had this old-school composition software on our home computer where you could input musical notes, and I started entering the Metallica score into it. I think that was my first experience with sequencing. After that, I bought the cassette. The sheet music came first.

At that time computer music must have been quite rare.

Back then, audio support was almost nonexistent, and MIDI hadn’t yet become standardized. The sequencer I was using was extremely primitive – if you wanted to express a single note, you needed one track, and if you wanted to play a triad, you needed three separate tracks. Audio was completely out of the question, and you could only use the built-in instrument presets that the sequencer provided. I had to resort to all kinds of tricks to make music with that limited setup.

In 2004 you debuted with the album Non-Linear. Could you tell us about the formation of Mot and the story leading up to the release of the first album?

Mot started out as a one-man band. I wrote, composed, recorded, and programmed everything by myself, and kept building songs without doing any live performances. I worked alone like that for one or two years. Then I posted an ad on an online second-hand marketplace looking for a guitarist, and that’s how Z.EE joined. After that, we went to jazz school together, studied, and re-recorded the same songs three or four times over for another three years before finally releasing Mot’s first album.

You’ve collaborated with musicians across many genres – from internationally-renowned Korean stars like RM (of BTS) and Lena Park to a new generation of K-pop and K-hip-hop artists such as Swervy and Samuel Seo. How do you approach collaboration?

It’s important to spend a lot of time understanding the other musician’s music and thinking carefully about what exactly they need from me, or what context they need me in. And then, of course, to talk as much as necessary.

As for many of the recent collaborations, there isn’t one specific secret. I think some of the younger musicians listened to my music when they were very young, and then reached out after growing up. Some of them knew my work from the Mot days, while others only discovered it later or didn’t know that history at all. More than any specific trick or reason, I think the most important thing is simply that I’ve continued to remain active as a working musician. If I had stopped after Mot or after my first solo album, I don’t think there would have been nearly as many collaborations. I also have a desire not to remain frozen at some point in the past, but to keep working as a musician of the present.

Your music has a very distinct clarity to it, with every element given room to breathe. How do you find space for each sound in the frequency spectrum?

I try to use only essential instruments and the minimum number of tracks. I could record separate guitar tracks for chord backing and melodic lines, for example, but if it's possible to play both parts on a single guitar, that's the approach I prefer. This way the overall musical structure becomes much tighter in both arrangement and sound, and tends to make the music more interesting.

Then I assign a clear priority to each track and start cleaning up conflicting frequencies. Tracks with similar priority are organized first through manual EQing. Then I set up plug-ins and sidechain routing so that lower-priority tracks are dynamically cut by higher-priority elements when frequency conflicts occur. The bass is cut by the kick, the low end of the guitars and keys is controlled by the bass, and the remaining instruments are spectrally carved out by the vocal. This allows each element to sit in its own space while keeping the mix tight and musical.

What techniques have you developed for bringing life and movement to your productions?

Aside from techniques such as humanizing MIDI through random variations in timing and velocity, I often use methods where the sound itself changes from note to note. For example, I might set up EQ or plug-in parameters to move subtly and randomly, so that each note has a slightly different character.

You can do this in Bitwig by placing two different saturators or drive processors in parallel on a snare, then slightly changing the blend ratio between those two signals on every snare hit. This way each hit retains the core identity of the sound while feeling alive and different.

There's often a stigma attached to the use of presets and stock sounds in music-making. What are your thoughts on their use?

I actually use presets and stock sounds quite often. There was a time in the past when I strongly disliked using presets, or anything that felt like a typical or obvious sound. But I don’t really feel that way anymore.

Music is all about context. A preset can provide a great starting point from which to shape into the musical context you're working in. Even a very trendy or overused preset that might make the track feel more familiar or less distinctive is ultimately a musical choice. If it already sits well in that context, I don’t think there's anything wrong with leaving it as it is.

You recently posted a short video using Bitwig Studio's Audio Sidechain modulator to dynamically modulate an EQ VST. How did you set that up, and what effect does it have on your mix?

I used a famous 1073-style EQ almost like a dynamic EQ. EQs like the 1073 are usually used for tone shaping, but while experimenting with different approaches, I found that cutting with the mid band of a 1073 had a very musical quality to it, and a smooth, natural way of controlling the midrange I really liked. I set the mid band frequency of the 1073 to 1.6 kHz and used the Audio Sidechain Modulator's envelope to control the 1073’s mid band knob via the incoming signal. When the midrange becomes too strong, it applies a cut. When there is less midrange content, it moves toward a boost.

The result is that the density of the midrange stays more consistent and controlled. You could create a similar setup with a regular multiband compressor or dynamic EQ, but this felt much more… buttery, for lack of a better word. It has a pleasing smoothness that feels very musical, rather than overly processed.

You mix your solo productions yourself. Which Bitwig Studio features do you use most when mixing?

Bitwig Studio's modulators are probably my favorite features when it comes to the creative process, but if we're talking about mixing, I think Bitwig’s containers are an even bigger strength. In most DAWs, plug-ins are usually stacked in a single vertical line, one after another. In Bitwig, you can place a container in the middle of that signal flow, split the signal into multiple paths, process them separately, and then bring them back together again.

Even complex parallel processing can be handled within a single track, without the need for additional tracks. The Multiband FX container, which gives you built-in multiband processing, is extremely useful, as are the various Split containers that allow you to divide and process the signal based on different criteria. You can also place containers inside other containers, so the signal flow can branch out almost like a tree. This means I tend to approach mixing less as “putting plug-ins on a track,” and more as designing the structure through which the sound flows.

You've previously taught Bitwig Studio's modulation environment and talked about how it's changed the way you make music. Could you share a tip for working with modulators?

One tip for approaching Bitwig’s modulators is to actively use the third-party VST plug-ins you already know and love. The 1073 example I mentioned earlier is exactly that kind of approach. When you're first getting familiar with Bitwig, I think the plug-ins that already feel familiar to you can be a great entry point.

You might ask yourself, “What would happen if I turned the 1176-style compressor I always use into a multiband setup?” By coming up with ideas and building them yourself, you start to experience the real joy of expanding beyond the usual limitations of your existing tools.

Do you have any advice for people who may be struggling to finish a piece of music at the moment?

Copy the song structure of different tracks. One of the main reasons people struggle to finish music is that they have an idea or theme, but don't have a plan for how to structure a complete song.

But in every finished piece of music exists a blueprint created by someone who has thought deeply about that problem and solved it. It's free, and there's no copyright on the form itself. Studying and copying song structure can really help you understand music from a macro perspective instead of focusing on individual sounds or small ideas.

Text and photos provided by GEARLOUNGE. Additional text by Graeme Bateman.