Six Missing Recommends

Ambient music producer and composer TJ Dumser, aka Six Missing, shares his studio essentials.

Six Missing at his home studio.

1. Walking/Exercise/Meditation Practice

I come from a family of fairly active people , mostly into sports, and so I was always the odd one out as a kid when it came to that as I’d much rather sit inside with my imagination and play with toys. Truthfully, not much changed all these years later but I did happen to discover the magic of exercise, running specifically. I started because I had all this free time many years ago but as I got better with it, it’s a practice that has stuck with me. I feel so off when I don’t go. It sets up your brain to be clear and free after the run. I use my runs as a place to take out a broom and sweep all the nonsense out - or make a plan for the day ahead. Some days you can just set down right into the studio, look up and have it be dark out. But I really try to keep a steady practice going - the healthier your mind is, the more space you have to be creative. And that’s exactly how I fell into my mindfulness practice as well - I started by dipping my toe in with the apps - that quickly led to me doing floatation therapy back in NYC twice a month for a few years. Disconnecting ourselves from our river of thoughts and realizing that we don’t have to identify with them, rather, we can just watch them float by was a life changing experience. It’s spilled into music creation entirely and I’m so grateful for it. I read all the books you’re too shy to buy in the actual store and listened to all the tapes, watched the youtube videos - yada yada - but hey, this shit really works. Blasting your egoic mind to smithereens makes for the best studio vibe you could ever hope for. Get out of your head and just tune into your surroundings - there’s a lot to uncover.

2. Analog Synths

Well, I am going to be that person that says the thing you hate reading people say, analog synths just sound better. Well, do they? I don’t actually know, I think digital and virtual machines these days are truly outstanding and I use them in my productions all the time, sometimes exclusively. But, there is this magic and playfulness that you can’t get in a virtual synth that you can get by touching an actual knob. I’m a pretty big believer in not reading manuals and that is largely because I don’t learn that way, but it’s also because if someone tells me how to achieve something rather than discovering it on my own, I am now in a box of thought. And that kills the fun for me. Purchasing analog gear has been the biggest–and scariest, priciest–catalyst to production in my work. Since I mostly work solo, having a synth in the room is like having a person there with you. It takes up space. It smells when it starts working, I love the smell they make by the way. It sometimes doesn’t behave the way you want it to or it’s in a mood, I mean - come on, they are alive. I’ve found myself in possession of some iconic pieces and I feel honored to click the on button and hear what they have to say to me that day.

3. Korg PS-3100

And on the note of analog gear, I want to talk about my love for the Korg PS3100. It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s temperamental, it’s already been in the shop twice since I’ve owned it…but I will never give it up. I’ll quite literally put it in my will. It’s one of the most expensive pieces of gear I’ve ever purchased but also one of the most mystifying. And that is exactly what I was hoping for. The tactile functionality of its layout is a joy to adventure on. I love having the interface and knobs presented right in your face, it’s almost like it’s telling you to play around, mess shit up, have fun, see where it goes. I saw Olafur do an interview with one once and while I was watching and listening to him speak about it, I realized that he was talking about synths the way I do - he was speaking poetry really. So I went on an aggressive hunt for one until I got lucky enough to land one and strike a fairly reasonable deal. They put it on a plane and I picked it up at the airport like I was smuggling cocaine. What a day.

4. Tape Machines

I got my musical start on a boombox that had this tiny little mic built into it, I would pop in a blank cassette tape and pretend I was a disc jokey on the radio introducing the songs and taking fake phone calls. Then I’d bring another cassette player nearby and play it into the mic, building my “show.” But really what I was learning how to do before I really knew it was…record. I learned about levels, mic’ing distances, editing, flow…all that from a tape machine. That led to me being in my first “band” in a basement recording onto a Fostex - we really had no idea what we were doing with it - but I found that out of all of us I was most drawn to figuring it out. I then got a four-track of my own, a Tascam, probably - and then upgraded to a Zip recorder - the Boss BR-8. Man, that thing was so fun. After kind of chasing technology upwards to my first Pro Tools rig in high school, I then found myself all these years later scouring the internet for the tape machines I grew up on. There’s an intimacy and immediacy of recording to tape. There’s also that beautiful degradation that happens with cassette tapes. Which is why I really only have one cassette tape that I keep recording over and over onto - I love what happens when you have all this material stacking itself upon itself - the sound really only gets better, in my opinion. It becomes an element you can’t quite capture with plugins. These days, I have two Tascams (a 414 and 424), a Nagra IV-S, and an Otari MX5050B-ii. The Tascams are pretty much used for the pitch shifting capabilities - I record stems in at the highest speed and then pitch them down, super useful for doing a remix or rework and you need a good starting texture - you just have to remember to “tune” the speed otherwise your screwed,ha. The Otari became my mastering deck - I’ll get a mix all set, print it to tape, capture it back into Ableton and then put some finishing touches on it. There’s just a forgiving warmth you can’t get doing it any other way. And then the Nagra is quite literally all your fault, Danz - I was reading Vol 2 or 3, I can’t recall, and Bibio was talking about the Nagra like it was the greatest piece of kit ever - so…I tailspun down an internet hole of research until I found myself in a Facebook group (of which I signed back up on facebook for) and was sending a crazy amount of cash to a total stranger. Luckily, he was legit and the deck arrived as described and holy hell, yep Bibio, you were right. I also love how finicky a tape deck can be - just like myself.

5. Odd or Challenging Instruments

The internet has gifted us with the glorious ability to deep dive anything and everything. I’ve used this massive amount of computing power to… spend hours on Reverb and eBay finding weird shit I’ve never heard of. While it seems like a waste of time or money, I actually think it’s a part of my process. Having something weird or unique or challenging to wrangle actually helps you find your voice as a musician or producer. As a sound designer, I find the search for sound endlessly fascinating. I found this Suiko ST-50 online the other month and was blown away to learn about the different minor scales in it. And when it showed up, both the manual and labeling were all in Japanese. Some blessed soul on the internet actually took a photo I sent them and translated all the signage for me - the internet working for good! But I loved having it be foreign to me because it meant I was only using my ears. Did this sound good? Did that sound bad? Oh, when I turned that while doing this, this happened… that kind of exploration that you can only get by not knowing what the hell you’re doing. So getting outside of your comfort zone and quite literally speaking another language is so fun.

6. Mobile Recording Devices

There’s a saying in photography that the best camera you have is the one you have with you - or…something like that. I feel the same way about recording tech - I am always listening, I literally experience life through sound. And so whenever I’m out and I hear something funky or unique or a sound that has made me clue into it, I’ll take out my phone and voice memo it. Honestly, I’ve used “field recordings” in my music on records that were recorded on my phone - and I’ll chuckle when people DM me to ask what I used to record it and I tell them my iphone. Look, whatever you have is the best you have. If you happen to be traveling with a Zoom or Nagra, DAMN, good for you - but I would say having a phone is what we all most have these days - and with all these apps for the ipad/iphone, you can get a pretty darn good sound captured.

7. The Studio: An Instrument

I believe wholeheartedly that the studio itself is my instrument. And I’ve taken painstaking steps to ensure that is the case. My entire studio functions as my writing device. I haven’t undergone the process of putting in a patchbay, I know I know it would help, so everything is wired in directly to my Apollo interfaces. This way I can capture audio from anywhere and toss it to anything else all within Ableton. It makes the process of recording more of a discovery mission - let’s see how…THIS sounds. Just the other day I was capturing a fairly simple straightforward arpeggio practice on my Minimoog and afterwards, I wanted to see what would happen if I tossed that to my pedalboard - not having to plug anything else in and just click a few clicks and be done was so satisfying. I used to live in small NYC apartments where I would have to pull out my pedals and guitar before starting up anything - and anyone that has done that will know that having that be your hurdle could be your productivity killer. Sometimes even having to just plug in one cable is “too much” for us. So when I finally got lucky enough to get bigger spaces I made it my entire goal to have everything “at the ready” so that I could start playing and experimenting even if I wasn’t in the mood. It was the best workflow change I could’ve ever made. Paring that with the pandemic, I went into overdrive. It was wild. I know not everyone has the space to do that, but my advice would be, leave as much plugged in as you can then. Take away any hurdle.

8. Backup System

I don’t think I’ve ever read about this in any of the Synth History zines, so I’ll be the one to do it - and I’m prepared to have people snooze on this one - but it’s so important to have a backup system in place! My goodness, y’all. If you don’t have even just a tiny external hard drive to drop sessions onto then what are you doing? You’re taking huge risks. If your livelihood depends on, or you want it to depend on, your music or work - then back your shit up. Hard drive space is so cheap these days and you could even do it through cloud services like Google or Dropbox. Okay, so here’s my overkill method, feel free to take pieces of it for yourself.

I have an internal SSD separate from my operating system SSD for all sessions I do. Each night those partitions are backed up automatically to a Synology NAS bay I have. Later that evening my NAS is backed up to cloud storage. And then I also keep an additional copy of my NAS on a few Glyphs stored in my closet. Oh yeah, and I’ll also clone my OS drive separately in the event there’s a worst-case-scenario meltdown. For my TV episodic mixes, I work on the cloud and then go through that same backup process - so yes, I’m backing up one cloud service to another in the event one cloud ever goes down. Nervous? No. Prepared? You betcha.

9. Headphones/Monitors

I may have an unpopular opinion here, and it’ll be really interesting to see what people think when this comes—please let me know! I do not think you need the best monitors or headphones available. I just believe that if you know your headphones or monitors, then you can make anything sound great. It’s all about knowing your gear. For the longest time I mixed solely on headphones, the AKG K702 open backed set. I played back a lot of old mixes in them and auditioned three different manufacturers and finally landed on these as being the most transparent and the most representative across all playback sources. But heck, a good mixer can get good mixes on the old white iPod earbuds. I think there’s validity to checking mixes on playback sources where your audience will consume your work. That all being said, I have to give a huge plug for Genelec here. They were the monitors I started using in school and they taught me how to listen and make mix decisions, so in a way, Genelec taught me how to “hear.” They were in every studio I ever worked in in NYC and so they were the set I bought when I had enough cash to put monitors into my room. There are so many out there, go listen to some and make a call. But if you can’t just yet - just get to learn your own.

10. Jazzmaster

I’ve been a Fender player since I began playing at 12 years old. Their craftsmanship is so solid. I still have my first Fender and I use it all the time - it was a black and white Strat, there’s just something so magical about it. About ten years ago I bought myself a Jazzmaster - I didn’t go for the expensive model, just the more affordable version and then spec’d it out like crazy. I swapped the pickups, put in a Mastery bridge, tremolo, and string holder, changed the pots to be 500k and snipped the rhythm circuit since I kept accidentally hitting it while playing. Something about Fender guitars, especially the Jazzmaster - it makes you play differently. It evokes such a fearlessness in me - maybe because it feels indestructible. I’ve quite literally dragged guitars around and have stood on the tremolo and they just pop right back up ready for more. Buy yourself a Fender, have a friend for life.

11. Hologram Electronics Microcosm

When it comes to effect pedals, I went crazy for a few years collecting everything I could. But then I had to start really refining the criteria in which I kept them. They had to earn their keep on my board. Traveling around NYC with a giant pedalboard wasn’t necessarily easy - especially taking the 6 Train to Grand Central Terminal at 5:50pm on a Friday…which…why? Everything Hologram makes always earned its keep. I pretty much opened the box for Infinite Jets back in the day and played it every day since then. So when Microcosm came out, I was floored. It’s an entire workstation in a pedal but in a totally musical way. There’s no real menu diving to get lost in, it’s just creativity unleashed. Whenever a track just needs some textural elements or an idea starter, I will throw something at the Microcosm and am never let down. I had the true pleasure of beta testing Microcosm and fought for months to not spill the beans. It’s so cool to see it out in the world - the Hologram crew are crazy inventive. I can’t imagine working without the sparkles Microcosm throws at me.

12. Earthquaker Devices Avalanche Run

I want to be slightly dramatic for a minute, but this pedal changed the entire course of my musical career. No joke. I bought it from Main Drag Music in Williamsburg and the clerk ringing me up smiled and said “hope you enjoy losing time for three days.” And you know, he was right. I sat down and got entirely enveloped by this pedal. It is a universe. It is a pad and texture machine. My entire first album I put out as Six Missing was just one long improvised session with Avalanche Run, I wonder if anyone knows that. It was just me playing with the pedal and the pedal playing with me. I couldn’t ask for a better device - something that takes what you feed it and chews it up into something representing taffy. I love it, I will never be without it - and if I had to choose just one pedal to do a show with - it would be Avalanche Run, easily.

13. Meris Mercury 7

I am a bit of a reverb junky, I have so many reverb plugins and I honestly love them all. I can’t stop - every reverb is so different and fun and special. And in the studio I’ll stack reverbs on top of themselves to create dense, complex, billowing soundscapes. What’s more fun than that? When I got Mercury 7 I was blown away, but then I ran it in stereo and I had the pieces of my blown-up mind vaporized. This is an emotional pedal. I don’t know how else to put it - it contains pure human emotion inside it and makes me play so differently. I have just a few “always on” pedals and outside of certain contexts, this pedal is always on, even with other reverbs behind it - I’ll just adjust the size and mix on Mercury 7 but I’ll never turn it off. I don’t know what those Meris folks did to get this thing like this but, damn. I’ve seen they have some newer bigger pedals but I think there’s such a beauty in this blue box - it’s straightforward and dead-perfect.

14. Chase Bliss Thermae

Thermae was one of those pedals that I bought before even knowing what it did. And quite frankly, I still don’t fully understand it, but that’s the fun. Joel and Chase Bliss have always released such stellar pieces that they are one of the few companies I could buy a pedal sight unheard and be totally stunned by the result. Thermae is part of my sound - chirps, digital womps, fluttery sputtery lines, I mean - it’s incredible. Whatever I throw at Thermae, it makes it better. I let someone play with Thermae before and they just didn’t get it - but it’s because they weren’t listening. You need to be patient with Thermae and let it speak back to you. It makes you adjust your playing - you can take your time with it. Or, you can choose to let it rip and run ahead of you. It’s so brilliant. I’ve fed flute, saxophone, drums, guitars, stems, synths, field recordings - you name it - into Thermae and it always sounds better coming out than it did going in.

Boomerang III Looper: I grew up loving jam bands, Grateful Dead, Phish, heck - the first time I ever smoked weed was at MSG on Halloween night watching Widespread Panic - wild times, (sorry mom). And so I was watching a rig rundown with Trey and he spoke about his looper - Boomerang - and I thought it looked so archaic and clunky, plus you needed another pedal to control the pedal…what? Upon googling I found the company was still making them but updated the design and it was precisely what I was after - I wanted an asynchronous looper pedal so that I could use it last in the chain and capture pieces of a performance and weave a tapestry with it unhindered by measures or needing to “stay in time.” It’s built like a tank and never fails. I really love the two assignable “Bonus” footswitches as I can have both reverse and octave down available at a toe touch. Pretty no frills piece of kit that I would never give up.

15. Herman Miller Chair

Another in the “not totally fun to talk about” category but my Aeron chair is by far the most I’ve spent on a desk chair, but it is fortunately worth every penny. It’s “the” studio chair. They are built for those longer sitting sessions, pretty customizable as far as height and posture go and last forever. I started sitting in Aeron’s back at Full Sail and then they were in every studio I worked in, visited, saw a photo of. I used to use a drum stool in my studio for space reasons, but also out of sheer laziness of spending over a grand on a desk chair. But when I finally invested and bought myself my own Aeron, I kicked myself for not doing it sooner. Don’t short yourself comfort. How can you be creative if your back hurts!

16. Oblique Strategies/Books

I like things that light up your brain in ways you weren’t expecting. The pack of cards that contain thought-provoking statements, questions, ideas that Oblique Strategies has is perfect for that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a hole and just flipped through them and got inspired. The best one I had was something to the effect of “do less,” haha. That idea really sticks with me - sometimes, maybe most, the best studio tool is actually the mute button. I also really love the mental imagery that horror and sci-fi novels conjure up. Reading “Dune” back in the day and Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series was so influential on some of my older albums. I wanted to create worlds with sound like they did with words. I’m always so intrigued by how our minds draw these pictures while we read - I think that’s why my music is so “soundtracky,” I write music with imagery in mind - Theater of the Mind, if you will.

17. Comfort Movies/Trippy Movies/Music

Finally, who doesn’t love and always need to watch a good movie? Since I work in film + tv, I often “hear” the work when watching bad movies - so I always love when a movie wraps me up and I completely lose myself it in, that’s so special. But then there are films that just make you feel comfortable, that’s Back to the Future and Ghostbusters for me. Something to turn off the old brain for a while. So many times I’ll be trying to figure out where to take a part in a song or maybe I’ve hit a snag on something and I can try to think it - think it - think it into existence to no avail. But then I’ll give my brain a little space and the solution will just slide right in. That’s also why I love trippy movies or deeply psychological thrillers, anything that makes the thinking brain step out of the way for a bit and just take in the information it’s being presented with. And of course, listening to music is imperative - go find something that makes you feel good. Being that I work on music almost every day, I sometimes forget that I should just sit and listen to it as well, ha - it’s like “oh yeah, music rules.” There’s just so much out there it’s dizzying. I have a friend who curates playlists for people based on a questionnaire –Debop–and I think that’s just such a great way to begin a deeper dive - taking in a wider net at first and then going deeper. I also love doing that with bands I love and why I love reading Synth History so much. I was reading the last volume and so many folks were suggesting Cocteau Twins, which I of course had heard of them but never heard them. So I finally said enough and pulled them up and started listening to The Moon and the Melodies and lo and behold, there’s my old pal Harold Budd. I am so grateful for finding new music, it sounds cliche to say but, life would be so dull without it.

Find out more about Six Missing here.

Synth History Exclusive.

Photos provided by SixMissing.

Conducted by Danz.