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I’m an unabashed fan of Camel Audio, and was very excited when they announced their Analogica library.  Ian Boddy, who had worked with Camel in the past, created this intricate library. I couldn’t wait to hear a Camel Audio redux of analog boards. Nothing Camel puts out is ordinary or by the book—it all has a certain fingerprint that pushes it forward in a direction that is as interesting as it is unexpected. Ian Boddy’s Analogica didn’t let me down, with its instantly recognizable analog sound and refreshing new take on familiar sounds.

After using the library enough to write up a short review on it and make a couple of audio demos, I decided it would be fun to talk to Ian about the creation of the library, including what led him to it, and what’s next. I was delighted that he was kind enough to oblige.

Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do?

Well I'm Ian Boddy and have been involved with electronic music since 1979 when I first tried my hand on a EMS VCS-3. Over the years I've released lots of solo albums and played many concerts. I went fully professional 9 years ago and run my own music production company Something Else Music Limited. This has 3 strands of activity. There is the ambient music label DiN which has over 40 releases on its catalogue from electronic music artists from around the world in various solo & collaborative forms. Then I compose a lot of library music for the company DeWolfe Music which gets my tracks played all over the world in various TV shows, films, documentaries, etc. Finally, and of course most relevant to this interview, is my sound design work both in terms of sample libraries for Zero-G as well as my soft-synth work.

At what age did you buy your first piece of gear, and what was it?

I was 18 and studying at Newcastle University for a degree in Biochemistry. This was in 1979 and through a friend I had discovered this amazing publicly funded open access music studio at Spectro Arts Workshop. In those days students actually got grants so I used this to help me fund for the purchase of a Jen string synth - I can't remember the exact model number. It appeared on my first 3 cassette only album releases from 1980 to 1982.

You’ve been a presence of the UK electronic scene since 1983. What drew you toward and inspired you to create electronic music?

Before getting into creating my own music I was actually very interested in art. Indeed at Spectro I also used their screen printing facilities and I used to work on optical art prints in the general area of say Bridget Riley or Victor Vasarely. At the same time I was very much into the music of the early German EM artists such as Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Ashra etc., and for me electronic music was a way of creating a visual experience in sound which I found a fascinating prospect. To this day I often describe musically what I do as "painting in sound".

That’s actually how I describe what I do as well! Which leads me to: How did you get into sound design?

Well I guess as I grew up with analogue synths such as the EMS VCS-3 (which I used at Spectro) plus my early Roland System 100-M modular I was very interested in creating my own sounds from scratch. I think my earliest commercial sound design role was creating DX7 patches for an early ROM cartridge system for that esteemed digital synth. However my work in this field didn't really take off until my days at Akai - I was a sales rep/demonstrator for them for 12 years from 1990 till 2002. I met Ed Stratton who had formed Zero-G early on - I think about 1992 - at one of the music trade shows and told him about some of the sound patches that I had done for the Akai samplers. I sent him a demo and on hearing these he invited me to do a full CD-ROM sample library - I think it was about the fourth title ever released on Zero-G - which was called Ambient Volume 1. This did really well, I think it helped that there was very little competition in those days - so he invited me to do more and so over the next few years I released a steady stream of libraries for them including Ambient Volume 2 and Malice in Wonderland. I was made redundant from Akai in 2002 and so decided to go full time professional with my composing & sound design and having more time I did a series of virtual instruments for them in Kontakt format (Morphology, Analogue Sequencer Loops & Outer Limits). As my reputation grew I was also invited to do work for other companies such as Sample Magic, LinPlug, Rob Papen and of course Camel Audio.

Camel Audio is one of my favorite companies, so I was very excited to see you working with them. How did you guys get together?

I can't remember the exact date but I recall being invited by Ben for a meeting up in Edinburgh to look at some of the early work on Alchemy and to see if I was interested in providing some of the sample content for the original core library. I was really excited about the project as some of the features he was discussing such as the ability to modulate time stretch in real time was things I used to dream about at Akai but in those days this was just not possible. So I designed a lot of nice analogue sounds for the core library and then as time went on and they produced a series of sound packs I often contributed patches to those. Alchemy is such a deep instrument that it enables sound designers such as myself to express their own musical personality through their patches.

The Analogica library definitely sounds like a labor of love. How long did it take from start to finish?

Well Ben & Colin had asked me to do a signature sound bank for quite a while as I believe a lot of users were liking my patches. It takes a lot of work to create Alchemy patches so I put this idea on hold for over a year until I had a sufficient window in my work schedule to really go for it. I wanted to work on this project as non-stop as I could so I could create an overall feel and character to the library. I started in spring 2011 by initially creating a lot of analogue patches from my large arsenal of vintage instruments as well as more modern modular gear. But I decided I wanted to only use 100% analogue sound sources and to capture the essence of the sound I either did large multi-sampled .sfz's (most of these are sampled every minor third) or used long samples (up to 60 seconds) of morphing sound beds. Once I had about 400Mb worth of sounds that were all nicely looped I started working on the patches. Then as I started to get a feel for how the various categories were shaping up I would record new analogue sound material and continue with the patches to try and get a nice even balance of quantity and variety between the different types of sound. I finished right at the end of July just before I was due to leave on my summer holiday which was great as I certainly needed a rest after such an intensive programming spree. So all told it took about 3 months with the last 6 weeks being full on Alchemy programming.

The sounds in Analogica are, for the most part, instantly recognizable yet often difficult to pin down. It’s clear that you used classic analog gear, but this isn’t just another emulation soft synth—it smacks of personality. How did you decide where to draw the line between staying true to the original sounds while adding your own touch?

Well a lot of the personality is in the original sounds - I created analogue patches that I knew I could adapt to Alchemies way of presenting sounds. One of the things I used a lot was the morphing ability to seamlessly cross fade between variations of the same sound. So for example in Pads/Four Wave Morph Pad you get a beautiful cross fade between these rich multi VCO Saw/Square/PWM/Triangle pads. This is something that I do a lot on my modular [synth] and I often use a lot of LFO's that are not in sync so you get these constantly changing morphing pads. So I was using some of my analogue modular patching tricks but doing it within Alchemy. Other patches are things I'd love to be able to do in the analogue domain but I can't as some of these synths are of course monophonic - so to be able to play a pad polyphonically of the Minimoog with all of its 3 VCO's playing in unison is awesome. Even though I meticulously tuned and sampled the notes every minor third there will come through slight inconsistencies of both tuning and also the phase relationship of the VCO's when you play all these samples together - but this for me makes the pad all the more richer and beautiful. I also explored the granular and additive/spectral aspects of Alchemy on some patches to push the analogue sounds into stranger and perhaps more digital sounding territory but still with the overall feel of the library.

Are there any Analogica patches you’re particularly proud of?

Gosh where to start. Some of the lead sounds are great fun to play such as Classic Mini Saw Lead & I love the soft distortion on Overdrive Lead. Sometimes I find modern sound libraries try to do too much, the sounds can get too big & shiny so I do like soft and subtle pads that can easily fit into a mix, something like Floating for example. I also love to hear the raw VCO's doing their thing so Majestic PWM's is nice for that. Some of the Soundscapes are very evocative, Desolation certainly sounds like its name should. In the synth section Glorious Gliss is very beautiful, it's multi-sampled using my Analogue Systems French Connection keyboard, which uses the Ondes Martenot system of a rocker switch for volume and a metal ring on a wire pulley for pitch. The samples are all quite long and slowly evolve in terms of volume & timbre and the vibrato is done by me wiggling the metal ring which gives a far more natural vibrato than using a LFO. Play it slowly and let the notes breath. Finally for something completely bonkers, in sound effects there's Mad Cow Disease, which always makes me smile.

What’s next for you?

Well coincidentally as I write this I've just had an E-mail through from Camel re their next sound bank so I'll do a few patches for that. I'm also about to start composing a new music library album for DeWolfe and I have my DiN ambient label to run with 2 new releases coming out in the next month.

Thank you again for your time. Do you have any final thoughts for our readers?

Whatever musical sphere you're involved with try and express yourself and let your own personality shine through in your work.

You can read more about Analogica, including my brief write-up and song demos here: