From Metal to Modal Filters: How Mr. Bill Went from Shredding on Guitar to the Boundless Possibilities of Electronic Music

Sydney, Australia, March 29, 2023- Producer and Ableton specialist Mr. Bill is known for many things: an ear-catching and intricate production style that draws from genres ranging from IDM to psy-trance and beyond; high energy live sets around the world; and a host of video tutorials on the very technical skills he leverages in service of his creations. Though a master in the realm of DAW-based music production, his foray into music started in a very analog way: by picking up an instrument. “I was in metal bands playing guitar from a young age,” Mr. Bill says. “When I was around fifteen years old I slowly started producing music on my parents computer with Garageband, using premade loops to create demos for my band to learn. But as I got more into electronic music and psy-trance—with artists like Infected Mushroom and also IDM stuff like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher as major influences—I started exploring more of what was possible with more powerful DAWs.”

Mr. Bill followed his interests to the audio engineering program at SAE Institute in Sydney, where he burnished his technical skills and began building buzz for his own music. “I learned a bunch and was already making and releasing music and playing shows,” he says. “By the time I had finished my degree I had a website up and running.” That website, which began as a class project, evolved into the centerpiece of Mr. Bill’s universe, where he now shares his compositions, tutorials, sample packs and podcasts, and promotes his livestreams and tour engagements.

On the Lookout

Since launching the website, Mr. Bill has sustained a level of output few could manage, as a snapshot of his year-to-date indicates. “I’ve been constantly playing shows, making educational content for YouTube, working with plug-in designers, and doing sync work for film.” Though he has mastered many industry standard tools of the trade, Mr. Bill notes that he always makes time for new discoveries that help keep his music fresh. “In electronic music, you’ll find that certain synths or plug-ins become standard and then everybody wants that sound because it’s comfortable and people don’t want to be challenged,” he says. “But when I’m making a new album, I make sure to clear my books completely so I can dig into new plug-ins and really learn them and expand my sonic palette. Otherwise I don’t feel like I’m growing as an artist.” Polyverse’s Supermodal plug-in was a recent example of a new plug-in that piqued his interest.

A Bucket of Sounds

Mr. Bill first discovered Polyverse due to his fandom of Polyverse co-founder and Infected Mushroom member Erez Eisen. “I’ve always thought of Erez as a very forward-thinking producer who achieves these really interesting effects doing things like morphing one sound into another, so it’s clear that that’s very much in the DNA of Polyverse,” he says. Supermodal, with its modal filter’s unique implementation of hundreds of bandpass filters arrayed to recreate the resonation behaviors of physical bodies like pianos, glass, or vocal sounds, showed potential for expanding his sonic palette. “Supermodal isn’t really similar to any other filter I’ve used,” Mr. Bill says. “It’s a whole new bucket of sounds and I would have been doing myself a disservice not to investigate it.” He notes that the plug-in’s GUI invites experimentation, gradually revealing its complexity as the user familiarizes themself with its controls. “When I first opened it up and could see that it was a pretty intuitive filter with some interesting UI elements, but once I honed in on the modal filter side of the plug-in with the spherical control I was like ‘Okay, this is pretty crazy,’” he says. “I could tell that it could do some very complex things—especially with all the modulation options—but it still felt very accessible. The physical modeling capabilities immediately made me start thinking about a lot of string synthesis ideas and delay line tonal ideas. ”

By Creators, for Creators

A plug-in designer himself, Mr. Bill appreciates the work of other plug-in designers who reliably push boundaries and improve his production workflow. “Polyverse is good at creating devices that aggregate a lot of processes into these single, useful plugins,” he says. “They’re the kind of plug-ins that will help you get sounds really quickly that you would otherwise have to create with crazy, complex routing setups.” Several of their prior releases have found their way into his workflow. “I use the I Wish, Manipulator, and Gatekeeper plug-ins frequently.” Gatekeeper in particular has become a mainstay on Mr. Bill’s productions. He utilizes the volume enveloping plug-in to generate tailor-made curves for the pumping effects characteristic to modern electronic music production.  “I use it on every single tune as my midi-triggered sidechain,” he explains. “I have a ducking group set up with Gatekeeper on it and then I double the midi from my kick and snare and send that to trigger it.”

With a remix album of 2021's Phantasmagoria, Phantasmagorical is on its way with new VIP features featuring a bevy of new sounds and production flourishes from his latest sonic explorations and a wealth of multimedia content always in his pipeline, Mr. Bill’s furious creative pace continues into 2023. His tutorials allow him to continue his tradition of leveraging the knowledge he gains through his own sonic explorations to provide resources for up-and-coming producers and music creators, and he points out that music technology education is more accessible now than ever before. “These days you can get a degree off of YouTube if you have the discipline,” he says. “The information is all there.” As for Supermodal, Mr. Bill says it is sure to continue to find a home on upcoming productions. “It’s definitely not quite like anything else out there,” he says. “Sure, you can stack up several delays and filters and get some cool effects in this space, but Supermodal is a lot more intuitive and adds its own fun quirks. Because sometimes when I’m making a buildup I just want to chuck something on there and make a buildup, you know?”

To learn more about Mr. Bill, pre-order Phantasmagorical and upcoming tour dates, visit https://mrbillstunes.com/

For more information and to purchase Polyverse Music VST plugins, visit https://polyversemusic.com/