Hi all,
I’ve been listening to Nils Frahm and fell in love with his sequences, but cannot come close to replicate it or do anything like that…
How would I got about doing it?
Here are some examples of the sequences:
https://youtu.be/dIwwjy4slI8
https://youtu.be/GCJacEzcU7A
Two things about the moog one:
You need a very spacey reverb to get even close.
Also, the sequencing is pretty sparse and the melody isn’t exactly Beatles - I think it’s a case of otherworldly melodies spawning otherworldly soundscapes 
Might be obvious to you, all this.
…i think all mother 32 vids are completely tied to a Reverb!
Yeah, as mentioned above, the Moog videos rely heavily on the reverb - it’s probably Eventide H9 or Strymon.
I just recently got into listening to Nils Frahm, and I think a big part of his sound is his delays. I was watching his live set on KEXP, and he is very fond of his Space Echo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLNeZogTsK8
To my ears, there may not be anything crucial to the sequences’ sound beyond the addition of the echo. I see him using that Roland Echo in a lot of live performances, and the resulting performance sounds similar to the studio recording. Since I don’t recall him using an additional sequencer in some of those performances to add additional intricacies of timing/muting to the sequence, maybe it’s just the echo.
The core elements of Nils’ synth-based stuff are often deceptively simple. In the main melody from “Says” for example, it’s just a simple arpeggiated Cm chord running over two octaves, processed through the tape delay. There might be some other things in the effects chain — chorus from the Juno, spring reverb from the space echo, perhaps another delay — but you can get really close with just a tape echo (El Capistan works great if you don’t have a spare €1k for a vintage unit).
Cheers for the great answer, it sounds like external effects are the way to go.
I know the moog aren’t Nils, I just like them too.
Around the 30min mark, a Nonkeen (mentioned above) song is played.
All good. If you have a spare 45 minutes, I recommend this:
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Korg they use around the 28 minute mark, which seems to be a poly MS-20, is (I think) a PS-3100. Beautiful example of filter sequencing.