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AND NOW, THE MUTABLE INSTRUMENTS PODCAST

This interview was conducted with Mutable Instruments founder and sole employee Émilie Gillet, by remote audio chat in April 2018, following the release of the Mutable Instruments Plaits, Marbles, and Stages modules.

Mylar: I guess I was going to start by thinking about the past. It was funny, I was looking at my emails and I discovered that we'd actually emailed each other about 10 years ago.

Émilie: Oh, wow!

Mylar: Actually about 13 years ago, when you were doing Bhajis Loops (a mini DAW for the Palm Pilot), as “Chocopoolp”. That software was amazing, since it came a time when we didn't have remote electronic music making capabilities, no smartphones like we do now. I remember being really excited I could make music on the go (with a Palm Pilot!). I think I read about it on Music Thing...

I looked again on the Chocopoolp site today, where you say “we no longer make this software because smartphones are sad”. I thought it was an interesting point. I was going to ask you, what are your feelings on this? Because obviously, mobile technology is driving all of the hardware in these Eurorack modules… What is your feeling about the kind of “smartphone music making generation”? And how did you start off making software, and why did you then move into hardware?

Émilie: OK. So yes, this comment about smartphones being sad is not about technology in itself. It's more about the business model of Apple and Google with App stores. That's what I don't like. And I also find these devices extremely complicated in terms of programming. Like you have so many layers between your software and the hardware that it's all just too complicated, it's too much work. It's too much of a burden for me and I don't want to learn how to deal with APIs that I haven’t designed, so that's why I prefer hardware. Just because it’s easy on the mind, there’s high control on the way things are, control of the latency control of the priority between the user interface and the audio processing threads. So for all these reasons it’s more flexible for me to work on embedded devices that I design.

Mylar: You feel that people are better off if they're working with a physical device, something with very low latency?

Émilie: Yeah, there is a question of latency. And there is also the fact that maybe things are changing too fast with software running on a general purpose device - whether it's a desktop computer or a smartphone.

The fact that you buy your module, you give your money for it, I think that kind of forces you to learn how to use it and to keep it - for maybe 2 years or 3 years of 5 years. But on the desktop computer, you start you start choosing a piece of software and then in 6 months, or one year later, you have to upgrade. It's moving too fast.

Mylar: I know exactly what you mean. I've had the exact same experience where software technologies change, and in the case of smartphones, the platforms themselves change…and your software either grows with them or it dies. I guess it’s like: Who uses the Palm Pilot anymore?

A lot of manufacturers I know have a bit of a musical background to them. Do you make music with this stuff? Do you play and tinker? What is your musical relationship to the equipment that you and other people make?

Émilie: I used to make music. I started in my teens with trackers, and then I got my small home studio with a sampler and a couple of analog synths. I stopped in my twenties because I didn't really have the time, and I think I was not very good at it. So I moved on to something else, and actually I got into building and designing synths because I thought that it would be a way for me to get back to making music - but it didn’t. That didn't really work out as planned…

Mylar: What is it about designing music hardware (and software originally) that appeals so much? Why does it carry you through now?

Émilie: I like sound. I take a lot of pleasure listening to music and just enjoying sounds, even just listening to a single note, a single drone, not patching any CV into an oscillator and listening to this single tone. I just like that. And also I like the mathematics and physics behind sound.

Mylar: You get to explore both of those aspects at once.

Émilie: Yes.

Mylar: I suppose from a design perspective then, if you're not a musician, how do you personally try and make your products work for musicians? How do you know that what you’re creating will fulfill a musical purpose?

Émilie: Well, maybe I'm not a musician, but I still can appreciate sounds and music. For example, when I'm developing sound generation devices, like oscillators, I can listen to the sound and I can feel that it's interesting or it's pleasing. And when I work on something that generates patterns, like for example the “t” section of Marbles, I can listen to the pattern and say yes, it's interesting. Even if I don't really know how to put this into use to create a complete piece of music, I can hear that something interesting is going on and I know that musicians will be able to take that and run with it.

Mylar: I wonder how many different iterations the pattern engines went through in Marbles? You get down to 3 in the drum section - but did you try more, and how ultimately how do you decide what makes the cut?

Émilie: I think I reviewed between maybe 9 or 10 pattern generation algorithms. In fact, I think that if you press the buttons for more than three or four seconds, you can still get more options. For the division/multiplication mode, I tried many different ratios, and I tried to sort them by order of strangeness. You get all the exotic ratios like 7 or 13 at the extreme position of the knob. The question is at which point do you introduce the ratio of 3 or one-third? Should you continue going 2, 4, 8 and so on, or when does it start getting interesting when you introduce one-third?

That is an example of a moment when I spend a lot of time just changing one or two lines of code, then playing for 20 or 30 minutes with the module and then doing little changes. I call that “balancing”, because it's not really working on a feature of the module itself. It’s just changing parameters or changing the way the response of a knob is calibrated. Just little details.

Mylar: I think those things make all the differences in the world though! And I’m thinking it’s like on Clouds, the “catch up” mode you created where you can kind of wiggle a knob to sort of bring it back to the position. I think there are certain usability aspects that perhaps can only be discovered or are mostly only discovered when you actually have some physical hardware to interact with or see.

It might be good to get you to talk a little bit about the sort of, quote unquote, “typical” module development process, because I'm interested in how you first come up with an idea but then how you iterate and flesh that idea out. Your feedback loop. What you were talking about there. How do you inform yourself about what is successful or not?

Émilie: The workflow for a digital or an analog module is very different, because with digital modules, there are so many things you can try without actually having to modify the hardware. But usually I create very quickly. It's just a matter of days, or at worst it’s a week. The first prototype for digital module would be just a piece of software running on my computer. Sometimes, I use Pure Data to prototype things, but I don't really do it very often now.

Mylar: Do you exclusively use Pure Data to software prototype, or something else as well?

Émilie: Usually it's just a command line program, and I just if I want to listen to what happens with the knob at this position, I just modify a constant value in the program. It's really basic, but I like this process, and when I feel that I'm onto something, that's when I start thinking about what kind of inputs and outputs I want and how many knobs, and will it be a big module or small module. And at this stage, that’s when I contact Hannes Pasqualini (Papernoise design, who design Mutable’s panels) to make a panel mockup for me.

Mylar: So how do you conceive of modules, and how do you know which ideas are truly worth pursuing, and investing all your time in?

Émilie: So I keep a list of ideas, and then sometimes another manufacturer releases a module - and I know I can remove one or two in the list...

Mylar: Ah yes, I've seen your comments when that’s happened before...

Émilie: So I try to stay informed about what's going on in research. I like to read conference proceedings and just to look at what's happening with plugins, hardware, with everything. So I keep this list of ideas and that’s always on my mind, and then at some point I realise that OK, this idea is what I have to work on in the next 3 or 4 months. I don't really know what causes an idea to move out of this list and suddenly become the thing I'm obsessed about...but I just know that at some point, it happens. I start the software prototype and then I want to visualize it. Sometimes I draw a mockup myself, sometimes I do it in Photoshop. Sometimes I just send an email to Hannes and I just tell him “OK, I want to do this thing with 3 big knobs, 5 small knobs and 2 buttons and 8 jacks. Can you find a visually pleasing way of arranging all this stuff on the panel?”

Mylar: I think it's interesting how Hannes is not just a visual designer, he's very much an interaction designer and he will have a mind for functional layout. I've got the Push Turn Move book and I was really interested to see how Clouds developed through many iterations. Is it normal to have so many? And do you have to change the hardware prototypes even after you've had them built?

Émilie: Yes. Clouds is a very particular case, because I had this idea of a spectral processing module, and the user interface and hardware was specially designed for this spectral processing thing...and in the end I didn't really like the result. Since I had the hardware made, I started thinking about what else could we do with this hardware, without redesigning everything. So that's when I wrote the granular processing code, and everybody seemed to like it, so that’s what happened. And the rest is history. So Clouds is a bit of an exception, but usually once I have decided what's going to be on the panel, in terms of number of knobs, number of CV inputs and outputs, usually things don't really evolve that much.

Mylar: Regarding evolutions, I remember reading comments when Plaits was announced, people saying, “Are you going to sell your Braids, now?”. The old device doesn’t magically stop being useful, it’s still just as musical as the day it was invented - but I am curious about your feelings on this, obviously particularly with reference to Clouds. You said there will be a new, evolved version of this module, as you were dissatisfied with the way the people were using the original. You felt it not been successful in the design, because people were using it in a way that you hadn't imagined...they were using it less effectively?

Émilie: So I think my mistake with Clouds was to say OK so this module is going to be used in a modular system so I expect people to have random voltage sources, so I don't include a random element into the module. It will have to be patched using all the CV inputs. And I think people did not really get what my intention was with the module. I think the root of this is that granular synthesis can mean very different things to different people, especially in the USA. Curtis Road’s approach, which is really focusing on fragments of sound, looping and sliding across a waveform with just one single playhead. This is what we see in the Phonogene. But in my mind, my view of granular synthesis was more influenced by Xenakis. So there is this idea of creating large clouds of sound with many grains played at the same time, and how you randomize the pitch and position and duration of the grains. My idea was to create clouds of sound in which the parameters of each grain were randomized, but this randomness had to be supplied to the module, by the user, through the CV inputs.

Mylar: I’ve been using Clouds in my live system, and I think you’d be pleased to know, applying random sources to Position and Texture and Size just to invigorate the results! I think understandably people have found their own uses for it, and it’s to its credit that it is so flexible. I think there are lots of different applications. I've seen it used in more like a traditional sampler, too. But I’m really excited to see your revision because I think that's obviously going to be your definitive answer.

Émilie: Yes. I think now I have a better understanding of what people are using the module for. For example, you mention using the module just as a kind of sampler. So now that I am aware that people are going to use the module for that I can make provisions for it in the user interface.

Mylar: I think I said to you on email how I'd never I honestly never once used Braids in Meta mode, and because of the dedicated Model input on Plaits, I did, and it instantly became my favorite thing. I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that distilling project. In the case of discontinuing both Clouds and Braids, my response and I'm sure the feeling of the community too, was one of deep respect since as these were clearly your bestselling modules and you’re prepared to “kill your darlings” as they say, to kill your babies, in order to make a better product.

Émilie: Yes, regarding the design process for Plaits. So I think around 2015 I was writing the code for Rings and Warps and these two products are using a more modern CPU. With this CPU you can do floating point maths, it's a bit technical, but what that means is that it's very, very easy to write signal processing code. Because you write code that really looks like the mathematics you have in your head. And on the other hand while I was writing the code for Braids, it took more steps between the mathematics you have in your head and the code you actually write. So it was very, very easy for me to write code for Rings and Warps and I was always telling myself OMG, it would have been so easy and so much better to write the code for Braids using the same techniques. So I kept this idea to do a version 2 of Braids, and I actually asked Hannes to make a mockup of the user interface for me. At the time it was just 14 HP. It was just similar to the old version with a better screen and more CV inputs and two audio outputs so it wasn't very different from the first version, because it was still based on the screen and encoder. And then so I told him “OK. Keep this picture somewhere, at some point I will want to start working on it.” And I think I started work at the beginning of 2016. I had this spreadsheet with the 16 models, because one of my intentions was to connect the dots between the different models in Braids. For example, in Braids you have these 3 FM models, and I wanted the 3 of them to be grouped in one single FM model instead, so we could say “OK there are 16 modes in Plaits and each mode is a different synthesis technique”. So I had this big list with the 16 models, and what the Harmonics, Timbre and Morph knobs were supposed to do, and every week I was coding like 2 or 3 of them in the list.

Mylar: Plaits really illustrates the idea that hardware should be finite and have a design, because if there's a screen, I feel almost subconsciously the user temptation is to modify and add things to it. In the case of the Bees in the Trees for Braids, don't get me wrong I have tremendous respect for the people who do this, but I personally I would never want to use the product where they've hacked it, and added so many features that it's just constant scrolling. What are your feelings about the firmware modifications to your hardware in general - adding layers of functionality to your products, what is your feeling about that?

Émilie: I personally think that it's too much. I think it's really crossing the threshold above which I say no, it's too complicated. I don't even want that in my rack. I don't use alternative firmware for my own modules. I think my point is, that if I would be comfortable with things being more complicated, they would have been that complicated in the first place.

Mylar: What I've discovered is that the most successful and longest-standing tools are always the simplest. Take the LA-2A compressor, where it has 2 dials (and one is gain!). Personally speaking, it's my favorite compressor in the world, I have applied it to every voiceover I’ve ever done. I get the knobs in roughly the right place, and I can rest easy knowing it always does a good job. Have you always been confident to be more in-depth in terms of controls, for example in the case of Elements? You see Elements and then you see Rings. The question is, is Elements more difficult to use?

Émilie: I think there are too many things piling up in my head at the moment! The first thing I wanted to say, I started making digital modules in 2012, so at the time what I had in my rack was mostly Doepfer modules and it was not a big problem to have Braids with its menu in this rack because everything else was analog. This specific module is complicated to use, but it's not a problem because there is only one digital module in the system. But now if you look at a system in which every module is digital, every module could have a screen and a menu system, it's probably too much now. At the beginning, my modules were kind of the exceptions in the rack, because they were cohabitating with mostly analog modules, but now everybody is making digital modules I have this sense of responsibility to make things simple again.

Mylar: I definitely feel that, and I like it. You seem to make digital products that work in a very analog way I think. If you look at something like Rings, it doesn't “feel” digital - whatever that means, whatever a digital module feels like. It doesn't act in that way. I simply just push a button and turn dials and good things happen in the same way that playing with an analog filter with cutoff and resonance is just always feeling satisfying, it's the same thing. On another topic, is there anything that has particularly surprised you in the way that other people use your equipment?

Émilie: One thing I didn't truly anticipate is that people can make music on systems without external MIDI controllers or sequencers. I come from this background which was really focused on having a MIDI sound generator, which you hook up to a sequencer or computer, in order to make it play music. But now when I see the videos made by Lightbath, for example, there is only Marbles and sometimes Stages as a sequencer, and I did not really expect that people could make rich and pleasing generative music without a proper sequencer.

Mylar: He's a really good example. I’ve been watching his Loom videos and it’s all just lovely isn't it? I think it's interesting to see how people are using your tools so differently. I feel strongly that if you've got a Marbles and Stages, then you have “the Mutable Instruments sequencer” in those two modules. That's the role that they perform.

We talked a bit about alternative firmware, but I was going to ask you about open source because I think it's remarkable really. Why do you open source your module designs when potentially it would harm your business? And what are your feelings about seeing the various ways that people use your code?

Émilie: I was open source right from the beginning, when I started making D.I.Y. kits. For D.I.Y. kits, it makes much more sense because you're selling a kit, you have to provide the schematics, you have to provide assembly instructions, so it's pretty much like documenting how to make a copy of your product anyway. I was very happy with the process of open sourcing the kits. It made me feel very light, very relaxed about what I was doing. So I wanted to maintain this transparency when I moved to the Eurorack modules, and in terms of clones or things like that, harming my business, I'm not entirely sure that it's the case. I'm pretty confident that the benefits outweigh (or at least balance) the disadvantages.

Mylar: I was emailing someone who was asking me about getting into modular, and my recommendation to them was that they should try VCV Rack. I said the cherry on top was that “most of the most remarkable Mutable Instruments modules are there..for free”. That is a remarkable thing. Some of the best Eurorack modules are available to anyone with a powerful computer. I don't know how you feel about that specifically; did you give permission? Is that necessary?

Émilie: I was in touch with the developer of VCV Rack like 5 or 6 months before he released it. I actually gave him high-resolution images of the faceplates. I really wanted to see this project succeed, because it's such a cool idea and it's extremely well implemented. To me it’s done in a much more competent way than other virtual modular software.

Mylar: In what sort of way?

Émilie: It's very easy to use and what I have seen of the code is extremely well written. It's also easy for developers to create their own modules with it.

Mylar: People seemed to have jumped on it, there’s so much that you can get for it.

Émilie: 4 or 5 weeks after the release, there was already 50 or 60 third party modules. It was really great to see how much traction VCV Rack could get.

Mylar: Can we come back to what we're talking about regarding open source affecting your business? I mean it's sort of a funny question, from some conversations that we've had in the past, and I mean this in the best possible way, I've got this impression of you that you really don't subscribe to a notion of “pure capitalism and endless greed”. To put it mildly. You don't necessarily want your business continuing and growing endlessly.

Émilie: Yes, yes.

Mylar: It’s the craving for novelty that Eurorack seems to foster - perhaps in the way that modules are released with very little information leaking beforehand. It's very quick, it’s very exciting. Perhaps this fast novelty cycle encourages users to spend more money than they would on any other aspect of studio technology? And as a business owner, you can really benefit from this. But I don't know if you feel that this is necessarily a good thing?

Émilie: I feel that the World probably doesn't need quite so many little arrangements of matter that work as voltage-controlled signal processing boxes. We don't really need to have a hundred thousand modules in the world at the moment. Sometimes I feel that people buy modules that they don't really need, and I feel guilty about that. Yes, on my side maybe that my decision to never push or try to grow the company. For example, I don't have any employees. This decision is maybe a way to set a limit. So for example every module you buy, every box, has gone through my hands at some point, I touched it. And I like this limitation. I like this constraint because I know that as long as I'm doing that, I'm not making too much. I don't want to get into a situation where I can say, there is my office, and there are the guys in the back shipping boxes all day, and I don't really see what they do. And then I see on the spreadsheet the number of modules sold this month is not 1000, it's 5000 or 10,000 and it doesn't mean anything to me because I don't touch the stuff myself. This decision to continue doing the shipping myself is a way of keeping the growth under control.

Mylar: Wow.

But I totally get it.

Though I suppose the only question is what do you get from it all? Why do you continue? What is satisfying about the level that you’re at that you don’t need to go any further?

Émilie: So in terms of creativity, I like this balance because in order for me to recoup my development costs, I have to sell between 200 and 500 units of a module. So it’s very reasonable. I know that most of the ideas I have, I can turn them into a module and I know I will make enough money to recoup the development costs. I don't have to say to myself “OK this idea is cool but since I have to sell 20,000 units, I will have to make something more mainstream”. So in terms of freedom of expression, I think I can express all my strange ideas. And in terms of personal situation, I like the way I'm living now. Sometimes people tell me “but you know if you had someone to do all the shipping for you, you could spend 8 hours a day thinking about module ideas, or 8 hours a day just writing code”...but I know that I don't work like that. All the daydreaming I do while shipping boxes - It helps me be more creative afterwards.

Mylar: Getting yourself into multiple headspaces.

Émilie: Exactly.

Mylar: This sounds like a strange thing but it is related. I was in a sandwich shop called Pret, and I read something on one of their napkins. I don’t know if it’s truly part of their business practice but according to the napkin, the staff are told to spend at least a minute making a sandwich. And then after they make a sandwich, they have to then make a salad, and then they have to come back to a sandwich. You can't just keep making sandwiches forever. I assume that this is designed to keep your mental process fresh and to keep doing different tasks throughout the day so that you don't come to hate one task that you have to do. As they say “a change is as good as a rest”.

I had another question about one aspect of your business, which was email, because I have never dealt with anyone who is more efficient with it than you seem to be. Could you please tell me how you do that because I find email a tremendous distraction from work. How does one use email efficiently?

Émilie: Yes, the first thing is that if it takes 65 minutes to answer an email and then if instead you do it in 60 minutes or 70 minutes, it won't make a big difference. But if you reply within 2 minutes it's not the same thing as replying within 7 minutes. So what I usually do is that if I see something in my inbox and I can reply right away, I do it. I stop doing anything else and I just reply right away. At least once a day someone tells me “Wow, you replied instantly, it's amazing.'' It's just a question of priority. It makes a big difference to just answer a simple question that has just arrived in your inbox.

Mylar: In terms of business efficiency, you obviously have companies that assemble the modules for you?

Émilie: They make everything for me, like I receive a box and it’s the same box I ship back to the dealers.

Mylar: So you can offload that. Do you pack everything and test everything yourself as well as or is that all done for you?

Émilie: They also do the testing.

Mylar: This is a silly question but why does every module include a toy? And is there anything significant about them?

Émilie: I think the story was in 2012, in December, my wife and I were in India and we were at the airport with like 1500 rupees that we had to spend - at the airport. So I decided, OK we're going to buy a bunch of small things and I will give them away to my customers. So that's what we did at that time. So people who got their kits in January or February 2013 were the first ones to get the small statues. And they loved it, so I decided to do it every time.

Mylar: You obviously you can’t go to the airport each time now; you have to buy them in bulk.

Émilie: Yes, it's a completely different story now to get them in quantity. But that was the beginning of that.

Mylar: It’s like collecting sets of toys from cereal packets, but I can’t know if I've collected them all yet!

A question regarding hardware production, are there any kind of war stories you might be able to tell? I'm assuming that even at this stage, things still go wrong. What is that experience like and do you have any cautionary tales for other manufacturers?

Émilie: Yes, the first thing is that for all my products, I usually do a first run of 25 units and then once I have tested and approved this 25 units, the rest of the batch is made with 225 or 475 modules, so usually the most significant mistakes are identified within these first 25 units. For example in the case of Frames, the wrong LED was used and it was very dim. But it's just 25 LEDs to replace. I had made a mistake in the design of Tides, where if you used the wrong kind of patch cables, you could create a short when patching a jack in one of the inputs. So most mistakes get identified in the first 25 units...but for the first full quantity batch of Peaks, there was this part I used for the illuminating push-button, it could get stuck because the diameter of the button was a bit too wide. So I had to use a nail file and file down all the buttons on every one of the first 500 Peaks.

Mylar: Oh no…

Émilie: If a mistake is made by the supplier or the manufacturer then they fix it themselves, but if I make a mistake in my documents, then I have to fix it myself. For example with Yarns, I specified the wrong reference for one of the spacers and so instead of it being 11 millimeters, it was 10 millimeters. Meaning, I had to disassemble and reassemble the first 250 modules. I made a similar mistake on Grids. I forgot to mention that they had to put on a washer and again, it's 250 modules to disassemble.

Mylar: That must have given you a lot of dreaming time! Is there any module or hardware that you would like to make but hardware constraints are actually holding you back?

Émilie: No, not really. I think we are very far from having explored the space of all the synthesis or effects algorithms we can do with just 1000 operations per sample. This limit of 1000 operations per sample is what you get on the ARM processors I used in my modules, so I think there are so many, many, many different ideas that can be done just with the hardware I have access to now. And then in terms of constraints, I think it's more a matter of time. If I consider projects like making a desktop synth, it's probably for me 2 years of work. In the same amount of time I can make eight modules. So yeah it's not a matter of hardware cost, it's more a matter of opportunity costs, like If I make this product I know that I'm not going to make 8 other products. So it's more interesting for me to make more different products. That's also why I love making Eurorack modules, because in terms of the total time I work on the module, it's 3 or 4 months...so I know that if I'm not happy with the result, or if someone else is making something similar, well, OK, it's just 4 months of my life, I can move on to the next module. Every month someone emails me and asks me, “are you going to make a hardware version of CyliC”? If I do that I would spend 2 years of my life building it. I prefer making more modules.

Mylar: Obviously with Marbles, was it not 2015 when it was first announced?

Émilie: Yes, exactly.

Mylar: You know in the case of some modules, do you take a lot more time? A question from both a practical and creative standpoint is how do you keep focused on a project for that long? And how many concurrent products would you have ongoing at any one time?

Émilie: So yes, one thing is that I didn't really spend any time working on product development throughout the second half of 2016 and pretty much the entire year of 2017. If it took so much time for Stages Plaits and Marbles to be released, it is not because I really spent a lot of time working and improving them. It's just more personal reasons. But to answer your question about the number of projects I keep working on, yeah, usually it’s 3 or 4. So if I'm stuck on something because there is a problem that I don't really know how to solve, or I am lacking motivation or inspiration, or I'm just waiting for parts or prototypes to be delivered, then I know there is something else to switch to. So that's why you usually get three or four modules almost simultaneously, because that's how I work.

Mylar: It’s interesting to me how these three modules you just released, how Plaits, Marbles, and Stages, they feel like a whole system. When I had them to test, and had to keep them secret, I put them in a dedicated case on their own, with a Clouds for polish, they made a “Music Easel”. The Mutable Music Easel.

Émilie: I did not really have this project of making a mini-system in mind. I didn't really think of interaction between them, I was really in this mindset of simplifying things when I developed these three modules. I was always going back and forth between the three modules, so for example when I decided to add the LED indicators on the outputs of Marbles, I decided to the same on Stages. And then when I decided to use the DC-DC converter on Marbles to reduce power consumption, I decided to do it simultaneously on Plaits and Stages. So they did sort of co-evolve together.

Mylar: So, obviously you have collaborated with Hannes and he is obviously a huge part of the development you do, but you also collaborated with Tom (Whitwell, of Music Thing Modular). Can you talk a bit about that, what inspired you to do that? And is there anyone else you would like to collaborate with if it was possible?

Émilie: No, not really. I don't know. Maybe something really completely crazy like working with Korg on a physical modeling Volca something like that. But not for designing modules. It really feels like there is this notion of authorship in module design. It's like asking a writer if you want to collaborate with another writer to write a novel, it sounds silly and I think it's the same for designing modules.

Mylar: I'm curious about the Ears project though, you’re obviously fascinated with exploring aspects of physical modeling.

Émilie: It's actually related to your question about Elements and Rings. So at the time I wanted to do a module based on Modal Synthesis, this idea of breaking down the sound generation into an excitation and the body of the instrument or the resonator, and the question is: should we split it into two modules like we have an exciter module and a resonator module or should we combine the two in one big module?

At the time I was designing Elements to me the answer was no, it’s more interesting to bring the two together because there aren't many modules that can work as good exciters anyway so that's why I designed Elements... and then I started using Elements to process external signals and I realized, “Oh well, in fact just the resonator would be so interesting”. So that's why I developed Rings. And just a couple of months after that, Tom released the Mikrophonie module and just patching it into my prototype of Rings, it was amazing this idea that you can tap or scratch a virtual surface or virtual material. I absolutely loved it, but there were two problems; the 1st one was that the Mikrophonie was a DIY kit. I thought that if we want to make this accessible to a large number of people, it has to be sold as a factory-built module. And then there were a couple of limitations in the hardware design. I just looked at the schematics and I said, I know I can do better than that, in terms of noise and distortion. So that's why I contacted Tom and said I want to do my version of the Mikrophonie. “Are you OK with that? Can we find a way to compensate you?” And I also got in touch with Steve from Thonk because he was distributing Tom’s kits, and we agreed on the way to do this. I'm quite happy with the result because it works so well, with Rings and also even with Clouds. People don't do this, but you can record into Clouds, a sound that you make by scratching or tapping Ears, and then you can granularize it and process it into Rings. It's really interesting. I'm quite proud to have introduced this kind of sound into modular systems. I managed to find a different kind of sound, and suddenly people making ambient music were drawn to modular...

Mylar: I saw someone commented on one of Lightbath’s videos, they made this slightly dickish comment about how “this is the kind of music that people who own modular synths and cameras make”. I was like, mate, you're such an idiot. It’s called “ambient music”. I think Lightbath is a brilliant example of the use of physical modeling, generative sequences and a really beautiful use of textural delays and reverbs as well.

Émilie: And houseplants!

Mylar: And gemstones! That's a very important aspect.

Émilie: I'm happy because I like this aesthetic, I am not even hiding it...

Mylar: Tom Whitwell ttalked on this podcast about how he successfully made an automatic piano melody generator. I would like to encourage you and other manufacturers to keep making modules that allow people not only to discover chance musical phrases, but to be able to loop and explore them, because I feel strongly that the moment where you capture that randomness, where you choose to repeat it, is where the human element comes back in.

So I think there's basically really only one or two more questions that I would like to ask. One is relatively large, the other is quite simple. In all your years of doing this, this activity what would you say is your proudest achievement?

Émilie: I think it's...it’s whenever I find an artist already in my music collection, an artist that I listen to a lot, it’s when I find that such an artist is using my modules. For example it happened with Adrian Utley from Portishead, Sam Prekop, Jon Brooks from the Advisory Circle, Scanner. All these people, I was playing their music all the time and suddenly I am finding out that they use my modules. It’s wow! It’s a big moment.

It’s really is closing the loop. Because I listen to their music, it impacts my tastes, what I decide to put in my modules, because my definition of pleasant music has been influenced by what I was listening to...and then they get the modules. It’s a complicated feedback loop.

Mylar: So my last question is something I've been asking everyone I've spoken to in some form or another. What do you see as the future of music technology? What would you like the future of music technology to look like?

Émilie: The thing that I repeat all the time in interviews, at the moment it's not really easy to record a control voltage alongside an audio track in Live or Logic. I cannot record a CV and manipulate it the same way I manipulate an automation curve, or MIDI, and it's also difficult to get this signal back to the module. I think that at some point designers of audio interfaces and music software will address this question, and maybe it will give birth to a different way of composing...in which you think less about notes, and you just have this blank page in your music software in which you can draw curves. Maybe we'll go back to this idea of graphical scores, by Xenakis and the likes. A more visual or graphical way of manipulating music. Besides that, I don't really have any big plans.

I got into this DIY desktop synth thing, and exploring digital modules, and maybe those are the only two big ideas I’ll ever have.

Mylar: Those were pretty good ideas. Everything's working pretty well so far?

Émilie: Yeah. What I mean is, I'm not making modules because my goal is to invent the future of music technology. It's just that digital modules turned out to be an interesting thing to make in 2012. I don’t have this plan or objective. I'm not obsessed with the idea of what's going to happen in 5 years, or 10 years, in music technology. I just…

Yeah. Let's see. Let's see what happens.

And let's see if we can build on what happens.

////////////////////////////////////////////////

Notes:

Here are links to good stuff mentioned throughout this podcast!

Firstly, thanks for helping pose questions:

James Carruthers: http://twitter.com/jamescarruthers / https://twitter.com/nobotsno

Tom Armitage: https://foxfield-instruments.com/ / https://twitter.com/tom_armitage

Mutable Instruments: https://mutable-instruments.net/

CyliC: http://defectiverecords.com/cyclic/index2.html

Music Think Mikrophonie: http://musicthing.co.uk/pages/mikrophonie.html

VCV Rack: https://vcvrack.com/

Graphical Scores: http://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/graphic-scores-art-music-pictures/crumb-twelve-fantasy-pieces-after-zodiac-ampl/

Musicians referenced:

Lightbath: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNcpKG4D0_nxBYwtgD4iA7w

Iannis Xenakis: https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2013/apr/23/contemporary-music-guide-xenakis

Portishead: http://www.portishead.co.uk/

Sam Prekop: http://www.thrilljockey.com/artists/sam-prekop

Jon Brooks (Advisory Circle): https://ghostbox.co.uk/

Scanner: http://scannerdot.com/

Buy Wonderful Mutable Instruments Eurorack modules and other fine kit from episode sponsors Signal Sounds: http://www.signalsounds.com (Go on, have a browse. Go. Go now. Tell 'em we sent you)