Euro’ sceptic
Much of Jon’s synth work is done in the box, calling on the likes of FM8, Serum and Spire. When he feels the need to escape to the hardware realm, though, his options include the Moog Model D and a well-stocked Eurorack modular system. “I’ve started using that more just to get away from the screen while I’m working. It’s another interesting opportunity to create different results,” he affirms.
: What does modular bring you that you can’t get from softsynths? JG: “From a technical viewpoint, the modular produces tiny inflections and variances in arpeggios, pitchbending and envelopes that I can’t seem to replicate with the computer, no matter what synth I use. It’s an inherently slightly inaccurate object, so for things like plucks and anything clean and staccato, I wouldn’t use anything else now, because I can’t seem to replicate the nuances it gives. Maybe you could, but it would take a long time in comparison.
“So that’s one aspect of it. But you could easily get bogged down in talking about whether software emulation is good enough, and the sort of elitism that comes from people with lots of hardware synths, who’ll tell you that they’re inherently ‘better’ at music because they have higher quality oscillators and things like that. Regardless of that, it’s just really fun to use, and keeping yourself in that child-like state of just exploring haphazardly – and using something where every time you touch it, you’re learning something – never stops being exciting. Once you get over the hurdle of how it works, and have the right modules, it’s an easy way to waste a lot of time.”
: Given how easy it all is to get lost in, how do you stay on track and integrate the Eurorack in your production? JG: “That’s a big thing. If you go on YouTube and type in ‘Eurorack modular’, you get thousands of videos of, in my opinion, people wasting their time, making sounds that have no place in anything, really. There are so many people with huge racks of modules, producing a sound that you could actually make efficiently with three modules, for a tenth of the cost.
“So I try to make sure I’ve got a reason for using it. There are two ways to use it. I can either run MIDI in from the computer, and in that case, I’m directly taking a melody or something I’ve created onscreen and just trying to get a different result in terms of how it’s produced. That gives me an in and an out, so I’ve got control of it via the screen.
“The other way would be to use the clock source in the Eurorack and actually use control voltage to produce arpeggios and so on. I have a unit called a Microscale, which will Auto-Tune pitches so you can generate a random frequency and tune it to the nearest note that you select, which is fantastic. You can basically get a piece of music that never repeats itself. It’s sort of fun when you can get your Eurorack to do that – you can set it up so that it’ll run through a chord progression over a period of minutes, and never really play the same thing twice – but it sounds harmonically sensitive, it’s a proper piece of music.”
“The sort of people that buy Eurorack systems aren’t necessarily musicians. I think it has a bit of a fanbase in people who are just as electronically interested as musically interested, and just using it in that way is fine, but probably not exciting to the sort of people who are reading and want to make results – something that’s actually going to create an atmosphere. It can do that – it’s just all about finding the right modules.”
“Once you have the right modules, it’s an easy way to waste a lot of time”