(image: Sina Schulz)
Introduction
Producers are productive. I am not. In fact, avoiding productivity is what got me into this. For me electronic music represents subculture, freedom of expression, and experimentation. All of which are values that somehow contradict productivity. Productivity means using your time effectively and producing results. When I’m making music, I try to lift time instead of using it.
A machinist is someone who operates machines. So do I as an electronic musician. We tend to think of machines as tools to execute external will but operating them requires adaptation to their respective logic, their rules and limitations. It is as reactive as it is planned: A permanent exchange of feedback between the operator and the machine that can result in productive dialogue, or chaos.
“Machinist EP” is the result of a deep dive into the world of modular synthesis. The five tracks have been produced between November 2024 and May 2025. They display different stages of research into these kinds of instruments and methods to operate them. This blog is a reflection on this time. It takes the tracks of the EP as motives but on a free, associating base.
The EP
Personally, this piece marks an important milestone in my career and musical development. As my first professional work, the project taught me a lot about collaborating with clients: How to communicate about music with non-musicians, or what is the monetary value of my work? Furthermore, I learned that I am not one of those musicians that can sound like anyone else but that I have a specific style. My first attempts at this project were all too focused on what I thought the clients wanted rather than what I have to offer, and therefore turned out to be shit. Only when I left aside samples and synths I didn’t like and harmonies I didn’t care for, it took me two studio sessions with the modular case to finish the piece. And they liked it! “Don’t try to be someone else to make other people happy. Develop your own expression, and people will follow” is the lesson I learned here.
1) Flyer of the circus show
The EP
When I asked my friend Boris (syrup) to remix the piece I knew that he would bring out the best of it. Boris and I have an interesting musical relationship. While our brains work very differently, we share a similar taste, and sometimes complementary or symbiotic approaches. His workflow is clearly digital, and he fully exploits the possibilities of the medium. Producing a whole track from a single kickdrum sample, routed through countless return channels that modulate each other, for example. Or remixing his own ideas 15 times, and you wouldn’t be able to tell that they are made from the same material. His way of painting ideas on the timeline leads to advanced structures and a very non-loopy feel, as well as a high level of intention. My approach on the other hand is very much tied to hardware, intuition, and loops. I tend to create interest through live interacting with those machines, like establishing polyrhythms through shortening loops on the drum machine, developing a running patch or sequence and so on. This can lead to very long recordings of exploring the same idea after which I don’t know what to do with the material. But what if I don’t always have to bring the material to a finished piece myself but give it to other people?
1) Cover of the original release
2) syrup and I
The EP
Nowadays, a lot of club music is very fast, impactful and focused on big drops. Accumulated energy from covid times and the explosion of electronic music through streaming and social media might play a role here. However, I am convinced that the meditative potential of club music is far superior. It takes courage on the artist’s side to prioritize slow evolution and endless rise over instant gratification and release. The listener must be patient, must get involved, must take their time. But it can lead to a unique state of trance.
The center of the track is a recording of a sampler module, sequenced by multiple LFOs. Every now and then, another LFO Pulse turns around the sample direction, which is especially impactful on drum samples. A droning wavetable oscillator gives it an unpleasant but hypnotic feel. Harsh samples from other recording sessions enrich the sound. Kick and Bells were recorded with the drum machine.
1) The “Wooden Beast” Case
2) “Deep Tech” Patch, one example of a playable patch on the Wooden Beast
The EP
To play live sets was my idea from early on, and most of my tracks were just that. But there was also a big uncertainty coming with that. I froze quickly in front of others. Partly because I lacked confidence in my taste, but also because I couldn’t articulate my ideas the way I wanted. It was jams and a show with rosie cpt that taught me to follow the vibe but respect your previous choices. More than that, she taught me to enjoy what I am doing and not be ashamed or afraid that people won’t like it.
Benjamin Flesser planted the idea to ask what the machine wants from me. I always tried to avoid harsh reactions when I changed filters, tuned oscillators, or when I used resonance and drive. Now I went to look for them, since they were part of the machine’s sound palette. Modulations, that would rip up the sequence, its harmony or rhythm were way more interesting than the sequence itself. What happens when an LFO provides the clock, but you feed it back to itself? How does the time structure change due to the amount of feedback? Would it turn into something rhythmically interesting, when I crank up the filter resonance, close the filter and give it a snappy envelope? I understood to use those reactions as possibilities to extend my idea, to tell another story above or behind it. Giving control to the machine is beautiful but fingers are modulators as well.
1) “Found Myself” is an 11 min cut from my Live Set “Flows” at Block1. You can see the whole show here:
2) rosie cpt and I as Pattern Game at PULSE Winter 22
The EP
Working fast like that requires some skills one needs to develop first though. Besides a developed ear for pitches and rhythms, it’s important to know what sound to go next for and how to achieve it. Does it need a second drone, something drum like, a melodic sequence? It took me quite some time to get to that point.
A new method I tried in this project was strict resampling. After every recording I immediately treated the respective track with compression, effects like saturation or resonators. Instead of using a lot of automations I treated the knobs while recording and when I was happy with the result, I printed the track to audio to not have any plug-ins or automation to deal with. As someone who tends to have second guesses, this approach helped me as much as recording hardware to stick to my idea. It also helps to shape the development of the track from early on. When the previous channels already follow a certain dramaturgy, the following recordings will react to that and that leads to a more organic and often surprising development compared to when I have a bunch of non-expressive channels that I try to treat and automate afterwards.
1) Example of a playable patch
2) Recording a Drone for a job with rosie cpt while modulating parameters and the Filter Cutoff by hand.
Conclusion
Realizing this changed my perspective on making electronic music fundamentally. Producing, as I understand it, is a lot about using well-defined ideas, delivering a rounded product. Dealing with machines is about the process, the dialogue. Recently, I played a live show for Blank Pages Collective using only the Behringer Neutron, sequenced with the Beatstep Pro, and a Reverb Pedal. I developed a generative patch from scratch and although I had some modulation ideas and prepared sequences, I didn’t have a fixed plan where to go. It wasn’t the first time, I tried something like this, but the first time it really worked. That’s because I embraced the dialogue: I knew that there would be moments when everything starts to fall apart, things become weird or unpleasant. Before, I was trying to avoid those moments, now I embraced them as part of the process, an invitation from the machine to interact and find a knew sweet spot, a sound, a movement or rhythm that I could keep for a while before disrupting it again. And then again. I came to realize that when you share that process, the audience appreciates it as well. “You could feel the patch come alive”, Boris told me afterwards.
What does all this mean for me as a producer, in the sense that I still want to finish and publish my music? First, I stopped seeing production as a process for itself. I improvise and compose for live situations instead of playing my finished compositions live. Tracks are only byproducts of that process, documents, recordings, artifacts. Second, some of those ideas earn to be developed further. But it’s not necessarily me who should do that. I will give more of my ideas to other people to interpret them. And third, I will keep focusing on machines and the dialogue with them. I am a machinist!
1) Blank Pages Gig with a single synth + reverb pedal, May 2025