Musicians are trying to ‘sculpt the shape of sound’ with modular synthesizers

DALLAS — Building a modular synthesizer is a lot like playing with Legos. These synthesizers are made up of different modules, or electronic circuits. The modules can be mixed and matched freely, and patch them together and suddenly electricity turns into sound.

Keaton Collins started building his modular synthesizer in 2020. He uses it to produce ethereal, melodic soundscapes. Collins cases his modules, some which he soldered himself, in a wooden cabinet he built. The modules have turning knobs, switches and a messy spider web of colorful patch cables spilling out of one module’s output to another’s input.

“You’ve got oscillator modules, which just create a tone and you can vary the pitch of that tone,” Collins said as he patches the oscillator to the filter module. “You can go in and you can sculpt the shape of the sound with filters and modulate the various parameters that you’re putting on that sound.”

Collins makes ambient music, and he is part of the growing modular synthesizer community in North Texas.

Many of these musicians collect all kinds of modules. Modules range in size and price, and each has its own function. By patching differing modules, a musician can make peaceful, atmospheric tunes or improvised harsh, electric-static noise that challenges the definition of music.

“You’re manipulating real electricity to make a lot of these sounds. There’s something very organic about that,” Collins said.

BENDING THE RULES

For many, modular synthesizers are for breaking and bending the rules of music. But collecting modules can cost thousands of dollars.

“It’s a prohibitively expensive hobby to just break into immediately,” Collins said. “At least for me, it’s a slow build. I haven’t bought a new module in over a year, as much as I would love to.”

There is another more cost-effective option to make experimental music without modules.

Elizabeth Garcia is a Dallas-based producer who goes by the name Uxra. She makes industrial experimental music, which can be created with a modular synthesizer, but instead she uses a computer program called Ableton.

“You have things like plug-ins that you can use, or you can rent virtual instruments,” Garcia said. “Ableton is really great for having the tools to make different sounds that aren’t necessarily something that you can just pick up and play on an instrument.”

For Garcia, Ableton is how she can produce music without spending thousands of dollars on equipment. It provides the creative tools needed to produce, arrange, mix and record music.

“Being in a not-so-great economic situation, I’ve found that that’s not an excuse for me not to create,” Garcia said. “I don’t have a lot of physical instruments. My world has expanded beyond what people have that they’re using to make music with.”

While the hardware is different, that’s also what appeals to Collins. The multi-instrumentalist said making music with a modular synthesizer is more freeing because you don’t need a lot of physical instruments.

“I’m more engaged with this type of stuff than I ever really was with guitar or bass,” Collins said. “I can play any of the basic chords and do some songwriting, but it was with this that I started really being able to just kind of lose myself in the music I was making.”

That engagement is what draws fans to Dallas Ambient Music Nights at Texas Theatre. It’s an immersive event that happens four times a year.

Bruce Blay, an experimental musician, was in the crowd at the most recent event in August.

“I listen to texture more than anything, and ambient music has that in droves.” Blay said. “I would describe it as visual music, like it’s music for your eyes.”

With modular synthesizers, there are no composition rules. There is no music theory or chords. Musicians have the freedom to create and experiment. It’s that freedom that appeals to this growing community. For them, the possibilities are endless.

“The more modules you have, the more you know, the sky’s the limit,” Collins said.