Wolfgang Merx – Mr. X

1.    Favourite knob or fader or switch on a piece of gear and why?

Moog Sub 25
Moog Sub 25

Look at this great filter cutoff frequency knob on the Moog Sub 25, one of my recent additions and mainly part of my setup for gigs. I guess the resulting filter sweeps when turning this knob are the most famous synth sound!

2.    Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?

Moog Little Phatty Stage II
Moog Little Phatty Stage II

This Moog Little Phatty Stage II is the first synth I ever bought and still my go-to synth when simply wanting to play or starting a session. It’s almost perfect because of its sound and the stripped-down layout, but exactly this one-knob-for-all layout has one flaw: it results in “jumping” of the values when turning the knobs after selecting a different feature. For example, you set the cutoff first and then select the resonance, but the value will jump as you move the knob. As always with synths, it is better to try and hear it than to read about it.

3.    What setup do you bring on holiday or tour or commute etc.?

Mobile Modular Euro Rack
Mobile Modular Rack

This is my Mobile Modular Rack which I use for gigs because it has many essential modules and offers five or six separate voices, depending on the patch (details are available here: https://modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/1933212). I use an Arturia Keystep Pro with this rack.

4.    What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?

Arturia Minifreak
Arturia Minifreak

No idea. I rely on hardware, but I use Ableton for mixing. I still added a picture of my Arturia Minifreak because they added a VST along with the hardware synth. I think this is a very good idea of combining both worlds (despite the VST having its flaws).

5.    Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?

No regrets! I take a lot of time before buying or selling anything. Planning my setup before buying anything is crucial to me.

6.    What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?

Moog Little Phatty
Little Phatty

I must get back to the Little Phatty again. The classic Moog sound is what made me want to make music in the first place. Of course it is monophonic, but melodies which sound good on this synth will certainly have more to offer when you add more instruments and introduce polyphony and harmonies.

7.    If you had to start over, what would you get first?

Nord Electro 5D
Nord Electro 5D

Despite loving synths, I would get a Nord keyboard like the Nord Electro 5D. It is the most versatile instrument in my setup and covers a lot of ground.

8.    What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?

Behringer Model D
Behringer Model D

I had a Model D, the MiniMoog clone by Behringer, but it suffered from pitch drift in such a severe way that I couldn’t use it for performances anymore unless I wanted to tune every 30 minutes. This was a problem with the early runs of that model. It was long out of warranty, but to my surprise somebody bought it from me. Still, I bought another model because I need that sound in my setup. The pitch is stable so far.

9.    Most surprising tip or trick or technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?

Doepfer A-121-3
Doepfer A-121-3 in the thick of it

I don’t know whether this is a trick or not, but I like to combine multimode filters and two crossfaders to create a pseudo-stereo sound. The Doepfer A-121-3 multimode filter offers four filter types: low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and notch. You can pair them and send those outputs to the crossfaders. When the crossfaders and the filter module are modulated, you can create constantly evolving soundscapes with these few modules already. This works in a similar way with the Nonlinear Circuits Feague which is a filter module and a quadrature VCO. It has four outputs: two low-pass and two band-pass.


Artist or Band name?

Wolfgang Merx a.k.a. Mr. X.

Genre?

Berlin School, Kosmische Musik, Ambient, Synthwave and a bit of Funk.

Selfie?

Wolfgang Merx a.k.a. Mr. X

Where are you from?

Bedburg, Germany, close to Cologne and Düsseldorf.

How did you get into music?

I started listening to hard rock and prog rock when I was a teenager. The most important band that started my interest in synths and making music is Emerson Lake & Palmer. Hearing the sounds that Keith Emerson made with his famous and enormous Moog modular has been mind-blowing and very inspiring, even to this day. Klaus Schulze is my other major influence, along with Tangerine Dream which I discovered a few years later. Schulze’s spacy and dream-like music is amazing and shows what one person can do …with a lot of synths and keyboards. Tangerine Dream, being a band, expanded this idea in their unique way, adding a sense for fantastic group improvisations.

What still drives you to make music?

Listening to other people’s music and hearing sounds, for example in nature or in everyday life.

How do you most often start a new track?

Most of the time by either improvising a soundscape with pads or Mellotron sounds or by improvising a synth sequence.

How do you know when a track is finished?

I think that music is never finished if it is performed. But when I record music for a future release, I simply feel when the music calms down and a jam is coming to an end.

Show us your current studio

Mr. X’s studio setup

Mr. X’s studio setup

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

Miles Davis once said: “Don’t play the butter notes.”

Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.

This is my latest album „Time Stands Still”, available on most platforms and Bandcamp, of course: https://wolfgangmerx.bandcamp.com/album/time-stands-still


Sascha Haber – Northern Light Modular

1. Favorite knob or fader or switch on a piece of gear and why?

That one is easy… the knobs on my Tegeler Audio Manufaktur Schwerkraftmaschine.

Tegeler Audio Manufaktur Schwerkraftmaschine

I don’t have much outboard gear, but the Tegeler gear is simply outstanding.

They spend a good amount of practical engineering on those motorised pots and switches and seeing them turn while using the plugin is just magic.

And then you touch them during a session and they do not resist, but instead write the automation…

Wonderful german engineering 🙂 

Tegeler Audio Manufaktur Schwerkraftmaschine insides

2. What bit of music gear are you particularly proud of?

That is my TTSH/1601 combo… the piece of gear that started my soldering career i would say.
I always dreamt of owning and playing with an ARP 2600, and 6 or 7 years back there was no re-issues like today.

But then I hear about this swedish project that was around for a while and ordered a kit from Jon. Little did I knew what it takes to build an instrument! It took like 3 months and occupied most of the living room space all the time.

But there I started to invest in tools like a proper DMM, my first real soldering iron and a scope. I actually managed to finish the project, got it fully working and learned so much in the process.

So I started the Facebook group called TTSH and at some point I did a group buy and talked Behringer into selling us a few thousand fader caps.

TTSH/1601 combo

3. How do you see your gear in the landscape of music?

Very much as accessories to existing Buchla systems… like Akrapovic makes racing exhausts for Ducati, we make expansions for 4U systems.

When we started Northern Light Modular both Marc and I had a small DIY system.

Well, mine grew at that time as I built each and every kit that i could get my hands on and after a year I had a massive 24U system blinking at me.

But then we looked at things like the Ornaments and Crime, Temps Util or the offerings by Mutable Instruments at the time and thought, that kind of stuff is missing in the 4U world.

And instead of cross patching Euro to 4U we got in contact with Max, and Patrick and of course Emelie and looked into collaborations to port them into 4U.

The 2OC was our first project and at that time in 2017 very much a Euro module behind a 4U panel.

It took another year or two to adapt all the software to work properly in the 1,2V range, revert negative voltages and show proper values on the displays.

But it was a great time, 3D printers allowed us to experiment with front panels and making your own PCBs was exotic and fun.

2OC in 4U

4. What music has inspired you to produce this gear?

I am a sucker for Berlin synth school…Tangerine Dream etc.
The O_c is in my opinion the best multi tool one can add to a rack, even if it takes a bit of learning .

But once you figured out how to cascade the quantizer playing variations of simple shift register notes, it plays generative music that is not just random noise.
And I like that a lot.

5. Most surprising tip or trick or technique that you’ve discovered about your gear?

Haha… the stuff other people do with my gear compared to what I intended it to be used for always amazes me.

Like, we build this massive 3 voice oscillator, spend countless hours to make it track 8 octaves and FM in sync with each other.

Sounds like angels singing and then someone comes and cross modulates the FM with the sync and all hell breaks loose.

So I am just watching and standing in awe, one part of me wants to yank out the cables and the others is like, that is super impressive, bro.

Northern Light Modular Animated Tricillator Model 2AT

6. How did you get into music gear making?

Well, after that TTSH adventure, diverse EuroRack modules that came and went i stumbled upon the 4U crowd and how few options they had.

So we talked to Émelie Gillet (Mutable Instruments) and Max Stadler (Ornaments & Crime, Temps, Utile) about porting some of their designs and they were very helpful sharing and helping us up on the horse.

My lovely girlfriend Katrine, who built many of the SMD designs we have now, also is a wizard with the 3D printer and so we could prototype our new modules very quickly.

Like a great danish philosopher once said : 
Life in plastic, it’s fantastic  🙂

hOChTU

7. How do you most often start a new piece of gear? Where do the ideas come from?

Necessity I want to say, but that’s not quite true.

More often it is actually artists airing out ideas, pointing me to existing gear, or just imagining things.

Though the latest thing we’re making, was born from an idea to have a multi effect that works without any cables.
I have had a handfull of different guitar pedals and it really gets out of hand at some point with power and audio and midi cables.

So I wanted to build something that works straight in the Music Easel and can use its modulation.

We made a Kickstarter to found the project, I learned to program with Max/MSP at Notam/Oslo  over winter and BLAM!… we had a multi effect.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nlm/model-cardme-a-multi-effect-slot-card-for-the-buchla-208

Northern Light Modular – mobile effect engine

8. How do you know when a piece of gear is finished?

Is it ever ?

Most of our modules evolve constantly… either we fix small things here and there or sometimes, when they need a bigger change we made a V2 or V3 like with the Ornaments.
The latest version has input and output attenuators and LEDs indicate the actual level produced…
I think no other O-c in the market has that… and the software still works with that added hardware part.

Every year we also do special edition that we auction off for a good cause, and last year we made one for the international trans fund.

Northern Light Modular – Dual CV Polymorpher

9. What is the best creative or production advice that you’ve ever heard?

Go with the flow ! 

Turn off Facebook, put the phone on silent and jam… just record what you are doing, maybe you strike gold, maybe not 🙂


Selfie

Sascha Haber

Where are you from? Where are you based?

From Germany…the south…and based in Copenhagen since 2006 and Northern Light Modular has been operating since may of 2017, for six years now.

Show us your current studio/workshop!

Sascha Haber studio
Sascha Habers Studio

Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.

Northern Light Modular – http://northernlightmodular.com/
Modular Grid – https://bit.ly/2No5sus


Markus Mueller – Nebula Instruments

At SuperBooth 2023, I did an interview with Markus Mueller of Nebula Instruments.

He talked about his acoustic instrument the Euphone and the process of making it. It builds upon the tradition of the Cristal Baschet, but adds newer materials and features, such as the ability to re-amp sounds via the large metal reflector.

Check it out here: https://nebula-instruments.com/