TALK 916 - GForce Matrix 12 And more

Hello everybody, welcome to Sonic Talk episode 916, recorded today on the 11th of the 11th,

2026. I can't be silent if it's 11 o'clock anywhere, but it's probably 11 o'clock somewhere,

but it's one minute past. Yeah, it's 11 o'clock where one of our guests is, hence the sign language and him not speaking.

Good for you, Rich. Anyway, this is Music Technology Podcast, so welcome back. We did have a week off while I was in China.

I'm back. I spent the last week, this week in Bristol at ADC, which I'll tell you a little bit about later,

but we're going to be talking about software, synthesizers, drum machines, music production,

all kinds of stuff, all the sort of ecosystem and technology surrounding the making, creation,

and sometimes consumption and playing of music. That's our thing. So welcome if you've not joined us before.

If you haven't, you can subscribe. We're on YouTube. We're on Facebook. We're on LinkedIn.

I'm streaming everywhere. In fact, I'm streaming to Instagram today as well. So hello if it's working.

Very rarely does, but they gave me a new set of options and maybe it will be. So if not, if it is, then that will be good.

So we have, well, it's a bit of an old school panel today, but I'm going to leave that little tease there

while I give you a bit of coming up information because we've got some things coming up.

We've got Ableton 13 video is out. That came out on Tuesday, the new beta for that.

Ekon 6 instruments appear. Also, I've used Decent Sampler, which now has auto sampling built in.

I made it using that. So I do check those out for upper tier members.

And like I said, ADC videos that we shot this week, lots of cool stuff.

And we've got many things in the pipeline. So I will encourage you to join us from a membership point of view.

And this is the point at which I press that button. So back after this.

Yeah, we're back in the room. So let's start the furthest away.

Mr. Rich Hilton is there in Connecticut where he's probably getting ready to pack his smalls for a load of disco touring for the party season.

No doubt. How are you, Rich? You well? With Chic, of course, keyboards.

I am very well, thank you. But before I go on the road with Chic, I'm going on a brief holiday here in the US.

Oh, nice.

To celebrate my birthday.

Oh, happy birthday. Is it today?

It is.

Oh, wow. Well, congratulations. Going anywhere nice?

Going to Vermont, which is very, very nice. It's a bit cold this time of year, but we don't mind that.

Ah, will you be visiting the Sound Toys HQ? Because I'm pretty, I think they're based in Vermont. I think they are.

Yeah, they're up in Burlington.

Yeah.

But I'm not going quite that far, so I won't see them this time.

Ah, OK. Well, have a lovely trip.

That's nearly Canada, basically. That's a good reason.

OK. All right. Well, lovely to have you, Rich. I can't wait to hear more.

Lovely to be.

It's always good. And then we're going to come this way. I'm saving the surprise to last.

Gaz Williams there, of course, looking very orange today. I like the colour.

What's that? Oh, black mirror. OK, interesting.

Oh, yeah. Went on the black mirror experience in Montreal. Oh, sorry, gone.

Oh, really? OK. Well, Gaz, of course, modular performer, bass player and head dude, one of the head dudes of Rack Records

and part of the improvisation modular group.

Quasimodal, that's it.

Oh, Quasimodal, yeah. Part of Bleep Club in Bristol's monthly synth hangout.

We are launching, Rack Records are launching in conjunction with Arbor, my favourite brewery,

sessions starting on the 24th of November on the glass boat.

I've got the flyer ready to go. It's going to go live later.

But we're doing each session. Steve Davis and myself are doing Arbor, which is a wonderful Bristol based brewery.

I've now got the glass boat, which is a beautiful boat right in the absolute dead centre of Bristol.

Is that Bristol Bridge? Next to Bristol Bridge. Yeah, yeah. Right next to Bristol Bridge.

Beautiful boat. And we're going to have like the front room of the boat where we're going to be doing regular sessions.

So we're going to theme each session. And the first session is going to be, well,

the title of the event is going to be Back to the Beginning.

And we're going to be looking at early music concrete, Pierre Chaffeur kind of ideas.

And we're going to just explore. And then each session is going to have a different kind of theme.

We've got Berlin School and various other things kind of lined up.

Hauntology. Each one is like a themed sort of session. It's very, very beautiful.

What a great idea. Yeah, thanks. It's going to be great. It's going to be free 24th of November.

That's a Tuesday night. Really, really small capacity.

So, you know, we're probably going to ticket it, even though it's free, just to kind of make sure.

Yeah, so you know what's coming. Oh, I might try and get along to that.

Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. Your video is frozen. I'm just telling you now.

OK, hang on. And I'm going to throw this out to the room.

Obviously, you're doing sessions for a brewery and there's lots of session IPAs.

I mean, they've got to be introducing some sort of named beer to to go along with some of your sessions.

Surely, surely there's got to be a tie in there somewhere. Right.

Oh, OK. I mean, Arbor have got a very big range as well. I'll have to look through. That's a good idea. Session.

But yeah, we recommend this beer to go with this type of music.

Yeah. And then the other thing, very briefly, just about I'm appearing with Zorch, like I mentioned last week as Zorch.

And then I've created a page on my website about the history of Zorch.

And I've got new brand new interviews with the members as well. That's on that page.

And there we go. I got it. Britain's first all synth band.

And I like defy anyone to actually disprove that people have said, oh, maybe it's like Peter Zinoffy and Delia Derbyshire.

But they weren't actually playing like since they was since involved.

But Zorch, I think I've got a good claim to being Britain's first.

The only band to ever record at the EMS studio has as things incredible picture there of the studio.

But there's yeah, there's there's links to Zorch's music.

And yeah, as I say, and Guio's Epics, one of the members and Basil Brooks.

But Guio's Epics is our dearly beloved Howard Scarr. I might mention that on the site.

I haven't actually yet. But Howard, obviously, long term Sonic State listener and wonderful sound designer.

I might still have the tumbleweed sample here somewhere, but I can't.

But yeah, to have a little guest appearance with them is such an honor for me.

So I'm so I'm really thrilled. Hence, I'd love it if people could have a little read on my website of the story.

Because I think it needs to be posted. Thank you so much.

I think the story is really, really interesting.

And yeah, I think it's a little slice of British synth history, really.

A little little kind of maybe needs a little bit more from, you know, putting it out there.

I just have to say the ever excellent cheapo card company is going for.

But what about the Vera Lynn drum as the earliest, which is absolutely cracking.

It's just terrible, but also good in a way. Well done.

OK, so anyway, thank you, guys, for that update.

And of course, did a drum roll, please. Here we have Dave Spears back again after a little while.

Quite some time. And Graham, who together are part of G4 software representatives for this show.

How are you, Dave? It's a big question. I realize.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm all right. Yeah. Just getting over a cold, which is annoying.

Oh, but other than that. Yeah. No, I'm good. I'm all right. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. It's amazing. It's like this is proper old school now.

We're just kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this this is like.

Yeah. Many years ago. And of course, we've got Graham there.

No, no. I'm just coming on to you, Graham. So, Graham, you're the one of, I guess,

one of or the guy behind the new G4 software release, which is obviously Matrix.

Is that is that your your role in this particular setup?

Yeah, I designed from a software point of view, Matrix 12,

you know, with with help from the team and the input from Dave and Marcus and such.

Excellent. And I went, please come on, because I don't know very much about it.

Talk about the hardware. I tried to persuade Dave to come back on the show as I get back on.

So here I am. OK, well, thank you, Graham, because I've tried to, but he won't listen to me.

So it's taken me a couple of years. Well done. Well done. Well, it's worth it.

So we'll go to the four up for that one. So, yeah, we've got a number of things to talk about,

one of which will obviously be Matrix 12 released because it's out this well.

Was it this week or has it been a little bit longer? I feel like I've not been sort of listening to anything for ages.

Thursday. OK, so last week I was still in the sort of just back from China.

Oh, is that rich? Are you are you playing a bit of twelve background? Excellent.

OK, well, I'm the role of rich on the rolling who are sadly now defunct, which is, yeah, I guess no surprise.

But a bit disappointing, obviously, again, I suppose. Yeah, you never know.

Might be able to rekindle the fully. That's not what. Yeah, well, Paul, it really poorly, I suppose.

As in P.O.R.L.Y. Rich is your only working. OK, not fully.

And I there is a there is an empty promise burning a hole in one of my email folders from them.

So I do have another one over there. You see, I did realise that I should have at least two of them because I want to keep playing them.

This one does work in almost every way that I need it to.

The failures are not in places that I tend to go very often on that instrument.

But there's a B flat. No, it's actually on the Y axis.

It's actually on the Y axis, not the X axis. So I only do so much on the Y axis anyway.

Most of it, I don't know, can be done anywhere. Well, fair enough.

Well, I'm glad to hear. I'm glad to hear that there is a workaround. That's that's fantastic.

Let's see. Well, we could. Well, why don't we start with the aforementioned G4 software?

I'm going to play this. This has got a bit of an intro from excellent video intro from Alex Ball.

And I know he does a lot of your stuff, Dave. So we'll just kind of open the topic with this one.

And here we go. So 80s.

The Oberheim Matrix 12 is the synth we've been asked for more than any other, and we're proud to announce that it's here.

The Matrix 12 was the most elaborate synthesizer Oberheim ever made.

Born out of the Obie Expander prototype and the production Expander.

This digitally controlled analog synth was launched in 1985.

OK, I'm not going to play the whole thing. People will watch the whole thing.

You know, that's fine. But congratulations, David Graham, on the launch.

It looks like a great instrument to do.

I mean, you've been very much on the Oberheim tip for the last several releases, I guess.

Obviously your own your own instruments as well.

What? Why the Matrix?

Is it, David, you just got like a penchant for complicated, multi timbral devices that are really hard control.

I mean, this one notoriously had an underpowered, shall we say, MIDI processing engine.

So it was a little bit kind of difficult to operate in terms of real time. Right.

Yeah, it's an interesting one. I mean, from my perspective, blimey.

I know Chris used the Matrix 12 on a Keith Emerson tour and he said it was one of those instruments that you kind of went to learn it because there's a lot of menu diving.

And then all of a sudden, you know, you could walk away from it for a couple of days and come back and go, oh, shit, how did this work again?

So I bought I bought an expander years and years ago personally, but it was just after we bought the OB eight.

And I so love that kind of hands on tactile thing.

I bought the expander really for the kind of filter modes and because everyone had been saying, oh, it's amazing. Amazing.

But I found it kind of slightly impenetrable. I'm not.

It was great, but it wasn't massively inspiring. And that was really because of the architecture, I guess, you know, the menu diving.

So in the end, I swapped it for a camera.

Yeah, but I don't use it much. It was the old Canon 7D. But yeah, it was a really bad mistake.

And then when we were talking with Marcus Ryle about the whole Oberheim kind of lineage and stuff and obviously the Matrix 12 was the last instrument that Marcus did before he left Oberheim.

And as soon as Marcus said, well, his aim was to create a polyphonic module, I was like, oh, I kind of get it.

And then I had to go and buy another one. And that was the kind of start of this kind of weird relationship with it.

And then to me, it was still sort of semi impenetrable.

There's a really brilliant video of one of the guys doing all the programming in the 80s.

It's very 80s. And I kind of delved into that a little bit.

I was like, it's still fairly impenetrable.

And obviously we can do software and we don't have to kind of stick to that old school paradigm.

And that's where Graham came in.

Yeah, I was going to ask Graham. Well, no, fair enough.

I was going to ask Graham, I mean, when you're working with Dave and obviously there's these kind of things, I think we're going to do this.

And then you see it's got 15 separate filter types.

Does that make your, does that excite you or make your heart sink, shall we say?

I think in the case of this, we actually, originally we designed the Expander.

So in the case of this, it wasn't presented like we're going to do this, Graham, work it out.

We had the unit at the studio and I just asked if I could take it home.

So I sort of had this idea.

So I kind of riffed on an idea without it essentially being, you must achieve this by that goal.

Once there's an idea down of how we break it out from this.

I think of The Matrix 12 like a monster trapped in a box with like six knobs and 12 buttons.

It's 12 modular sims.

Voices, yeah.

Like, if you think of like a Moog 55, like in a room and then just get 12 of them, stick them on one keyboard and ask people to use it with six knobs and 12 buttons.

And that's basically your only way of getting into it.

And a character display.

Yeah, a VFD display and stuff.

Once I had the initial idea to break it out, that was done with kind of no pressure to make it a product, which I think is always good.

We then spoke to Marcus who encouraged us to go for The Matrix 12 instead of Expander and had his input.

And yeah, loads of customers asked for it.

Once we started working with Oberheim officially, we just had constant requests for The Matrix 12 slash Expander.

It's interesting, isn't it?

I mean, it sounds absolutely great.

I mean, and looking at it, I mean, it's a bonkers amount of spec to it with all the 12 outputs.

Like you say, with the software, you can kind of make it easier to kind of achieve those things which were previously hidden, shall we say.

I remember when I first saw it, it was one of those synths that I thought, oh yeah, that's a synth I'd like to aspire to, like the Prophet 10 was as well, because it just looks so cool.

But then I also heard that it was a bit of a difficult thing to use.

Rich, I know you were testing this.

I mean, did you have any experience of the actual hardware itself beforehand?

I guess it must have come across.

I was actually working with someone who got one pretty much on release, a full Matrix 12.

So I was around it, yeah.

And in my historical perspective, this was a revolutionary instrument at its time because previous to and during the time that this thing got released, we were basically operating still on the Minimoog signal path principle where you had oscillators here, a mixer, one or more filters over here, a couple of envelope generators, maybe an LFO or two.

And that's what you had.

And this was something that was kind of revolutionary in the way that it was breaking free of that and beginning to offer multiple modulation possibilities.

And I guess I can see now in hindsight why that was viewed at the time by those people as being modular-like, because that was the place you could do that at the time.

And so this was a revolutionary product in its context because there was nothing that offered all of these kinds of capabilities and these possibilities.

And so it achieved this kind of very expensive and heavy gravitas because it was a big, unwieldy kind of thing.

Yeah, it must have been really expensive because of all the electronics.

It was heavy.

And it was expensive.

It was somewhere between $3,000 and $4,000, I think.

It doesn't seem too bad.

But that was the high end.

That's what you could get.

I mean, the CS80 was somewhere in there.

You know what I mean?

That was what you could get at the high end for synthesizers in those days.

So in the time that it appeared, it was an absolutely revolutionary product.

And in hindsight, it's a fancy Minimoog to me on some level.

I mean, it has so much more than a Minimoog, and I understand that.

But it's essentially stepping up from the Minimoog signal path into, all right, now let's offer modulations.

Now we have products that offer modulations in a gillion different ways now, in software in particular.

But this is a fantastic sounding and really fun to operate piece of software for me, and I really enjoy it.

And you guys did a great job.

Nice.

I think the Expander was answering a very specific call of how do I not have to take six synths on tour with me, right?

So it's not a synth that you sort of ride the knobs of and perform the front panel of.

You set your show up.

And the Matrix-12 had a keyboard on it, so it was a bit more oriented towards a player.

But Expander was serving that purpose.

And answering the Jupiter-8 thing, because the Jupiter-8 stole the entire utility of live where you could have two synths and it looked big as well.

But ultimately, I still say that the reason the Jupiter-8 was so massive is because it was used by bands that needed two synths and only wanted one keyboard.

So all of us mortals who weren't into synths but just had our pinups, it became a pinup synth because it was associated with those bands for its utility rather than its sound.

I'm going to duck for cover now.

Dave, you look shocked.

No, I mean, we've talked about this, haven't we?

Because you say you prefer the Jupiter-6, isn't it?

Yeah.

I mean, there's certainly features on there that's…

Yeah, I mean, I like the JP-8.

I mean, for me, the JP-8 was one of the first super reliable, roadworthy polysynths.

Right.

You could take it out and it just didn't break down.

It just didn't.

I don't think… I mean, we've got one.

Yeah, we've definitely got one.

Minimum of one.

Actually, we've got two Jupiter-6s.

That's a bit bad.

But it's never gone wrong.

It's just never gone wrong.

And it looked good.

I love those old brushed steel in cheeks.

Fair.

Yeah, fair enough.

Fair enough.

Gaz, did you ever have your hands…

I've never had my hands on one of those, mate, at Oberheim's.

Well, my first encounter was with the Matrix-1000,

and I just thought it was just the most ugly and uninteresting-looking synth I'd ever seen, I think.

That's true.

And I didn't realize, because the studio that I used to do stuff in in the early 90s,

and they had one there, and I just kind of overlooked it,

because I was just so into, you know, hands-on things,

and this was like the anathema to that.

However, you know…

None of the benefits of analog with an analog engine, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so…

But, you know, then you kind of realize, you hear it, and you go,

wow, okay, there is that thing that Oberheim has got that is just…

it's just a beautiful, beautiful musicality of everything.

You know, it's just a beautiful sound.

And from what I've heard of this, it sounds like it's got that.

But, I mean, but other than that, I've got nothing to say,

because I'm not really interested in things anymore.

Okay.

Anything.

Wow, how nice.

I did want to say, Graham, I think…

Dave, you need to take note of this.

Graham said, it's a monster in a box.

I mean, there's your marketing tagline right there.

I mean, I didn't see that in any of the literature.

I think that's quite a good one.

Yeah, yeah.

What do you have to say there, Graham?

Well said.

Yeah.

Well, we broke the box a bit.

That was a fundamental task, because when we're making the software version,

obviously we want to provide people more access to what was inside the box.

What's the hardest thing?

What's the hardest thing to emulate in this?

Because, obviously, if you're taking, you know,

you start with a single voice structure, and then, obviously,

you can replicate, and then the interactions between.

What's the hardest part of that to get right?

You know, the flow.

Is it the filters?

Is it the amplification?

You know, is it the VCA?

Is it the VCO?

What's the hardest bit?

I think that's a question I need to ask Remy, who coded it.

Obviously, there's a lot of things,

and the way the FM works inside Matrix 12, as I know,

that was particularly tricky.

Matrix got 15 filter modes, which is 15 more than we normally have to handle.

No, 14 more than we normally have to handle.

Yeah.

And then, yeah, just managing the scope of it

and how we display it in one place on one screen.

Yeah, that's tricky.

And you've gone for a tabbed approach,

which I think is a really good idea, actually.

And it's, in a way, quite similar ideas from the two-voice or the full.

I forget which one of the Oberheims you did,

where you can make one full screen, and then you can just copy stuff between.

So if you get a great sound, copy it to the next three outputs

or three or four voices, and then maybe change different ones.

I mean, that sort of stuff makes it a lot easier to navigate that sort of thing,

doesn't it, because there's a lot of…

I mean, otherwise, it's a lot of fiddling about.

It's a lot.

I mean, that's from OBE, the eight-voice,

which we sort of re-borrowed some of those tricks that were very successful for OBE.

So, yeah, you can copy and paste the voices

and group them and edit them in chunks and things like that,

which I guess Dave designed originally on OBE.

So all of those UX tools will make it more accessible.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Nice.

Well, if anyone's…

I left a pause there for Dave to step in.

He hasn't got anything further to say, so we can move on.

There is also a delay in our communication, so the timing…

There we go.

Sliding out of the topic there.

Thank you very much, mate.

I guess I should play an ad, so let's do one.

And we're back.

So let's think.

What should we go to next?

I guess we must have some live users amongst us here as well,

because, I mean, the Ableton Live 13 beta came out this Monday,

which we had Tom Glen Denning, a.k.a. Elephant, here showing us it.

And I have to say, some really good ideas,

particularly with the sequencing, I thought.

I don't know what you thought about that, Gaz,

if you've got a chance to see it.

Some really hardware sequencing sort of features inside the software,

which is just a really interesting way of visualising it, I thought.

Yeah, and, I mean, you know, this is like an actual, yeah, 13 version,

and Ableton…

It's a point release, yeah.

It's a, you know, they've always been quite cautious to move the number up,

as opposed to other software, which might do that on a yearly basis.

So it's quite a big event in the music tech sphere.

And so I was really interested to kind of look,

because I've been a user of Ableton since version 1,

and I've always been really impressed how they've managed to kind of maintain

more or less the same visual aesthetic throughout all the iterations.

You know, it's really – they don't really change enormous things,

but they just add these, you know, wonderful extra dimensions to it.

So, for instance, the sequencer is great.

I know Cubase has had something similar for a few iterations now as well.

And I always find it quite interesting, this back and forward between software

and hardware, where both influence each other,

and you kind of see – you see that going back and forward quite a bit,

and this is another good example of that.

So Ableton, obviously, a big part of their appeal is this uncluttered,

very clean, very purposeful kind of design language that they use.

And, like, they managed to get everything into this.

Like, for instance, the context menus is another good example where –

and also the – I think something that perhaps should have been in it a long time

is the stack of devices now appearing as a list where you can turn them on and off.

Yes.

Because you could end up with a really long strip at the bottom that you're kind of

panning through to get to the various elements.

Exactly.

So this feels very much in – you know, this new addition, and also the kind of –

yes, the context menus where everything has a kind of – they had something like that a while ago,

but this is, you know, where you could click on, like, the preset browser

and you would get, like, a specific linked –

Yes.

But this takes it much to another level now where you can get all of the relevant context menus

to do with the specific devices that you're working with.

Yes, whether it's a MIDI track or an audio track or –

Yes.

And it all fits into the aesthetic and into that kind of beautiful workflow

that they've always kind of maintained.

And, you know, fair play.

I think it's really good.

I think, you know, obviously, you know, things like the new drum engines, you know,

I think we'd seen it before in some Max for Live, but, you know,

that migrating across into the very powerful drum – you know,

being able to use that in a very powerful drum rack, I think, is, you know,

is something people are going to really like.

ARA as well.

Now, that's something that I use a lot in Cubase.

So seeing that implemented – because that was always a very frustrating thing

if you were trying to use Ableton as a proper studio production DAW.

Yeah, you couldn't access that stuff.

Yeah.

And ARA is, for those of you who haven't used it, you know,

that enables you to have things like Melodyne or, in my case,

I'm increasingly using Spectralayers.

I've got Spectralayers Pro, the most recent one,

and you can use that as an ARA plug-in as well.

It's along similar lines to iZotope's RX, like a spectral editor,

but enables you to do some really clever stuff.

So being able to bring that in – I mean,

I can straightaway see something there that would be quite good.

With Ableton, with Spectralayers,

Spectralayers has got the best drum stem splitter that I've seen.

So, like, it'll take – if you put, like, a nice stereo drum mix in,

or, indeed, if you just – if you stem split and get a drum,

a stereo drum stem from another track…

You can take the individual drums out.

And it'll – yeah, and it'll – but, like, Spectralayers lets that

over, like, seven different types of drum types – toms, hi-hats,

ride cymbals, crash cymbals, kick and snare – split them out like that.

So, you know, which goes further than the tools that are in Ableton

or Cubase, for that matter.

So the ARA, being able to bring in those really specialist tools,

but have them inside of the workflow so you're not having to run it

as a separate sort of plug-in, it's kind of integrated

into the workflow, I think is a massive thing.

And, obviously, Melodyne – Melodyne, I'd imagine,

is going to be a lot of people's – you know, they'll be whooping

for joy about that.

Having Melodyne for doing your kind of vocal pitch work or whatever it is

that you do, having that integrated into the Ableton workflow is pretty –

is pretty special, I think, really.

So, yeah, yeah, I mean, this is a good – I mean, there's a whole bunch

of other things.

But, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's good.

I think, yeah.

I think my two favourite things are buttons in the macro.

Finally.

So you just haven't got those kind of little grey sort of faders,

just there's actually a button with a state because we've toyed

with making racks, and I think that's going to – and also the increased

number of macros as well.

You can have multi-state – before you had a button, but it was just a knob

that went 0 or 1 or 0, 1, 2, 3, depending on how many different states

it might have.

So that's really big.

And it's going to be useful for people who want to make their own custom

instrument racks and whatever and sell them and do all of that sort of thing.

Yeah.

That was pretty cool, I thought.

I don't know how many other Ableton users there are here.

I don't know, Graham, if you're an Ableton user, whether it's something

that kind of riches as well.

Some good stuff on the Push 3 as well, I thought, with custom scenes,

all that kind of stuff.

Rich, anything that caught your eye?

You're muted.

Take a drink.

Take a drink.

We're proper old school now.

It goes back.

Woo-hoo.

In the conversation about the macros, the fact that you could have each macro

stem following a different curve in the way it's being manipulated by the

controller in question was a very, very clever bit.

Adding contextual menus to the entire – basically,

they're trying to make it easier to use, and I get that.

And it is a very, very successful layout and platform.

Tangentially to me, over the course of the history of all of these DAW products,

it's interesting to see who leads the pack and who trails the pack at any given

moment in terms of the implementation of specific features.

So let's take ARA, for example.

ARA was introduced, I don't know, probably 10 years ago in some people's

software, and it's taken various other software companies various lengths of

time to get it into theirs because there's always feature creep across.

They're all looking at each other to see what's clever to do, you know,

in our next iteration.

So oddly for them, they're about the last guys to bring ARA into the fold.

They're even later than Pro Tools, which there should be a T-shirt that just

says, we were even later than Pro Tools.

Because usually Pro Tools is absolutely the last guy on the block to give you

like a MIDI editor.

And then they think they've invented it as well.

Right, of course.

Nobody's ever made a MIDI editor like ours.

Yes, absolutely.

Actually, their MIDI editor is pretty good.

But besides that, so in context, yes, this is a very useful set of updates

and features, but to me it's almost a dot.

I know this seems to trivialize what I'm sure they think is a tremendous

amount of work.

But I'm not sure five years later after 12 that this is 13.

It feels like essentially the same program with a lot of UI enhancements

and your ability to get to things that were already there is improved

tremendously.

But I didn't see that many things that are there that weren't there before.

And the ones they introduced are pretty damn clever, but I'm not sure their

version iteration five years apart better.

That's fair.

Fair point.

And without trying to trivialize, I'm sure they put a tremendous amount of

work into it.

I'm sure it is.

I mean, Graham, are you an Ableton Live user?

I mean, are you kind of, is there anything in there that floated your boat

particularly?

Yeah, I use all the DAWs, but in a particularly niche way of, you know,

GS4 sims in them.

Use Live a lot.

I quite like the look of the looplets they're calling them, where you can sort

of add different start points or loop points within a single sample,

the different keys.

That looks fun.

Whether it's a 13, it probably is.

I think they are justifying it because of the rebuilding of the browser stuff.

I think all of that kind of enhancement is probably where they're justifying

the 13.

I think that's quite a shift in the way it operates.

Like the actual plugins of Johnson looks fun.

They're always fun.

And yeah, looplets caught my eye.

I've not used it yet myself.

I'll get it tomorrow.

No, me neither.

To be honest, I haven't done anything apart from film videos and edit them

and sit on planes for the last three weeks, so I guess that's why.

But I'll check it out at some point.

Beta's available now, I believe, so do check that out.

Just going to take a quick break.

Be back after this short message.

Okay, and we're back.

So as I mentioned previously in the intro, I've been at ADC this week,

Audio Dev Conference, which I think was a really interesting thing,

and it was sort of different to our regular shows.

We're not going and looking at kind of, I don't know, say, for instance,

a subtractive analog synthesizer.

We're looking at kind of maybe some of the new ideas that are coming into

software and whatnot, and I thought there was some really interesting

and hardware as well.

And one in particular, I mean, amongst many interesting conversations I had,

one was with a chap called Dara O'Neill, who had a talk.

Because what I did is I went through the talks.

ADC is a really good event, actually, if anyone wants to go next year,

it's worth checking.

And I think you can still join now and probably see all the talks that they

filmed because they filmed all of them, so if you're interested in this kind

of stuff.

His talk was on the notion of morph, what if hardware could morph,

and has been doing research into the sort of materials that can do that,

like polymers and alloys and liquids and all kinds of stuff.

So I just wanted to riff on this as an idea.

I'll play a bit of the video briefly.

Let me see.

This was the one.

Yeah, so this is Dara.

Let me just morph in hardware.

So, Dara, lovely to see you.

You were on my hit list of people to talk to.

You haven't done your talk yet, but your talk was really interesting.

You're head of embedded firmware, is that right?

Embedded software, yeah.

Embedded software at Arturia.

And your talk is titled, What If Hardware Could Change Shape,

which immediately piqued my interest, being from one of the larger

manufacturers around.

So what's the thrust of your talk?

Yeah, the point of the talk, it's really around hardware interfaces

and what they might look like in the future.

So, you know, our products are constantly evolving,

and even compared to when I started in the industry,

people have more and more firmware updates.

You get new features for free, basically.

This is quite, I mean, if you remember, like 20 years ago,

it wasn't the case.

You bought a product and the product was fixed,

and you didn't really get updates.

Well, I mean, I have to say your freak range has led the industry.

Exactly.

It's a mini freak, especially, continuous updates, which is great.

But the physical controls obviously don't change.

And so it's part of, actually, I recently did a master's at the

University of Grenoble Alps, just beside Arturia,

and it was around human-computer interaction.

Right.

I encourage you to watch the video.

I mean, I could play the whole thing, but then we'd all be sitting here

not saying anything.

It's just, it's a really interesting concept.

So the idea, because we have materials now that can take memory,

and this is off into the future.

But I'm just thinking in terms of, you know,

what you could do with controllers.

It just sort of starts to make you think,

if this technology was to become available sort of soonish and affordable,

what could you use it for?

I'm going to have to go to product people here,

because obviously you guys are in software.

But, you know, you did make a controller once.

I remember that.

I mean, but it would be, you know, we've had for so long,

I think I've got a split.

For so long, you know, getting the right controller is really hard,

because it's always, you know, when you do one-to-one,

it's like, okay, well, this control maps to the synth,

so therefore it looks a bit like that synth.

But having something that could actually move around

is quite an interesting thought.

But it's a little bit sci-fi, I think.

I don't know if we're ready for it.

I think it would be a bit freaky.

Totally.

I mean, the one thing that, actually,

it was one of mine and Chris's big things, you know,

when we did the Fat Boy a million years ago, you know,

obviously it was, I don't know how many knobs.

It was like 14 knobs or something.

And obviously you mapped it to your software synth,

and it would work.

But there wasn't this one-to-one correlation

to where things were on the screen as to what you were controlling.

And whilst it was an amazing thing at the time to have that,

I think it was one of the first MIDI controllers.

Yeah.

It definitely, there was an interrupt between the kind of workflow.

And we always wanted this idea of like, oh,

that knob corresponds to that position.

That knob position corresponds to that position on the screen and stuff.

So, yeah, I mean, this is, that would be my first thing.

It would just be like amazing to have a kind of one controller with multi.

I mean, I have no idea how this would even work.

But that would be my first thing, would just be like, oh, my God.

Therefore, there's no interrupt between you.

The creative process just kind of flows because you see that thing

that you want to move on the screen, and you instinctively move to that knob.

So we've seen, like, in the past in like CES and stuff,

like screens that can pop up like buttons.

And I think BMW had something in a car,

they wanted to have a tactile screen in a car.

So I, maybe it's just my angle, but from a software point of view,

the idea of putting software underneath a screen

and being able to control physical buttons

and some sort of interactions where you can touch the screen and it is raised

and you can move your hand around to change parameters, that seems powerful.

Do you remember there was that company who did, like, pots that you could put on your...

Stick onto, yeah.

Yeah, what happened to that?

Well, I think probably people lost all the pots that they had.

They fell off the screen.

We covered it, didn't we, in Sonic Touch, didn't we?

I remember.

Didn't you actually, didn't you bring some in, Gaz,

and we couldn't get them to work or they only worked a bit or something?

I can't remember.

It wasn't quite the promise of the literature, shall we say.

Well, you know, it's interesting, isn't it?

Because the iPad, when I was thinking about this,

I was thinking about, like, that MIDI Designer Pro

and a few things like that on the iPad,

sort of being able to be that thing where you can have it be one-for-one.

It could map to the location to match what you wanted on the screen

and that kind of thing.

So it was a definite step in the right direction.

And then I was thinking about the embodiment

and just imagining that where it can raise up just,

and it wouldn't have to raise up much,

but, you know, it could just raise up slightly

just to give you tactile feelings of where...

Yeah, a surface rather than just a slidey kind of, yeah.

Yeah.

And I can imagine how the technology, that doesn't feel, you know,

something a little bit like with the ROLI technology a little bit,

but it just, you know, it just somehow,

that there's little pockets that kind of inflate with a liquid

that just kind of raise up a little bit.

Pixel...

What could possibly go wrong?

My controller, my synthesizer is leaking.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

That makes me think of when my Stretch Armstrong split and...

Oh.

...synthetic stuff.

Sorry, that's going back a bit.

I actually bungee jumped him out of my bedroom window

holding onto his arms when he...

Wow.

Congratulations, and he survived.

Only two broken legs.

Eventually, we split him over by putting him over the goalposts

and a bunch of people hanging onto legs and arms,

and we split him in half.

Anyway, I digress.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Gia Bevan told me a while ago about through-the-air haptics,

and that was, I thought, was...

And that's kind of a technology that's available,

or, you know, that's happening now,

which feels kind of really sci-fi,

being able to kind of actually feel things in the air, you know,

through-air haptic.

I mean, that's just, for me, like, mind-blowing,

but it feels in line with this kind of thing.

And, yeah, so what the prediction is around, sort of,

in around 10 years to 15 years' time...

Wow.

I mean, who knows?

I mean, who knows?

Who knows?

There's no...

Yeah, right.

But the rate of things...

They're not announcing it at NAMM, put it that way, you know.

Yeah, okay, good point.

But, I mean, in order for this to kind of be practical

and useful to us in our music production, you know,

we have to try and actually kind of visualise something.

So, you know, if you imagine, like, for instance,

maybe Ableton Push 5 or whatever it is, you know, like,

so one of the features we barely touched on, on Ableton,

the new one, you know, on the Push,

is being able to do that thing where you can create custom surfaces

and it uses the MPE, you know, for, like,

you can have, like, a performance mixer.

You tried that, though, didn't you?

Yeah, that was really cool.

Yeah, that was pretty cool.

So the amount of pressure you could actually,

even though using pads, you could put a fader

and you could kind of actually move that thing.

Because they're positional data on the pads themselves, exactly.

Right.

It's not just one spot, it's, like, the position of the...

Yeah, all of that stuff.

So this, when you contextualise that kind of thinking

and just, it's, like, almost the next step on, like, as I say,

if there's any way to imagine it, that there is a way to just create...

And as I say, you know, I think you mentioned in that interview

about, like, a joystick sprouting out or something, you know,

and maybe it will get there.

It would be...

Actually, I think it would be closer to a Dell nipple, perhaps,

would be the thing.

Right.

So, as with most technology,

you let the porn industry do the kind of legwork on this

and then we get the benefits of it downstream of that.

So...

But, I mean, you know, when you contextualise something

like a push controller and try to think about how this could...

You know, for me, that's how I'm kind of seeing...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying.

Yeah, you know, and being able to kind of...

Yeah, I mean, because muscle memory is a really important part of performing.

It's very useful.

I was thinking about this, like, Bastl, a really interesting company,

they make modules, but they also do other things as well

and they use things in a...

They put, like, their controls in strange ways.

If you look at the pizza module, for instance, you know,

you get, like, a kind of a crossfader

and, like, a kind of a diagonal fader and the knobs

and everything is laid out in a particular kind of quirky way.

So, if you rest your hand on it, you don't have to look because...

It makes sense. It makes sense, right.

Yeah, they're all laid out in sort of different ways.

The upcoming Kalimba, which is an astonishing piece of kit from them,

you know, when you hold that, it's...

Actually, the underside of the Kalimba is actually...

Yeah, there's all those sensors in there, yeah.

Yeah, sensors, but also they've shaped it to be like a game controller.

So, when you hold it, it's kind of got that ergonomic kind of thing there.

So, just taking those kind of ideas of specific layouts

and ergonomic and physical kind of controls,

people are going to have specific needs.

And, of course, from an accessibility point of view, this has got...

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, I was thinking...

My first one was, like, Braille, obviously, really.

Right, exactly. So, there's tons of really positive stuff from this.

It's not just a technology for technology's sake kind of idea,

but really interesting to see how this is going to be... how to play out.

Yeah, one thing that Dara said was the idea of pin...

like pin matrices, you know, those kind of frames that you get

where you push your face into it and you can create a kind of...

a low-resolution sort of render of something by just pushing your hand

into a load of, like, a nail, a bed of nails, effectively.

But each one would have an actuator.

Yeah, actuator on that.

Yeah. In Quasimodal, Greg, the drummer I work with,

he uses them on his different drums.

If you watch some of the videos that we've done,

he puts them on the drum, so as he hits the drumstick,

those pins jump up and then they come down and hit the...

Oh, like a sizzle, sort of almost.

Yeah, it's like a sizzle, but it gives a really kind of interesting

almost electro kind of sound to acoustic drums.

Sorry, that's an aside, but carry on.

Oh, sorry, yeah. So, Rich, I don't know what...

I mean, you've got a futuristic control surface.

I mean, you know, maybe if you put 240 volts through those keys,

they might start moving around a bit and you can kind of start experimenting.

Let's hope not.

V Collection 38, the blob by Arturia.

Nobody knows what it is because it's different every day.

No, but seriously, the only product I know that even conceptually

seems to stem from the idea that you should be able to take something

that becomes more of a platform that is malleable

than something that is fixed in its purpose and in its design.

It's not the same thing with regard to tactile,

but the DSP APB-1 boxes where you're using fully analog processing,

but you're controlling them digitally from your computer in a recallable fashion,

and you're routing actual analog audio signals through the box.

So, from the standpoint of conceptually trying to create something

like a playground into which you can build other things that work,

that thing does it.

But the idea that it's physically malleable

and that it's like modeling clay in some level doesn't cross to that at all.

And so I think...

No, that's true, yeah.

The Arturia blob, I much look forward to seeing that.

That'll be interesting.

I mean, but that does bring up another point.

I did have a chat with some other gentlemen who were from the University of Maynooth,

I think it is in Ireland somewhere,

and they were talking about like a layer that made FPGAs easier to program

because they're notoriously difficult or complicated to do.

And this led to another discussion about, you know,

there's lots of talk about vibe coding and firmware hacking

and all of those things, obviously.

But the concept of being able to vibe code and reconfigure an FPGA

if you have one in a synthesizer so it could do different stuff

and be different hardware is something that was...

I hadn't really...

Yeah, that's also possible apart from obviously you could break it

because certain pins would be going holding power

and certain pins would be voltage and certain pins would be audio.

I don't know.

It's an interesting thought, though.

I don't know, Graeme, if that piques any interest,

the idea of sort of having a reconfigurable FPGA.

I mean, I guess if you hacked your Novation Peak,

you could turn it into, well, a doorstep, obviously,

but you could also maybe turn it into something else

because you're rerouting a load of internal gate arrays and whatnot.

Yeah, obviously there's a lot of conversation

about vibe-coded firmware updates on lots of hardware units

and it's difficult to know where we stand.

It's certainly not going to go away anytime soon, that's for sure.

No, that's true, yeah.

I think, well, what can we say?

I worry about the quality and the speed in which these things are done,

so I would be reluctant to be digging into expensive hardware

and buy things like this.

Yes, well, I totally agree.

I mean, yeah, I'm just thinking when you buy a platform

that's basically an FPGA,

however much meterage of morphing physical control surface you can afford

and then you just pour your stuff into it

so that it does whatever it is that you buy the package that it does.

I mean, obviously, you know, you could break everything.

But, yeah, I know, it's fascinating.

Lots of discussions like that

and I believe there are going to be some more announcements.

In fact, I shot a video there with a certain company

who are announcing something tomorrow

and that will be out about 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon,

so watch out for that.

Even though I was using my new camera as a test

and I was wrestling with its robotic AI-controlled camera option,

so it did make it a little bit less than my best filming job, shall we say.

But, yeah, I know, it's interesting.

So, I know we could –

I'm just thinking if we're going to go –

and you've got any further sort of topics to go for,

whether we could wrap things up.

I don't know if you gentlemen have got any more time

or whether you've got anything else you want to plug.

What's the deal with the Matrix at the moment?

Is it on offer until a certain amount of time?

I didn't think to write that down, unfortunately.

Yeah, it's on offer to December 1st.

Okay.

And that offer is dependent on where you are.

It's the same percentage, but, you know, dollars, euros and pounds.

Yeah, got you.

It's some money off.

Off the top of my head.

Some money off.

Some money off, yeah.

Some money off until December 1st.

Excellent.

I take it all back about marketing, actually, there, Graeme.

I'm sorry.

I think I misspoke.

Leave it to someone else, shall I?

Okay.

Monster in a box, some money off.

Monster in a box.

That's great.

Money off your monster in a box.

I mean, you know, that is – that's a very –

yeah, that's a very compact phrase.

Gaz, what's next for you?

Have you got anything kind of lined up?

Are you streaming or releasing or any of that kind of thing?

Yeah, so, like I said at the top of the show, 24th of November,

our first Arbor session on a glass boat with Steve Davis.

Then the 29th is the Great Gong Gathering where I'm guesting with Zorch,

as I mentioned earlier.

Those things are the most pressing, I think.

Is Howard going to be there, Gaz?

Sorry?

Is Howard going to be there?

Yeah.

Yeah, Howard's playing.

Oh, okay.

Wow.

So, Howard and Gaz will – yeah, we're playing on the Friday with System 7,

with the legend that is Steve Hillidge.

Wow.

Wow.

So – and the Great Gong Gathering does look really good.

If you like gong, and gong are such an institution, in my opinion.

This is phenomenal.

It's a three-day event in Glastonbury.

Gong are playing themselves on the Saturday, but here and now on a Sunday.

The Guitar Glissando Orchestra are playing.

Didier Malherbe is playing.

Wow.

What date is this?

What date is this?

This is – is it the 20 – oh, I should know this.

I think it's like the 29th.

Is it November?

It's the – yeah.

So –

29th of November.

I might have to put that in the diary.

That might be a good place to go and hang out.

Yes.

Maybe we can meet up with Tinley as well because he'll be in, obviously,

in Glastonbury.

And really, you know, when you look at kind of Zorch

and Zorch's kind of history using sort of EMS synthesizers,

Basil is going to be actually using the Syntrix rather than an EMS one,

which is quite interesting because I had one of those here recently

with a very similar – very, very similar,

virtually identical kind of workflow, although it sounds quite different,

but is – and I think Howard's mostly going to be doing stuff using the

computer, I think, main stage or something for what he's going to be doing.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

But I'm still yet to decide what I'm going to do, but so –

but I'm really super, super thrilled to be asked to play with those

wonderful gentlemen.

That's going to be –

Yeah, I think it's going to be a –

I'll bring some mushroom tea.

I'll bring some mushroom tea down.

I think it's essential.

I think it's essential.

Mushroom tea and hot knives, yeah.

So –

And maybe – yeah.

Yeah, but I mean, there's a load of acts playing across the three days, yeah,

and all, you know, affiliated, and there's such a great – you know,

it's that combination of great musicality but also kind of exploratory.

A bit different.

Yeah, fabulous.

Yeah, nice one.

Yeah, thanks.

And, Rich, what's next for you?

You're going on holiday.

How long are you having off?

Just a few days, and then I have a few private gigs with Sheik,

and then I'm back, and I'll be home through Thanksgiving,

and then in December we're going to briefly go to Japan.

Ah, yes, that's the – yeah, that's the thing.

I've seen that.

I missed my chance to go to Japan from China because lots of people were

going from Shanghai over to Tokyo for the Tokyo –

Tokyo Modular.

I don't know exactly what it was.

Tokyo Modular.

Yeah, I didn't get a chance.

Just felt a little trip to Japan,

and also I would have doubled the cost of the trip having to go to Japan, I think,

just because staying there is so expensive.

And so, Dave and Graham, I guess, well, for you it must be the end of the day

unless you're working 16-hour days, which I hope you're not.

And I guess, what, you just sit back and watch the cash roll in now from the –

excellent relief from the –

of the Matrix 12, right?

Contemplate your new yacht.

Yeah, my second yacht.

Or a rubber dinghy.

I don't know.

No.

Yes.

We've got lots going on.

Lots and lots and lots.

Oh, well, that's good to hear.

Yeah, things have been up a pace.

It's an exciting time.

Been lovely to have all of you here.

Feels like old times.

Don't leave us alone next time.

Anyway, you've persuaded him to come on, Graham.

Maybe, you know, maybe we'll do it again.

You don't have to have the release of product just to come on.

You can actually be on without having anything to plug.

So, yeah.

That'd be good.

Anyway, thank you very much.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Awesome.

All right.

Well, that was Sonic Talk episode – oh, it was 916, wasn't it?

So, yeah, we'll be back next week.

See you all next time.

Take care, everybody.

Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Edited by https://otter.ai