Andrew Huang nails modular synthesis in a 7 minute video
Andrew Huang is a prolific producer of music and videos. He’s released over 2000 songs and currently has over 1 million YouTube subscribers. He likes to play with things, mess around with technology, different genres. He does reviews, tutorials, challenges himself to make music within absurd limitations and comes across as a frighteningly good communicator and talented, creative musician. And to top it all he seems to be a really nice bloke.
YouTube Modular
On Thursday (26th October) he released a video entitled “The instrument I’ve secretly worked on for 13 years”. It’s just over 7 minutes long and he totally nails what modular synthesis is all about (below). Many serious modular users (myself included) have created long and fascinating videos or even video courses that try to unpack the joys of modular synthesis. These hours of excellent and well thought out information pull in a few thousand views over the months and years of being online. In one day Andrew’s video has had over 100,000 views and probably from an audience that has never been exposed to modular before.
Somehow, in the 7 minutes, he manages to give us a historical biography of his journey into modular along with crystal clear explanations of how it all works. It manages to be informative, inspirational and funny. How does he do that? I confess to being left completely speechless. He makes it look easy like it’s the kind of thing anyone could do – which of course it is. And he did everything right. He referenced the right places, gave nods to the software that started him off and featured some excellent modular creators – who is this guy?
What’s in the Eurorack?
His rig is quite interesting. It features several Mutable Instruments modules, Braids, Clouds, Elements, Streams, Warps and Frames. There’s a Maths (of course) and a Pressure Points from Make Noise. The Qu-Bit Chord and Malekko Variagate 8 are great choices. Then there’s a Hexinverter Mutant Clap and a 4MS Dual Looping Delay. And along the top he’s got a single 1U row of utilities. It’s a very creative little setup, in what looks like an Intellijel case.
This is probably the first time modular synthesis has had such mainstream cultural exposure. It’s going to be interesting to see if a large YouTube following has the power to popularise a complex form of music technology.
You can follow Andrew all over the place.
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