Introducing | Mutable Instruments
"Gentle Ambient Music That Will Caress the Leaves of your Houseplants"
In the span of 9 years, Mutable Instruments has gone from a small operation making DIY hybrid synthesizers, all produced by one woman, to one of the most revered Eurorack module producers in the world…all still largely produced by the same woman. Émilie Gillet is the mastermind behind Mutable Instruments, intentionally running a small operation that offers a lush palette of tones. “If you combine wavetable synthesis techniques great for smooth, evolving tones…lush and layered granular processing, generative melodies…you get a great recipe for gentle ambient music that will caress the leaves of your houseplants,” Gillet says of the tones her modules produce. It’s the lush and gentle tones that allow Mutable Instruments to stand apart from the competition in a crowded Eurorack module field. “Mutable’s characteristics allow them to be super versatile, yet have this unique flavor that triggers ambient soundscapes,” said Joe Sherman, product category manager for synthesizers at Chicago Music Exchange.
Transparency Comes First
Another thing that sets Mutable Instruments apart within a competitive Eurorack field is the fact that their products are open source: users can go onto Mutable’s website and easily find the hardware schematics for their most popular modules. When asked why, Gilet responded that making Mutable’s schematics open source was a conscious decision based on “transparency, education, inspiring some good practices, occasionally sharing some discoveries…and the right of any product owner to know exactly what goes into it.” This sense of transparency carries over to Mutable’s forum, where Gillet is an active participant, and often shares the process of developing Mutable’s different modules as they are released to the public.
Building your Rack Through Mutable
Compared to the semi-modular or fully-assembled state of most traditional synthesizers, the modular style of Eurorack synthesis can be intimidating to newcomers. “The worst mistake you can make is to plan a full system with $2000 worth of modules,” says Gillet. “You won't really know what you need before having spent hours and hours playing with a system... and then it's too late!” She recommends starting with 3 modules: “A simple recipe would be a modulation source (sequencer, LFO), a sound source (oscillator, physical modeling resonator), and a sound modifier (filter, effect).”
Which Mutable Instruments module should people reach for first? “I would recommend Plaits, since it does not require any other module to produce fully shaped tones—it can be directly used as a standalone synthesis voice,” says Gillet, because Plaits will continue to be useful to the player even if they decide they like the sound from a different oscillator. “Once you start getting deeper into a specific synthesis technique, Plaits will still remain very useful as a secondary voice, for layering, a percussion channel.”
Shop Mutable Instruments Eurorack modules today at Chicago Synth Exchange. Questions? Give us a call at (773) 525-7773, or chat with us every day from 9am-9pm on our website!
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