14 - Sean Elliot

Giannis Kampiotis
October 07, 2022

Hello music people 👋

Today in the spotlight, Sean Elliot

A retired for 10 years bass player, finds joy again in making music through modular synths.

Coming from England, Sean Elliot is making music for fun but he is not messing around. In just two years he has gathered a big gear list and his Bandcamp is full of releases 🎶

Read Time: 9 minutes 📰

The Setup

Gear List

Oxi - One sequencer
Moog - Matriarch
Moog - Subharmonicon
Arturia - MicroFreak
ASM - Hydrasynth
Behringer - Cat
Roland - TR-6S
Roland - MC-101
1010Music - Blackbox
Bastl - Kastle Drum
Allen & Heath - SQ5
Native Instruments - Maschine MK3 (retired)
Korg - ER-1 drum machine (retired)
Meris - Polymoon

Plus various eurorack modules, basses and guitars, pedal effects, and Grogus

Who are you and what is your relationship with music?

I am Sean Elliot.

I am based in Essex, England. I have been making music and dabbling with music technology gear since I was 13 (I'm now 48). My main instrument is the bass, and that is the instrument I am most confident in and the one I have played in previous bands.

I lost interest in music and music gear just over 10 years ago and slowly stopped making any music at all. It felt like a chore to be doing everything on the computer, and nothing was inspiring me anymore.

Then, in 2020 I happened across some videos of Hélène Vogelsinger, who is a wonderful French artist who records these incredible videos performing with her modular system in various abandoned structures. I was immediately intrigued as, although I had been aware of Eurorack modular stuff, this was the first time some music gear and the thought of the possibilities it offered had excited me in over 10 years.

I immediately started doing some research and decided my first play with a modular type system was via the Moog Matriarch. I was instantly hooked and excited about the possibilities of making music again.

Initially that was using the Matriarch with a Maschine, Korg ER-1 drum machine and a Tascam DP24 hardware multitrack recorder (which I already owned).

I mostly now just make music for fun.

I work full time in a retail environment so messing about with synths and other gear is the perfect antidote to that. I do release my stuff to Bandcamp and all the streaming platforms, in case anybody else is interested in it! But at the moment, it is just an (expensive) hobby that brings me joy.

What's the one thing in your studio you can't live without?

From an instrument point of view, the Moog Matriarch. This was the first synth I bought as my introduction to modular gear and I would still be happy if it was the only thing I owned.

From a practical point of view, the mixer I use - an Allen & Heath SQ5, is fundamental to how everything connects together. As my gear collection rapidly evolved, I needed a way for everything to connect together and this mixer is incredibly flexible in how you can configure that and is so easy to use, considering how powerful it is.

What's your process?

I usually start by noodling around on either the Matriarch's built in sequencer, or by patching something on the Eurorack stuff. My main control hub, if you like, is the Oxi One sequencer, which I was lucky enough to get in on through their initial IndieGoGo campaign, and it is an incredible machine.

This acts as the leader for all devices - pressing play on the Oxi One will start everything that is syncable either via CV/clock or Midi. So sometimes I might sequence the Matriarch directly from the Oxi One or the Oxi will just be the timekeeper and provide the clock source for Matriarch's own sequencer, but may also be sequencing either the Eurorack stuff or maybe the MicroFreak or Hydrasynth as well.

My main aim is to basically have everything playing or sequenced live and I essentially record direct to a stereo mix. If I want say, the Matriarch to be doing more than one thing, I can use the 1010Music Blackbox to sample any played part and then that sample can be sequenced directly, but you obviously lose out on the live manipulation in that scenario. This will free up the instrument for another job, if absolutely needed.

If I have come up with something that I think sounds half decent and has something approximating a beginning, a middle and an end, I will usually run through it a few times trying out various things that can be tweaked on the fly and then record it as a video which gets uploaded to YouTube. I will then create an audio only version which I also release on Bandcamp and the streaming platforms.

I only work on headphones so if I've finished a track that I'm going to release as an audio version, I do the age old test of playing it in my car to check the mix. If something is wildly out and it sounds unbalanced, I do have the option of slightly remixing it. Although I record direct to stereo, I do also record some stereo stems from the mixer to the computer as well. This allows me to make (some) mix balance adjustments and create a new stereo mix for the audio version.

I do this in DaVinci Resolve - the free video editor, as it removes the distraction of the DAW environment and forces me to keep the editing to a minimum and just do some basic level adjustment. Its actually very good for that!

How would you explain your style?

Good question.

I have no idea, maybe Funky Ambient; is that a thing? I'm not a fan of genre labelling, you either like something or you don't. It doesn't matter what label is applied to it.

As an example, my iTunes library consists of only two genres - Jazz and Alternative, in that it's an alternative to Jazz. So anything I add to my library will either be re-labelled as Jazz or Alternative (i.e. not jazz).

I love exploring and playing around with rhythm. I'll often have odd numbered sequences or patterns that will loop and interact in an interesting way, so I guess that would be part of my style. I think I'm still exploring so I don't know if I have settled on any one particular thing yet. I mean, I haven't even tried to integrate my bass and other stringed instruments into the mix yet so that could be a whole other avenue to wander down.

Has this journey of building a hardware setup changed the way you think about music or life in general?

Using a mostly hardware setup has definitely brought back the joy I had lost from making music.

Eurorack modules and the endless creativity they offer allows you to sit and play around with patching stuff just to see what happens. Having hands-on control of pretty much everything is an absolute joy and allows you to feel like you are actually 'creating' something as a performance that is never exactly the same twice.

I have made and released more music in the last two years than anything I've tried to do previously and I'm having more fun now too!

Discovering and following other similar minded musicians on YouTube and Instagram is inspiring as well and has opened me up to many exciting artists that I would never have come across otherwise.