82 - Eirik Brandal

Author

Giannis Kampiotis
June 02, 2023

Artist Interviews 🎶 Studio Tours 🎛

Hello music people 👋

Today in the spotlight, Eirik Brandal

Coming from Norway, he is building beautiful electronic sound sculptures. Not the usual music production guy, he creates a different kind of world. Learning what it takes to build sound generators is not only interesting but insightful for us, music producers 🎶

I’ve included a few pictures of the beautiful sculptures. I suggest you go to Eirik’s website to see more sculptures but also watch them come to life on video.

Read Time: 9 minutes 📰

Studio

Gear List

  • GW-Instek GPE-4323 power supply

  • Hantek DSO5102P oscilloscope

  • FE FY6900 arbitrary signal generator

  • Ersa i-Con pico soldering iron

  • ZD-8915 desoldering station

  • FE1W fume extractor

  • Homemade LM384 based bridge audio amplifier for testing purposes.

  • A flashlight I got in a Donald Duck magazine

  • Prusa MK3S+ 3D printer

  • Canon 7D for still photography

  • Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K for video

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Sculptures

Interview

Who are you and what is your relationship with music?

I'm from Stavanger, Norway, and I've been grappling with the multiple facets of music since I was young, through classical violin and guitar, to the self-containing and regenerative synthesizer works I design and build today.

I realize this interview is supposed to be mostly geared toward music-making equipment, but I have none of the sort - except for two homemade modular synthesizers I've built over the years (one which is right next to my main work area, and the other stored away). I'd rather talk about the gear I work with to create new instruments and sound sculptures, because that is 90% of what I do.

Which piece of equipment in your studio is essential to your production process?

I'm in a constant state of flux really, especially on the software side.

I've been going from paper to SketchUp to Fusion 360 with my designs, and I recently updated from KiCad 4.0 to 7.0 on the schematics side of things, which actually was a really tough transition.

Hardware-wise, I would say my GW-Instek GPE-4323 power supply is the most essential, regardless of how boring that sounds. Obviously you need power to do anything with electronics.

Besides that, I think an oscilloscope is pretty important.

What is the least expensive piece of gear that gave you the most results?

That would be my 230V soldering iron from 2012.

While it has been replaced by a better one now, it must have seen at least 8 hours of soldering every day from 2013 to 2015, when I was just starting out.

Walk us through your process for creating and producing music.

I've got probably three routes to choose between at the beginning of any project.

Depending on the seed that sparks my first ideas and sketches, I might go fully digital, with just square waves and simple envelope generators and things – it's great if I want to build something limited in size – or I can go two separate, more complex routes.

The first one is the DSP route, where I program all or most of the synthesis and the algorithmic composition on either a Daisy Seed or Bela mini. That is also quite space-efficient, but would require better sound reproduction (aka speaker and enclosure) than the fully digital method, thus requiring more physical space.

The last route is going all analog, where I still got a microcontroller at the heart of it, but only for the compositional aspect. The sound synthesis is however compartmentalized into discrete components, much like in a modular setup.

In the end I suppose it just comes down to what my initial idea calls for; how physically large I think the object needs to be (do I really need to accommodate for three meters of light pipe and a 32x8 LED matrix?) , how complex I want it to be (sometimes I just want to prototype something, and I'm not going to waste expensive analog chips on it), or quite simply what kind of aesthetic I'm going for.

What is a production technique that you always come back to?

I think using sequencers adds a lot to the sense of progression in the music my objects create. I always program them to change gradually at certain time intervals or events elsewhere in the algorithm so that there is always that push forward. You can play the sequences slowly to create melodies, or you can speed them up to create harmonies – it's basically the simplest way I can think of to make music.

Another trick I like is to have one deep synth voice and another barely audible far, far up there, and then run them both through the same filter and overdrive. It creates beautiful, I want to say subharmonics, but I'm not actually sure if that's what they technically are.

How would you explain your style?

I sincerely don't know how to answer that.

I always believed that any artist is just an archeologist going through their own memory and experiences, forging together bits and pieces from that.

What is a big challenge you have as an artist?

I think it's the balance between being integral to myself and pushing myself and my work on other people.

I'm not talking about social media and stuff, that's fine – people can choose themselves if they want to see your stuff on their feed. I mean actively reaching out to people to make them interested in whatever it is you create, and potentially coercing them into buying it.

Another thing I'm struggling with is this whole Patreon thing, or similar services for that matter. People are paying you to post stuff, but how much do you want to share of your process, and what is actually interesting to share? Everyone needs money to survive, no shame in that, but how far do you go before losing touch with what you actually enjoy doing, and more importantly, don't become a nuisance to others?

Has building a hardware setup changed your perspective on music or life in general?

Some years ago I would probably say that most off the shelf electronic products are massively overpriced – maybe especially in the synthesizer business – but as I've started to value my own time a bit more, that statement has lost some weight.

Still though, paying more than €20 for a basic oscillator module? Nonsense! Build your own.

One tip on how to spark creativity?

I'm one of the seemingly few people who can't just relax and then have ideas magically pop into my head.

Reading about things I can somehow grasp but not fully understand seems to work though. I'm looking at you, Siegfried Zielinski.

I think I just like to make my own very basic ideas around appropriated knowledge.

A book, movie, article, or album that has inspired you?

Nothing currently. Lebbeus Woods generally.

Where can people find more of your music and connect with you online?

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