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DELVE001: FORS - Elegance In Experimentation with Ess Mattisson & Felisha Ledesma

Added 2022-03-02 19:04:49 +0000 UTC

DELVE: FORS

Elegance In Experimentation with Ess Mattisson & Felisha Ledesma

In this Lux Cache interview series, we talk to innovative creators in the experimental music production space to discover the integral creative and practical aspects of their work. For our inaugural chapter of Delve, we spoke to experimental development team Ess Mattisson & Felisha Ledesma on their synthesis and M4L venture Fors - exploring their space in underground art scenes, their past work with Elektron & unique approach to synthesis design.

This interview is available as a patreon post and a preferable .pdf format. We ask you kindly to not share Lux Cache content outside of the Patreon, our contributors rely on your donations.

Exclusive download to ‘Romb’, a new M4L Device designed by Fors, is available on the Lux Cache patreon for Premium Subscribers.

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Fors Website ‘About’ Page - fors.fm

What are your earliest memories of an interest in music production/sound, how did the relationship develop and turn into a career in synth design and development?

FL: I was surrounded by music growing up. That was something gifted to me by my parents and I didn’t make the connection/understand the impact until adulthood. Memories filled with lots of records, little tape recorders I would find at the thrift store my mom was working at, and calling from a payphone when I was staying out late at whatever venue would let in kids in the LA area. The best part of my day was driving around listening to cassettes in my mom’s beat up station wagon. And, some of the weirdest times were being dragged to gigs my dad would play at like, Universal Citywalk. But looking back, all of it really shaped the way I share and create sound.

EM: My parents didn’t listen to that much music when I was a kid actually, so in some ways I feel like I had the opposite experience from Felisha, haha. I think about this a lot when we collaborate, I think it’s a cool dynamic. Felisha knows all the lyrics in a song while I recognize little details in the sound instead. I’m not totally sure how I got into music, I think it just happened. I have always had a drive to create things myself, and when I was a kid this would shift from one interest to the other frequently. Then one day I stumbled upon some purely electronic music and it just clicked, I was hooked and it was all I could think about.

So from that point onwards I was completely obsessed with making music. I naturally got really into synthesizers and subsequently wanted to learn how to make my own. At some point the tools to make the music got equally or sometimes even more interesting than the music creation itself.

I’m not totally sure why making tools became so appealing, but I think it just felt more worthwhile to me. This is a weird head canon, but when I went from drawing all the time to making music I felt like this new medium had so much more temporal weight, a piece of music is so dynamic and long lasting. And then if you make the tools to make the music, you’ve made something that has almost infinite equilibrium in a sense. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m afraid of death and this is the only way to mitigate that fear.

Ess, could you talk about your work with Elektron, how you started working there, what you were involved in and and what led you to start your own venture with Felisha?

EM: I was actually chatting to another person in the music tech industry the other day and we both talked about how we “accidentally” ended up at our positions, it seems kind of common to me. The way I phrased it was that I slid in on a banana peel to my product designer role at Elektron. I started working in customer support there in 2015, but I had been a huge fan of their work since way back. I remember how elated I was to get that job, but I also internally reminded myself over and over that I shouldn’t expect it to amount to anything “more”.

But at that point in time Elektron was tiny, only like 20-ish people, so I quickly found myself in an environment filled with like minded people that appreciated my know-how and deeper interest in synthesizers. Pretty soon I had drawn up product ideas together with my ex-alum, now co-worker, Olle, and presented them with positive reactions. We did all of this outside of our working hours and probably spent 10 hours in the office almost every day. There were a few of us who were there all the time back then, most notably one of the founders who I bonded with over our mutual love for old computers and keyboard switches.

Anyway, in 2016 they started working on the Digitakt and I remember not liking the initial designs. I drew up this alternate front panel or whatever and Olle was like “you should redo the GUI too!”, so I did. I had been into pixel art since I was a kid so I had no problem drawing up a little interface for the small monochrome display. My front panel idea was (rightfully) not that appreciated, but they loved the GUI. I ended up designing the entire user interface and got to influence the functionality a little as well. After that I just ended up doing more things and it all sort of culminated in the Digitone which is an FM synth that was that “more”, the wildest of expectations in the back of my head. It was really the synth I had dreamt about making.

At the point of my leaving I had been involved in making user interfaces, product concepts, synthesizer engines, some industrial design and yeah… An inappropriate amount of things. Unfortunately I didn’t like the direction the company was heading, plus a lot of people I enjoyed working with had already quit. I felt myself become very frustrated, less happy, and kind of mean in all honesty. It’s a long story but at some point I realized I had to leave. Felisha and I had both considered moving to Berlin at that time so… We did. We took a leap and moved from two opposite parts of the world and met in the middle, you could say.

All in all, it was a life changing experience that I am deeply grateful for.

Elecktron’s ‘Digitone’ FM synthesiser - designed and developed by Ess Mattisson & the Elektron team.

During my journey in experimental music, it felt like a lot of my first glimpses to tools and education around electronic music were commercially orientated to genre-confined sounds & formulas. How would you say your involvement in multidisciplinary experimental art worlds have lent a hand in Fors?

FL: I co-founded an art space in 2014 in Portland and this became a great place to experiment and explore ideas. One of the projects there was the synth library, which hosts a large collection of modular synths and other hardware for the community to utilize. During that time, I was learning modular synthesis and in the library constantly, supporting artists or watching people record.. I wasn’t thinking much about it at the time, but I was forming my own views on what I wanted to see in the synth world, what different artists like and are drawn to, what makes something fun to play, and what gives me joy sonically.

EM: Before I started working at Elektron I studied art and music compositions for a few years, that definitely had a big impact on how I think about tools and my approach to product design. I’ve also never been interested in pop music so all my reference points were rooted in experimental music which perhaps made me interested in making tools that are more exploratory rather than ticking boxes of features that “should be there”. I don’t mean that in a dismissive sense, more that I appreciate when things can be niche and focus on a specific area of interest. Though, sometimes I feel like that mode of thinking can be a bit egocentric, like I love “this” type of sound so it only needs to cover “these” areas - that’s how people build a max patch for themselves, haha. But within that is a subjectivity that I think is important for building musical instruments.

We already have a million flagship synthesizers that all sound technically amazing (Serum, Phaseplant, Pigments, etc…) so I think it’s important to balance that out with some ideas that are more niche. Therein comes the subjectivity, what actually sounds good? Can you quantify that besides less or more accurate sounding whatevers? Not really. It’s up to you as an instrument maker to define the explorable areas and why/how that is interesting. In that mindset, I think having a background of various artistic practices, experimental or not, is really beneficial. I always find myself questioning established design patterns - it’s partially because I’m an arrogant asshole- but also because I think I have learned to not accept the norm, but to find my own approaches.

I'm fascinated by directing partnerships who can both align on the foundational elements that execute a great idea. What would you say are your strengths in working together? What kind of language have you developed in developing and designing your instruments?

FL: There is a lot of understanding between us. We each have a different skill set and workflow, but we find ways to give each other space and communicate our needs in tandem. One of my favorite things is to take breaks and talk about sound together (watching some synth videos on YouTube or a VST demo I had never heard of). I think that makes what we do together on Fors stronger.

Close to launch I definitely do get a little stressed because Ess tends to be laser focused and I am trying to check everything off our timeline, but each time something new gets released it goes more smoothly. Last launch we had a nice cake and invited some friends to share it with us.. it was the first time I felt we were really celebrating our accomplishments.

EM: Yeah, we definitely balance each other out in a good way. I often work on things alone for long periods, and as I check in with Felisha I get a lot of valuable feedback that usually comes from a very different perspective than my own. The cake was great by the way.

What were your initial goals with Fors, and how have they developed since you started the venture in 2020?

FL: Our main goal was to pay rent, hah!

I tend to be a big picture person, but I never want to disappoint or fall short with my fantasy. When we started Fors, we were in different countries. We would talk about sounds or a specific synth we liked or a record that inspired one of us, or an imaginary instrument.. That’s usually how we would get excited/begin creating something. Leaving a full time job like Elektron, you need a moment to have a little fun and make what you want on your own schedule, and Fors really provided that for Ess. I still like to approach Fors as an artist project and not a company, it gives more space to take risks making instruments that we want to use for our own practice and share with others, too.

We have dubbed 2022 the year of the drum and that’s about all I can say for the future, but we are looking forward to it.

Could you give a glimpse into the step-by-step process in designing and developing one of your devices?

EM: When we started Fors we made a list of instruments we’d like to make and we’re still going through it. It’s evolving and shifting a lot but the start of a device is usually like “let’s make the fm synth next” or whatever, and then I start spending time researching what technology would be necessary and what could be conceptually interesting to do with it.

As a lot of sound making devices share technology it’s often a very non-linear trajectory, some little pieces of one thing might inspire another and often smaller elements get reused like filters and envelopes etc. Our synth Chiral started out way back in 2020 when I was working on something else entirely and started experimenting with phaseshaping. I kept returning to the same Max patch from time to time and played around with different ways of altering that oscillator.

Phaseshaping is a sort of amalgamation of different synthesis methods. It’s based on similar technology to very basic wavetable playback; you have a waveform (e.g a sinewave) represented by a lookup table (LUT) which is then scanned by a phasor (a periodic unipolar ramp that reads each sample in the LUT) – in between that you can put all kinds of stuff that affects the phase, resulting in different timbres due to how the table is being read. The classic Yamaha FM synths (and Digitone, etc) all do this as well, but feeding the operator outputs into the phase signal and so on. Phaseshaping typically does things like bending the phasor or mirroring it to create richer timbres, and this is exactly what Chiral does. Arguably Casio’s CZ series of phase distortion synths do the same thing, but implemented slightly differently. It’s all within that family of synthesis.

EM: Then as I was approached by Corry Banks from Modbap Modular I already had a bunch of interesting algorithms for the Osiris wavetable oscillator that he wanted to make. Chiral kind of grew sideways along Osiris but without any of the wavetable aspects; I just wanted it to be a sinewave that got shaped in all of these interesting ways.

At that time Felisha and I got kind of obsessed with Buchla systems and reading a lot about that world and time, the experimental culture and newness of auditory exploration through synthesizers, really inspired us to push for a more unconventional structure. Chiral has sort of a Low Pass Gate filter built-in actually, which is famously a staple of Buchla designs.

That also got me thinking about performance– the music Easel was a synthesizer made for performance and back then that meant having a keyboard, onboard sequencer and other things that were uncommon for a synth but made it much more playable. Similarly, Live 11 had just been released and MPE was the big new thing, it just kind of clicked. We bought a Sensel Morph with (ironically) the Buchla Thunder overlay and set out to make an MPE capable synthesizer.

A lot of the development was spent only on the oscillator and its phaseshaping algorithms as this was really the fundamental of Chiral, trying to find new approaches to bending a sinewave in meaningful ways. Often when I work on the core of an instrument like that I build a small patch with some kind of oscillator setup so I can easily see exactly what is happening which helps for troubleshooting. I also love looking at waveforms.

Core oscillator development Max patch of Chiral

EM: I make all our sound-related things in Gen~, which is an environment within Max that allows for more precise digital signal processing. It allows for single sample processing and a lot of other cool stuff that’s otherwise hard to do with the msp~ objects in Max. I started using it way back when working on the Digitone and later used it to create fully working Max for Live prototypes of each of the synth engines in the Elektron Model:Cycles.

The Chiral oscillator in Gen~

EM: Usually I try to get some musical context going as quickly as possible, this often means wiring up some barebones sequencer in Max and playing around with the synth engine for a few hours. It’s a vital part of the process as it really helps with figuring out what parameters are fun and what ranges they should have.

Early chaotic patch testing the core oscillator out in a musical context

EM: As all the ‘core’ components get to a mature state it’s time to work on the interface. This usually ends up taking up most of the time spent on a device actually. I use a combination of built-in objects in Max/Max for Live as well as making my own UI elements with Javascript. In Max you can do this by either using the JSUI object which gives you a blank canvas, or writing a custom render routine (JSPainter file) for an existing object (for example live.dial). The latter is super useful and is the method I use the most, it allows us to give our devices a unique look while retaining the nice feel and functionality of the standard Max for Live objects.

Working with JSUI (writing Javascript in external editor Sublime Text) in Max to make the oscilloscope for Chiral

EM: Sometimes I make a quick mockup in Illustrator or Sketch, but often these days I just start writing Javascript immediately. At some point you just get good at structuring things up in your head, and I really enjoy that way of working. It’s quite relaxing compared to clicking around on a canvas sometimes.

When all development and testing is done I set out to work on logotypes and other assets that sort of build up the world of the instrument. I really like how the early Elektron stuff had very strong iconography by Jesper Kouthoofd, so I like to try and give our instruments that same kind of depth.

The first couple of Chiral icons in Adobe Illustrator

EM: We always make a launch video too and I have some unwritten rules for that. For one, all the sounds and effects have to come from the device itself so you can get a pretty clear picture of the capabilities. Secondly, the device’s interface should be central in the video and should always be a screen recording of what is being played so it correlates to the sound.

I make our videos in Adobe After Effects which is a very laborious process. Not sure I would recommend it to anyone but I don’t know what else to use, haha. It’s honestly the worst part of this whole process– I make the soundtrack first which always sends me into a spiral for a day or two until I’m happy with the result and then I chaotically put together a video.

After that I sleep.

The Fors approach to user interface design is uniquely abstract yet intuitive - your website quotes "We believe in novel instruments that are elegant to use and adventurous in sound." What are your design inspirations when developing these interfaces?

EM: Felisha hates that quote, hahaha. I’ve promised to change it but I have yet to come up with a better slogan. Sorry!

FL: Ess is always tattling on me.

EM: I think we both wanted to make tools that feel approachable and exciting to explore. I like to work with abstract visualizations of sound a lot, things that represent what’s happening through a different language than knobs, numbers and sliders. You can easily get overloaded by information with software– everything has a number underneath it, it’s so precise, and I can get really hung up on that. Comparatively, using some old analog synth will make you rely on your ears a lot more and I find that a relaxing experience.

I think this approach to interfaces creates a good middle ground of a more ‘fun’ and ‘explorable’ experience and I like to think about my favorite instruments as little universes to dwell in– that’s what we want to create as well.

Since I began Lux Cache and started to design sample libraries and tools for music production, I am constantly using them in my own productions due to how much I enjoy the tools, and partly because my ego enjoys it. How has your personal relationship with music production changed since getting into development?

EM: During development I use our devices extensively. A big part of my process is to spend hours just using the basic tech while tweaking the parameters to see what works conceptually and/or technically. I try to find out what feels fun and what controls would be appropriate and so on. I often catch myself having listened to a constant soundwave for a few hours, which really messes with your balance once you take the headphones off, haha.

With Fors I’m making instruments for other people to use, I always have that in mind. When we release a device I’m handing it off for the world to use and that’s the time for me to take a break. It’s also a lot like, when you know when sausage is being made or whatever– I’ll just think of the things I want to improve. But then I come back to a device a few months after release and I’m like “wow this is great” hahaha …

Lux and Bokeh/Ego (ironically) are the only devices that I actually made for my own work before they became Fors products and I do find myself using them more than the others. I think it makes sense, it’s something I made because I wanted it.

EM: I don’t know if it’s about ego necessarily, but I’m definitely at a point where I almost exclusively want to use tools I build for my own artistic practice. It feels fulfilling to me, I’ve had a dream for a long time to make my own tools and I feel like I’m finally at a point where I can confidently do it. It’s selfish, in a way– but I think I need to keep some things for myself. Although, a lot of that ends up somewhere in a product at some point so … I don’t know, it’s all some big meta practice really.

On that note, I recently made this “live set” for a recurring event called Flash Crash which is focused on a loose definition of live coding. It’s perhaps the first time where I felt like I truly created everything myself to a quality that I’m pleased with. It’s this enigmatic text based sequencer (a long-standing idea of mine) controlling a continuation of the original synthesizer core for Lux, featuring a reverb that later became the “Romb” device that we have made for you. (Yes, you!)

Ess M flash crash 01/01/22

FL: In the spring of 2020 we were having a conversation about what I felt was missing from my set up. I was rambling about my dream synth and Ess casually started making it. We talked about features and layout and went through the process together. That was really how Fors started. We made the AMQR which is a four voice binaural amplitude modulation synth (a half joke because I watch/listen to ASMR videos every day). It has changed my music making process SO much.

AMQR, designed by Ess & Felisha.

FL: I love sharing tools and resources, it’s a big part of my practice, but something about having this little *secret* synth feels really nice. Eventually we will share aspects of it in a future build. I will let go someday.

Do you see any similarities in music production and software development process? And in what ways do they differ?

EM: My gut reaction is to say; not really, I think it’s two very disparate practices. But one can definitely influence the other, especially in the way you approach things. For example live coding (e.g Algorave) takes programming practices and applies that as an interface for music creation while Serialism involves method and logic to compose music.

But for me it’s different modes of thinking, programming is all about problem solving while in music I am looking to express myself. Tools like Max can definitely blur these lines a bit and I find that helpful when working on synthesizers, you need some room for playfulness and happy accidents.

I was introduced to your work through a video on Twitter -- a mutual producer friend of mine using Superberry to create rich super-saw style trance arpeggios. How do you think people are finding out about your devices?

FL: That’s what we love (and tell your friend we said thanks)! Coming from a more DIY place, we both really appreciate word of mouth and lowkey promotion. Not to say that we want to be hard to find, but neither of us are big with marketing. We do our best to reach out to artists and projects we admire with previews or to have them test ideas we are working on and we will continue to find new small-scale ways to share what we are doing.

Are there any devices/instruments/tools from other designers that you enjoy?

EM: I absolutely adore nanoloop by Oliver Wittchow, I’ve used it since I was a teenager and I still think it’s one of the best sequencers ever made. It’s been hugely inspiring to me in its minimalism and how it represents music and sound via iconography and abstraction rather than numbers and letters.

I think what Monome is doing with their norns platform is really cool. I’m really interested in projects that are so community-focused and I’ve always loved the ultra-clean design of their stuff. The fact that they source everything locally is also really inspiring.

FL: I love Argeïphontes Lyre by Akira Rabelais and Emisson Control 2 made by Curtis Roads and his students at UCSB. I always recommend trying PureData, but for those just starting out you can use Automatonism - I have taught a few synthesis classes with it and I am always so proud of the patches people end up with.

Big fan of Make Noise, Ciat Lonbarde and Erica Synths and Schlappi Engineering for some much needed harshness. Also really enjoy ModBap’s Osiris (Ess designed the synth engine).. Here’s hoping for another collaboration with them soon!

Synth development from an outside perspective seems to have a steep learning curve. I myself have wanted to jump into M4L and VST design and have felt intimidated. What would you tell to avid music production enthusiasts who are looking to jump into development?

EM: Find a (small, to start with) concrete goal (e.g a small simple synth) you want to achieve and work towards that obsessively, that’s how I get anything done at all really, haha.

But I don’t know, it’s hard to say since people work so differently. I can be really stubborn with learning certain things if I don’t get immediate results. This is why Max has worked well for me, it doesn't take much work to get some sound out of that environment while programming a VST is a much more treacherous endeavor.

If I would recap key points in my own journey towards Fors it would be:

Dream; before I knew how to make things in Max I would draw them, jot down ideas, designs and concepts. Dreaming about making things is the first step, I think.

Find your tool; does your brain gel best with something like Max or code (e.g C++)? I’ve been dabbling with programming since I was 10, but still struggle. For me it helps with the immediate visual and sonic feedback that I get from a tool like Max.

Learn from experts; this is true especially for DSP and synthesizers. There are so many caveats and domain specific knowledge that’s hard to search for or learn from a book. I would recommend joining a Discord or lurking some forums to learn best practices etc.

Find a way to have fun; I have a hard time when I’m not getting instant gratification so I usually build elements in steps - and play with them along the way. If I’m building an oscillator I try to get it to do something as soon as possible so I can play around with it while I build. It helps me to not lose steam and keep feeling excited about what I’m working on.

EM & FL:

Thanks so much for inviting us!

We wanted to make something special for the Lux Cache community.

Romb is a reverb effect based on some of Ess’ designs for personal work. It’s a particularly smooth sounding reverb, between somewhat big and huge spaces. Forever inspired by classic reverbs used in IDM like the Alesis Midiverb, this sounds equally synthetic and pairs well with any synthesizer. It’s lush, if you will.