Mutable Instruments

Among the many brands and Eurorack manufacturers around the world, Mutable Instruments has become very popular. A pioneer of modules that make full use and advantages of digital open circuits.

Here at Synthesizer New Zealand we're very happy to announce Mutable Instruments is joining the list of brands we are offering. Currently most of the modules are in stock and ready to be shipped, as always we offer free shipping on all modular synthesizer modules and a speedy dispatch.

We are an official dealer for Mutable Instruments products which you can verify on the dealer page by clicking here.

Among the many brands and Eurorack manufacturers around the world, Mutable Instruments has become very popular. A pioneer of modules that make full use and advantages of digital open circuits.

Before starting Mutable Instruments (MI), Émilie was interested in signal processing (especially automatic song detection such as tempo extraction, genre recognition, etc.) and machine learning. She worked on these technologies with Google, Last.fm, and a small French startup. Her main work was research and the content of research was put into software. 

She started playing with Arduino boards in 2009 to study electronics and embedded systems herself. Her first serious electronics project was a monophonic hybrid synth.

Some people wanted to talk about the synth on several forums, so she decided to start selling it as a DIY kit. This kit (Shruthi-1) became so popular that after many times it was sold out, she had to set up a company to deal with taxes. Eventually this company has become her main activity and main source of income. 

MI originally sold desktop synthesizers in the form of DIY kits. They are Shruthi, a hybrid monosynth, Ambika, a hybrid polysynth, and Anushri, an analog mono. Why did you they leave the DIY world?

Émilie admits she was frustrated with the ever-increasing support and wanted to do something more powerful and beautiful. She had often received requests for Shruthi's oscillator module, but Eurorack was strange and unclear to the fresh to eurorack Èmilie.

She needed an LFO, a clock, and a standard oscillator waveform to test the circuits. She was designing, so bought a 2012U Doepfer system. In other words, she bought it as a test equipment.

But then fell in love and was immediately captivated by the modular synth that she decided to make a module in this format. The Eurorack modules seemed easier to get started with, it developed more and more, and the production costs were reasonably affordable. So she decided to follow this pathway.

 

Mutable Instruments Beads, successor of Clouds.

What drives the development of Mutable Instruments?

The main process is thinking in terms of “activities” or “processes” the musician would like to achieve, and then try to come up with parameters/dimensions the musician could control. Èmilie likes to mathematically abstract an existing synthesis technique – find new parameters, or new ways of controlling its parameters. It’s why some of her modules do not really fit pre existing categories, or why there are knobs that influence different parameters behind the scenes.

But in terms of design process, a bunch of other things are going on at once, scratching her own itches, trying to fill “gaps” in the line to reach the goal of a full Mutable Instruments system and finding good uses of little code/algorithmic nuggets Èmilie has found when implementing ideas found in research papers.

In addition to this philosophy she is trying not to leave too many unused CPU power/gates unused in the modules, staying not too close from what other manufacturers are doing, or just doing something very different from what she has been doing for a while now.

Mutable Instruments is ran completely by Émilie, there are no employees and she does everything herself. From packing the boxes shipped to our store to testing each module prior to sending it.

Find them online here:

Website: https://mutable-instruments.net/

Our store: https://synthesizer.nz/categories/mutable-instruments/

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