Do It Live! Krista Bourgeois

There's nothing quite like performing live with a modular system. Live sets offer an opportunity to be completely genuine with your sound. Rather than searching for tracks primarily made by other artists to compose a DJ set, creating a live set is the essence of your own individual sound which feels really special.

Coming from a DJ background, the necessity of ensuring sets are both dynamic and polished enough to fit in between DJ sets in a club atmosphere is always front of mind. Time has been spent iterating on the live setup to make that possible. The basis of the performance is a mixture of live patches in a eurorack case and stems (primarily recorded out of the modular into Ableton) all triggered by an external sequencer, the Squarp Hapax.

Modular synthesis began as a means to sound design for compositions in Ableton. In the winter of 2022, the decision was made to take the modular on stage. This started a long journey of designing a live set, which meant acquiring and learning how to work with a lot more modules.

The Setup

The live rack is housed in a 14U 104hp Amalgamod travel case which is perfect for traveling to gigs and being able to leave all patches intact. The top boat contains voices, filters, and some effects while the bottom boat houses master effects, mixing, and output modules.

The voices in the case consist of: The Industrial Music Electronics Piston Honda, used for pads and long metallic stabs. The Noise Engineering Manis Iteritas, used with a delay to either use it as a simple stab or increase the delay and make it into a feedback patch. The Noise Engineering Basimilus Iteritas Alter, which splits the output via a mult, sending one signal into the Sovage Engineering L'ECORCHEUR filter and the other signal into the x1l3 Shard. This creates two distortion patches that have their own unique characteristics. Both of these outputs go into their own Modulaire Maritime Isotita (a 5 band EQ) to shape the distortion to fit the mix. The Erica Synths LXR, mostly for leads and some drums. The Hexinverter Mutant Hihats.

Modulation is covered by the Xaos Devices Zadar with the envelopes mult'd out to various areas of the rack. The decay on the envelopes is adjusted live to have more percussive or more long drawn-out hits as needed. The 4ms Mini Peg modulates parameters on the Sovage Engineering L'ECORCHEUR filter.

The Bastl Dark Matter and Qu-Bit Data Bender are among the favorites for sound design but they don't always have a permanent home in the live rack. Both are used heavily in productions. Specifically, the Data Bender was used to create all of the glitch sounds in the track Riding With Death as well as the long glitchy sounds in the breakdown.

A DIY kit of the Error Noise Lab was built and can be heard in both the intro of Riding With Death and after the breakdown. Bits of the Noise Lab were also recorded and cut up to layer with other glitch sounds throughout the track.

All kicks are created in Ableton and then played back via the Assimil8or. This enables heavily processing kicks and ensures they will have the necessary power needed for the style of techno performed.

Signal routing between the top and bottom boats is streamlined using Octalink modules directing outputs into the Boreddrain Stereo Xcelon Mixer. The mixer is a new addition to the live setup and so far, "the best I've encountered for live performance." Two stereo send and return FX setups are configured with each being an Erica Synths Pico DSP module, set to different algorithms.

The Boredbrain Xcelon mix out goes into the Cosmotronic Cosmix V1 because of its overdrive. Then the master signal goes into the Cosmotronic Messor compressor then the WMD Overseer filter and lastly, the Boredbrain Monitr output module.

In a recent evolution of the setup, the transition was made from the Octatrack to the Squarp Hapax for all sequencing alongside the Rossum Assimil8or and 1010 Bitbox for stem playback. Everything is sequenced over midi via the Expert Sleepers FH-2 and cv expanders.

Something essential was finding a way to recreate the functionality of Octatrack scenes in the modular. This was accomplished using the Droid Master with the Droid X7 expander and 2 Droid P2B8 modules. With those, parameters on master chain effect modules can be controlled by selecting different 'scenes' with the buttons on the Droid P2B8. This system controls parameters on the Xaos Devices Timiszoara, Noise Engineering Desmodus Versio, and WMD Overseer as well as sending a gate to a 1U Intellijel Dual VCA to switch the kick on or off. These 'scenes' are driven by the Intellijel Xfade 1U Crossfader acting as a macro controller, allowing the creation of breakdowns and other creative effects that would otherwise be impossible with two hands. This helps with transitioning between different moments in the live set which can be one of the more challenging aspects of performing live.

Production Process

For composing tracks, individual elements from the modular are recorded into Ableton and then cut up and processed. There's an appreciation for being able to EQ, clip, time-stretch, and otherwise add FX that just aren't available in the modular. Having the ability to combine modular elements with elements sound designed fully in Ableton lends to more flexibility when producing. Certain soft synths VSTs are enjoyed that haven't found a comparable Eurorack module equivalent. There are a lot of possibilities when combining both hardware and digital sound design.

"The great thing about Eurorack is the unique textures and sounds I can design with my modules that would take ages to get even close to creating in Ableton." Sound design with modular feels more immediate, visceral, and full, which is important to the artistic approach.