Zoë Blade and Nina Richards talk about their individual music careers and how they came together to create the Stepper Acid Eurorack Sequencer.
Show Notes
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:18 - Composing For Patreon And YouTube
03:04 - Chiptunes
05:47 - Patreon Followers
06:57 - Developing A Sound
11:00 - Working With Older Machines
13:39 - Expanding The Synth Collection
17:01 - Demosceners / Trackers
22:26 - Working With Nina
24:14 - Creating The Stepper Acid Sequencer
30:55 - The Drum Machine
32:23 - Customers And The Manufacturing Process
38:02 - Using Stepper Acid Live
41:21 - Future Plans
43:45 - Ending
Zoë Blade - Biog
As a teenager, Zoë Blade sampled household objects into Impulse Tracker, twisting them into rhythmic alien soundscapes. Not quite music, but not quite not, the result was a bizarre example of outsider art.
She's since honed her aesthetic into something more polished but no less unique, fusing catchy melodies and rhythms with the untamed sound of her sprawling modular synthesizers.
She's currently making music for popular YouTube series ContraPoints, as well as her patrons at patreon.com/zoeblademusic and is also involved with Nina in the Transistor Sounds Labs company.
Nina Richards - Biog
Nina Richards is the kind of musician who always likes to dive a level deeper. Always looking to improve the tools available, she designed and built Stepper Acid, a modular sequencer loosely based on the TB-303, but geared more towards live performance.
This was well received by other musicians too, and has been used by the likes of Nine Inch Nails's Trent Reznor and Underworld's Rick Smith. The product is marketed through her Transistor Sounds Labs company.
In addition to her solo work, Nina is also known for writing music for actress Abigail Thorn's YouTube channel Philosophy Tube.
https://www.ninarichards.co.uk
Stepper Acid Sequencer
Stepper Acid Sequencer
Stepper Acid is a 16-step Eurorack sequencer module designed with live performance in mind, designed and built as a collaboration between Nina Richards and Zoë Blade.
https://www.transistorsoundslabs.com
Interviewer: Caro C - Biog
Caro CPhoto: Shirlaine ForrestCaro C is an artist, engineer and teacher, specialising in electronic music. She started making music thanks to being laid up whilst living in a double-decker bus and listening to Warp Records in the late 1990s. This "sonic enchantress" (BBC Radio 3) has now played in most of the cultural hotspots of her current home town of Manchester, UK. Caro is also the instigator and project manager of electronic music charity Delia Derbyshire Day.
http://carocsound.com/
Twitter: @carocsound
Instagram: @carocsound
Facebook: www.facebook.com/carocsound/
Delia Derbyshire Day Charity: https://deliaderbyshireday.com
About the Electronic Music podcast channel
On this channel we feature some of the pioneers of the industry, interview musicians and talk about retro and current gear.
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