Lars, as a modular enthusiast and the mind behind Herzlich Labs, how did you first get into modular synthesis?

I can pinpoint the exact moment my interest began - I was visiting a good friend of mine, and we were hanging out, playing music, talking about synths, and at some point we happen across of a video of a guy patching a hi-hat on a massive modular system. It was almost comical at first, seeing a guy patching such a simple sound on this monstrosity, but even if this simple exercise on such a complex machine seemed a little absurd and needlessly nerdy, it was undeniably fascinating, seeing him create something from nothing.

I remember we laughed at it initially, and agreed we’d never go that far down the rabbit hole, but I guess the joke is on us now! It wasn’t very long before I bought my first case and, I think, two modules - a Doepfer Wasp Filter and a Mutable Instruments Clouds - and it was just some of the most captivating and fascinating instruments I’d ever played, I was hooked.

 
What drew you to this form of music production?

At this point, I’d played several different instruments, I owned lots of old hardware synths, and it was all wonderful and interesting, but there was something truly transgressive about modular synthesis that I didn’t recognize in anything else I had tried. If you pick up a guitar or a keyboard, there are “expected” ways to play and perform with it - there are well-defined tunings, styles, postures, grips, traditions, and so on, and so on, that you are expected to adhere to and act within the realm of. With modular, there was just this kind of punkish “plug it in and see what happens”  attitude, like, “let’s put a contact mic on this cymbal and run it through a filter and into a granular processor, maybe it’ll sound super cool” or “let’s DIY a hydrophone and listen to random sounds through this esoteric reverb effect” - that complete lack of structure was very appealing to me, coming from a much more rigid and orderly musical background and way of thinking about music, it was very liberating.

Herzlich Labs is known for its unique and high-quality modules. Can you take us through your design process when developing a new module? Where do you start, and how do you balance functionality with innovation?

I think in almost every instance, my designs begin with curiosity: what happens if I do X, how does Y work or why is Z built this way and not some other way. I think my process is like finding a loose piece of yarn in a darkened room, and slowly pulling on it, exploring where it takes you as you untangle it. Every answer to every question brings about new questions, new ideas, new experiments, which each form the building blocks of projects. Only rarely are my projects top-down, where I start with some idea and find out how to achieve it, more often they’re bottom-up, where I discover something really fascinating and find a number of interesting applications for it.

Balancing functionality with innovation is a great and difficult question - my preference is always to make something that doesn’t yet exist, or at least offers a fresh take on an old idea, but I think it’s important to recognize that nearly all music and music technology is iterative: we’re creating things within more or less familiar frameworks and traditions, even when we’re trying to push the boundaries of what is possible (although some companies may want you to think otherwise).

The modular synth community is vast and diverse. How do you stay inspired within such a competitive field, and how do you keep your designs fresh and relevant?

Modular is a wonderful scene, because it contains multitudes of players - everything from microscopic makers, to boundary-pushing rebels who sleep on a mattress under their workbench, all the way to the biggest names in music technology. There aren’t a lot of industries that have this absolute breadth of representation, where even the smallest maker can stand shoulder to shoulder with the titans. Naturally, this does lead to various types of competition - we only have so much room in our cases, so much money, so much time to invest, two eyes and two ears to absorb everything with - and if you’re a one man company, you’ll never outmatch your big boy peers in marketing budgets, in economy of scale, in manpower, so you have to decide where you want to make an impact.

For me, it’s never been a conscious decision - there’s no marketing strategy, no brand management plan, no communication key performance indicators, no 5-year release roadmap. It’s just me, and the product is what I want to make, on my terms, take it or leave it. Nearly everything I do in this company is something I do because it’s something I enjoy or something I believe in.If you’re constantly chasing what some vaguely defined demographic wants, or you’re constantly trying to out-compete your colleagues with the latest and greatest Hot New Thing™, you will lose sight of what makes you and your work authentic, and I think authenticity is the only way to remain both fresh and relevant.

Are there specific philosophies or design principles that guide your approach to module development at Herzlich Labs?

I think a good Eurorack module is a gesamtkunstwerk that seeks to join technology, usability and design into one cohesive vision. It's more than the sum of its parts. My inspirations are quite eclectic, and I'm always balancing on a razor's edge between creating things that are consistent with my previous designs, and iterating and creating something new. 

In that way, I don't think any module I make is ever really finished - lots of modules go through several revisions during their lifetime, as I discover better ways to do things, small improvements, even just purely visual updates. 

Finally, I'm not afraid to pursue ideas that don't necessarily add much functionality: even finding the exact right bolt and nut for some minor assembly can feel like a great step forward, though the user may not even notice.

How important is the user experience for you when designing modules? Do you focus more on intuitive interfaces, or are you willing to push the boundaries of complexity for the sake of sonic exploration?

I think user experience is important - but I also recognize that l am not the user. I try to design products according to what I think will make a great experience, similar to how a luthier builds guitars that are both beautiful and nice to play, I try to design musical instruments, not just modules. In that way, I tend to fall on the side of simplicity over complexity. Not every function on every module needs CV control - I know some people disagree, and that's OK. Feature creep is always a challenge when you're designing, because every additional feature adds cost, complexity, size constraints, power constraints, and so on, and I think it's perfectly appropriate to ‘kill your darlings” in this context, to realize that you can improve your product in other ways by letting go of things you thought were important.

Collaboration seems to be a strong theme in the modular world. Have you had the chance to collaborate with other developers or artists? How do those collaborations influence your work?

I have been fortunate to collaborate in a number of different ways, and I'm very grateful for every collaboration I have - but, I think my preference, ultimately, is to work alone. I tend to quickly latch on to an extremely clear vision of what I want to achieve, and I like pursuing that with heart and soul. For the same reason, I find it extremely rewarding to work with people who are more tangentially related to Eurorack: musicians, makers, builders, engineers, artists, coders, and so on, because we can join forces with each our strengths, our very best ideas.

Some of the best and most interesting projects I've had, were collaborative efforts, ideas gifted to me by people with clear visions and a desire to see them realized. It's also a great motivation to have someone counting on you to find the best solution to a complex issue, and to be forced to work on the very boundaries of your knowledge and experience to drag it into being. 

Modular synthesizers can be both an artistic and technical challenge. How do you approach the technical side of designing a module, especially when it comes to ensuring reliability and performance?

It's challenging, because modular is such a diverse space, and there are no hard and fast rules on how things are supposed to work. There are sometimes unwritten “standards” for how things usually are done, but there are no guarantees, so you have to accept that something you design may be incompatible with something designed by somebody else. That risk is hard to mitigate, so instead I focus in designing products that are internally consistent, durable, high quality and reliable. I try to choose the best components I can, and even though it's much more expensive, I hope it will mean people are still making music with my gear 30 years from now. I like the idea of longevity, and of making it possible to repair and maintain old units. They're not products to be consumed - they're musical instruments that I want people to use, enjoy and feel inspired by for a long time to come.

With the ever-evolving landscape of modular synthesis, how do you see the future of modular gear? 

More than the actual gear itself, of which we have enough for several lifetimes of exploration, I hope to see the community around modular continue to grow and thrive. Synthesis has historically been a diverse field of identities and expression, and I would like to see that continued and celebrated, as we continue to carry the banner of pioneers like Else Marie Pade, Wendy Carlos, Gerald Donald, Suzanne Ciani, and so on…

Are there any emerging trends or technologies that excite you?

I think that we're in an interesting time, where music and musical instruments are increasingly democratized. I remember spending my saved-up pocket money on a cash-on-delivery mail order of a Boss ODB-3, with absolutely no way of trying one, hearing one, let alone seeing one beforehand. Some years later, I got my hands on a copy of Circuit-Bending by Reed Ghazala, and I must read it in one sitting, yet I didn't live near any electronics stores that I could use to access basic electronic DIY tools and components, leaving me to only dream of it for years to come.

Today, you can order pretty much everything from your phone, and make decisions based on multitudes of information in text, sound and video format. Even budget products have, on average, become high quality and good value, allowing many more people to play and experience music. I hope this means even more people are encouraged to both play music, but also to pick up the soldering iron and learn some DIY, as it's never been so easy to get started.

For someone just starting in modular synthesis, what advice would you give them? How can they navigate the sometimes overwhelming world of modules and patching? 

Start slow. I see newcomers diving in headfirst, buying ten or more modules all at once, and while I understand the impulse, you run the risk of not taking the time to learn each module individually, which in turn will tell you something about where you would like to go next.

Don't feel discouraged by the amount of technical jargon, either. It can feel overwhelming at first, but it becomes second nature as you play and practice with your system, and once you start to get everything figured out, you will become a better musician for it. Consider getting even a simple oscilloscope as well, being able to visualize your work will elevate your understanding and learning tenfold.

While some people like to work entirely within the modular, I think it's very worthwhile to explore how you can use it with your DAW, with midi and with other devices that accept CV. It takes none of the magic away from the modular to sequence it from your DAW, or to sample it and use those sounds in your work, so I would encourage exploring that aspect quite a lot.

Finally, try to participate in the modular community - ask questions, attend meetups, share your patches with others. We're a small and close knit community, and we all benefit from having more perspectives, artists, peers and engineers.

Your modules have a distinct sound and character. What do you believe is the key to creating a module that not only functions well but also inspires musicians to push creative boundaries?

I think modules are more than utilitarian sound machines, they're instruments that invite us to play, and the way they're built and designed plays a role in that. We live in a time where we're spoiled with choice, we can open a DAW on a computer and have extremely complex synthesizers and accurate emulations of all manner of gear, we can program and play nearly anything, with any combination of effects we dream of. But when we put ourselves so much in control of everything, when we have so many choices, it's easy to fall victim to choice paralysis. What snare drum do you choose when you have a thousand, and which one do you choose when you have just one?

We push our creative boundaries when we dare to experiment and move beyond our comfort zones. For instance, you might use a passive touch controller and accidentally patch things together in a way you didn't intend, and as a result discover something you never would have thought of otherwise - even better, you might use one of my touch controllers in a way I couldn't predict, and do something utterly brilliant as a result. Happy accidents, as Bob Ross would say. Designing modules that don't prescribe a “correct” way to use them, but invite more open ended and creative use is always a goal I strive for.

How has your personal approach to modular synthesis changed over time? Have there been any moments or discoveries that have significantly shaped how you think about sound creation? 

I think I started out completely enamored with all of modular; I wanted a system that did everything, basically, but I was especially fascinated with the idea of Krell and generative patching. The idea that you could build a system where multiple components affect each other in unpredictable ways was really interesting, like you're merely making suggestions and the machine makes all the decisions based on cascades of interaction.

Over time, I became far more interested in taking a very deliberate approach to music. While I think generative music is still very interesting from a conceptual standpoint, I find I much prefer to approach music from a deliberate compositional standpoint, and the modular is a tool with strengths and advantages in that regard, just as a DAW, a standalone synthesizer or a drum machine each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

One of the things I enjoy most about the modular now, is how quickly I can experiment and find inspiration in various sounds and processes, but most of all I think I've just learned to trust my ears: all that matters at the end of the day is whether or not it sounds good. You can spend so long working towards the “correct” or “optimal” way of doing something, but your only concern should really be: does this sound good to my ears, or not?

Let things clip, glitch, break, be noisy, badly intonated and distorted, so long as you let your ears guide you.

Looking ahead, are there any upcoming projects or modules you're working on that you're especially excited about?

I'm always working on at least ten different projects, and it's always hard to pick one over another. Herzlich Labs is an ever evolving, ever changing project in and of itself, currently tethered in Eurorack, but by no means permanently anchored. I have one research project that’s been in development for a few years that I hope to share more information on soon - an electromechanical module, that I can currently only describe as a low-frequency oscillator for luddites.