Synthesist Raffael Seyfried shared Waves, a composition for piano, cello & modular synthesizer.

It features Ben Winkler on cello.

Here’s what Seyfried has to say about it:

“This piece is all about inverting the expectations I have in my music. Usually I start out on the piano and add to it. For this I wanted to work the other way around. I sketched out the synth line and recorded that first. Actually I thought about having piano from the beginning of the piece but I decided that this time, the piano would only be flourish. I really like how this turned out and how much more the focus is on the sound of the synth in this one.”

Here’s what Seyfried shared about the technical details:

“Two patches for this one:

1. The synth

I used my trusty old MfB Kraftzwerg for oscillators, they are patched into the Doepfer “A-108” ladder filter the 12db/octave output of which goes into the Erica Synths “Acidbox” for additional filtering and dirt. The output of the “Acidbox” goes into the “Vnicursal” VCA by Zlob Modular and from there into Mutable Instruments “Clouds”. After recording all the lines I took the whole synth mix and ran it through the Revox A-700 in it’s tape delay mode at the slowest speed.

2. The piano

The piano goes into “Beads”. Grains are generated. The level of the piano going into the modular is controlled by a Keith McMillen “Softstep”.

Microphones for the piano are Octava Mk12s, recorded into Cubase.”