Philippe Petit – Birth­day Ses­sion

An in­vi­ta­tion to drift with…

Mod­ulisme has been in ex­is­tence for 2 years al­ready and of­fer­ing ressources, hours of music – shar­ing great works of today and those from the past – so I feel happy that it has be­come a strong voice sup­port­ing left-​field Elec­tronic music.
To mark the oc­ca­sion I have com­pleted this BD Ses­sion in hope to clar­ify mu­si­cal in­ten­tions and broaden the scope of our plat­form + send a mes­sage to all those who had al­ready of­fered their music not to hes­i­tate to com­pose a sec­ond ses­sion, re­turn­ing being the best way to re­in­force our com­mu­nity/fam­ily !
Our union makes us strong in the ac­com­plish­ment of this labour of love that brings more plea­sure every day.

Mod­ulisme shall re­main thought-​provoking, I want to em­pha­size the im­por­tance of ex­ten­sive in­ter­view/liner notes rather than of­fer­ing any shortcut-​reader’s di­gest type of thing, feel wel­come to step in and im­merge your­self, this is an “in­vi­ta­tion au voy­age” just like this ses­sion is an ode to “dérive”: a Sit­u­a­tion­ist drift.

What have you been work­ing on lately, and do you have any up­com­ing re­leases or per­for­mances?

I just com­pleted a piece for the Anti f:Orm se­ries of com­pi­la­tions which God Hates God Records has been re­leas­ing through­out the years.
Buried Trea­sure, a British label spe­cial­iz­ing in Con­tem­po­rary Li­brary music, has agreed to re­lease 3 vinyl EPs and the first one is ap­pear­ing in the Fall + they are fea­tur­ing a song on a sam­pler CD.
In the Sum­mer we com­pleted the sec­ond part of the tril­ogy Michael Schaf­fer and I ini­ti­ated last year, « II » is sched­uled to see the light of day in Oc­to­ber.
By the end of the year Flag Day Record­ings – out of the USA and who had re­leased my homage to Hyerony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earthly De­lights” trip­tych in 2020 – will man­u­fac­ture a Cas­sette edi­tion of « Cym­balo­men­tums », ex­plor­ing the sound of my am­pli­fied Cym­balom vs. Elec­tron­ics.
Glacial Move­ments, #1 home for tasty Am­bi­ent Music will issue « Ice_Thaw­ing » in 2022, an album de­nounc­ing the con­se­quences of global warm­ing, the melt­ing of glac­i­ers all around the world…
In 2022 Aural Ter­rains, a label ded­i­cated to Con­tem­po­rary music and op­er­ated by the com­poser Thanos Chrysakis, will re­lease “In A State of Weight­less­ness” a CD gath­er­ing some Elec­troa­coustic works I com­posed dur­ing the past 4 years.

Last but not least I com­pleted an am­bi­tious work mar­ry­ing Grand Piano with Elec­tron­ics. « A re­as­sur­ing Else­where » is a work around my “inside-​piano” tech­niques where – un­like the prepa­ra­tions made pop­u­lar by John Cage which di­verted and ori­en­tal­ized the in­stru­ment while keep­ing its unity – I tried to ob­tain more di­verse sounds, more spread out in the fre­quency spec­trum. My de­sire was to trans­form its tim­bre, re­tran­scribe the im­por­tance of the instant-​compositional ges­ture, keep it con­crete in the way Pierre Henry had in­tended in « Le mi­cro­phone bien tempéré » for in­stance… I wanted that my pre­pared piano could play the unique role of an in­stru­ment that cre­ates sounds that feel elec­tron­i­cally al­tered using an acoustic ma­nip­u­la­tion and then I worked on mar­ry­ing them with my Buchla 200 and Syn­thi A synths.
The most noble acoustic in­stru­ment meet­ing the 2 most leg­endary mod­u­lar sys­tems not know­ing where one stops and the other be­gins… Non­clas­si­cal Record­ings from Lon­don have been con­vinced and will re­lease the album in 2022 !
Hav­ing been a strong sup­porter of the label since its in­cep­tion, in the early 2000s, it is need­less to say that I am very pleased to be fea­tured along­side Gabriel Prokofiev, Lang­ham Re­search Cen­tre, Ligeti Qt., Aisha Orazbayeva, Tom Richards, Do­minic Mur­cott, Klavikon, Mer­cury Qt., Génia and so many oth­ers who ap­peared on their com­pi­la­tions or side projects…

How were you first ac­quainted to Mod­u­lar Syn­the­sis? When did that hap­pen and what did you think of it at the time?
How does it marry with your other « com­po­si­tional tricks »?

Back in 1978 I went to see Kraftwerk play and ever since records of Elec­tronic Music have been added to my shelves. But I fully un­der­stood and em­braced Mod­u­lar Syn­the­sis in 2018 only, and I was amazed to come closer and un­der­stand such ways of cre­at­ing the music I may have in mind !
Up to then I had been re­ly­ing on Roland Fan­tom G6, Arp Solina String en­sem­ble, min­i­Moog and DAW and TBH I felt bored with cre­at­ing music on a DAW. It’s such a te­dious process with very lit­tle in­ter­ac­tion ex­cept for tons of mouse and key­board click­ing.

When did you buy your first sys­tem? How long did it take for you to be­come ac­cus­tomed to patch­ing your own syn­the­sizer to­gether out of its com­po­nent parts?

I bought an Easel K and fell in love with the world of Buchla in 2019.
Patch­ing seemed very nat­ural as I had been a DJ + Turntab­list for many years and move­ment/ges­ture is of the ut­most im­por­tance to me. I loved the im­me­di­acy of the in­stru­ment !
It truly made me re­al­ize that I am a sound-​craftsman who puts his hands in the grease and sculpt sound…
Of course to fully un­der­stand what I was doing and know what I may be able to achieve I read Allen Strange’s op­er­at­ing di­rec­tives « Pro­gram­ming and Metapro­gram­ming the Elec­tro Or­gan­ism » and watched video tu­to­ri­als by Todd Bar­ton.
And I am still watch­ing Todd’s won­der­ful tu­to­ri­als on a reg­u­lar basis be­cause in 2020 I up­graded to a 200 sys­tem and every­day I work at es­tab­lish­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with + be­tween the mod­ules…

What was the ef­fect of that dis­cov­ery on your com­po­si­tional process?
On your ex­is­tence?

A point of no re­turn !
Even if I am dis­tanc­ing my­self from the « all-​electronic » modular-​only trap and ad­vo­cate the mar­riage of acoustic with elec­tronic more than ever, to me the elec­tronic ad­di­tion is much needed. And I’m re­ally not talk­ing about elec­tronic ad­di­tions to look good (be­cause the process is bank­able) while not al­low­ing to hear the trans­for­ma­tions or feel that the cur­rent passes be­tween the be­ings. To my ears, all these trendy processes are harm­ful and un­der­line to what ex­tent hu­man­ity priv­i­leges ap­pear­ances over con­tent.
I have a vis­ceral need to feel the elec­tric cur­rent run­ning through my fin­gers, you see at a younger age my mother wouldn’t let me play with fire, so I enjoy con­trol­ling elec­tric­ity all the more, un­less it may be this ad­dic­tion that con­trols me?!

Quite often mod­u­lar­ists are in need for more, their hunger for new mod­ules is never sat­is­fied? How do you ex­plain that?

First things first, I con­sider of im­por­tance to re­main cu­ri­ous so if such hunger is due to a search for knowl­edge and plea­sure it is healthy. Show­ing such cu­rios­ity would not kill a cat…

Ob­vi­ously gear is very im­por­tant for us who have to build our sys­tem. To com­plete an in­stru­ment being able to grat­ify our sonic wishes im­plies re­search­ing mod­ules on the in­ter­net and buy­ing stuff that we don’t know whether or not we need be­fore we ex­pe­ri­ence in real. It takes time and re­search to find the right miss­ing mod­ule and our needs would change with every com­po­si­tion when we are after va­ri­ety. Some would be happy to re­pro­duce the same music once they have man­aged to find their own sound, some other would like to di­ver­sify and try dif­fer­ent in­stru­ments. For in­stance you can have a look at the 4 pic­tures of my Buchla 200 show­ing that I am often un­screw­ing/repo­si­tion­ing mod­ules so as to keep my prin­ci­pal in­stru­ment in con­stant evo­lu­tion and change my ges­tures and the way I ap­proach/prac­tice.

What is dam­ag­ing is that the cap­i­tal­is­tic world we live in is well-​known for cre­at­ing needs which we do not need.
Isn’t that the best way to sell and thus make profit?!
Hunger is fu­eled by the in­sane num­ber of mod­ules avail­able in the mar­ket, es­pe­cially when it comes to that Eu­ro­rack world I have cho­sen to stay away from. It can take a long time to ex­plore the op­tions and ar­rive at a sys­tem that sup­ports your mu­si­cal de­sires. And this is my point : what are those de­sires?
It would serve a com­poser to work on a script, par­ti­tion his think­ing and then choose the gear that can help achieve his task.
Un­for­tu­nately, many still de­velop a com­po­si­tional point of view from try­ing new mod­ules and, even if ob­vi­ously play­ing may bring in some fresh ideas, this is not com­pos­ing. This re­lates more to the epi­curean at­ti­tude that wants to take im­me­di­ate plea­sure, the search for en­joy­ment, and this is great and some may want to try mod­ules just for the sake of it, if they can af­ford !
On an­other hand Freud, in his psy­cho­an­a­lytic the­ory of per­son­al­ity, calls it the plea­sure prin­ci­ple. One wants to sat­isfy needs as quickly as pos­si­ble, with lit­tle or no thought given whether or not they be needed for real. For in­stance think of young chil­dren who often try to sat­isfy their bi­o­log­i­cal needs as quickly as pos­si­ble, with lit­tle or no thought given whether or not the be­hav­ior is con­sid­ered ac­cept­able. As chil­dren ma­ture, the ego de­vel­ops to help con­trol those urges. The ego is con­cerned with re­al­ity. The ego helps en­sure that the needs are met, but in ways that are ac­cept­able in the real world. The ego op­er­ates through what Freud re­ferred to as the re­al­ity prin­ci­ple. This re­al­ity prin­ci­ple is the op­pos­ing force to the in­stinc­tual urges of the plea­sure prin­ci­ple. In­stead of seek­ing im­me­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion for urges, the re­al­ity prin­ci­ple guides the ego to seek av­enues to ful­fill these needs that are both re­al­is­tic and so­cially ap­pro­pri­ate… BUT what if the ego craves to be­come im­mor­tal by leav­ing be­hind music that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions will dis­cover, as quickly as pos­si­ble, with lit­tle or no thought…?!
Don’t get me wrong I do not want to « play super­ego », mor­al­iz­ing, and only want to em­pha­size the im­por­tance of plan­ning well, with­out of course to­tally eras­ing one’s in­stinc­tive de­sires, and it seems ob­vi­ous that find­ing the right bal­ance is one of the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions of a man’s life…

How has your sys­tem been evolv­ing?

It could re­late to my per­son­al­ity, hop­ing to find that bal­ance.
As a human being I’m con­stantly ques­tion­ing and repo­si­tion­ing my­self, I hope to avoid cer­ti­tudes and hope­fully keep evolv­ing in the right di­rec­tion. When it comes to music I keep ex­per­i­ment­ing, as a Man I am learn­ing every­day so I pur­sue cer­tain di­rec­tions and adapt my de­sires ac­cord­ingly…
Un­less it be the op­po­site, and my de­sires would be dic­tated by my in­tel­lec­tual dis­cov­er­ies, meet­ings… ?!
De­sire? Needs? Ego? All of this brings in some more ques­tion­ing and my sys­tem keeps evolv­ing, so does my con­science…

Do you tend to use pure mod­u­lar sys­tems, or do you bring in out­side ef­fect and de­vices when play­ing or record­ing?

Doesn’t the an­swer de­pend on the size of a sys­tem?
For ex­am­ple some in­stru­ments in­clude Re­verb, Delay, Fre­quency Shift­ing, Ring Mod­u­la­tion, Phaser, etc… And in such case I don’t see the point of adding any­thing.
Again, such choices would be re­lated to my com­po­si­tional need and if I’d like to process a sound in a way that my sys­tem may not allow then I’d con­sider using a pedal or some plug ins (GRM Tools, Wave…). For in­stance in some parts of my Ses­sion 001, I had processed my Easel K thru the Fuzz FX of the Even­tide H9 Pedal, or a Mooger­fooger Ring Mod­u­la­tor.
Since then I got rid of the Even­tide and I am still using the Mooger­fooger + keep­ing my re­verb ex­ter­nal re­ly­ing on the Ek­dahl Mois­tur­izer Spring Re­verb.
I plan on ac­quir­ing a PT Delay lovely red box stand­alone from Bug­brand…

Would you please de­scribe the sys­tem you used to cre­ate your Mod­ulisme ses­sion?

I had ini­ti­ated our se­ries of ses­sions and recorded back in July 2019 using only 1 synth : The Easel K from Buchla. In­stant com­pos­ing, one take and giv­ing pri­or­ity to spon­tane­ity. That ses­sion can be seen as a sign of that time when I was learn­ing how to play-​patch and be in com­mu­nion with my in­stru­ment. Today I think it is im­por­tant that I know how to take the time to let it rest, what mat­ters is my process of re­search, cre­ation and the way to in­ter­pret what I have in mind im­poses it­self to me when the idea reaches ma­tu­rity.
Con­se­quently I de­cided that to cel­e­brate our 2 years of ex­is­tence I’d « com­pose » a ses­sion in­stead of im­pro­vis­ing, and I must con­fess being quite ec­sta­tic dur­ing the 8 months it took to com­plete it.
Ec­stasy des­ig­nates a state in which the in­di­vid­ual feels him­self to be “trans­ported out­side of him­self” char­ac­ter­ized by rap­ture, vi­sion, or ex­treme joy which hope­fully may lead to drift­ing… Dérive !
You see in my early 20s I de­cided to go against any­thing chau­vin­is­tic or na­tion­al­is­tic and con­sider my­self as a « Cit­i­zen of the World » rather than a French­man… Feel­ing close to the US term ‘drifter’ re­fer­ring to a va­grant who re­fuses the solid bour­geois val­ues of work, fam­ily and na­tion. Drift­ing apart from the kap­i­tal, the law of value, choos­ing to mar­gin­al­ize and stay In­de­pen­dent which be­came pos­si­ble thanx to my pas­sion and in­volve­ment in music, a « de­rive » which has never dis­ap­pointed as I hope to al­ways ques­tion my­self, keep repo­si­tion­ing and through­out this ses­sion I would like to in­vite you to fol­low the idea of drift as a priv­i­leged prac­tice of open­ing up to the new, the one de­fined by Guy De­bord:

« Among the var­i­ous Sit­u­a­tion­ist pro­ce­dures, the drift is de­fined as a tech­nique of hasty pas­sage through var­i­ous at­mos­pheres. The con­cept of drift is in­dis­sol­ubly linked to the recog­ni­tion of ef­fects of a psycho-​geographical na­ture, each ac­tion chang­ing the be­hav­ior of in­di­vid­u­als and re­in­forc­ing the af­fir­ma­tion of a playful-​constructive be­hav­ior, which op­poses it in all points to clas­si­cal no­tions of travel and prom­e­nade ».

Fol­low­ing the spirit of sit­u­a­tion­ist ir­rev­er­ence and cre­ativ­ity I hope to stim­u­late a dérive to­wards a pleas­ant lis­ten… I will de­scribe in de­tail the thread of his­tory and its in­stru­men­tar­ium :

01. Sit­u­a­tion (03:45)
Buchla 200

In 2021 I made quite a few short songs to be aired on our Modular-​Station. Fol­low­ing dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions, largely for the sole pur­pose of mak­ing my­self happy, en­joy­ing the present sit­u­a­tion, in a very epi­curean man­ner. Fol­low­ing an idea, choos­ing a di­rec­tion and in this case rerout­ing the old and pop­u­lar Plan de De­bord and serve as a pre­lim­i­nary step to our voy­age…

02. Une Villégiature Cosmétique (17:03)
Turntab­lisms / Inside-​Piano / Spring Re­verb / Pul­sar 23 (SOMA) / Buchla 200 / Syn­thi A (EMS)

« Une villégiature cosmétique » is tak­ing us to a « cos­metic re­sort » where one would like to go find re­sources…
It orig­i­nated back in 2010 mov­ing my pre­paired vinyls dur­ing a « turntab­lis­tic per­for­mance » which was recorded and was used as a basis for this com­po­si­tion. Then I added some tex­tures play­ing my EMS Syn­thi + var­i­ous elec­tron­ics with my Buchla.
A few per­cus­sions came from the SOMA Pul­sar 23 + bang­ing on the Ek­dahl Mois­tur­izer Spring Re­verb. I also opened the grand piano at CNRR na­tional Con­ser­va­tory and aimed at play­ing with res­o­nances, slid­ing rub­ber, wood, alu­minium and used plas­tic on & be­tween the strings.

This one in­spired a video to PRFRK :

03. A Breathe (01:57)
Inside-​Piano + Buchla 200

Once you have reached the “Naked City” and found a cos­metic shel­ter where na­ture is breath­ing out in tune…

04. Psy­cho­graph­i­cal Piv­otal Point I (02:35)
Syn­thy A (EMS) + SOMA Pul­sar 23

Orig­i­nally The Naked City was a psy­cho­geo­graphic map of Paris cut apart and De­bord had repositioned-​recommended parts that were ‘stim­u­lat­ing’ and “wor­thy of study and preser­va­tion”. As a guide he drew red ar­rows be­tween these parts to rep­re­sent the fastest and most di­rect con­nec­tions from one place to an­other.
Red ar­rows show the way and we do move on care­free…

05. Driftin’ to Ec­sTazy (10:55)
Inside-​Piano / Buchla 200 / Turntab­lisms / Field Record­ings / Voices / Meta­sonix RK2 VCA + RK3 Grinder + RK4 Fil­ter / Ti­betan Bowl

The cen­ter part of this ses­sion, the drift is guided, or­ches­trated like a Debord-​style “map­ping” – to­wards a ques­tion­ing … A re­as­sur­ing doubt, ben­e­fi­cial since it opens our con­scious­ness to new ex­pe­ri­ences.

06. Transur­bain… Trance-​Urban Splash Sonic Dis­rup­tion (05:15)
Buchla 200 / Am­pli­fied Wood Tablet percs

No more doubts, Trance sleep­walk­ing being dis­rupted, sound-​objects are pour­ing out all over…

07. Psy­cho­graph­i­cal Piv­otal Point II (02:31)
SOMA Pul­sar 23 + Buchla 200

Still fol­low­ing the red arrow, happy as a bird, hop­ping like a…

08. Quin­quinet­te­abella (05:12)
Buchla 200 / Min­i­Moog

After the flood comes a more con­tem­pla­tive mo­ment in homage to my beloved Quin­quinet­te­abella who brings sweet­ness to my ex­is­tence. Drift­ing when ar­rang­ing to spend a week­end away to­gether. Trav­el­ling to our cho­sen des­ti­na­tion by dif­fer­ent means and with­out ar­rang­ing a meet­ing time or place and find­ing each other…

09. La Bo­hemia du flâneur (09:24)
Inside-​Piano / Nepalese Singing Bowl / Syn­thi A (EMS) / Record­ings from hy­draulic ma­chin­ery dri­ving wa­ter­wheels, forge bel­lows and tur­bine. Recorded at La Tail­lan­derie: a XIX cen­tury farm-​workshop man­u­fac­tur­ing scythes and other cut­ting tools.

« Flâner » is a French word mean­ing « To stroll », urban wan­der­ing, the rein­ven­tion of the city through imag­i­na­tion, the su­per­nat­ural sense of place, the sud­den in­sights and jux­ta­po­si­tions cre­ated by aim­less drift­ing, new ways of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fa­mil­iar set­tings, La Bo­hemia !

10. El­e­gantly End­ing Our Psy­cho­geo­graph­i­cal Ex­plo­ration (07:39)
Wood + Metal­lic Percussions-​rubbings-cracklings + Syn­thi A and Gui­tar processed thru Land­scape Stereo Field.

The LSF is one in­stru­ment with three uses: si­mul­ta­ne­ously a stereo/quad mod­u­lar touch plate feed­back atonal syn­the­sizer, a stereo/quad audio proces­sor and a pres­sure sen­si­tive chaotic CV “con­troller”. Here all three uses are avail­able sep­a­rately as well as si­mul­ta­ne­ously and in con­ver­sa­tion with each other de­tourn­ing our Naked City beck­on­ing lis­ten­ers to end their psy­cho­geo­graph­i­cal ex­plo­ration.

What do you think that can only be achieved by mod­u­lar syn­the­sis that other forms of elec­tronic music can­not or makes harder to do?

Im­me­di­acy !
As we know Elec­tric­ity sim­ply refers to the move­ment of elec­trons through a con­duct­ing ma­te­r­ial, such as a cop­per wire or a patch cable. The force ap­plied to elec­trons to push them through the con­duct­ing wire is known as volt­age, and the rate of flow of the elec­trons is known as cur­rent. Noth­ing else may bring such sweet and ma­lig­nant plea­sure than being able to think that it is pos­si­ble to cre­ate such sounds with im­punity from di­vert­ing cur­rent and con­trol­ling volt­age source.

Are you feel­ing close to some other con­tem­po­rary Mod­u­lar­ists?
Which ones?
Which pi­o­neers in Mod­u­lar­ism in­flu­enced you and why?

Vis­it­ing our « Ses­sions » tab will re­veal quite a few of the com­posers I am feel­ing close to and more to be added every month be­cause I truly feel an urge to sup­port Con­tem­po­rary ana­log Elec­tronic music.
When it comes to in­flu­ences, my de­sire is also to doc­u­ment pi­o­neer­ing works which paved the way to what we cre­ate today. I want the « Early Elec­tro­MIX » tab to be an es­sen­tial guide through my fa­vorites « reper­toire works » so please go get lost in music.

Any ad­vice you could share for those will­ing to start or de­velop their “Mod­ulisme” ?

2 years ago I had ad­vised to « Be open-​minded and ready for un­ex­pected ad­ven­tures… » so allow me to sim­ply add that it is cru­cial to make the most of it. As with every­thing in life, enjoy it as much as pos­si­ble.
Thanx to YOU who lis­ten, show sup­port and in­ter­est !

http://www.philippepetit.info

P.S.: I en­vi­sion our Mod­ulisme as a label-​family strug­gling to help our com­mu­nity to grow and be heard. I’d like to ded­i­cate this ses­sion to Yan Proe­frock whose gen­eros­ity and pre­cious ad­vices help make Mod­ulisme what it is.

An­other video from PRFRK:
“Voices In My Head” is a ref­er­ence to Larry Cohen’s cult movie « God Told Me To » deal­ing with un­pre­dictable as­sail­lants ran­domly killing peo­ple claim­ing that God told’em to do it… Play­ing my Easel K (Buchla) + those voices in my head could be ut­tered into your ears thanx to the SOMA Pipe: a voice / breath / mouth-​controlled dy­namic FX proces­sor turn­ing my voice into a pow­er­ful sound­scape syn­the­sizer.
MU­TANT speech syn­the­sis !