Intro to Generative Modular Synthesis with Noodlerack

This beginner-friendly workshop introduces modular synthesis as a way of making small generative sound systems. Using Noodlerack, a free patchable modular synthesizer that runs in the browser, participants will build simple patches using oscillators, clocks, envelopes, filters, random sources, modulation and feedback.
Rather than treating synthesisers as a conventional instrument or sound design tool, this workshop will demonstrate how systems-building can be an act of composition, and the instrument itself can become an improvisational partner. The workshop frames modular as an ecology of signals: modules listening to, interrupting and reshaping one another. We will start with a single sound, then gradually add rules and relationships until the patch begins to produce changing rhythms, tones and textures of its own.

Participants will learn how generative, process driven art can emerge from relatively simple systems without the need for AI, complex computation, or IP theft.
No prior experience with music production, modular synthesis or coding is required. By the end of the session, each participant will have made a small generative patch and learned the basic concepts of signal flow, clocks, triggers, envelopes, modulation, randomness and feedback.

Where possible, participants will be encouraged to share their patches through Noodlerack’s public patch board, so the workshop can leave behind a small collective archive of strange machines, unfinished systems and useful accidents.

Workshop requirements: Participants will need a laptop, headphones, and a web browser.

About Jeremy Osztreicher:
Jeremy Osztreicher (he/they) is a sound artist, software developer and mover from Naarm/Melbourne. They started exploring Modular Synthesis as a physical reprieve from their screen-based job, (unsuccessfully) staving off madness during the lockdowns by building patches and exchanging modules in clandestine discord trades. They pared down their room of synths into an Escher Etched suitcase and moved to London in 2022 where they now work as Tech Lead at the Royal Ballet and Opera. His work is inspired by a love of movement, improvisation and the choreography that emerges from rules based systems. Recently, he joined the Choreographic Coding Lab at RBO/SHIFT, where he explored the choreography of labour through feedback based systems. Jeremy is also the founder of London Dance Calendar, an online catalogue of dance classes and workshops all over London.