Through the cracks
(2025-26), series of pieces for modular synthesizer
Modular synthesizer: Lula Romero
Trough the cracks I (2025-2026) for modular synthesizer. Modular synthesizer, Lula Romero
(ENG) Through the Cracks is a series of works for modular synthesizer, centered on the idea of leftovers and errors. Ideas, motives, and concepts that were dismissed or did not fit previous projects for acoustic instruments are revisited, recycled, readjusted, and translated for the modular synthesizer.
This move from one medium to another, however, is not a simple translation: the instrument itself, the modular synthesizer, imposes its own nature and contingent character. A modular synthesizer is a non-fixed instrument: it cannot store patches, and its processes differ from one performance to another. The timbre of FM or ring modulation changes depending on the frequencies involved in the synthesis, which in most oscillators are not clearly defined or cannot be fixed precisely.
This contingent character is embraced in this work and reinforced by the concept of building the patch during the performance itself. In this process, the lines between a synthesizer patch, a performance, and a musical work are blurred, becoming indistinct and intertwined. The piece emerges as an interaction, a shared product of the encounter between me, as performer-composer, and my system, the modular synthesizer.
This series of works is about openness and about ideas and identities on the fringes, those that escape through the cracks.