Emute Lab Instruments

We’re taking music technology research from the Experimental Music Technologies Lab at the University of Sussex, and realising it in the form of hybrid digital/analogue musical instruments.

About us

Emute Lab Instruments is a new project, based at the University of Sussex, and coming out of the Experimental Music Technologies Lab research group. We’re focused on making new instruments based on our music technology research.

Our first product was uSEQ, a eurorack module, that brings two worlds together, livecoding and modular synthesis, in what we hope is a fun and performative approach to mixing digital and analogue musicking. We’re just releasing our second product, Myriad, an oscillator and textural sound source that explores new approaches to sound synthesis.

To speak to our team, email us at info@emutelabinstruments.co.uk or check out our website or Instagram.

Our products

• uSEQ: Livecoding for modular synthesis

  uSEQ is a eurorack module that brings livecoding into your modular system. Fundamentally, it’s an extremely flexible voltage generator and processor. It has a set of CV and pulse inputs and outputs, but instead of having a fixed set of controls and functions, you can choose how voltages are generated by livecoding them. This means that you can control uSEQ’s behaviour with the vast possibilities of creative coding, using a simplified programming language specialised for music. uSEQ is great for sequencing, waveform generation, and waveform processing. You can use it as a live performance tool, or configure it for specific functions.

• Myriad: Stereo Pataphonic Oscillator

  Myriad is a pataphonic* oscillator. If pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions and exceptions to the norm, then pataphonics explores the contrast between everyday music making and the surreal, abstract and maybe absurd edges of sound synthesis. Just like pataphysics accepts that contradictions can simultaneously be true, Myriad can seem a conventional oscillator, but also veer away into wildly unconventional textural sounds and experimental modulations.

  With flexible mixes of sound sources and dynamic meta-modulation systems, Myriad allows for flexible mixes of sound sources and dynamic meta-modulation systems. This encourages the musician to reimagine the role of an oscillator by working across layered and shifting tonal textures, as well as creating wide discordant soundscapes and morphing melodic sequences. *Myriad is also paraphonic, with multiple oscillators summing to the same signal path.

  Key features of Myriad:

  • 12 oscillator models using Bitwave Synthesis
  • 9 detunable oscillators (organised in 3 banks of 3, around 1700 combinations)
  • Two types of output: clean, or shaped, using analog waveshaping and overdrive
  • Stereo outputs for both clean and shaped sounds
  • Built-in VCA
  • Adjustable CV control of pitch, spread, octave interval, VCA and epsilon (a parameter that controls something different in each oscillator model)
  • 7 metamodulators - lively algorithmic modulation systems that influence the oscillator models
  • Colour TFT screen
  • Overdrive LEDs visible through the front panel
  • Precise digital tuning
  • Hackable open-source design - both hardware and software.