Photo: Jon Sonnenberg
MONTREAL — To say that Quebec-based gear head René LeBlanc has developed a deep love for the intricacies of programming and patching the many units that make up his modular synthesizer would be an understatement. After losing his job as a sales associate for Canadian telecommunications giant Rogers, LeBlanc devoted nearly all of his time to programming the “patch of [his] life.”
Unlike many other synthesizers, LeBlanc’s modular set up does not allow him to save patches digitally once he has created something he likes.
“I just don’t like the way digital synths sound,” says LeBlanc.
“There’s just something very appealing to me about existing in that single moment; losing myself in sounds that no one has ever heard before and will likely never hear again.”
LeBlanc, who has been single since purchasing his first modular unit four years ago, believes he has logged roughly 8,760 hours tweaking patches to date, though has never recorded any of his “experiments.”
“I had invested two LSD trips and countless joints into this particular patch that I had been programming since November, 2012. I would leave my equipment on when I went to work and immediately return to it after getting home. The synth was never turned off, and the achievements I was making sonically with the patch were not of this world.”
The tree branch responsible for the power outage which affected LeBlanc’s home (Photo: Rob / CrabAppleLane)
On the night of May 12, 2013 however, LeBlanc lost everything during a thunderstorm of relatively average intensity.
“I was in the middle of re-patching a sine generator into an analog delay unit, then back into itself, then into the existing patch which was being arpeggiated by my sequencer, when I heard a tree branch coming down in the back yard,” he recounts.
“I quickly ran downstairs to the garage to grab the small generator I bought for these exact scenarios, but to my horror it was out of gas.”
LeBlanc then ran back up to his studio just in time to hear the last oscillation of six months of meaningless sound exploration.
“It was truly devastating, but like any modular synth user, I am equally excited to start plugging in new patches and seeing where my experimental intuition will take me.”
At press time, LeBlanc was tweaking the first parameter on a new patch that he believes will be equally important in his own life, despite the likeliness that its existence will again be rendered completely irrelevant upon the powering off of his equipment.
