Jun 14, 2020
Talk about a career! Stephan Schmitt started his journey into audio development by making noisy object as a kid, then got into electrical engineering to work on large format consoles (which is where he took on software...), then co-founded Native Instruments, creating Generator/Reaktor. After years with NI (including the development of Spark, Skanner and Kontour), he set off to work on his ultimate project: a keyboard player's dream synth, called the Nonlinear Labs C15.
In our chat, we talk about his history through the creation of NI, how he finds the synth voicings that are his signature development, and how the C15 fits into the world of modern music playing and production. Along the way, we also learn a lot about the things that (according to Stephan) make a synth 'expressive', and how this can benefit the live synth player.
Super fascinating, and a chance to learn the history behind the earliest days of virtual synth development, and the on-going work creating a niche hardware device. Check out Nonlinear Labs at https://www.nonlinear-labs.de/index.html.
Transcription available here: http://www.darwingrosse.com/AMT/transcript-0330.html