From TONTO to the McLeyvier: Rich Aucoin on recording 162 synths for his album, SyntheticEver heard of ‘choice paralysis’? Countless producers and engineers have spoken to MusicTech about the challenges of knowing which plugin or synthesizer to reach for when inspiration strikes — often, they talk of limiting their setup to avoid the phenomenon. But not Rich Aucoin. The Canadian artist went in the complete opposite direction, recording as many synths as he possibly could for his quadruple album, Synthetic. In total, he played and recorded 162 synthesizers at studios, including Calgary’s National Music Centre and the Vintage Synth Museum in Los Angeles.
His sessions saw him capturing sounds from synthesis history. In Calgary, he played the mythic TONTO synth, the room-sized modular synth built by the late Malcolm Cecil and famously used by Stevie Wonder and Quincy Jones. He also became the first artist to record the McLeyvier, a precursor to the beloved CMI Fairlight. Aucoin wasn’t alone in his endeavour, either; he collaborated with over a dozen other artists, who each performed parts on different synths and helped guide Aucoin’s vision.
Synthetic Season 4, the final volume of Aucoin’s quadruple album, takes listeners on a journey through 102 synthesizers and a staggering number of different genres and influences, from Air, Brian Eno and Justice to Parliament, Herbie Hancock and  Ennio Morricone. Here, he breaks down the five-year adventures in synth land.
Synthetic Season 4 by Rich Aucoin
Hey Rich! 162 synths across the Synthetic multi-albumMcLeyvier…Wow! How did this concept come about?
It started in 2008 when I visited the Cantos keyboard museum in Calgary. I was on my second national tour and recording my first LP with over 500 guest musicians (I like a goal/concept), and bookmarked the idea to come back and make an album. Years later, that museum turned into the National Music Centre, and they had an Artist In Residence program, which I applied for.
I’d just completed an album I wrote while cycling across America, and it had pretty full front-to-back lyrics, so I was ready to make some instrumental music with synthesizers.
I told NMC that I wanted to record every synth they had (which ended up happening for almost their entire collection, over the course of almost five years). I decided to make it primarily instrumental and to make it for both my current self and past 14-year-old self, who preferred [Air’s 1998] Moon Safari instrumentals to its lyrical tracks.
I knew it always had to be a quadruple album because of the volume of the three hours of different kinds of tracks I wanted to make over the project.
Vintage Synth Museum space. Image: Press
This album took you from the home of TONTO, to the Vintage Synth Museum in LA and into studios with many friends and collaborators. Did you expect such a journey for this album?
I knew I’d have to return to Calgary to NMC a few times, but my sister’s family lives there, so it was also a good excuse to see them more.
Originally, I intended to make four albums in two years while playing around 60-80 shows per year, but that all came to a halt in 2020. It got more reasonably spaced out, and a few more visits to NMC happened than would have if the original two-year plan had been completed.
Initially, I had 200 responses to my request for folks to join me on the albums, thanks to Moog reposting it, but I kept hitting deadlines and not having enough time to include folks in the album series until the final season. I regret not being more comfortable showing the rough works in progress to get people involved sooner.
TONTO. Image: Allison Seto
Talk to us about TONTO! This historic synth is a legend in the synth world.
TONTO! Maybe the most awe-inspiring synth out there. Mothersbaugh (Devo) once said, “It’s like being inside an eyeball” — it’s a spaceship. It was definitely overwhelming, but lots of praise goes to its engineer and one of the engineers of this album, Jason Tawkin, who helped wield the beast into some amazing tones.
I knew I wanted TONTO to be the first track on the record, and so for it, and the other historic one-of-a-kind synths, I didn’t make any demo first; I just experimented with it for roughly five hours of tracking before cutting it down to what’s on the record. I went back later in the recording process and recorded a short Wendy Carlos Switched On-inspired Bach EP on TONTO, too, which we released this year on Bach’s birthday.
ElectroComp NMC. Image: Press
What was the most surprising piece of sound design you discovered while experimenting with these synths?
I really liked the squelches and speaker-ripping tones of the EML Electrocomp Series and the Steiner-Parker Synthacon; I ended up using those synths on both the techno track ElectroComp and Synthacon, but also flew them into Chroma on the new record. I could really just go round in circles with this question and just list so many sounds I was excited by.
Each song had a much longer version with other sounds and experiments. I kept each record to one vinyl length too, so all the six- to eight-minute start lengths got cut down sometimes to a two-minute track in the end. Lots on the cutting room floor.
McLeyvier. Image: Press
This is the first time the McLeyvier has been recorded on an album. Can you tell us about this synth and how you became the first to place it onto an album?
The McLeyvier is a synth that sits in the basement of the National Music Centre and was a precursor to the Fairlight CMI (of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill fame). The McLeyvier synth was just a little ahead of its time, and therefore only a handful of them were made.
One thing that’s unique about the McLeyvier is its warm chords made from real analogue VCOs instead of the latter CMI’s digitally generated sound waves. Just like the CMI, you use a DOS command system to bring up patches and make modifications. It was tucked in a corner, but maybe it’ll be up in the museum or in its studio one day by TONTO and get more use and love.
I thought, ‘What better synth to build one of the tracks that most inspired this project, with some 40 extra synths on that track too, all taking turns with synth lines and warm pads?’ The beat is also made from the Wurlitzer Sideman, the first drum machine.
Using all this gear is one thing, but making it all sound cohesive is arguably the real challenge. How much editing and back-and-forth went into each track?
I thought of this series of more experiments/works during this period, rather than it having a shape or flow of any sort of narrative. I did originally think it might feel like a party; building, climaxing and then subsiding, but I kept wanting to make more energetic music as I went along.
SE4 is anything but the dying down of a party until its final track. So hopefully there’s a nice flow to it all.
I haven’t yet listened to it all as a whole; the only time I suspect I’ll do that for a while is at the listening party on 30 October on a local hi-fi listening room system called Rooms Coffee in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Image: Jason Tawkin
How do you intend for listeners to experience Synthetic?
I don’t think many folks will listen to all three hours of it back to back. I knew that a quadruple album would be a bonkers idea in the year 2025; it feels like there’s so much stuff coming out or being unearthed and rediscovered right now that I don’t feel like many folks’ palettes are wanting/needing a 3-hour-long album, so I just hope folks enjoy whatever pieces of it that they do hear. It’s quite eclectic, so hopefully there’s something for the royal you on it.
Tell us a bit about your own studio.
I like to work with Ableton Live in my bedroom with a couple of keyboards. I have a Moog Subsequent37, a Rhodes 54 and a Korg Triton LE full-size with some other keyboards around, like a Korg M1, Realistic MG1 and some small ones.
I like to demo and edit here and then go to places like the Vintage Synth Museum in LA (truly an amazing place to work when you’re ready to tackle a shopping list of sounds) and just get inspired by the synths there. When I turned on the Crumar Spirit, it was already arpeggiating with that triplet feel that I used on the track and then had that excellent fuzz tone that makes it sound like an electric bass on Spirit Pt. II. That’s all, just the Spirit with no distortion added; just driven.
After so many edits and so many layers, it really felt like a nice way to end the album was to just play one synth for the final track, Anemoia; I played the CS70m at VSM, and what you hear at the end of the album is just the first take of listening to the synth and its chords. I didn’t want to crowd it up by adding anything else.
Ondes Martenot. Image: Press
You’ve used everything from 1928’s Ondes Martenot to modern gear – what’s the biggest misconception about vintage versus modern synthesis, in your eyes?
I’m not sure I can speak as an expert on big misconceptions, but I can say that I tried to pair the oldest gear with some of the newest-sounding production. Ondes Martenot is from 1928 but is on a track more akin to Bicep. The E-Mu Modular System is from the early 70s but has some quite modern sounding turns on the pair of tracks named after it in SE4.
Who gave you the biggest lesson in your career? Can you tell us about how it impacted you?
Maybe my older brother, who’s produced around 50 albums over the years and encouraged me to experiment with recording and use the whole recording studio as an instrument.
My producing partner Gordon Huntley (of Leaving Laurel and roommate) was shocked a couple of times at VSM when I was like, ‘Let’s just loop this part and play everything over it; we’ll sort it out later!’ But, yeah, my brother encouraged that when I’d show him different experiments, and he was always sharing interesting music like Squarepusher or Amon Tobin. He definitely gave me Moon Safari, which started all of this.
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