Modeling is a 3-piece, synth-driven electronic group comprised of brothers Connor, Ryan and Cuinn Brogan based out of Fayetteville, Arkansas. The band focuses on creating songs inspired by films, photos, memories and fictitious dream worlds. Currently, they’re writing and producing a 6 track EP inspired by a non-existent dystopian world to be released sometime in 2020.
We chatted with Cuinn on how Modeling has been using the Prophet Rev2 and OB-6 in their music:
What made you choose Sequential?
Back in 2014, I came across a video of a discussion panel at NAMM featuring Dave Smith and many others in the analog/digital synthesis industry (including Eric Persing). At the time I had already purchased Omnisphere, a software synth essentially. It’s capable of doing much more than the usual soft synth, but a big part of it was just being a software synthesizer. Which, in itself, gives you the ability to do almost ANYTHING. That can be an advantage and a handicap depending on how you look at it. Anyway, it was the first time I had heard of Dave Smith and immediately, I was drawn to his personality. He has a unique charm and perspective in the world of synths that I resonated with. His blunt and compelling statements in that discussion about soft vs. hardware synths is what sold me on Sequential. I was first a guitarist before anything else, so when I heard him talk about how software doesn’t have the look/feel or sound of a real musical instrument and how they eventually become disposable instruments, I was able to identify with that. Then there is also the fact that no other synth brand at the time had polyphonic synths at such a reasonable price point or even had a poly synth to sell.
How are you using it?
I have both the Prophet Rev2 and OB-6 and we use them in just about any way possible. Our group is heavily influenced by film scores and classical music, especially the sounds and timbres of orchestral instruments. However, at the moment, we’re unable to afford an entire orchestra to perform our music for us, so we use a lot of sample libraries to replicate that sound. The downside to this is that you miss out on a lot of the unique characteristics and random inflections that real players can bring to a performance. But by layering and embedding analog synths into the sound of the orchestra, you can get something really quite compelling out of it. The synths give breath, texture, movement and warmth. Together it creates a unique overall tone, a more modern sound of orchestral arrangement. Then of course outside of the layering, there’s a vast world of compositional possibilities with these synths.
What is one of your favorite things about it?
The overall layout of both the Rev2 and OB-6. I really like the emphasis on physical touch rather than a bunch of menu diving. Which can be said for both of them even though the Rev2 has a small screen. So instead of screen diving to get really deep into the synth, there are like these little almost secret passage ways through certain knobs on the OB-6 that I really enjoy toying with. The Rev2 pretty much works the same way with most of the emphasis on the physical knobs. The touch makes it feel like you are playing an actual instrument, not a computer.
What does it give you that other synths might not?
It gives you that Sequential sound that no other synth can replicate. A pretty generic answer but it’s true. Our group uses other brands of synthesizers like Moog and Korg but the sound of a Prophet just hits the right spots for me.
Any interesting tricks or techniques you would like to share?
One pretty nice sounding trick is creating an analog phaser effect on the OB-6. Set the filter mode to notch-only at 12 o’clock and the cutoff to 50%. Then use a sine wave LFO to sweep the filter frequency pretty slowly. Most seasoned programmers know how to do things like this but I found it pretty cool haha.
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