How did you find your way into making your own music? What drove you into it?

Music has always been part of my life, since I was a child. My grandfather was a musician (he played the saxophone), and he passed down his passion to me. I’ve never seriously played an instrument until I was 15 years old; in high school I wanted to start a band with my friends, so I decided to learn to play electric guitar (back then I used to listen to a lot of post rock, noise and indie). Ten years later, when I graduated from university, I received my first synthesiser (a Roland SH-201) as a present from my friends. From that day on, I started playing guitar less and less, and switching the SH-201 on, instead. In a matter of weeks, I was recording my first songs (raw electronic layering of sounds) and shortly after I started adapting them for videos a friend of mine was making. At that time I was taking inspiration from Autechre, Mouse on Mars, Murcof, Pansonic and so on. I moved on to producing dance music only in 2015, for no reason.

Well, there is one reason, but maybe it sounds weird: it relaxes me.

Tell us about your methods. How do you approach music production and what kind of gear do you use? Where do you find your inspiration?

I start off collecting tracks I like, or that friends suggest to me; they have to blow my mind. The genre is not as important as the feeling the songs should give me. I listen to them for weeks; listening is very important for me. Then, I open a template I’ve created on Logic and I start recording a lot of loops, like you do when you prepare a live set. I pick out the things I consider interesting and I try to mix them, as if I was doing a collage with photos or cutouts. From these loops I then develop the track, although most of the time I’m taking away instead of adding.

I have a very simple setup. A virtual analog synth (the Virus B from Access) and a Machinedrum from Elektron are connected via MIDI to my sound interface, and receive the MIDI clock from Logic. On Logic I have 4 Virtual Synth and Battery from NI. I rarely use samples, I prefer to get the sounds directly from instruments.

Most of my inspiration comes from the movies I watch. I’m passionate about cinema and I always try to gain something from the images and the soundtracks. I also like art and graphic design, so when I work on some new idea, I need to have images both around me and in my mind.

Lately you’ve been releasing some very high quality melodic techno, namely in labels such as DNC Limited, Three hands records, Us & Them and (coming soon) with stratos. What comes next for you?

The open projects on my desktop are not that many, and they are very different in style and sound, but I don’t want to release them, not as long as I consider them “open”. I would like to produce also some progressive house, and I think that in the next few months I will focus on that.

There’s another thing that interests me: the production of dance music outside the common path of stereophony. I’ve seen that producers like Third Son started to mix something in Dolby Atmos surround; this could come next for me in the future, as I find it an outstanding perspective to give more spatiality to the kind of melodic techno I like. Can you imagine how the Pads would embrace you on the dance floor when in 3D sound? Of course, the clubs will not spend any money to improve their sound systems yet, but I don’t see nothing wrong in trying to go down this path in our production studios.

Besides the music you produce as Modal, do you have any side projects that you’re currently working on?

Nothing serious. I have several collaborations with other musicians, who are not involved in the dance scene. One of these projects will take off in springtime, with a 2 tracks EP.

Do you have any gigs planned for the next months? What can we expect from you in the near future?

No, I don’t have any. I haven’t had a chance to play in a club lately, but I really would like to do it soon.

In the near future? I’ll keep my hands on synths and go forth with the production, trying to improve the quality of the tracks, to be more original and to experiment more.