About Modular: An Audiovisual Synth Workshop with Leon Trimble

What happens when sound becomes light, and images begin to move with music?

Join artist Leon Trimble for a fun, hands-on workshop where you can play with sound and moving images.

Using special creative machines called modular synthesisers and video synths, we’ll explore how music and visuals can be connected. These machines are made of small parts called modules that can be linked together with colourful cables. By plugging the cables into different places and turning knobs, you can create new sounds, patterns, and abstract shapes that move and change on the screen.

Leon will first show how the machines work and how artists use them to make exciting performances and artworks. Then everyone will get a chance to try them out and experiment for themselves.

There’s no right or wrong way to do it. The workshop is all about playing, exploring, and being creative. You’ll see how changing a sound can make the visuals change too!

The workshop is open to children and families, and no experience is needed. Just bring your curiosity and get ready to experiment!

Leon Trimble

Leon is an audiovisual artist regularly gigging in the UK and Europe. He has a history of doing visuals at many festivals, including Shambhala, Glastonbury, Moseley Folk, The Big Chill and Maschina Bristonica. He is a resident VJ for House of God, The Acid Morris & Freerotation. His music has developed around the use of tech that pairs up with those visuals, over the past few years, with modular synths, and he takes sonic journeys through low drones and floor-smashing rhythms. In 2022 he supported Regis, Suzanne Ciani, Sote, Steve Davis, Graham Dunning, amongst others.

Leon has always been involved in starting and running grassroots music projects like Jigsawmusic, 8bit Lounge, Birmingham Modular Organisation and most recently Swimming with Gravitational Waves, which has taken place in Moseley Road Baths, The Arlington Baths and Pickaquoy centre, Orkney. He has worked for nearly ten years on his Gravity Synth project, even bouncing the sounds of the synth off the surface of the moon from inside Abbey Road Studios & appeared on the BBC World Service live. He is an honorary research Associate in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham.