I went to Berlin for a music event and here is what happened.
Intro
There were moments in my engineering career where I simply wanted to say f*ck it and throw away my computer. Sometimes what we do as software laborers is either plain boring or easy to lead to burnout, so most of the people reading this have that feeling at least once I believe.
Apparently, I didn't drop everything or become violent towards my computer, but I often found myself playing around with other endavours when that happens, just to feel something again. It's subjective and different for everyone, for me, those f-it moments were always followed by the thought of becoming a musician, artist, rapper, or anything that is music-related. If you have been following me for a while on the internet, you might have gotten the hint from the songs that I share sometimes or music-related open source projects such as Linuxwave, so I have been taking some steps towards that dream for a while now.
Also, a couple of months ago, I got inspired and encouraged by my good friend Harun and got myself an electric guitar to play some of my favorite shoegaze/grunge tracks:
Playing an instrument after a long time really opened my eyes to why I was interested in music in the first place: it's the most direct way of conveying my emotions in an improvisational way. And recently I have been wanting to build a project that combines my love for music and software.
If you are new around, I'm maintaining Ratatui, a Rust library for building user interfaces in the terminal. There are already music-related projects built with it such as this Granular Sampler or this Music Live Coding application so I definitely want to hop on that train.
Also, we recently landed "no_std" support, which means you can run Ratatui on embedded devices as well. See this blog series for more information about that. But in a nutshell, you can now do things like:
There are endless possibilities for what to build! All I needed was some inspiration.
That's when my good friend David Runge came to my rescue. He's pretty active in the music scene in Berlin and maintains hella audio packages for Arch Linux. He mentioned Superbooth to me and it was definitely what I was looking for — a place where I can meet audio nerds and learn more about what people are building in the analog world.
So in this post I will be documenting my experience of "going to Berlin for music" and sharing my raw take on everything that I saw. It's going to be fun!
Day 0x0
While I'm waiting for my flight, I wanted to compile some general information about Superbooth:
- A trade fair for electronic musical instruments.
- Features a lot of exhibitors, manufacturers, and independent artists.
- Held annually in Berlin, Germany.
Looking at the website was enough to get me overwhelmed with the sheer number of events and booths that I had never heard of before. I did a quick research and took some notes for the interesting stuff that I want to see/visit:
| Exhibitor | Notes |
|---|---|
| KORG | Of course. |
| FL Studio | The OG DAW |
| Freaknoise | A synthesizer that produces nothing but melancholic sounds. WOW. |
| Silhouette | Sample audio, convert it to a picture file and then reuse it as visual material for the synthesis 👀 |
| MOOG | The OG synth builders. |
| Ableton | Never used it but heard it's good. Might switch to it one day. |
| AKAI | Hey I have an AKAI MPK Mini MK3! |
| Flowfal | Using smartwatch to control Ableton Live... what!? |
| Elektron | Digitone II looks sick! |
| Arturia | I heard about Microfreak before! |
| Landscape | Looks very interesting. |
| afk audio | Next-generation drum controller?? Interesting. |
| Audio.computer | This looks very cute! |
| Beetlecrab.audio | The vector synth demo is crazy. |
| Sonicware | I need to get my hands on CyDrums. |
| dpw design | Apparently they do eurorack and pedals. |
| Bela | They do open source embedded stuff, I definitely need to check this out. |
| Leafaudio | They are making some interesting looking microphones. |
| Zlob Modular | Kickass logo, also the modules look sick. |
| Beetronics | I play guitar, this is my sh*t. |
There is definitely more stuff to check out... but that's all I could filter with a quick glance. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to visit as many things as I can!
Day 0x1
I woke up early to get myself familiar with the floorplan. This place is huuuuuge.
Alright, let's go!
Here are my highlights...
Zlob Modular
First of all, they have a kickass logo and gear:
They are a small company that specializes in building modular synthesizers and effects, ranging from beginner-friendly utility modules to more advanced VCOs, VCFs, VCAs, LFOs, sample and hold modules, and attenuators.
I attended the DIY workshop and built the Diode Chaos module.
Diode Chaos is a small Eurorack module that creates random wiggly voltages and a chaotic trigger signal. It is an unique module and was inspired by the article called "A simple chaotic circuit with a light-emitting diode".
It took around 3 hours to complete the circuit.
Last time I soldered was a while ago... Not that rusty, eh?
Here is the final result:
Thanks Keven for the workshop and putting up with my boring questions! (:D)
I'm currently lacking the equipment to use this in my music production setup as of now but building it was fun and useful either way I think. At least it gave me my confidence back about electronics (which I dove into quite a long time ago).
FL Studio
I paid my necessary visit to the booth — learning how to use FL Studio was one of the biggest milestones in my music career.
Since I'm a super fan, I also got a FL Studio sticker and a legit tattoo in case I decide to get a tattoo of a carrot on my arm one day (💀).
We had a fun conversation about running FL Studio on Linux. It seems like quite a bit people were also doing that... (see my setup below)
Unfortunately FL is written in Delphi so the guys at the booth told me that it's a bit difficult for them to release an official/native port on Linux anytime soon. Right now the only problem with FL running in Wine is that you are limited to the stock plugins... which is quite enough for me actually. But let's see!
SOMA
They have very interesting instruments!
Floating-hand-controlled thing (Soma Flux):
Or this thing (Soma Terra):
It's a wooden block with some metal spheres on it that you can touch. It produced heavenly sounds for me, but apparently you can use it for many purposes:
Mad Sound Factory
I was just walking around the booths and all of a sudden found myself in the middle of a techno rave:
They have this thing called "Drop" which produces amazing tunes.
I would love to get one for myself (or build something similar) one day!
Microrack
They seem to have very easy-to-build synths that only require a breadboard!
Also, there was a funny synth that uses a microphone input, adds some effects and produces some autotune-like output.
any frequency
They have built a synth that uses AI to learn from a given signal and accompany it by generating a signal that matches the tune.
You can also tweak the learning speed and all kinds of other parameters as well.
Beetronics
As noted above, this was my sh*t.
They have some kickass pedals with hella functionality and it sounded amazing.
Unfortunately they didn't bring a guitar to try things out which is a shame — I think it would be splendid to hear those with the guitar.
Also big props for their branding/marketing!
Chase Bliss
Another guitar-related booth which I like!
And they had a small guitar (Steinberger Spirit) to try out their modules!
Boom Kick
Is an introduction needed? It's the
Acidbooth
Man I love acid.
Silhouette
Sample audio, convert it to a picture file and then reuse it as visual material for the synthesis
Saw that in action!
Technoise
Keven from Zlob and his friend Eliot were kind enough to invite me to a party that was happening in the evening after Superbooth.
I showed up and it was literally an office turned into a stage with a bunch of synthesizers and free drinks :D
The lineup was pretty interesting. Here are my highlights:
Definitely interesting and different vibes. I felt like I was committing a financial crime the whole time.
Damn, Goblincore to the moon baby!
Man I love acid.
And here are some other videos that I took from the event:
Day 0x2
(
While checking the schedule on my way in the morning, I realized there are still tickets available for Clacktronics workshop. So I went for it!
Clacktronics
They design and manufacture DIY synth and Eurorack products. They also have a "Build Your Own Modular" book which I find very useful!
In the workshop there were a couple of kits:
- VCO (voltage-controlled oscillator): for generating audio signals.
- VCF (voltage-controlled filter): for filtering audio signals.
- Arpeggiator (stepped ramp generator): for generating arpeggios.
I went with VCO since it's one of the fundamental modules in a synthesizer setup.
This was a quite fun kit to build!
In the video you can hear the signals produced by the module and me playing with the knob:
At some point we added other modules (drums, filters, effects) and turned the workshop into an acid rave (Man I love acid btw):
Thanks Ben for helping out with the workshop & Simon letting me play around with his setup, it was super fun!
Now I need to get myself a rack to play around with these modules myself when I get back home. 💀
Playing Around
I spared the rest of the day for playing around with the various synthesizers, modules, instruments at the booths. There were many things that I touched and I definitely lost time at some point.
I didn't take specific notes about the things that I tried out but here are some highlights:
It's just amazing. I cooked up some bangers on this. It is surprisingly easy to use and you can do many things.
Man I love acid.
Video synth. Aye look that's me!
Here are the other things that I played / tried out:
While you're walking around, it's possible to run into some random-ass cook sessions like these:
Lastly, RIP theresyn.
Concerts
I was going to meet David but I got distracted by this kickass techno event in the middle of the forest.
It was Jessica Kert playing... it was an amazing set!
After that, I was really impressed by the huge setup at the stage:
I can summarize my second day with this T-shirt I guess:
Day 0x3
(
Today I'm heading to DIY Kit Day organized by Berlin Modular Society!
It's where you can buy DIY kits and assemble them, listen to some live modular music and just hang out with audio folks at a nice rooftop!
I bought and assembled an amazing kit there:
It's a VCO that produces a squeaky sound and is very fun to play with!
Look at the eyes!
Also, got myself a fuzz pedal called Fur Face for assembling it when I get back home:
Bought the album of Keven from Zlob! I'm glad that there is a CD player in my car.
And one really surprising thing happened... I got recognized.
Some people approached me and said they were big fans of Ratatui...
It was nice to meet you Juan and Gustavo!
Lastly, we wrapped up the day with some amazing sets, most notably from Shakmat's founder's live set:
Outro
My Berlin music adventure has ended. It was a very packed 3 days and it really felt like 3 weeks of learning new things!
I'm very glad that I did this. My vision has definitely broadened, I had many ideas for my projects and most importantly met so many new people!
Ah, also I now have these modules:
So what's the plan going forward?
I have been doing something called
- Think of a crazy project idea.
- Turn that idea into a talk proposal for a conference (and get accepted).
- Speedrun the development of the project.
- Profit (or crash and burn).
That's what I did with Ratzilla, see my talk at FOSDEM 2025. I think it's a great way to beat the comfort of delay and keep myself on the grind.
And yes, I am doing
I'm planning to livestream my whole journey and I'll start in the following weeks. So make sure you follow me on YouTube if you don't want to miss the new tunes & TUIs!
If you liked this post, or anything that I'm building, gimme a sponsorship on GitHub :)
Special thanks to David Runge for letting me know about the Superbooth!
As a beginner in the music sphere, I would appreciate any ideas or tips about starting out.
As always, you can leave your comments below!
Love, ~o