How Experimental Pop Producer SOPHIE Pushed the Envelope

Though her career was cut tragically short, SOPHIE left an indelible mark as one pop music's leading sonic visionaries: As early as 2013, she was co-founding a quirky style of electronica known as “bubblegum bass,” and while the general public was catching up to its repercussions in mainstream pop, she continued to break new ground as a producer, songwriter and live artist.

By combining pop staples like bouncing rhythms, saccharine melodies, and striking visual aesthetics with highly-detailed, hyper-imaginative sound design SOPHIE forged a distinctive sound that opened the doors to collaborations with Madonna, Charli XCX, and Vince Staples among others.

Shortly before her passing, we spoke to the enigmatic producer-turned-artist as she generously shared some candid insights into the instruments, tools, and techniques she used to power her future-facing sound.

“I think music as a term and a concept itself might soon be outdated. Our understandings of music, art and entertainment are constantly evolving as well as culture itself therefore i think it’s worth thinking on a deeper level about what sound and music are to you. And to think about different sensory experiences as the same format almost.”

Elektron Monomachine
The Monomachine is a digital synthesizer and sequencer created by Swedish company Elektron, combining several methods of sound generation with a groove-box-style sequencer and intuitive hands-on control.

Its sound palette ranges from emulations of analog synthesis staples to rich polyphonic textures and harmonies. It is capable of FM and speech synthesis, and has dedicated tools for synthesizing drum sounds. It can also emulate the sound chip of a Commodore 64 computer – producing distinctive lo-fi sounds characteristic of classic 8-bit video games.

Some of its pioneering features – such as the ability to sequence changes in effect parameters – were readily adopted by future-minded music makers and have been integrated into many of Elektron's subsequent instruments.

"After a few years of really using the Monomachine a lot, I stopped even looking at it. I can just close my eyes and start synthesizing sounds. A lot of the time, I will choose to use my eyes because it speeds things up, but when you're initially making something, you're not forced to look at a screen and you can choose where to put your attention."

Akai AX60
The AX60 polyphonic synthesizer was positioned as Akai’s response to the Roland Juno - a true legend which despite tremendous capabilities the AX60 could never really catch up to.

In contrast to the Juno series, the AX60 is one of the last fully-analog synthesizers of the era, with voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) which tend to be less “stable” in operation. This leads to small pitch inconsistencies, which is actually seen as a benefit by some players. The AX60 is best remembered being responsible for some of the cheesy synth-pop sounds of its late-80s heyday, but it’s also capable of some fairly brutal industrial noises – both of which made it a fitting addition to SOPHIE’s setup.

"I found this synthesizer in the backroom of a club in Berlin with my old band. I was like, 'Oh, can I take this?' Then they said, 'Yes, but you can just give us €50.'

"Half the buttons were falling off. I just liked the way it was so battered by the time I got it that it would just throw out a really huge, interesting sound every time.

"It’s one thing in my studio I’ve bothered to keep around because you never know when it might be useful."

Clavia Nord Rack
In 1994, Clavia released the Nord Lead synthesizer, marking a new generation of "virtual-analog" synthesizers - albeit being fully digital.

Rather than relying on dedicated analog circuitry, it emulates the behavior of such circuitry on a small computer chip, with the obvious benefits in terms of cost, reliability, and flexibility. Before, almost all digital synthesizers tended towards a particular sound aesthetic, often described as colder or less rich than that of analog synthesizers. By leveraging powerful new chips, Clavia was able to convincingly approximate these desirable analog sounds, while still allowing users the option of creating more typically digital sounds via FM synthesis.

Complete with 49 keys and housed in a distinctive red enclosure, this digital synthesizer became a common site on stage throughout the 90s. The Nord Rack is a keyboard-less version, designed to be mounted in a studio rack, hence the name.

"I had the Nord from when I was very young. It was my first ever synthesizer and I kept it around. It's basically where I learned how to do synthesis.

"Because every parameter on that machine has a knob, it teaches you in a very hands-on way what’s actually happening with synthesis – like how the circuit works and what are the fundamentals."

Yamaha Motif
Originally released in 2001 by Yamaha, the MOTIF range of keyboard workstations has evolved through various formats and incarnations, with the MOXF models still available today. The Motif’s sounds are conveniently arranged into categories according to their type, such as Piano, Organ, Strings, Leads, Pads, FX, and Drums. The series’ acoustic sounds are known to sound extremely realistic, and the synthetic sounds typically offer immense possibilities for detailed sound design.

"The first keyboards I got were children’s toy keyboards. Inside them, you’d be able to basically run a sequence or something. That’s the way I started making music.

"In a way, these workstation keyboards allow you to do the same thing and just focus on the sound. And because the libraries on them are so big, I'd find myself playing something I would never think of – a trumpet, for instance – and would be like, 'Oh, that’s interesting.'”

Apple Logic Pro
Now on its tenth iteration, Logic Pro is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Apple for Mac computers. A DAW is essentially a software version of a physical recording studio, though there are many different takes on this concept. Until the recent addition of a clip-launching mode, Logic Pro followed a relatively traditional approach, based on a linear, left-to-right timeline and a mixing window with faders that resemble those of a physical mixing console. It also comes with a large selection of virtual instruments, effects, and other tools.

Logic Pro began life as Notator Logic in the early 1990s, and was created by a German company that went by the name of C-Lab (later Emagic). Apple acquired Emagic in 2002.

"Logic has a varispeed function that allows you to change the speed and pitch of your whole project, like a turntable.

"That’s basically how I started recording the SOPHIE vocals – those sped-up sounding higher-pitched vocals, it’s just a tape machine technique that’s possible in Logic. You play back your track 12% slower, record the voice, and then put the whole thing back to the original speed – with the voice now pitched up."

Ableton Live
Ableton Live is a DAW that, like Logic Pro, is now on its tenth iteration. It contains many standard DAW features – including a linear timeline and a classic mixer layout – but its approach to sequencing and arranging tracks differs from more traditional software. Designed from the beginning to be effective for live performance (hence the name), Live software loads in the grid-based Session View by default. The grid can be populated by clips containing either MIDI or audio data, which can then be launched in most any order or combination. This encourages a jam-style approach to constructing tracks, the results of which can optionally be recorded to a linear timeline.

Live is also used by DJs, as it offers a suite of controls for beat-matching, crossfading, and other different effects used by turntablists, and was one of the first music applications to automatically beat-match songs.

"The challenge for me was that I wanted to replicate the workflow of the Monomachine in in a piece of software I could specialise in. I then found that Ableton, along with, Ableton Push would allow me to make music in a way that comes naturally to me, based on a step sequencer way of arranging ideas and freewheeling the tempo."

Ableton Push
Ableton Push is a a hardware controller designed specifically for Ableton Live - it functions as a physical counterpart to the production workflow that the software pioneered and popularized. While fully powered by the computer, its focus is on playability as an instrument, allowing producers to steer clear of the keyboard-and-mouse-based workflows which some find to be uninspiring. The 64 pads can be configured to act at times as a step-sequencer, drum pads, an isometric musical keyboard, or a clip launcher for Live’s Session View.

"With Ableton and Push, I had this one quite portable machine with which I could design any sounds I wanted, and basically use it like a Monomachine on stage as well.

"Now, in my latest shows, I’m experimenting with having two computers and two Pushes, and I essentially DJ between Live sessions. That’s my latest solution, and I’m quite happy with it working this way at the moment."