Daria Goremykina¶
Daria Goremykina is a pianist and electronic musician from St. Petersburg, now based in Berlin. She started piano at age five, studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, and later earned diplomas from UdK Berlin. As both a classical and electronic performer, she has played in concert halls across Europe. Since 2023, she teaches electronic music production at Catalyst Berlin. Her work combines her classical background with live electronic performance, focusing on improvisation, synthesis, and music technology.
Live Setup and Looping Challenges¶
Benjamin: You often perform live, sometimes with machines, sometimes with real instruments, or both. What’s your current stage setup?
Daria Goremykina: For me, it’s usually the piano if one is available, otherwise a Nord Piano. I often add the Prophet-6—my favorite—and the Prophet-10. I loop the instruments live and then maybe play piano over them or switch between the looped instruments.
Benjamin: What do you use for looping?
Daria Goremykina: Recently, for example, I’ve been using Loopy Pro, an iPad app. Though I’m still searching for the perfect setup—especially regarding synchronization. Otherwise, I use simple looping pedals. I want to loop a lot of notes and be able to flexibly change parameters at the same time. I’ve also worked a lot with the Digitone and looped within it—that gave me the flexibility to keep voices in time and vary parameters live. With Loopy Pro, I only loop audio tracks and load Eventide plugins there to vary the sound.
Experiences with Sequencers: Torso and OXI¶
Daria Goremykina: Regarding MIDI looping and sequencers: At one point, I was really fast with the Torso T-1. But after a longer break, I had to almost start from scratch because of its color interface—light red, dark red, etc. I’ve never experienced that with other devices to such an extreme. Normally, muscle memory comes back quickly.
Benjamin: The Torso is very minimal in terms of information.
Daria Goremykina: Yes. I like features like the Euclidean sequencer or the “Voicing Deviations,” which make melodies sound more natural. But I also know I’m fastest when I can place notes directly as I imagine them—without many intermediate steps, like with some Elektron sequencers. I know which notes I want to hear, when they come, and how long they are. I want to be able to set the notes as quickly as possible, usually without having to hear them.
For a performance, I tested the OXI One. I had the idea that I could do without an extra MIDI keyboard in a smaller setup. The OXI has an inverted color scheme with glowing white keys. On the piano, the black keys are more prominent—they stand out. I couldn’t get used to it.
I also prefer odd pattern lengths—7, 13, or 15 steps, anything that’s not the classic 8 or 16. Quick access to pattern rotation is an important workflow aspect for me. Or quickly copying and pasting odd patterns to other pages, so each page has, for example, only 13 steps, and my 13/16 bar isn’t spread across two pages.
Searching for Logic and the Right Synth¶
Benjamin: What’s important to you in devices for the stage?
Daria Goremykina: If you have enough space and budget for the setup, it would be nice if not everything was double-assigned. With the Digitone, you have to jump back and forth between synth tracks and MIDI tracks to control something else. Sometimes, having two identical devices side by side would be better.
Optical feedback logic is important to me—that the same function looks and behaves the same across different devices from the same manufacturer.
My favorite synth is the Prophet-6. It’s incredibly simple, but compared to several other poly synths, it just sounds fat. I need polyphony because I come from the piano. My first hardware synth was the Prophet-08 (Rev2), but at some point, its sound became too digital for me.
Benjamin: So you like heavy, weighted keyboards?
Daria Goremykina: Yes. The Nord Piano is great for that. It’s easier to control how you play. With a weighted keyboard, I can work much more precisely. With an unweighted keyboard, I miss that precision. I’d love to have my Nord Piano with a mod wheel—then it would replace any MIDI keyboard for me.
Minimalism vs. Feature Overkill¶
Daria Goremykina: Many sequencers are overkill for me. Developers try to build devices for all kinds of workflows, but for my workflow, I actually only need a fraction of those features. I want quick access to the functions I need—multiplying even and odd sequences, quick editing, shifting notes by octaves.
Sometimes you wish you could change tiny details on a device—for example, inverting the piano keyboard colors on the OXI.
Feedback on the TBD-Toolkit Prototype¶
Benjamin: [Shows the TBD prototype] What could you imagine doing with this?
Daria Goremykina: My first thought about the color scheme of the buttons was the Monomachine or the Machinedrum. It looks like a small sequencer, a small synth, or a groovebox.
If I could assign the functions myself, I might want three or four monophonic instruments in parallel that I could quickly switch between. Navigation like a joystick—up, down, left, right.
Benjamin: There are four encoders and 16 buttons…
Daria Goremykina: I’d expect one button per instrument to switch quickly. For example, my top voice, then a lower one, and so on. Or you could develop firmware that lets me record piano samples and distribute them across three or four voices.
Benjamin: Where would you place the Shift button?
Daria Goremykina: The top left is uncomfortable for me—it’s better placed near the display. The encoders should be uniform and control parameters that you can see simultaneously on the screen. I’d expect filter parameters like cutoff and resonance there.
A master volume knob would be good as a safety feature. On some devices, fading out via master volume doesn’t work optimally; you have to do it through the mixer. But a dedicated knob is still important to me.
Sequence Lengths and Operation¶
Daria Goremykina: I’m looking for a device that has more than eight bars without having to dive deep into menus. I don’t want to prepare everything in advance; I want to spontaneously access, for example, the ninth bar and edit a few notes there. The Ableton Move works well for this approach.
Benjamin: So a looper? Audio or MIDI?
Daria Goremykina: A combined looper would be great! It would be nice to have a longer loop that repeats and, at the same time, shorter samples that are precisely placed on the timeline. For example, a long sample recorded on the spot, and you know: after 32 bars, a certain loop comes in. You then decide whether it’s a one-shot or a loop. If something doesn’t fit, I play live until it matches the loops again.
Benjamin: Would you edit this more on the device or on the computer?
Daria Goremykina: A computer editor would be good for organization—for example, preset management like on the Minitaur. That’s something I miss in many other synths. It would be good to save preset groups for each live set and quickly switch between different sets.
Benjamin: Could you get used to two different functions having an identical interface?
Daria Goremykina: Absolutely. Many devices follow a clear philosophy and look similar. If devices behave similarly and colors or LEDs always mean the same thing, it can even speed up the workflow.
Benjamin: Our idea for the TBD-Toolkit is to develop four standards that are super easy to use. You turn it on and can make music right away.
Daria Goremykina: I like that. Simple, intuitive standards are important before dealing with more complex features.
Interview: Benjamin Weiss (MID)
Funded by NLnet