Synth historian Oli Freke will spend big on a good bicycle

He’s hard at work on the upcoming Beat Gems, a gorgeous coffee-table book about the history of drum machines.

He’s hard at work on the upcoming Beat Gems, a gorgeous coffee-table book about the history of drum machines.

Oli Freke is a musician and journalist whose works have appeared in Sound on Sound , The Quietus , and Mixmag . This has included using math to explore the melodic potential of the Western 12-tone scale and deep dives on effects plug-ins . He’s even written a book tracing the evolution of the synthesizer from 1963 through 1995, charting the change from analog to digital and back.

His new project is Beat Gems , a coffee-table visual history of drum machines from publisher Bjooks . Like other Bjooks titles, Beat Gems is loaded with gorgeous photos, fascinating historical tidbits, and practical advice for making the most of your gear, whether it’s a vintage Roland TR-808 or a modern oddity like Erica Synths’ Pērkons .

What is the first app you install on a new phone or computer?

If I’m buying a new computer, it’ll almost certainly be my music computer, so I’ll be installing Ableton Live straight away. It’s a remarkable piece of music software, with a feature set that still feels staggering compared to when I started making electronic music with an Atari ST 520 that could just about manage MIDI, with no audio at all.

Which social media platform do you use the most (if any)?

Probably YouTube, if we’re counting it as social media. It’s brilliant having experts in almost any subject area explain ideas, concepts, and methods. I watch a lot of science, maths, chess, and, inevitably, electronic music. I could do with fewer algorithmic clickbait temptations, which is one reason I’m not a heavy user of other social media platforms.

Which is the most disappointing gadget you’ve ever owned?

Vegetable choppers and cubers seem like a great idea, but they never work properly and never actually save any time or effort.

What game do you have the fondest memories of?

Elite on the Atari ST was incredible. It’s world-building on a (memory) shoestring when severe technical constraints existed, and the results were truly creative.

As a musician, I wish I’d written a song that the whole world knew and loved, and that fans would demand I play at every opportunity — until I got so heartily sick of it that, in the end, I wished I’d never written it. Perhaps this has happened, and all these wishes have come true!