Sarah Belle Reid meets Gliss
Canadian-born musician and sound designer explores the noisier side of Gliss as a non-linear waveshaper
The video at the heart of this post is the third in a series in which we get Gliss in the hands of artists we deeply respect. In this installment the brilliant musician and educator, Sarah Belle Reid, explores the timbral possibilities of Gliss by using it extensively as a non-linear waveshaper.
Since the release of her debut album Underneath and Sonder in 2019, Canadian-born musician Sarah Belle Reid has positioned herself not only at the cutting edge of contemporary experimental and electronic music, but also at the forefront of teaching about modular synthesis. Originally a classically trained trumpeter, Reid’s development into both a pioneering educator and musician represents an all too rare unity of artistic ambition and an enormous talent for education – one honed by collaborations with musicians across genres, from legendary jazz bassist Charlie Haden to Julia Holter.
Her body of work – including her 2021 follow-up LP Nows with David Rosenboom and 2024’s MASS – are characterized by both a meticulous and explorative approach to sound design – embracing the chaos of noise and glitch as well as the subtle layers of brass melody and electronics. But there is another key piece to the sonic puzzle: instrument design. The electronics entwined with Reid’s trumpet are part of an innovative sensor-based interface she co-created, known as MIGSI. This creation sprang from Reid’s vision to merge her deep curiosity for technology, trumpet, and improvisation into a single, dynamic platform.
This is what makes Reid uniquely qualified to simultaneously explore and explain how to make music with Gliss. Here, she dives into the module’s expressive capabilities as a nonlinear wave-shaper, capturing her physical gestures into a buffer in order to control and transform the waveform of an oscillator.
To learn more about its extensive and intuitive capabilities, visit bela.io/meet-gliss/.
Listen to Sarah Belle Reid: https://sarahbellereid.bandcamp.com/album/mass-extended-remastered
Buy Gliss: https://shop.bela.io/products/gliss
