Modular synthesizers are wonderfully personal instruments: open-ended, endlessly flexible, and built on a few simple ideas. This four-part class starts with those foundations, including signal flow, voltage, gates, triggers, and clocks, then puts them to work across different kinds of music making. With extended hands-on time in the Neighborhood Sound Lab, you’ll build patches for drones, percussion, loops, and experimental soundscapes, developing your own approach as you go. By the end, you’ll know how to sit down at any synthesizer and make it your own.
CLASS DETAILS
The class meets on four consecutive Tuesdays, October 27, November 3, 10, and 17, 2026, from 6:30 to 8:00pm in the Community Synth Studio at AMLA/Esperanza.
This class is 18+. Class size is limited to 10. No previous experience in music or synthesizers is required.
Advance ticket reservation is required to attend.
QUESTIONS
Questions? Email SoundLab@bowerbird.org.
PART OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD SOUND LAB
This course is one part of the Neighborhood Sound Lab, a Bowerbird project that also offers a free community synth studio, classes, workshops, and community events. See the project page for an overview of the program and a list of classes and events.
ABOUT THE TEACHERS
Eugene Lew is a Philadelphia-based sound artist, producer, educator, and organizer primarily engaged in performance, design, access, management, transformation, (attempted) capture, storage, and playback of shared IRL experiences, with a sound/music bias. The fleeting moment, aggregate independent decision-making, and stochastic phenomena are especially fascinating and vital to his practice and general existence. He welcomes serendipitous collaborations and treasures long-term partnerships that seek to navigate and explore the constant cycle of remembering-learning-forgetting-reconstructing.
Carolyn Zaldivar Snow (she/her) is a field recordist and journalist whose work explores the textures of tape, water, and place. Her sound installations have been presented in museums and universities, as well as in more ephemeral settings—abandoned chocolate factories, geodesic domes, and overgrown Victorian gardens. Carolyn helps shape conversations around sound, and contributes to Tape Op magazine, Mystery Circles’ editorial pages, and The Tonearm writing about recording, listening, and the spaces in between. Dividing her time between Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, Carolyn co-directs Sound Scene at Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She recently released on Germany’s I U WE records, and considers eurorack modular systems her primary instrument.
ADDITIONAL LOCATION INFO
From October through December 2026, our Neighborhood Sound Lab will be located in AMLA Studios on the first floor (lower level) of Esperanza Arts Center, in the Hunting Park neighborhood of North Philadelphia. The street address is 4261 N. 5th Street, but the entrance is on Bristol Street, near the corner of 5th and Bristol. Enter through Esperanza’s main doors.
Parking. Free parking is available on the Esperanza campus. The lot is on Bristol Street between North 3rd and North 5th Streets, at 4th and Bristol.
Public transit. Esperanza is on SEPTA bus routes 47, 53, and 4. For the 53, get off at 5th and Hunting Park. For the 47, get off at 5th and Bristol. For the 4, get off at 9th and Hunting Park.
ABOUT AMLA
Artístas y Músicos Latinoamericanos (AMLA) seeks to promote the development, dissemination, and understanding of Latin music and culture throughout Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley. AMLA is based at Esperanza Arts Center in Hunting Park, North Philadelphia. For more info, visit amla.org.
Major support for NEIGHBORHOOD SOUND LAB has been provided by the William Penn Foundation with additional support from The Presser Foundation.
