If there's one brand to encapsulate the calculation of ones and zeroes, the spontaneity of musicmaking, and how those two seemingly opposing worlds can coexist, it's Arturia.
If you can believe it, 1999 was a different time – for quite a few reasons, actually. For the sake of our discussion, in the last year of the twentieth century, the relationship between musicians and computers wasn't as buddy-buddy as it is today. The relationship between the average person and computers? Forget about it.
It's with this burgeoning relationship between musicians and their now more commonplace consumer-grade computers that two engineering students at the Grenoble Institute of Technology in France started a new venture inspired by their computer engineering studies and their roles in Grenoble's University Symphony Orchestra. Over twenty years later, things are looking a little different.
Project: Arturia
Arturia Brand History
The Arturia story begins proper in 1999 with Frédéric Brun and Gilles Pommereuil. Two engineering students, Brun and Pommereuil connected over their shared studies and spending time in the university's symphony orchestra, as a violinist and the conductor, respectively. This balance between their mastery of engineering and their love for the arts proved heavily influential as the two launched their first product as Arturia in January, 2000. Storm Music Studio, an end-to-end music production software for the home computer, featured virtual instruments, sequencers, a mixing table, and more for users with Intel Pentium II 400 MHz processors and 128 megabytes of RAM.
Over twenty-five years later, and Arturia has continued on, evolved, and become something completely new while retaining the core tenets that made it what it first was. Early pushes for Arturia to throw their hat in the hardware ring and translate the ease, spontaneity, expressiveness, and inspiration of their software designs to physical gear became a reality over the course of the next decade. Acclaimed software releases arrived interspersed with new developments in hardware synthesizers kicking off series like the Arturia "-Brute," "-Lab," and "-Freak" instruments, which evolved into thoroughly modern models by the 2020s.
Arturia Today
Today's Arturia, still operating out of Grenoble, is a robust team of professionals with expertise in many things including research and development, sound design, and IT, all working together. A true meeting of left-brain and right-brain thinking, Arturia puts forward an all-encompassing experience with its musical and methodical minds with an employee base that truly reaches around the world with engineers, technicians, and directors alike hailing from every corner of the globe.
For the PlanetWhat's more, Arturia puts not only a creative mind forward, but one for sustainability. Arturia co-founder and CEO Frédéric Brun stresses the importance of sustainability and environmental conservation in his work with Arturia. In 2020, the brand started working with independent consulting firm UTOPIES to track the scale of their carbon footprint. Naturally, working with synthetic materials like plastics and electronic components and maintaining international distribution relationships produces carbon emissions. Arturia is very transparent about their feeling of responsibility for the planet, the effect their operation creates, and the ways in which they can better themselves to make the Arturia brand cleaner and more sustainable. Every step of the Arturia production cycle is tracked to minimize its carbon impact to the best of the company's ability, as, in recent years, many of the brand's flagship products have transitioned to be made with a minimum 40% recycled plastics and ship with 100% recyclable packaging.
"All of this is not easy, frankly speaking, but it’s certainly necessary. We will continue to have an impact on our planet, just like many human activities do. But we’d like, as we grow, to reduce this impact to the minimum. So that we can be proud of our work, not only when we see our instruments on stage or receive positive emails at the support desk, but also when we look back and consider the overall picture." - Arturia co-founder and CEO Frédéric Brun
The "Art" in "Arturia"
Arturia Synthesizers and Drum Machines
The Arturia lineup of synthesizers is an acclaimed bunch of instruments with hands-on playability as a unifying, crucial component. Across each of these Arturia pieces, the same can be said for their utility as player-friendly instruments primed for performance onstage, jamming alone, or even learning the ropes of a physical synthesizer in general. Let's talk about a few of these guys.
Arturia AstroLab Stage Keyboard Synthesizers
Arturia's AstroLab Stage Keyboard synthesizer series delivers massively for players seeking a one-stop-shop for their synthesizing needs. The Arturia AstroLab, available in different forms including the AstroLab 88 and AstroLab 37, packs enormous synthesizing power under the hood of a fully-equipped keyboard-fitted synthesizer. Between a thirty-seven, mini-key version and an eighty-eight, full-sized-key version, the AstroLab series hits so many creative highs for more traditional synthesizing tones for, say, cover band performances, to more out-there soundscapes more to the taste of mind-bending experimenters. In either direction, with either configuration, Arturia's AstroLab is a standby example of fine synthesizing brain and brawn in motion.
Arturia DrumBrute Impact Analog Drum Machine Synthesizer
Moving towards other styles of synthesis, Arturia has also gone on to try their hand at analog and hybrid synthesizers with their "Brute" and "Freak" series of instruments. For one, a real classic among drum machinists, as they very well could call themselves, is the Arturia DrumBrute Impact, which delivers pure analog drum machine synth tones through an incredibly player-forward interface with tangible buttons and visual tracking across the synth's sequencer. Responsive, playable pads and dedicated knobs oh-so twistable arranged across ten clear instrument tracks makes for a hands-on, spontaneous playing experience without all the menu diving that can come with more modern drum machines.
Arturia MiniFreak Vocoder and MicroFreak Hybrid Synthesizers
Along with an analog synthesizer like the DrumBrute, the Arturia MiniFreak Vocoder and Arturia MicroFreak hybrid synthesizers match analog and digital synthesizing designs for instruments meant to break the rules, stray from the beaten path, speak their own truth. These compact synths also feature intuitive interfaces and great playability to get into creative flow states with their inclination toward soundscaping and texturing with classic sequencing and arpeggiating functions at the ready. The MicroFreak's programmable PCB (printed circuit board) keybed opens the field for great sonic exploration while the MiniFreak Vocoder reinvents the classic robotic talk-box synthesizer tone. Altogether, these synthesizers are made for getting lost in the sauce – just in terms of creativity and inspiration rather than navigation and function.
Expedition Arturia
For a brand like Arturia, it all seems so simple. Straightforward interfaces, lush sounds, rewarding loops of creativity. In a field that can get bogged down with digital design and quickly become unfriendly to new players, Arturia defies convention to deliver and make the best version of synthesizer they can. Hands-on playability and the kind of creative feedback to fire you up to keep going and turn the next musical corner propel Arturia synthesizers forward and push the envelope for something exceptional. For making the distance between their synths’ ones and zeroes and that kind of spontaneous, musical inspiration ever shorter, as they have for over two decades, Arturia is up to that challenge.
