Emily Hopkins is among the internet’s most trusted voices in effect pedals and musical gear. With over 800,000 YouTube subscribers across three channels, the Long Island-based electroacoustic harpist can be found composing for the likes of DreamWorks films and Ubisoft video games, designing effect pedals and musicmaking software, or just hanging out with regulars on weekly YouTube streams.
We sat down with Hopkins and her partner Russ Fro for a talk all about signature gear, Nintendo games, New York bagels, staying inspired, and more pedals than you could shake a stick at.
Check Out Emily Hopkins on YouTube
Russo Music: Across your two YouTube channels, you guys featured hundreds of effects pedals, which one was your favorite?
Emily Hopkins: Okay, well we can't say Parting.
Russ Fro: We can say Parting.
Hopkins: No, we can't say Parting! Let's make the question not Parting, right? Like any other effect that we featured that we didn't invent. I think it's MOOD for me. I think, oh no, I don't know. Avalanche Run? This is hard.
Fro: I would genuinely say the 29 Pedals EUNA because we don't plug into anything without it.
Hopkins: This question is convoluted for us and we're going in all different directions, but every pedal that we mentioned, even Parting, we have the 29 Pedals EUNA on it. I would say that. It's not a fun answer, you know, because it's a utility thing. Yeah. That's probably my favorite.
I'll be honest, I didn't even think you guys were going to have an answer. It was a bit of a joke. I thought you'd just be thrown by just, "Oh my God, how many have we actually done," and just lose track.
Fro: There's definitely like a top ten, you know what I mean? We have to sit.
Hopkins: We'd have to fight about it too. We'd have to argue, yeah.
Can you guys give us a little introduction of who you are, what you do, and where someone might find you doing it?
Hopkins: Yeah, I'm Emily Hopkins, electroacoustic harpist, who mixes technology with the harp in the form of pedal effects, modular synth, and different forms of sound manipulation. I work on everything with my partner, Russ, who is a professional audio engineer. We started this channel together in 2019. You can mostly find us on YouTube, although we're on every social media platform, Instagram, TikTok.
We actually have three YouTube channels, which is really funny. We have "Emily Hopkins" and then we have "Harp Lady," which is more technology focused. We kind of put all of our instructional videos there that are more tech-heavy. The main channel, Emily Hopkins, is kind of just whatever we want.
Fro: Whatever we think is fun and inspiring and funny and what we want to do, like stuff we want to talk about. We started a really small third channel called "Emily Harpless," and the rule was anything that has nothing to do with harp goes on it. So sometimes it's games...
Hopkins: Yeah, cooking content, whatever. We have three channels, just wild.
What first drove you to the harp?
Hopkins: I saw my first harpist when I was eight years old. I was at a restaurant and it just so happened that the dinner performance was a harpist. It was a man named Edmar Castaneda. He was playing in this really cool Colombian style, like, really fast harp playing. I just sat there the whole dinner and my mind was blown. I had never seen anything like that before. I don't know if I had seen the harp before that, but this is the first time that I can remember it making such a huge impression on me.
Edmar Castaneda is the direct reason why I play harp today. He's such a huge inspiration for me. After I saw him playing, I just begged my mom for harp lessons, Yeah, the rest is history.
What first drove you to running effect pedals through the harp?
Hopkins: It's actually us meeting, I think.
Fro: Yeah, I think so.
Hopkins: I had an Electro-Harmonix Cathedral reverb. I had mentioned that to him when we met. He said, "Have you tried EarthQuaker Devices?" I wasn't used to the world of effect pedals. The reason I got this harp, this electro-acoustic harp that's capable of combining with pedals, is because I originally wanted to just amplify for wedding performances. So, I got a harp with pickups because I was being too quiet at weddings and I wanted to fix that. The effect pedals came later, but it just it all worked out.
Fro: I wasn't really big into pedals either. We just met. I had like three or four EarthQuaker things that my friend put me onto because he thought they were cool. When we met, we were like, "Oh, we should try that and plug that in."
Hopkins: I remember it viscerally. We were both sitting there plugging in. I think we had a Hummingbird, we had a Transmisser, and that was a mind-blowing moment where I was like, "Oh, this is so cool. Why doesn't everyone love this as much as I do?" I wanted to make a resource for other harpists before they invested hundreds of dollars into pedals. It can be scary buying your first one if you don't know what it sounds like on your instrument.
Fro: It was really funny because we originally made it as a resource for harpists but then like most of our audience over the years became guitarists, bassists, keyboard players, and now just like non-musicians just there to chill. It's been really funny because probably way less than one percent of our audience now is harpists.
Hopkins: I think definitely less than one percent is harpists, yeah.
This year, you guys released a signature pedal with Old Blood Noise Endeavors, Parting. With Parting, you built what I feel is a genuinely fresh approach to multi-effect pedals. The pedal features a vibrato, tremolo, delay, bit crusher, glitch generator, and a signal reverser. Can you describe the process of getting so many effects under one roof, and what made you choose those specific effects to star in Parting?
Hopkins: It's a long answer, and it's hard to pick what goes into the box, you know, because you can't put everything.
Fro: I think we had a really compelling, fun idea about signal destruction with bit crushing. Originally, it was this bit crusher lo-fi thing and it was about duality, and we were really interested in it as a non-ambient device, then we were talking about a glitch element. We weren't sure what it would be. We were trying some things and going back and forth.
There was a starting point and then a series of questions that we answered through exploring. It wasn't like we sat down and wrote, "Oh my God, it's going to do this, and this, and this, and here's a blueprint, here you go, Old Blood!"
Hopkins: It was very collaborative.
Fro: Yeah, it was very collaborative, but it was us asking a series of questions and being like, "Well, can we do this? What if we did this? How does this interact with this?" You know?
Hopkins: Oh man, and naming knobs is way harder than people expect.
Fro: Yeah, we tried to find a middle ground between being descriptive and not too technical.
One of the effects in Parting is a bit crusher. For me, I find bit crushing such a signature effect for you. You've put one in your signature pedal, and you've even put one in one of your artist presets on the new Meris Ottobit X that just came out. What compels you about sample rate reduction in this way?
Hopkins: I would say my background in video games and, in a way, the feeling of nostalgia that I get when I hear bit crushing. I grew up as a big video game enthusiast and it was hard for me to fit into the harp world having an interest that no one else took seriously. Our channel started with covers of video game songs. It's not how we got into effect pedals, but that's how we got into YouTube. We started doing pedal reviews, and then also, "Here's a Zelda song mixed with this reverb."
Fro: I think it's also a texture that works really well on harp and still feels pretty niche. Sample rate reduction has something that makes it an incredible texture to explore. I feel like it feels a little too niche and we love to shed light on it.
Hopkins: Yeah, that's a better answer, I think. My answer is really because I'm a huge video game fan and it makes me think of those kind of textures in video games, sometimes.
On that same kind of topic, you guys produced a full cover album of the Animal Crossing soundtrack. Is there another video game you feel you could take on a similar project for?
Hopkins: Oh, I would love that. Okay, can I just say that we have come a long way from that Animal Crossing album? I want to say that does not really reflect our skill now, that was during the pandemic or right before the pandemic happened, right? We released it in March of 2020, so right before the pandemic.
For Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Hopkins: Yeah! We did one release every week leading up until the New Horizons date, which is really funny. By the way, I was very disappointed in the music of New Horizons because it was not as iconic as New Leaf and other Animal Crossing games. Is there another one that we would do? I would love to do something.
Fro: Metroid, anything Pokémon is cool for me. I mean, you would like Banjo-Kazooie.
Hopkins: I love Banjo-Kazooie music, and every time I play it for Russ, he says it's circus music, which is such an insult to me because I love it. I listen to "Witchy World" when I work. It's actually from Banjo-Tooie, but whatever. I don't want to be factually incorrect. I would love to do a whole cover album of Banjo-Kazooie music or, what other games do we love?
Fro: I think I'm at a point where we would really want to reinterpret something in an abstract way, in less like a literal way. To me, I think Metroid is really interesting in talking about that.
Hopkins: Yeah, I would love to do a reimagining of Metroid. Yeah.
Metroid: Prime? Metroid: Other M?
Fro: Fusion had great music.
Hopkins: Metroid: Fusion had great music. I just really remembered this: If I was going to do a reimagining of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, that one in particular would be so sick on harp. I guess I'm changing my answer to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or a Metroid, primarily Metroid: Fusion.
So, it's no secret that you guys are based on Long Island. With that, I'd like to dedicate some questions to New York.
What was your favorite subway platform to play harp on?
Hopkins: Penn Station. Back in the day, I loved Penn Station because it was like that big connection hub between Long Island and the city.
It was also very easy for me to get my harp there because I would just have to jump on the Long Island Railroad and take it in. Definitely Penn Station is fun because a lot of people are waiting there for a long time too. You could play in any subway station, but sometimes people are running to catch the subway. In Penn Station, unless they're running late, they usually just get a soda and hang out. That's like, the perfect place to discover new music or discover something that you may not have seen before.
Fro: You miss your train out of Penn Station at night? Forget it.
Hopkins: Oh, you miss the 1:00, you're screwed. You gotta wait 'til 3:00.
What was in your usual repertoire on that platform?
Hopkins: Lots of Beatles music. "Bad Romance," like I would play that, Lady Gaga. Top hits.
I would play a lot of the same stuff that I play at weddings too and cocktail hours. So, the Beauty and the Beast theme, just calm, fun music. "Despacito" was a big hit, everyone was obsessed with it, so I would play that. A lot of people were shocked that you can translate it to harp.
What are your go-to orders at Wally's Bagels?
Hopkins: Oh my god, egg bagel with two fried eggs and salt, pepper, and ketchup.
Fro: Sesame bagel toasted with scrambled egg on it and nothing else. Maybe a little bit of ketchup.
You've held an annual online awards show for effect pedals, the Emmas. Each year, you crown a Pedal of the Year. In 2023, it was the Chase Bliss MOOD 2. In 2024, the Old Blood Noise Endeavors Dark Star Stereo. Last year, it was the Eventide H90. What is it about these pedals that put them over the edge for you as "Pedal of the Year" tier?
Hopkins: Well, we picked the Eventide H90 because, with the emergence of AI pedals and subscription-based pedals, the H90 is one of those things where you pay a decent amount of money, right, but you're constantly getting firmware updates and extra sounds at no extra charge.
Fro: We try to be as objective as possible with the nominations. You know, the wins are obviously very subjective, because if it's a bucket brigade delay versus a digital delay, you can't really put those up against each other, right? It's not really about the winners, but there has to be winners.
Hopkins: It's a celebration of the industry as a whole.
"I don't think there's a better feeling than that, to see the audience enjoying my music or, if I'm giving a talk, enjoying what I have to say. Making people laugh is my favorite thing in the world." - Emily Hopkins
Russ, you've recounted from the film directors the Russo Brothers, that, "Two people isn't twice as productive as one person, it's infinitely more productive." With that in mind, I'd like to dedicate a section to ask you guys about just a few of your many collaborators.
Who's the harder critic of gear, Cyberattack or Anthony Fantano, the internet's busiest music nerd?
Hopkins: I would say Cyberattack.
Fro: I would say Cyberattack, but's also easier to talk smack because that's what we do for a living.
Hopkins: No, but, the smack aside, he is very discerning with his gear. He has very strong opinions and I respect him for that. You know, so does Fantano, but if we're talking gear specifically, Cyberattack is more critical, I think.
You clearly have a lot of fun on your channel. From strongest to weakest, which of these guitarists has the best meme game? Rhett Shull, Rob Scallon, Yvette Young.
Fro: I would say Rhett Shull.
Hopkins: I would say Rhett. Are we putting them in a list? I think Rhett, Yvette, Rob. Yeah, definitely. Sorry, Rob.
Musically, what's it like working with only a vocalist like Courtney Swain versus only instrumentalists like Dan Briggs and Chris Allison?
Fro: Courtney was a special case. At no point it felt different than being with an instrumentalist. She's very connected in the way that she manipulates her voice with pedals and how in tune she is with improv and how comfortable she is. It doesn't feel like a lead vocalist. It feels like another instrumentalist in the mix.
Hopkins: She's amazing. We love Courtney. Also, the work that I did with Dan and Chris was more structured, was more planned out. With Courtney, it was very improv-based. Our whole album, Tournesols, was one take, improvising in my studio. With Dan and Chris, a lot of it did include improvisation as well, but it was recording my take, sending it back for feedback, working remotely. We were not in the same room for a lot of it.
Most of the work that we did was remote, which is really cool because I'm very proud of both end results from Tournesols and from Obverse, which are the two projects that we collaborated on with them. It's so cool to see the artistic process and see that it can happen in so many different ways. Courtney was in the room, improv based. With Dan and Chris, planned remotely, but you can still feel the passion and the energy coming from both projects. They're just different.
Who is the better music maker? Award-winning Animal Well game designer Billy Basso or your modified talking fish metal vocalist Billy Bass?
Hopkins: Best question. Best question. Well, the answer, of course, is Billy Basso...
Fro: ... the Billy Bass!
Hopkins: No, don't even joke about that. Billy's amazing.
Fro: I have it right here. It's great. I don't want to put it up on the wall because it's so hideous, it's so ugly.
Hopkins: Billy is amazing. We are huge fans of his work because he's very humble and he's so cool showing his process and just admitting like, "Yeah, I don't feel like I'm an expert, but I just started." That's what everyone should be doing when it comes to anything that they're passionate about. You don't have to be an expert in your field to make something really cool.
Fro: The courage and the gumption to do that puts him miles ahead of the fish.
You've been a featured performer at EarthQuaker Devices' EarthQuaker Day event, and Russo Music's Pedalmania event. What's your favorite thing about appearing at these types of events?
Hopkins: The energy from the audience and...
Fro: ...the pedal community.
Hopkins: The pedal community and seeing their interest live in a room. I love when I'm playing or talking about something that I'm really passionate about and seeing people in the crowd smiling back at me. I don't think there's a better feeling than that, to see the audience enjoying my music or, if I'm giving a talk, enjoying what I have to say. Making people laugh is my favorite thing in the world. I just love the energy in the room.
I love letting people try the harp for the first time; it's also my favorite thing. I love having the harp in person available for people to test out and to hear how it works with effect pedals or just even to feel the strings. It's really nice.
Fro: My favorite part is usually pedal builders are there. Some of our best friends in the industry are pedal builders. We only get to see some of them a couple times a year.
On a similar note, this month you'll be a featured performer at the Somerset Folk Harp Festival. There's surely plenty of differences between harp events and pedal events, but what would you describe as similar?
Hopkins: I will say that the interest in electronics is still the same. I teach classes on how to mix technology and harp. I teach these classes with Russ, too. We teach about mixing emerging technology with the harp.
I would say a similarity is that a lot of people are very interested, but a difference is that there are more beginners in the Somerset classes. We teach a very introductory course, you know, "What are effect pedals? If you're interested in getting these sounds and these textures from the harp, how do you start?” When I started, I was intimidated and there were no resources about how to get started with the harp and electronics.
You had to dig really, really deep to find even anything remotely helpful. I want to make that information easier for harpists who want to do what we do.
Fro: They're so different.
Hopkins: I would say, yeah, it'd be a lot easier to answer what is different about them. I will just say as a blanket answer, the interest in technology, the passion of the people who are there. Yeah, the attendees and their passion. I love it. I love to see it.
In your video, "12 Plumes overdrives on harp," you threw an EarthQuaker Devices "Plumes party" and said about a blue and orange Plumes, "I don't want to be mean, but this is definitely the ugliest guest at this party. I don't know who would invite him, except people who are specifically collecting all the Plumes variants or a Mets fan." That being said, do you have anything to say to the Russo Music exclusive colorway EarthQuaker Devices Plumes?
Hopkins: Oh my God. Okay. Listen, I think I was too harsh back then, I'll say. I think I was being too harsh because, looking at it now, it's not as bad, actually. Wait, did you have that or did you make that one?
No, this was ours, this was a Plumes at launch.
Hopkins: Oh, so I insulted you guys.
...yeah.
Hopkins: Oh, that's bad. Oh, I'm sweating.
Fro: You know what? I couldn't tell you what other Plumes there were that day, but I do remember that one specifically. It's bold.
Hopkins: And even if you're the ugliest person at the party, you're memorable.
Fro: Yes, exactly. At least you're not the second-ugliest person at the party.
Hopkins: It's great to be bold.
I'm sure a lot of people are wondering, what is your pedalboard looking like these days?
Fro: You know what? We abandoned it probably two years ago.
Hopkins: We have it, but we went a little too crazy. Like, that's a mega-board and it weighs a ton. It's so heavy and it's hard to get around.
Fro: We had an artist residency at the Pollock-Krasner House here on the island. There are some videos we have on their channel of performances, which was a smaller board that was kind of the perfect middle ground.
It's a 29 Pedals EUNA, Broughton Audio High Pass Filter, the Empress Bass Compressor, Parting, and then an Avalanche Run. That's it. Honestly, it might just be Parting soon.
Hopkins: We've grown boring in our old age, you know? That's what I'll say. Our board has been simplified and it's not as gigantic.
After this long in the effect pedal world, what makes you guys excited about a pedal today after seeing and personally being a part of so much?
Hopkins: Just something that catches our interest, something remarkable. You know, we always joke, we say, "How much more can they come up with?" For years we've said this, and they constantly do. They keep coming out with new things that catch our eye, that interest us in some way, that bring something new to the table. It's a hard thing to think about because you're like, "Will they ever run out of effects?" So far, we haven't really encountered that.
What keeps you guys pushing for the next big thing that excites you?
Hopkins: I don't even know anymore. I don't know. It's a great question.
Fro: We make a lot of content. We're working seven days a week. Our priority now has been, "What's fun? What will we enjoy doing?” and the pursuit of that has been inspiring and great. I think it's less about like, "We're going to get a ton of views and we're going to grow..."
Hopkins: It's never been about that.
Fro: Yeah, it's never been. We always said we want to make videos that we would have wanted to see when we were starting out or when we were getting into music tech.
Hopkins: I think that's the main thing that pushes us forward is that we make content that we would love to see when we were starting out on our pedal journey and our music technology journey.
What's next for you guys?
Hopkins: What is next? What day is it today?
Fro: What can we talk about next? We're working on a new record and we're developing a video game, but we can't say too much more about it at this time.
Hopkins: Again, we like working on fun stuff. That's what fuels us. You know, fun and silliness is what we're all about. What do I tell people I say?
Fro: We're very serious about not being serious.
Hopkins: That's it in everything we do.
