The Science of Sound with Russell Wedelich of Eventide

This week, Dmitri chats with Russell Wedelich, the President and CTO of Eventide Audio. Eventide has been shaping Eventide has been shaping recorded music since 1971, and Russell has used his background in both electrical engineering and musical engineering to help create products like the Space Stomp box, H9000, Physion, and Temperance reverb just to name a few. 

They talk about Eventide’s history and philosophy of creating audio tools, re-releasing legacy software, and why Russell believes fear and creativity are opposite’s when it comes to AI’s impact on music. They also talk about NAMM and why it is still worth going in 2026

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Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

[00:00:00] Dmitri: Russell Wedelich is the President and CTO at Eventide. He has the rare but highly coveted combination of a BS in electrical engineering and an MS in music engineering. With 18 years working at Eventide under his belt, this guy builds award-winning music production products with his eyes closed. Early on, he was the lead sound design engineer for the Space Stomp box, known for insane effects and new types of.

Reverb later, he oversaw the transition of Eventides extensive legacy code base to modern programming that ushered in the famed H 9,000. The studio grade effects powerhouse that's influenced each and every one of us without knowing it via soundtracks, film, and tons of music. More recently, Russell led the research and development of the tonal transient structural split for the split EQ and Physion plugins, which is a fancy way of saying he invented a new category of audio control that led to punchier drums without making them louder, clearer vocals without harshness and thicker bass without muddiness.

Plus, he enjoys playing the bass guitar, experimenting with synthesizers, and building and riding. Mountain bikes. Hey Russell. Good to have you here.

[00:01:07] Russell: Hey, thanks for having me.

[00:01:09] Dmitri: Did I get any of that right?

[00:01:10] Russell: Pretty much. It's Physion yeah. Yeah, it looks like Physion. So you got it right. I think we got it wrong.

[00:01:17] Dmitri: Well that, thanks for that.

So, you know, you've got a lot of technical expertise and now leading the company as president as well. A cool combination. But when you first meet someone on, say, on an airplane and they ask you what you do, what do you tell them?

[00:01:30] Russell: sometimes I say, I make rock and roll.

[00:01:32] Dmitri: Yeah.

And then they say, oh, okay. And they stop talking to you

[00:01:39] Russell: or they say, what band do you play with? And I'm like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. I, and then I get into the, I make the gear and yada yada.

[00:01:45] Dmitri: Yeah. Yeah. What do you tell 'em about the gear and about the company? Like how do you break it down to somebody who's maybe not as technical or, or an engineer themselves?

[00:01:52] Russell: Oh, I, I talk about the hardware first. 'cause I said, you know, when you see people on stage and there's a bunch of boxes at their feet that they step on. Eventide makes one of those boxes. Yeah. And that's used to,

[00:02:01] Dmitri: that's cool

[00:02:01] Russell: because that's something people have seen. Right?

[00:02:03] Dmitri: Right.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So, well, let's take it up one more level.

Say, you're talking to maybe an artist who knows a little bit more about some of the, types of effects and synths and sounds that they could be playing with, but don't know Eventide specifically, how do you break it down to them?

[00:02:19] Russell: Oh, I might say, you know, that guitar sound that Eddie Van Halen had.

Back in the eighties, it sounded like a cool chorus, but it wasn't really moving, and you always wondered how he did that. That was Eventide.

[00:02:30] Dmitri: Oh, that's good. That's cool. They probably get

it from there, huh?

[00:02:33] Russell: Pretty much, yeah.

[00:02:34] Dmitri: Yeah. So, we've been at NAMM recently, the big musical instrument trade show. How does Eventide fit into the musical instrument and gear landscape?

 how do you guys see yourselves?

[00:02:45] Russell: we're a legacy digital audio effects company, so. We've been around since 1971. Uh, the founder and the, head engineer, invented pivotal equipment for recording industry, right? So they invented the first digital pitch shifter. they did a lot of early reverb research and stuff, things that allowed people to, you know, get those classic sounds.

On records from the seventies and eighties. So we, we've kind of been a part of the conversation for decades. And so it's pretty natural. We fit in at N gear for, uh, recording engineers, right? That's where we started. But now that music has become a little more democratized. we've done the same.

 now, we make everyone's a recording engineer, right? You can record in your, in your house. you can play out anywhere you want. So we make those tools for, um, you know, players and musicians. Producers, that kinda stuff.

[00:03:35] Dmitri: Cool.

[00:03:35] Russell: Yeah.

[00:03:35] Dmitri: Let,

let's get into it a little bit. I, I like to think in terms of each company's contribution to the music tech world.

What do you think makes Eventide and its products unique? And feel free to like, tell us about specific ones that have been like anchors for you. I mentioned a couple in the intro, but, yeah. What, what do you think is the real contribution?

[00:03:51] Russell: I would say the core value of Eventide.

It's curiosity.

[00:03:56] Dmitri: Love it.

[00:03:57] Russell: Yeah. The founders, Richard to this day, is one of the most curious people I've ever met. And I'm not saying, not that he's curious, weird. No. But he has curiosity to like, look at things in such unique ways. he's actually a, a radio guy. He loves ham radio. Right. So, and he, and so he's into this.

He loves these podcast things too.

[00:04:14] Dmitri: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:14] Russell: so that, I would say just being curious about manipulating. An audio signal, right? Uhhuh is the foundation of Eventide. what can we do now that we know what's possible on the bleeding edge? And it's been that way for decades. And because of that, you know, they were like, what would it be like if we could actually change the pitch of a sound without having to like run tape across the room?

You know, what, what could you do with that? And they ask the questions and then they come up with a product, right? Or even before that. you couldn't delay an audio signal without running tape across the room. You know, I needed to come like a second later and they figured out how to do it, with a thing called shift registers.

I won't get into it, but it's interesting because what does that get you all of a sudden in live music, if you can delay, you can align your speaker array. So all the sound hits audiences at different parts. Of a giant arena at the same time before you would hear echoes from the far speakers.

Right. But if you can delay because you know the speed of sound, then that helps also, the way they used to do reverb in the studios, like old plate reverbs, they need a little bit of space to sound sweet right. for the, for it to sit just right. And so the delays helped there. That was, or even early in the seventies.

So. I mean, I could keep going through every decade.

[00:05:29] Dmitri: Yeah. I mean it's actually pretty interesting if you got another one or two of those kind of, 'cause those anchor moments of those inventions or those evolutions or those innovations kind of really do define the contribution of the company. I'd love to hear about two more of those.

[00:05:41] Russell: Sure.

The other really big one, was the H 3000, and this is a studio grade multi effects unit. I think that came out in the late eighties, I believe is when that happened. And this was actually, uh, I'll plug who responsible for this. Tony had hired, um, some young engineers in the early eighties, Ken Bog Donitz and Bob Belcher, and, Dave Durr.

And the three of them were primarily responsible for this, this box. But it, it has, you know, a hundred different, we call 'em algorithms or programs, whatever, you know, but very unique sounds very, Nice sounding special effects from realistic reverbs. And it had, uh, like some of the first pitch shifters, and not only a pitch shifter, but an intelligent pitch shifter.

So if you put the key and the scale right in there, it knows. So I'm gonna do a little bit of music theory here.

[00:06:31] Dmitri: No, that's all right.

[00:06:32] Russell: it knows whether, you know, if I know I'm in the, the key of G major, right. And I tell it to shift a third. It knows whether to flat my third depending on what note I'm playing.

Right.

[00:06:42] Dmitri: Wow.

[00:06:43] Russell: So that was, they, and they did that stuff way back then. and so you, and that ends up on like Steve Vai like passion and warfare and stuff. Right. And, uh,

[00:06:51] Dmitri: has an effect on the sound and the culture eventually.

[00:06:54] Russell: Yes. Yeah. And then, and everyone hears it, you know, and these were very expensive.

These are like the price of a car back then.

[00:06:59] Dmitri: Wow.

[00:06:59] Russell: So they were unobtainium, you know, it was aspirational gear. Like

[00:07:04] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:07:04] Russell: You know, big studios had this stuff and people would hear records. It was like, how does he do that? How does Steve Vai hitting that sound? Or, even like tweaky little things.

 With pitch shift, like if you use pitch shift on the order of cents. Little bits, not like thirds or fifths little bits. and if you pitch shift the left in a stereo field, the left versus the right, a little bit different, like maybe minus 9 cents, maybe plus 9 cents, right? You get this really nice sense of space and stereo spreads.

So you'll have these subtle little things like I talked to the engineer for Cyndi Lauper, who I think he's talking about like the shaker on time after time. It's just this, it's a simple song, right? With, Really nice ingredients, and that's just like this little flavor that really gives you the space and the percussion so that.

That was possible because of the A box. Tony invented called the H910

[00:07:55] Dmitri: huh?

[00:07:56] Russell: Yeah.

[00:07:57] Dmitri: I've got a question I see behind you, there's a bass guitar and a drum set. You're obviously a musician.

[00:08:01] Russell: Yes.

[00:08:01] Dmitri: He's like g leaning over so you can see it. and, um, I'm curious, like how do you, I mean, these things are, they're funny because they're like, they're sonic, they're acoustic, they're processing and digital.

There's all this little, in a sense, I'm almost saying like. They're theories, they're almost philosophical. You almost like, you have to have this idea of sort of like, what can we do with sound? How does somebody like you or the founder of your company, how do you guys ideate a concept of what you're even gonna implement?

[00:08:28] Russell: I mean, it's probably not that dissimilar from writing songs. you study and you practice and you develop a set of tools. ways of thinking, abilities, things like this, right? you acquire skills and you master them, and then you go out to try to create something new and, and.

Sometimes it's frustrating. You're staring at a blank sheet of paper, but you know, you put one foot in front of the next, you try something, take a breath, you listen to it, do you like it? Do you not like it? And then you take the next one and the next one. Right. and some of it does start with something you hear and some of it does start for me with math or something I think could be possible.

[00:09:05] Dmitri: Hmm.

[00:09:05] Russell: Right. So. Yeah, it's, it is, it's like, you know, I, I, I have an idea for like a bass riff and I play it and I hit it and I track it, right? And then I'm like, oh, man, what would the groove be for that? And then I go try a couple different grooves, and then I find the beat, and then I'm like, where does the beat sit?

And then I wanna move the, does the snare drag, you know, how does it need to feel? And then you start layering on top. So a lot of times when you're thinking about gear, For me, my technical background is DSP engineer. That's digital signal processing engineer. Right, right. So for me, it will start at the sound.

Right? What? And so that's math, and I'll come up with something. And when I hear something that I've never heard before, you know, from just fiddling and, and, fiddling from one step to the next, that's when I go, I've never heard this before. This could be a thing. It's, usually pretty, um, rough. It's pretty rough around the edges.

 I read this book by the head of Pixar. He calls them ugly babies. And this is a very critical creative, this is a very critical time in the creative development. You do not want to, you wanna save your ugly babies, so you gotta find the right people to get in front of, to get feedback. And then you just, and then eventually you figure out, well, all right, I can use this, they can use this.

 we need to put a set of constraints and parameters around it such that it's worth money to somebody else. 'cause that's how we make our living.

[00:10:18] Dmitri: Right?

Yeah. Cool.

[00:10:19] Russell: And that's usually about 10% of the way into the project.

[00:10:23] Dmitri: Well, that's good. At some point early on.

[00:10:25] Russell: Yeah.

[00:10:25] Dmitri: Early on.

[00:10:25] Russell: Yeah.

[00:10:26] Dmitri: so Eventides announced something a little different. You're re-releasing Music Mouse, which is this 40-year-old computer program that was made by Laurie Spiegel. And for those who don't know, it's this program that came out for Atari Omega, for McIntosh, for computers in 1986. You move your mouse around the screen and it plays complex, beautiful patterns.

Russell, why are you re-releasing this?

[00:10:49] Russell: Well, Laurie is, is very important, to. Early electronic music or all, uh, not even that early, but you know, she was at Bell Labs. she has pieces on the gold record, billions of miles away on Voyager right now. So if we all disappear and there's intelligent life out there, they're gonna hear Laurie's composition.

[00:11:10] Dmitri: Nice.

[00:11:10] Russell: Right. So, I don't know. it makes sense that you wanna preserve the work of, someone. who's, you know, representing humanity. Yeah, right. So, and it only worked, on the old Mac, the old Macintosh's. So, and it was actually, it was written in a language called C, which we still use to this day.

So it, it's worth preserving, right?

[00:11:29] Dmitri: Yeah. Yeah. It also seems like. We're in a moment in time where music creation is exploding. New generations are learning to play or compose or create music in ways that nobody fathom 40 years ago when she was playing with the This mouse as instrument, basically.

[00:11:46] Russell: Yeah.

[00:11:46] Dmitri: Or as controller or.

 and you know, there's a lot of interactive websites and apps and things where like you're just touching things and sounds are coming out. You may not know what you're doing. Of course, there's the whole AI conversation, which we'll get into later, but it's kind of interesting that in some ways it's old and in some ways it's right on time.

[00:12:06] Russell: Yeah, yeah. People are sort of wanting to interact and, and it's nice because something that we thought was. Old hat is a discovery phase to lots of new people because maybe they didn't have time to go to music school or take classes, you know, when they were kids. And life gets away from you.

[00:12:23] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:12:23] Russell: Yeah.

[00:12:24] Dmitri: let's talk about some more recent products or, or features from

Eventide. what's most exciting right now that we haven't talked about?

[00:12:31] Russell: let's see. What have we done? I mean, For, you know, COVID on, we've done a couple of, cool projects. One of them is a, it looks like a guitar pedal.

It is a guitar pedal, but it's so much more. It's called the H 90. Um, and that was a project that I project managed and led. It was kind of a weird experience 'cause I, I was telling somebody else, I don't, outside of some of the algorithms, which are what our term for the sort, effects, the sound effects, you know, and they, they're all themed.

Like, here's a. This is a hall type reverb and this is a analog delay, stuff like that. Right. And some of 'em have silly names like Crush station, um, yeah.

[00:13:05] Dmitri: Rock and roll names.

[00:13:06] Russell: Yeah. Which honestly I thought I came up with this name 'cause it's a distortion algorithm and back in the. A couple years ago, and I thought it was pretty clever.

 then I realized that there's a monster truck, called Crush Station, and it's, it's the monster Lobster, it's the Boston Monster truck,

but whatever,

[00:13:24] Dmitri: some ideas for the design team there.

[00:13:27] Russell: So the H 90 runs all this stuff, right? And so it really was, me looking at the spirit of like something like the H 3000 and trying to shrink it down.

 and make a box that's gonna be fun to use and has all the power of eventide. You know, like high quality studio effects, things that, like I said, were unobtaini people Now. you are accessible. you can get 'em and use 'em and use 'em at your feet. Use 'em with your guitar. Use 'em with your synth, use 'em with your bass guitar.

I do. stuff like that. So that was a 2022 project. A more recent one we did is this reverb called Temperance. And this one is, this is very unique. This is very you know, reverb is the sound of spaces, you know, spaces are as much part of the music as the music that's played, right.

 you know, the same piece. A small hall is gonna breathe and speak to you differently in a cathedral.

[00:14:23] Dmitri: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:23] Russell: Same musicians, everything. Right. And so, and this is very old stuff, right? This is like music and people learning to sing in caves and stuff. This is very deep in us. So temperance is a reverb, and the idea was, well.

What if we could emphasize or de-emphasize the musical notes in the room? You know, reverb is made up of many, many reflections. often spoken in terms of the word modes, which is like, kind of a physics term, a mode of vibration or a mode of resonance of, you know, the air moving as a waveform in the room.

And these things all combine and you get this sort of dense, almost noise like response, but built into that response. There are resonances that do happen at musical notes.

[00:15:11] Dmitri: Hmm.

[00:15:11] Russell: So there's a technology called a modal reverb, and if you can look at a snapshot of the room in time or across time and identify these modes, then you can say, Hey, which ones are musical?

You can just turn those up or turn 'em down. Right. So the, the notes bloom in the space in temperance or it's a spooky sound. They get sucked into some sort of, you know, nothingness, which is kind of a weird

[00:15:42] Dmitri: meaning taking them away. Is that what you mean?

[00:15:44] Russell: Yeah, you, if you take away something.

Especially in music, to me it's almost, it would be really good for a horror film or something. Like, say you play a note, right? And the o and, and it sounds like it's in a huge space, but the only thing ringing out are the space between the notes, but not the actual, you know, musical sound of like, say I play a chord on a guitar into a big cathedral, normally you would have this thing coming back at you and it would have some information about that you put into that room.

It's reflecting information back to you. but what if it didn't? what if it just like took all that musical information and sucked it into a void and only fed you back the stuff?

[00:16:22] Dmitri: It's like

flattening out the overtones and the echoes and the,

[00:16:26] Russell: it's more than flattening. It's a void.

I

[00:16:28] Dmitri: removing them

[00:16:29] Russell: it's, yeah. It's like they're gone.

[00:16:31] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:16:31] Russell: it's a strange perceptual experience, especially when you hear it. Yeah. The other thing you could do is like, say you want to emphasize those notes instead, you know, the, prettier thing. you can play drums in this room, right?

And now that you can suck out different notes. The drums can sound kind of like a synth, right? They're pushing a synth, and then you can sequence that on top. So you, you could be playing a beat and be moving chords just with the reverb.

[00:16:57] Dmitri: Wow.

It's like this was, you built a, an equalizer for noise cancellation for selective noise cancellation.

[00:17:04] Russell: Kind of. I

mean, It's less of a utility and more of a creative tool. Right.

[00:17:09] Dmitri: Oh, that's cool.

[00:17:09] Russell: So it's, like I said before, it's, wow, I've never heard this before. What can we, so we make the tool and we give it to the artists, and inevitably someone out there does something that. We're like, I didn't know I could do that.

So we're hoping that, you know that's the case.

[00:17:26] Dmitri: Yeah. Yeah. People invent totally new things. Alright, we've gotta take a quick break. This has been really interesting. When we come back, I wanna talk to you a little bit about NAMM. We're in NAMM season, so I'll ask you about that when we come back.

Okay, we're back. Russell, that was so wild talking to you about kind of the intricacies of your work and how you think about building these tools and what they actually do because there's such a creative element. So sorry to go. So very practical now, but. we're both at NAMM right now. I'm sure you've been to a lot of NAMMs over the years.

The trade show and conference scene has been drastically shifting every year. I mean, even with globalization, of course, with the pandemic now, with the tariffs, with all the macro economic shifts in e-commerce and the shuttering of independent retailers and the rise of social media influencers, it feels like every year or two when you go to NAMM, it's almost like you're going to a whole different.

Conference. It's just, you don't know what to expect. what role does Nam play today in the, uh, the music and gear world for you?

[00:18:30] Russell: Uh, let's see. For us, I don't know, trade shows are always good to drive internal deadlines.

[00:18:36] Dmitri: Hey, great point.

Absolutely.

[00:18:38] Russell: Um, so yeah, there's that, um, community, I mean, it's, you know, I, there's a lot of people that, you know, I don't have time to fly around the world and see, and I.

You know, my, my WhatsApp or whatever blows up and says, Hey, you're gonna be at NAMM. You're gonna be at Nam. Let's grab lunch, let's grab dinner. I think, honestly, those are the two biggest things for me. People come to our booth, we chat, we talk to our, um, you know, our partners in manufacturing will come over, fly over and meet us in California.

And we have, you know, it's great to. You know, as digital as we are, there's just something about it having an embodied experience and being in the same room with people and sharing a meal.

[00:19:16] Dmitri: yeah,

[00:19:16] Russell: that's what NAMM is for us.

[00:19:18] Dmitri: I love it. That's great.

[00:19:19] Russell: Yeah.

[00:19:20] Dmitri: it's great to hear so many people are thinking about the ROI on the expense of trip or exhibiting and.

All that kind of stuff. And there's almost like, it kind of reminds me of what we were talking about before the break in terms of sound. There's these other notes that are important in business. It's not necessarily what's been written on paper, what's been composed, but like your, it's the resonance of your business, you know?

[00:19:41] Russell: Yeah. I mean, there's that, I mean, what do we do? We make, tools and, toys for creative people and, there's a people element and listen, I'm a. I'm a numbers guy. I love to measure things, but I have to have a healthy relationship with uncertainty.

[00:19:53] Dmitri: Oh, wow.

[00:19:54] Russell: So

[00:19:54] Dmitri: that's good. That's good.

[00:19:55] Russell: Yeah.

[00:19:55] Dmitri: Coming from you with your fancy engineering degrees. I love to hear that.

[00:20:00] Russell: You can't control everything, but

[00:20:01] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:20:01] Russell: You could show up.

Yeah. Like,

[00:20:04] Dmitri: I love it. what are good reasons to come to NAMM and what are reasons that are sure to fail?

[00:20:08] Russell: I don't know about the failure. good reasons to come to NAMM.

I guess it depends on your perspective. I mean, we're an established company, right? So like I said, it's the community, it's the networking, it's the relationships.

 if I was doing a startup in the music industry, I think would be very tough. people do it.

The, you know, I don't know if NAMM is gonna have it this year. They used to have this basement and I used to love going down there. 'cause you, you could see like all the like certain things in their infancy. Right. And probably 90% of them failed. But I don't know, it's like, it wasn't worth doing.

I mean,

[00:20:41] Dmitri: it's push pushes the industry forward to see what, what if.

[00:20:45] Russell: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. If it wasn't for Eventide and standing on the shoulders of giants, like I could easily, I see myself in all those folks' shoes. Yeah.

[00:20:54] Dmitri: Yeah, that's cool.

[00:20:55] Russell: 

[00:20:55] Dmitri: we're doing an Innovators hub at Rock Paper Scissors this year.

Booth 1 0 6 0 7 in Hall A. And the whole idea is we've got eight different companies that are kind of, they're not the biggest companies, but they have really interesting, innovative products. Everything from the MyTracks by Blipblox.

[00:21:10] Russell: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:11] Dmitri: The company that does the only child's safety rated for children synths to, we Are Rewind, has a.

A cassette boombox with Bluetooth that doubles as an amp. you know, new brand new instruments as well. some software too, but like that's so, trash talk, which turns old school analog telephones into microphones. I dunno if you've seen that yet. But you're holding like a

[00:21:32] Russell: That's fun.

[00:21:33] Dmitri: Vintage.

That's fun. Yeah. Yeah. So there's some, some cool stuff. So we'll bring the basement up to the main floor this year. Bring up,

[00:21:38] Russell: yeah. I've played with, uh, one of the engineers at work last week brought in a Blipblox that he bought for his, uh, his. Toddler.

[00:21:44] Dmitri: Yeah. Cool.

[00:21:46] Russell: Yeah, it was fun. That's awesome.

[00:21:47] Dmitri: Yeah, they're super fun. Easy to get started with too. Russell, in the wider music industry, there's a lot of talk about AI competing with musicians and how this will transform the economics of music. How do you view AI's impact on your world?

[00:22:01] Russell: This is, this is a tough question. it's hard, you know, 'cause for me, I took machine learning classes and, you know, I've been doing this long enough to, now I'm out of date, obviously. Right. And, and. When people say ai, my engineer brain kind of knows what they're talking about. They're talking about some system based on neural networks.

And, uh, I, I, I know how those work. we use them, here and there and, but it's such a big term, you know, are we talking about chatbots, which are large language models or the, you know, or the music variation there of, I do think for musicians, it, it's so.

 I dunno, I hesitate to be a prophet. This, we're, I'm, I'm not, we're not that kind of company, right. I we're not, we're not big. We're not, I have no clue.

I think that there's fear and I think that there's opportunity. And I said this in another podcast recently too, and it stuck with me, and I'm gonna say it again. One of our partner companies and, and the guy who used to be my, signal processing boss, at Eventide started his own company called Newfangled Audio.

And he said something to me, I don't know, a couple years ago, he goes, I think fear and creativity are opposites. It's impossible to be creative when you're afraid. And that's what I think about when it comes to ai. There are things to be afraid of. You know, some of these things are very powerful and can make things that sound like whole songs.

 but I don't think we should stop being creative. Right. I think it's gonna change us, but who knows where it's going? I mean, it could just be like anything. it could be hype. I just don't know. It, it is very powerful. I, I've seen, you know, you play with Suno and you're like, okay, well this is, there's something here.

I think about it a lot. You know, like someone could take our effects train a whole model on it, right? I mean, it, it is an incredibly wasteful way to do some of the sounds we can do, right? 'cause it's like, all right, we're gonna train a model. And I know that they're using thousands of times more computations than I would use to do the same sound.

[00:23:47] Dmitri: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:47] Russell: Right? And so there's that kind of side where it's like, oh, they. How much water are they using? How much electricity are they using?

[00:23:53] Dmitri: Yeah,

[00:23:55] Russell: I, I have, but you know, you have no control, like I said, so it's, it's uncertainty.

[00:23:59] Dmitri: Yeah. It's interesting what you said about fear and creativity. because in a way you're saying, you, you could be saying that the damage done by AI as it relates to music is how much fear it creates, reduces the creativity.

Not that the AI reduces the creativity, not the AI reduces the. Incentive to do it because somebody else is gonna be copying or replicating what you've done. But that the fear that the AI creates reduces your personal

[00:24:24] Russell: Yes.

I, I think that's really more what it is. I mean, we're the product of hundreds of thousands, millions of years of evolution.

We, I mean we, you know, we're intelligent animals, right? We like, just because we made a machine that can mimic us doesn't mean that we shouldn't. Be us. Right? Like it's, it's almost like flattery. Cool. We're getting close, but still not us. So,

[00:24:46] Dmitri: Yeah. So outside of ai, what are some of the biggest trends and themes you're watching in 2026 impacting your work in the work at Eventide?

[00:24:55] Russell: Uh, workflow, the way people interact with musical devices, you know? I love playing with synths and seeing how people are, and, even stuff that gets into the DJ world, seeing how I, you know, music and electronics, you know, I love like turning a knob, like something playable, something expressive, right?

So that type of stuff I like to think about a lot. Like when you're making something physical,

[00:25:16] Dmitri: are there trends emerging in that, that, you keep an eye on?

[00:25:19] Russell: Yeah,

I think it's always, it's little steps. It's like, what can we gain? Like there's, there's miniaturization trends, right?

[00:25:26] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:25:26] Russell: Like how can I, you know, I have this

I just got this device from Santa called the Teenage Engineering, OPXY.

[00:25:31] Dmitri: Oh yeah.

[00:25:31] Russell: And that was how I spent my Christmas break, because we had a quiet one here at home. And I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a piece of music on this thing. And it's like a tiny daw. I'm gonna take it on the, you know, I'm gonna, I, I take it on the plane.

I'm, you know, fly home with it from NAMM and play it, you know, so there's definitely sort of an idea of like taking music and having it be anywhere with you. Right? Everything has USB audio. You can make quality music in a lot of places now. So there's, there's that. I think there are ways that help people with theory that are happening.

'cause music theory is, you know, You know, people go to school for this, right? But if you see, I've seen plugins now that are like, hey, chordify, like, you know, just here's ways to think of things that, what, if you have this chord, what should you play next? What should you play next? Right? And then, you know, let people experiment with songwriting that way, which, is nice.

I, I see that kind of, hey, music theory as part of the product. Product is education, you know, that type of thing. I see the, yeah.

Which I think is great.

[00:26:26] Dmitri: It's interesting what you said about the miniaturization, 'cause I was literally gonna mention teenage engineering when you it before you mentioned it to say, one of their co-founders, vp David Möllerstedt was on the podcast probably close to five years ago.

And when I was talking to him about the origins of the company, he specifically said that the. Creation of cell phones, smartphones, and video game consoles brought the size of components down and the price of those components down to the point where that was, is sort of the origin of teenage engineering, like making these small pieces, partly because there's so many pieces to work with.

The Legos got small enough that you could start to build instruments and interfaces, physical interfaces that. Were smaller and then you know, like I love what you're talking about. Not only like you mentioned the chordify too, just sort of like the evolution of how you even think about music making as the interface, whether it's a plugin or or a physical instrument.

As the interface shifts, it has this kind of ecosystem impact on. What the tools are to work with that changes what the possible music, like. Just the fact that you could make music on an airplane or at a park instead of in a studio could transform, like what's happening in your mind and what the influences are, but also even the size, the, the ratio of the size of the knobs to your fingers could also change.

You could spin those, knobs a lot faster, a lot further, or, those kind of things. Pretty interesting to talk about.

[00:27:52] Russell: Yeah, they're right. I mean, it, it is sort of, you know, we're the, we're a pretty niche industry. You know, we're not, we do it so we can keep doing it. Most of us, everyone, I know that's, that's what's going on at NAMM that like, why are we doing it just so we can keep doing it?

'cause we love it. Right. Uh, you know, there's not, you are not gonna hear a lot of talk about, you know, like finance or profit, right? Like, it's just like you need it to keep doing it. But we are like, you know, they're right. Like they're these huge industries, cell phones, automotive, you know, now data centers and stuff, right?

And they're kicking off all, they're making all these parts. And so we usually get, the stuff maybe a couple years after, like the, cutting edge thing. The super, you know, you gotta buy millions to even get in line. you gotta put money down for millions. And so that's not us.

So we wait, we wait a little bit and then something gets powerful enough for that. We can buy thousands or 10 thousands of it, right. Or something. Right. and then we get it. And then, then we can make our little toys.

[00:28:49] Dmitri: So give us a couple more years and we can tune the room with augmented reality glasses.

[00:28:53] Russell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The, the price of that kind of stuff will come down and they won't cost you $3,000 for the consumer and stuff. Yeah,

[00:29:01] Dmitri: yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Russell, this has been super fun to have this chat. I'm curious, before we go, do you have any shout outs for, any innovation in general or at NAMM before we wrap up?

 any companies or things we should go see at NAMM or, maybe not at NAMM? Maybe it's just, anything else that you've, been playing with or got a demo of that we should check out?

[00:29:19] Russell: It's a good question. I've been so busy working on Eventide stuff that I was going, you know, I'm going to

go walk around a nam and then

[00:29:26] Dmitri: find the goods.

[00:29:27] Russell: Lemme, lemme

walk around

[00:29:28] Dmitri: Okay.

[00:29:29] Russell: And see

what,

and come back with it.

[00:29:30] Dmitri: I'll come track you down in a day or two and we'll see what you came up with.

[00:29:33] Russell: See what I come, yeah. See what I, yeah. See what I find.

[00:29:36] Dmitri: Awesome. Russell, this has been a blast. Thanks so much for taking the time. look forward to seeing you around at NAMM and, seeing what you do now as president and CTO at Eventide.

 can't wait to see what comes next. Great talking to you. Great talking to you. Thanks.

Let us know what you think! Tweet @MusicTectonics, find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or connect with podcast host Dmitri Vietze on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.