Through blackouts, bitter cold, Internet disruptions, and nightly attacks, Ukrainian DIY producers Tembra Modular persist. The two-person shop continues to run workshops and produce DIY kits and assembled modules. Blackouts can’t stop them: their production often takes place literally by candlelight. Here’s Kaximia to tell us the story of their modular synth resistance, and why you should be conscious in your choice of what hardware you use.
I’ve written about the DIY and synth scene in Ukraine before, most recently the active community meeting at the NU31 hackerspace in Kyiv. There are few people more vibrant than the two-person Tembra Modular team, Kaximia and Yehor, pictured below — Yehor, working on original hardware development, and Kaximia, a voice both for the brand and for teaching the world about modular techniques. They’ve been a beacon inside Ukraine and for the international modular scene.
NU31 is an essential gathering point, as well as home to all Tembra’s local, in-person workshops. “We’re very grateful to them for continuing their work despite the difficult situation around and for providing us with the space and tools,” Kaximia tells us. “It’s a wonderful place!”
Here’s a video tour including one of the Tembra workshops.
And Kaximia consistently demonstrates serious skill at explaining modular to experts and laypeople alike:
Kaximia wrote last week to let us know that they would be proceeding with workshops and — yes, they did make this happen despite another brutal weekend.
We have been without electricity, heating and water for a long time. The power comes on for a few hours at a time. The internet may also disappear at times. It’s very cold, and at night there are sudden attacks – missiles and Shahed drones.
Right now, for the third Saturday in a row, we are preparing and working in conditions that are barely survivable. Despite this, we continue to create, and this Saturday we will once again hold a soldering workshop for our oscillators.
It’s difficult to overstate how challenging that situation is under growing Russian attacks. Heat in Ukraine for many buildings is also now reliant on electricity. Water heating and water pumps fail. (Even the metro saw disruptions this week.) And relentless, escalating attacks on infrastructure with increasingly powerful weaponry have created a deteriorating situation across Ukraine, including in the capital. (And yes, these are absolutely war crimes.) Kyiv Independent has done some great reporting on this; here’s their latest from the weekend, updated yesterday:
Modules and workshops continue, for the “love of sound”
It’s not just about a piece of hardware. These events form a greater function, says Kaximia:
Still [despite the situation], we keep developing our Ukrainian brand @Tembra.modular. Our team consists of just two people – myself and the developer Yehor. We run workshops and create new modules based on our original designs. By the way, these modules are compact and high-quality, and amazingly, they remain affordable. Quite literally, we are developing them by candlelight.
For us, these workshops are not only about soldering or modules. They are about sharing knowledge, mutual support, and building a community that persists despite everything.
Our slogan is “Tembra Modular – the sound of love for sound.” What we do is justified only by love for sound, despite the circumstances.
At this point, I feel obligated to say that Kaximia’s live sets are fire.
Kaximia also has some food for thought about the gear you choose, and why it matters:
People buy dozens of modules and other equipment from different brands, but how many stop to think about who actually stands behind that brand? That is the real value. Conscious choice is not only about sound or functionality, but also about the values you support with your decision.
We work in the conditions of war. On a personal note: I was 17 when I entered university. Six months later, the pandemic began, and then the war followed. I didn’t even have time to truly live a normal life. Can you imagine people living in conditions like this?
At the same time, we continue to make modules – both DIY kits and fully assembled ones. They are compact and multifunctional, designed to be accessible for beginners and experienced users alike. I won’t promote them with marketing statements here; this is not the kind of product that needs to be loudly advertised. Those who understand quality will make their own conscious choice. Please simply consider the context in which we create these modules and run our workshops – this is a completely different reality.
So to users, I will say one thing: make conscious choices. I am not encouraging you to buy our product – our customers find us on their own, purchase, and remain satisfied.
We are grateful to everyone who is with us – those who come to the workshops, support us online and offline, learn, and create together with us. And as I like to say – a phrase that has become the slogan of our DIY kits, which we solder at workshops and which have already traveled to different corners of the world for self-assembly: Build it. Patch it. Play it.
Oh, and, well — I can directly encourage you to buy their products! Ha! I think we’re fortunate to get to know the people who make the gear we use. That’s an answer to the usual line about the gear not mattering to music — maybe so. But every time you use a device like this, you’re taking a solitary process and building a relationship with someone else, making an impact on their lives as they make an impact on your music. And actually, since not everyone can go to Ukraine, it’d be great to see people organize events like this closer to where you are. (I wrote about community sharing in challenging times for the Beirut Synthesizer Center, which also worked through its own electricity limitations. And I heard again and again that synths and community can be a way to deal with trauma.)
I’ll keep us posted with Tembra and everything going on in Kyiv. And if you do something with their gear, let us know! Here are a few reviews from around the interwebs of their phase-shifting wavetable LFO (including a good explanation of what phase-shifting modulation is about):
