Name: Livia Borzetti aka Key Clef
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: Producer, DJ, label founder at Ipnotica Erotica
Current release: Key Clef's Ipnotica Erotica EP is out via Ipnotica Erotica. She's celebrating the release with a party in Berlin on April 12th 2023. Click here for more information.
Recommendations: My first recommendation its a sequencer for modular system: Renè. I've used this module for 7 years and it still isn't boring me. It is a sequencer that moves on a Cartesian system so you can get two different rhythm lines from it with the same 1v/oct output which will however give different results on the two sequences with respect to the chosen settings.
Second recommendation: The Clavia Nord Rack 2, the best performing synth I have. This track was made mainly with the Clavia Nord Rack 2.

If you enjoyed this Key Clef interview and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.  

What was your first studio like?

For a long time I was a bedroom producer with a fast-growing accumulation of machines.

In Rome, I lived in this room on the sixth floor where I could see the sunrise and sunset, the moon and storms. I had placed my entire setup in front of the balcony door.

The fact that I had a very long view in front of me helped my thoughts so much. I made this cassette with the setup described above:




How and for what reasons has your set-up evolved over the years and what are currently some of the most important pieces of gear for you?

The Elektribe ER-1 and ESX were my first machines but at that time I just played, I recorded practically nothing, I only thought about practising to go and play at raves at the weekend.

Then I started using Ableton and only after that did I really begin to deepen my knowledge of instruments and audio synthesis. This guided me towards the timbres and functions I was aiming for.

Today the modular system is the centre of my workflow.

Some see instruments and equipment as far less important than actual creativity, others feel they go hand in hand. What's your take on that?

I think it depends on how you use the tools you have at your disposal.

Nowadays even just the computer gives us a way to be very creative, but without basic knowledge we can only move by trial and error. Sometimes new discoveries can result from this process, as we know. But in my opinion, acting with intention is one of the keys that creates a link to the result. One way of reaching this is to gain knowledge of your tool. This is what, in my opinion, makes it possible to realise an idea.

For 6 months I stayed in a studio in Berlin where I had a lot of extra equipment that had been left to me with from the renter of the place. I had already achieved my working technique and thanks to the technical knowledge it was easy for me to integrate everything else and learn how to use it in a short time.



A studio can be as minimal as a laptop with headphones and as expansive as a multi-room recording facility. Which studio situation do you personally prefer – and why?

I like to be at the centre of all the machines, like in a control cabin. Everything has to be in positions that can be reached without too much movement,  so that I can easily control several parameters simultaneously.

Here's a track I made in one take:



From traditional keyboards to microtonal ones, from re-configured instruments (like drums or guitars) to customised devices, what are your preferred controllers and interfaces? What role does the tactile element play in your production process?

The tactile part is fundamental for me. I use mostly hardware but not controllers. I conceive of my synthesisers as real instruments with their own timbre and workflow.

For example: I touch a knob to change a parameter knowing its increment in value like a guitarist touches a guitar string to change tonality.



In the light of picking your tools, how would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I think music, and art in general, always reflects society and its needs. It represents it at that particular historical moment. Traditionalist or not, trends always come back cyclically as it is now for the 90s, for better or worse. The cycle is so short that you can relive the same things in a new, completely decontextualised way.

So in the end for me one thing doesn't exclude the other, you can be innovative or original even by repurposing the past in a contemporary key. How far can a tradition be carried on in terms of time and generations? The same thing in a different context will take on a new form.

I honestly don't think much about it, I make music in a very spontaneous way with regards to my ideas about sounds and what I want to express emotionally. I rarely make music only functionally.

Most would regard recording tools like microphones and mixing desks as different in kind from instruments like keyboards, guitars, drums and samplers. Where do you stand on this?

Even in this case it depends on how you use them. For me, for example, the mixer and its routing play a key role creatively. I think of them as tools for shaping sound as in sound synthesis.



On this release I used a contact microphone to record my heartbeat and my voice

How would you describe the relationship between technology and creativity for your work? Using a recent piece as an example, how do you work with your production tools to achieve specific artistic results?

Usually humans are more inventive when they think they don't have many solutions. So for example I always think that accessibility is not synonymous with progress. “SOFFOCARE”, and “ESOTERIC FLOOR” are a clear examples of my workflow and my creative process.

These tracks were recorded live. The important part of this way of working, for me, is to link all the instruments together through modulations, triggers, etc., so that they have an interaction of functions and I can move a few parameters around to achieve a significant change, considering all my synths in one patch. Then I play my patch for a while to get familiar with and prepare for the structure of the track, and when I feel ready I start recording.

I think the secret to making music intentionally, i.e., knowing how to realise your idea, as I said before, is the combination of knowledge, consciousness and creativity.

Within a digital working environment, it is possible to compile huge archives of ideas for later use. Tell me a bit about your strategies of building such an archive and how you put these ideas and sketches to use.

I am not the best person for this. I find everything in my chaos but it is still chaos. I have several hard-disks, well organised into folders catalogued by year, with so many open projects and so many others completed and never sent out or even played by myself.

In the last couple of years I have been focusing much more on DJing and this has taught me to become more organised to make better use of my vinyl collection. Also using rekordbox has required me to meticulously organise my digital music collection in a definitive method with no future changes.

This new approach has taught me new methods of organisation. But I actually hate these things.

How do you retain an element of surprise for your own work – are there technologies which are particularly useful in this regard?

Actually there's this method I have developed over the years, where all the machines are in communication with each other interweaving modulations, always creates an incalculable element of surprise. Giving a kind of autonomy to the instrument on a communicative level, humanising it.

Of course, without the modular system this would not be possible in the same way.

Production tools can already suggest compositional ideas on their own. How much of your music is based on concepts and ideas you had before entering the studio, how much of it is triggered by equipment, software and apps?

Often I'll have an idea or I'll build a concept and at the very moment it enters my mind, it is instantly clear to me - my brain processes it technically and practically, to understand how to realise it. Suddenly the theoretical path in my head brings to light new factors that intertwine with the initial idea, triggering each other. It's a very exciting process for me.

Music can be also used as an emotional outlet, like free writing, and that is something I love. Sometimes I find myself crying of sadness or happiness while making music. At other times, to vent anger, I have received from music the emotional outlet I needed to feel better - I could scream at the top of my lungs.

In this case, one's own knowledge is used on an unconscious level, but precisely because of this, it plays a fundamental role, I think, together with the ability to surrender to the sound on an emotional level.

Have there been technologies which have profoundly changed or even questioned the way you make music?

The modular synthesiser has changed the way I think about sound production in general. In the end it's always about the approach.

Just think of the fact that in the modular synthesiser, you have to connect the various parts before you get an output sound. This includes in the process that there is a flow of thought before the action. As opposed to perhaps starting from a preset, i.e. a sound already set, and seeking inspiration from it.

To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. Do you feel as though technology can develop a form of creativity itself? Is there possibly a sense of co-authorship between yourself and your tools?

It can be, it always depends on how you use it. I’m quite worried about how the interaction between humans and technology progresses. This is mostly because we are not using technology to implement new possibilities, but to get things done easily. We start to lose skills of the past to interface ourselves with the needs and comforts of new technological approaches.

I don’t know if our direction its a real progress for our minds and our cognitive capabilities.

What tools/instruments do you feel could have a deeper impact on creativity but need to still be invented or developed?

I think we already have enough tools for a deeper and different impact on creativity. Music is everywhere, life is already something that in itself has a profound impact on creativity, we are always influenced by everything we absorb.

We focus on the tools to get a new mindset or to be triggered by them. But we ourselves are the most important tools that generate ideas. And the great thing is that there is never just one way to realise them.