Tomer Baruch is an electronic musician from Tel Aviv who started the viral Instagram account, Animals and Synthesizers.
The account houses incredible short clips of glimpses into the natural world, set to synth soundscapes Tomer creates. His record, Synthesized Sound of the Sea is out now. Highly suggest checking out his account and the album.
Synth History: What inspired you to create Animals and Synthesizers? Did you expect the account to reach such a wide audience?
Tomer: I was inspired by weird animal videos on Instagram. I was following Natgeo and other animal-content accounts and they were posting such crazy videos that I felt were missing a proper soundtrack so I just had to step in. I definitely didn't expect it to be this popular but I guess scale on the internet is just generally incomprehensible and random.
Synth History: What are some of the synths you used on Synthesized Sounds of the Sea?
Tomer: The couple I used the most were my Moog Sirin and Juno 106 (actually Juno HS60 which has the same board). I also used a Juno 60, Korg Monologue, Korg Volca Keys, Korg MS20, Yamaha CS-40M, Viscont UFO 61, Hammond Organ, and the Casio VL-Tone.
Synth History: You've said that inspirations for the album include pioneers of synth music such as Raymond Scott, Laurie Spiegel, Vangelis, Suzanne Cianni - and one of my favorites: Mort Garson and his album Mother Earth's Plantasia - the music on it composed specifically for plants to listen to. Do you think animals are empathetic when they listen to music from us humans?
Tomer: I don't really have a sound opinion on how music affects animals or plants, but I think that when we humans listen to music which is made for plants we also try to perceive it as if we're plants and it essentially changes our listening experience. I'm not expecting anyone to play my album to sharks or to dolphins but when I wrote the music I was trying to create music which is like an accompaniment for these creatures and I think that having a real-world context to instrumental electronic music really changes the way people perceive it because it adds another layer of emotion and background to music which is otherwise abstract.
References: Synth History Exclusive.