Meet Fieldtone: Crafting Audio Capture Devices For the Endlessly Curious
Danny Turner · 10/20/26
Hugh Jones grew up in punk bands before moving into electronic music, using Ableton Live and Max/MSP. And yet, when off-the-shelf controllers felt limiting, he began hacking game controllers and building his own electronic instruments for animating and interpreting environments through sound.
Through his UK-based company Fieldtone, he created a range of hand-built electronic instruments that treat listening as the main creative act. Described as tools for "sonic archaeology," the instruments invite you to take music out of the studio and point it at the world around you.
The Weaver is the clearest expression of Fieldtone’s ideology: a handheld, single-knob sampler with a fixed two-second window, no undo, and no going back. In addition, the company has created a Eurorack sibling, the Weaver Modular, and the Box of Uncertainty, which offers deeper, more volatile sample manipulation.
To Fieldtone’s surprise, producer Andrew Huang named the Weaver his favorite desktop FX module of 2024. Since then, demand has outstripped Jones’s spare-bedroom workshop, and we got the chance to ask him about the randomness and restraint of Fieldtone’s devices, and the sound that got away!
Interview
Hello Hugh, it’s great to talk to you. Prior to Fieldtone, you had a career as a musician and experimental composer. What can you tell us about how that eventually led you toward designing instruments?
I grew up playing in punk bands before starting to produce and perform electronic music as a solo endeavor. A combination of Ableton Live and Max/MSP software became my tool of choice for writing and performing, but I became a bit dissatisfied with the choice of hardware control that was available - particularly for live performance.
I felt limited by the varying combinations of knobs, keys, and sliders that off-the-shelf MIDI controllers offered and wanted a more unique approach to playing back and manipulating the sounds that I was creating. I started hacking USB game controllers and eventually built my own MIDI controllers to use on stage, instruments like The Eggiophone and The Concertronica.
Fieldtone describes its instruments as tools for “animating and interpreting environments through sound”. What does that idea mean to you in practical terms?
My own compositions have always been rooted in making new sound recordings and attempting to morph and expand them as far as possible using technology. I’m fascinated by what technology can allow us to do with acoustic sound (as opposed to synthesis). When I started designing the Fieldtone instruments, I imagined that they could be used for remixing the world around us while the user is still in the environment that they’re capturing, rather than having to capture a field recording and take it back to the studio before they can create something with it.
The Weaver - powered by the Seed3
You also describe the instruments as tools for “sonic archaeology”. Where did that concept come from, and what kinds of discoveries do you hope people make with them?
When we record a sound, we have captured a moment in an existing and evolving story - the location, the subject being recorded, the time of day, the weather, who else was present, and whom it “belongs” to. All these things combine to make something really potent before we even get started on the manipulation of the sound material. I would hope that our Weaver instrument encourages users to listen more and consider the sounds around us that they might want to feed into it.
As you suggest, field recordings and interaction with the physical world seem central to Fieldtone. What do you think musicians can gain by moving away from their screens and engaging directly with their environment?
When I started designing the Weaver handheld instrument, I wanted to build a tool that someone could take on a hike with them, alongside other objects like a map or compass - something that could be used to navigate the landscape through sound. That’s why it has a built-in microphone and headphone amp and can be powered by battery.
Chance and unpredictability appear fundamental to products such as the Weaver and your Box of Uncertainty device. Why is randomness so creatively important to you?
These ideas are fundamental to our approach. I feel that they open up a dialogue between the machine and the user in a way that isn’t quite the same with finite control over every parameter of a device. Lots of people have described the Weaver as being like an extra band member, something that they can duet with rather than just a tool to be utilized.
There’s also such limited control with the Weaver that the most impactful choice the user makes is deciding what to point the microphone at. I like that it puts the onus back on listening and deciding what it is that we fundamentally want to capture.
While randomness can be exciting, presumably the challenge is to ensure that users still feel they can form a relationship with the instrument. How do you balance those two aspects?
Randomness is at the heart of the Weaver in particular, but it still has its own character and recognizable sound, so while you don’t know exactly what it's going to throw at you, you do know the landscape that it produces.
Fieldtone devices won’t be for everyone - if you relish finite control over every parameter and like to tweak, then you’re probably not going to love the Weaver - and of course there are loads of amazing instruments out there with incredible power that allow for this. I’d like to think that we are offering something a bit different.
The Weaver reduces sampling to two seconds of sound, explored with, essentially, a single knob. What was behind your decision on what not to include?
I wanted minimal control on the interface, hence building the “record” function into the same knob that’s used for playback. A major part of the Weaver’s design was that it should be as accessible as possible - I want an 8-year-old as well as an 80-year-old with zero music tech experience to be able to point it at a sound source, turn the knob and immediately hear results.
Too much functionality can be a hindrance to accessibility, so it was very much a conscious choice to keep it limited - albeit at the expense of certain features that were considered and omitted. It was a tricky balance to land on.
Producer Andrew Huang named the original Weaver his favorite desktop FX device of 2024. What was it like to receive that recognition, particularly for such an unconventional instrument?
That was a crazy moment for me and it changed everything. I had no idea that he’d even tried one, let alone that it was going to be included in his end-of-year review. I started getting loads of emails and messages from people asking where they could get the Weaver as we had no stock available when his video went public.
I turned on pre-ordering and we had to grow up very quickly as a company to increase production levels – all of which takes place in the spare bedroom of my house, even now, although we are looking to move into our own space next year.
The Weaver Modular expands the original handheld concept considerably. What did the move into Eurorack allow you to explore that wasn't possible with the original product?
Most of the features that were added to the modular version, and indeed the move to the format itself, were due to the many requests that I received for it to happen. I didn’t own any modular and had never been part of that world until I started developing the Eurorack Weaver. So many people had requested it that it was a no-brainer. The problem now is that I’m fully indoctrinated into the modular fraternity - my own rack is steadily growing and the warnings are real. Be careful of falling down the rabbit hole!
The Box of Uncertainty takes a similarly immediate approach. What can you tell us about this product and how it aligns with Fieldtone’s principles?
The Box of Uncertainty takes more of a hybrid approach in terms of what we’ve spoken about already. It gives more precise control over parameters of sample playback, but as the name suggests, is very unpredictable. There is certainly the ability to learn how to master it in ways that are not possible with the Weaver, but it remains somewhat erratic and volatile in how it responds to the sounds that are fed to it.
The Box of Uncertainty
Your products encourage users to feed them everything from field recordings and household objects to acoustic instruments and synths. What's the most surprising or memorable sound you've personally put through a Fieldtone instrument?
Having spent so much time with these instruments, I start to hear sounds around me within the context of how they might sound if they were fed to the Weaver. One time, for example, I made the cardinal sin of not following my own advice and was up on the hills near where I live without my Weaver when I came across a metal gate with holes in it.
The wind was blowing through the holes and it was making this natural, choral-like drone that sounded totally magical and I was desperate to try it with our instruments. I went back up to the spot a few days later with my Weaver, but the wind direction wasn’t quite the same so, sadly, that was the most memorable sound that got away.
One thing that I would recommend to anyone who owns a Weaver is to try to send it as many different textures as possible within the two seconds of recording time. If you’re making vocal sounds, for example, include a short whistle, a click, a sung note, and a fraction of speech all within the two seconds, and the results can be really rewarding.
You mention using dead stock and refurbished components in some products. Is sustainability and reuse a major part of Fieldtone's philosophy or is it simply about cost cutting?
To be honest, it’s just something that grew out of the process rather than being a conscious decision. I’ve always had a collection of miscellaneous knob caps, most of them relics pilfered from broken bits of tech that I used on my early MIDI controller designs. It always made sense to utilize these first and I liked that not every instrument would be identical. This has become less prevalent as we’ve increased production, of course.
How do you currently see Fieldtone products fitting into the wider world of electronic musical instruments?
One of the things that I love about the world of electronic musical instruments is the community that exists around them. I took our instruments to the Machina Bristronica event last year where there were hundreds of small instrument companies like us making incredible, varied and innovative new devices.
It didn’t in any way feel like a competition to me, but a shared passion that can be elevated by collective success. I really relish that community feel around the modular and pedal communities.
The Weaver Modular - powered by the Patch Submodule
Your desktop and pedal products use the Daisy Seed platform, while your Eurorack designs use the Daisy Patch SM. At what point did you decide Daisy would become part of your product development process?
While I had previously used things like Arduino and Teensy for control devices, I’d never done any dedicated embedded audio, so it was all new territory to me when the initial designs for my instruments were coming together. I looked at the options out there and Daisy felt like a good fit. It was also quite fortuitously timed as Daisy was reasonably young at that moment too.
The fact that I could use different environments like Max and Pure Data for prototyping was an important draw to Daisy. It was also cheaper than some of the other options I was considering.
How much creative freedom has working with Daisy given you, compared with designing around more traditional hardware or embedded platforms?
I’m not at all savvy with the “under the hood” stuff in hardware and embedded audio. For me, the fact that Daisy brings all the processing power, audio converters, memory, and interface together so I can just focus on the creative functionality and user interface of my designs is totally amazing.
Do you think musicians increasingly want instruments that surprise them rather than simply giving them more control? And what has Fieldtone’s audience told you about that?
There is definitely space for this kind of approach. As I already mentioned, it won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but those who have taken to it really thrive off the spontaneity that Fieldtone products can bring to a creative workflow.
I love seeing how people use our instruments differently in their creative process, from being an improvising second band member to a “happy accidents” machine that just sits in front of their DAW screen waiting to inject a bit of new direction when it's needed.
Looking ahead, what areas of sound, interaction, or instrument design are you most interested in exploring next?
I’ve got two new instruments at varying stages of development. One is another sampler, albeit operating in a very different way to our existing instruments, and I’m getting very excited about our first non-sampler instrument - a synthesizer with a rather unusual interface!
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We hope you enjoyed learning about Fieldtone’s innovative musical instruments. For a deeper dive, visit their website.
