Television and Film Composer Lester Barnes Crafts His Soundscapes with AJH Synth with Massive, Multi-Voice System

Known for his work for scoring animation and cartoons, award-winning composer appreciates the purity of sound and aesthetic functionality of his AJH System: "The sound is always there."

London, UK, 23 June, 2025 Trained as a classical musician and orchestral arranger, UK-based television and film composer Lester Barnes has had a love for synths from an early age. Now, as a Clio Award-winning and multi-Emmy nominated composer, he has become internationally recognised for his work on animations and cartoons. Since acquiring an original AJH Synth MiniMod system in 2014, Barnes has never looked back, and says it is still the first thing he reaches for when patching.

Barnes' multi-voice modular system is one of Europe's largest, with more than 48 channels of I/O and multiple active synth voices - including four AJH Synth voices consisting of (16) AJH MiniMod VCOs and adjacent filters, envelopes, VCAs and more. "I was always striving for an orchestral thing," he says. "I wanted my room to be polyphonic and multitimbral so the whole room is geared around as many voices as possible. As such, I can interact with it much like an orchestra and arrange things in a similar fashion." ​ ​

He recalls the first time he acquired an AJH Synth module and describes why they remain an integral part of his compositions: "First of all, there’s the purity of sound. When I plug it in, I just smile. With other modules, it seems like you have to work to get the result you want. I also love the tracking - you can leave several oscillators set up, come back several hours later, and they are still bang on in tune with no deviation."

Charting his course
Barnes got his big break in 1995, scoring a German children's show called Urmel, an animated series based on the books by author Max Kruse. "I had various monosynths around and was trying to get my head around writing commercial music while doing loads of other jobs," he recalls. Urmel was the first of many animated series he would land, and it was around this time that he began making deeper investments into his modular system.

After the Eurorack module renaissance, there was suddenly a plethora of modules and sonic flavors available on the market — and at a much lower cost than traditional 5U format synthesiser modules. "There was this explosion of Eurorack, but it was the wild west as well," he observes. "There were a lot of modules that sounded OK, but there were also some modules that didn't offer the precision or solid manufacturing protocol I expected. I wanted everything to be precise, and absolutely in tune. AJH ticked all the boxes."

Putting VCO tracking to the test
Recently, Barnes set all 12 of his AJH MiniMod VCOs to a single, tuned output to create a chord he could then modulate. "With one finger, I’d move the single output the next chord. The tracking is that good, that I could do anything with these voices, and I knew everything would be exactly where it needed to be." In the same patch, he also used the AJH Wave Swarm Animator module. "With animation, I am dealing with fragments that are cut and edited to the action on the screen."

He also routinely uses Contour Generators as his main envelope, as well as the Sonic XV and Transistor Ladder Filter. "I’ve got four of the Transistor Ladder Filters and two of the XVs. I love the mixer section in the Transistor Ladder Filter, since you can put three voices into it and it is really tolerant to levels. The bottom line is that you’re not striving for a sound with the AJH - the sound is always there."

Integrating workflow and aesthetics ​
Since 2014, Barnes has also appreciated the workflow, layout, and aesthetics of his AJH system: "The features are virtually unlimited with the amount of inputs, controls, and routing options you are given - it introduces a whole different world and makes it a lot more fun." He says the UI layout contributes to his creativity and makes things more intuitive: "There is a real, well thought out logic and conformity in layout that makes sense to me - where the jacks are, and where the knobs are positioned - so you know where everything is to be patched."

While much of his recent work has been anchored on cartoons and animations, Barnes remains versatile with a diversity of projects and mediums: "Currently, I’m working on a mystery film for a friend who works in Shanghai. It is a short-form, phone-sized television series involving traditional actors," he says. I’m also working through a UK-based cartoon series, which is now in production. Even though the animation work tends to be in fragments rather than a great big piece of music, I love it."

For more information on Lester Barnes, please visit https://lesterbarnes.com/.

 

About AJH Synth
AJH Synth is headed up by Allan J Hall, who has been involved with synths, electronics and music for several decades. He started by building a guitar fuzz box at the tender age of 12 and his interest in synthesisers and electronic music soon followed, fuelled by an unhealthy overexposure to early Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, Vangelis and Kitaro. For the last 15 years he has been building and modding synth systems both for himself and other electronic musicians, as well as spending some time as a semi-pro musician playing keyboards in several rock and tribute bands. Allan spent five years as a service technician repairing and modifying Moog, Arp, Korg, Roland and other analogue synthesisers along with some Pro Audio design work, previous to this he spent two years designing and building "boutique" valve (tube) guitar amplifiers. AJH Synth are based near Durham, in the northeast of England, where this small but enthusiastic bunch of synth heads now indulge their passion for all things modular.

Jeff Touzeau

Jeff Touzeau

Public Relations, Hummingbird Media, Inc.

 

 


 

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About AJH Synth

AJHSynth is headed up by Allan J Hall, who has been involved with synths, electronics and music for several decades. He started by building a guitar fuzz box at the tender age of 12 and his interest in synthesisers and electronic music soon followed, fuelled by an unhealthy overexposure to early Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, Vangelis and Kitaro. For the last 15 years he has been building and modding synth systems both for himself and other electronic musicians, as well as spending some time as a semi-pro musician playing keyboards in several rock and tribute bands. Allan spent five years as a service technician repairing and modifying Moog, Arp, Korg, Roland and other analogue synthesisers along with some Pro Audio design work, previous to this he spent two years designing and building "boutique" valve (tube) guitar amplifiers. AJHSynth are based near Durham, in the North East of England,, where this small but enthusiastic bunch of synth heads now indulge their passion for all things modular.

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