At the end of 2019 I decided that I wanted to start making music again. I had been a guitar player since I was young but hadn't really kept up with it. And as my music tastes have broadened and expanded away from the mainly guitar focused music that I had been making when I was a teenager and towards the strange and experimental, I wanted to dip my toes in and give it a try. So I bought a midi controller and started messing around with Ableton live.

Not long into messing around I discovered Modular synthesizers like these:

(this is my rack.)

This is a Eurorack Modular synthesizer. Eurorack is a modular synthesis format created by Doepfer Musikelektronic in 1996 and it has become the default format for modern modular synthesis. The TLDR of modular synths is that it is a synthesizer where each of the different parts of the synthesizer are broken out into individual modules with no predetermined signal path. It is up to the musician to string them together to make music.

I was sucked in by the wires and knobs and the beautiful / cacophonous music that would come out of them. The promise of being able to endlessly combine these 'modules' as they are called in new and interesting patterns spoke to me as a programmer. It reminded me of the way that programmer's today make combinations of code libraries to solve problems. Often times when you are building a library you can't always know what interesting things your users will do with your code. In the same vein modular synthesis, of which Eurorack is only a part, has the same potential for creativity.

Up to this point all of my music has contained some amount of my Eurorack system. In my next post I'll be going over my process with the modular in much greater and frankly Quite Nerdier detail. I'll go over the sorts of patches I make, my main modules as well as what my plans for the future are because as of right now things have settled some but changes are coming soon. -JP e