Feeling Analogue
Eliot Bates · 2023
When Harald Bode nominally invented the modular synthesizer in 1958, it was not yet clear whether it was a musical instrument or a less-defined form of studio-sited audio technology. Much of the technology, from the interface design to the specific parts, was shared with equipment considered at the time to be technical but not essentially musical. Sixty years later, hardware modular synthesis is used not just for musical creation but for noise, sound art, foley, and data sonification/visualization. Through a study of the design and use of the Eurorack modular synthesis format, I will investigate questions concerning both the ontology of ‘the musical instrument’ and the way we conceive of the building blocks of ‘musical sound’. While Western music theory assumes that music&s;s smallest building blocks are pitches with measurable loudness and duration, occasionally accompanied by an amorphous ‘timbre’ attribute, this conceptualization unravels when considering modular synthesizer-created music. The most distinctive so-called ‘timbral’ features result from operations involving rhythmic timings ranging from submillisecond microtimings to several hour-long durations, while rhythmic effects or perceived pitches can be a byproduct of strategically combined nonpitched ‘timbres’. Instead, I propose a framework for understanding what is distinctive about modular synthesis that attends to three phenomena: the design (topological, aesthetic, interfacial) of modules, the user&s;s kinesthetic and sensory experience of module interfaces and the kinds of operations users are expected to be able to do by using the module interfaces. This framework has additional benefits of moving beyond the flawed ‘analogue’ versus ‘digital’ distinction and exploring important underexamined aspects of musical digitization. Extending recent work in critical organology, I analyze the social lives of synthesizer modules in relation to their user communities. Rather than imposing a top-down taxonomic modular synthesis definition in the mode of Hornbostel–Sachs or its extensions, I derive taxonomic and ontological features from a grounded theory study conducted with modular synthesizer participants (makers, users, and social media ‘influencers’) based in the US and Europe, supplemented with discourse analysis of modular synthesizer discussion happening at trade shows and online at modular synthesizer message forums. Through using this framework, I will show that the ‘analogue feel’ of modular synthesis, in addition to resulting from a broader history of technological interface development, is constitutive both of the technologies and of the social lives of synthesizer users/designers.