p r i n s y n t h

prinsynth is a diy modular synthesizer

the rather nebulous idea behind it is to make something:
beautiful, inspiring, queer, kind of punk

...and to wander a lot in the process, exploring what i find interesting.

pretty much all the rest of the choices follow from that.

prinsynth doesn't (and probably won't) have any super unique components or circuits, and possibly that's because i'm not particularly good at circuit design (and am unlikely to be developing wholly new circuits - i more sort of "remix" existing ones, based on the many available schematics around the web)

...so i spend a lot of time thinking about what things should look like and how control elements should be placed and how they should interact; i'm interested in how interface changes the quality or type of experience an artist has when playing a synth, and then on what sound or music happens as a result.

ultimately, i'd like to make little systems - skiffs or something - and give them away to my queer folx, but still a ways off from that...

a queer punk synthesizer?

punk in the sense of diy, community, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist. queer as in deviating from cis-hetero-normativity and neurotypicality.

so, i've been reading analogtara / Tara Rodgers' dissertation, and she talks about how the ideas and metaphors we all use to talk about sound - including synthesis and synthesizers - are part of, and descended from, a colonialist culture that centers white men.

something probably similar is true of design, including in synthesizer panels and interfaces; most seem descended from sort of military-industrial "stuff": interfaces tend to evoke power plant control rooms, aerospace cockpits, science research or test equipment, early computers (there are certainly exceptions, but they are exceptions).

prinsynth is a try at making something that is ... not-that... something small but sparkling... that wanders off on its own, like a tiny errant satellite that has somehow managed to slip away from the orbital plane that everything else seems to go round in circles on.

that's very lofty goals. not sure it succeeds or will succeed, but that is the intention.

random stuff

this section/document is wip, and is just a braindump at the moment... so its kind of unstructured mess

one thing i do sort of wonder about, and have been thinking about a lot lately is about intentional obfuscation as a design principle. and by this i mean intentionally not labeling things, or putting interface bits in weird places, or labeling things with strange symbols

obfuscation

the existing prinsynth modules are sort of an example of the former - the elements while not gridded are sensibly positioned (or so i think anyway?) but nothing was labeled. there's a bit of it also going on in the serge paperface, where there is labeling but there are also a set of polygons that make up some of the design language.

ciat lombarde instruments sit in this someplace as well, where few things are labeled, nothing is labeled with text, and placement is not gridded but seems semi-sensible(?)

maybe not quite to the same extent, but make noise strega feels like another example, which has some text and labels both, but which also feels intentionally obfuscate.

czochralski cells are an example of "putting interface bits in weird places and labeling things with strange symbols"

admittedly how one chooses to structure a panel and how one chooses to annotate or label are different things, but you can obfuscate by messing about with either or both.

for prinsynth, i mostly think about: do i want to make something that is sort of intentionally obfuscate in some way because i think that will lead to a more exploratory use, and/or because making it ‘intentionally more difficult’ will somehow force myself to learn how to use it more fully?

or is that just annoying and needlessly complicated.

i know i don’t want things to be actually irritating to use, for example, the clock module (a variation of the fox one (linkie) can be self-patched for shuffle, by patching a divded output into the fine input, but the way i've laid out the panel, it would require the patch cable to go over the control knob, which is silly. (this is just one of the changes i want to make to this module, there's some added functionality and a bunch of other things i can incorporate that i've learned since making it) - note the panel for the clock module was also the first one where i tried doing some labeling text (way too small). but anyway, i know i want to avoid these sorts of irritations.

the dual oscillators are an interesting case where the slikscreen layer graphics - dahlias i think - are so prominent that they completely obscure the mask elements, which is what denotes relationship and flow between the panel components, and it is actually a bit busy, although i have no difficulty remembering what controls what (i built it, so unsurprising)

but i'm not sure i've yet found a comfortable inhabitable space in terms of design yet.

control elements

there are design elements i am entirely pleased with, or at least pleased with the direction they are heading. the use of color in the banana jacks, esp. once i started dying them myself (they can be dyed - something that loudest warning kindly shared when i asked over instagram how they got pink jacks - with rit dyemore or anything that will dye nylon. or at least the johnson-cinch ones can be dyed; there are new ones i just got that i've yet to try.

i also really like the jewel tone knobs, which came from either sweden knobs or knob knobs with the white indicator lines; as long as the synth is in reasonable lighting, i can see the placement of the knobs by looking at them, although not as well as i can see the position of sliders.

however, with the davies clone knobs, it is not as possible to tell where they are set by feel, vs a sifam. like for example i can feel the indicator line, like i can catch it with a fingernail, but its not as immediately obvious as a sifam, like something you'd find on a mutable, nor is it as obvious to both sight and touch as slider position. i've in the past mostly avoided sliders because of their short throw in eurorack (and their even shorter throw in roland boutiques, where i find them basically unusable), but then i got an arp 2600 clone (sigh the B one, yes, i'm sorry. it was used at least...), and the sliders in it are fantastic. they feel long enough, and you can tell by looking at them where they are from a distance. also when capped, some of the aesthetic of them is really good (see the intellijel cascadia and some of the original arp 2600) - so i've been trying to more explore sliders; i used them for the first time in a slew limiter, where i also experimented with text, and new graphic elements (result: did not like this font at all)

i used LED sliders, but i'm not sure i'll actually continue that; the slider position itself provides feedback as to its value so you don't need that. you could light them with a constant led for darkness but it wouldn't really provide much additional information. in the revision i ended up designing them so that the led on the slider showed the actual cv that was going into the slew limiter core, which is the slider position + the cv input(s), but that's also a bit confusing, and so i might just default to non led-sliders (altho they can be used to great effect - they're fantastic in the oam uncertainty). also i'm not a fan of the stock colors available on the led slider pots, which means i'd have to get them, then swap the LED out on them, which really feels like too much work - much more likely i will just cap them and then have panel LED when i feel like i need them. i would love to be able to cap them in jewel tones, in the same way i can get sweden knobs in jewel tones, but it seems unlikely, at least at the moment, and i'm not quite ready to cast my own out of resin or something.

some downsides of sliders: they don't form an attachment point to the front panels; you can kind of use pots for this (and in eurorack, you can use minijacks as well). so this is going to require a more secure means of attaching front panels, which is probably going to be small screws.

for instruments that generate sound, modular synthesizers (ok, not the video ones i mean), certainly seem to require a lot of visual accuity; you can't tell by feel on eurorack modules which jacks are inputs and which are outputs; you'd have to learn it and remember, and i think it would be nice to be able to tell by feel. for prinsynth i think it would be fairly easy in i think the most unambiguous way would be to sandwich a washer between the bananajack and the panel front for all the outputs. it could be a plain washer, or it could be something a bit more decorative, like it could be anodized aluminum or titanium (reminder to self: figure out if i could get a bunch of thin titanium washers to anodize)

there's going to be more about feminist design, and queerness

(wip)

what make a synth feminist? or queer, or trans? something different than just like, putting a pride or trans flag on the panel...

fonts: am totally flailing here. tried a sans, didn't like it. trying something i've made by cut and pasting raster letters from old botanical texts. that looks a bit better to me, but one thing i dislike is how baked into old science patriarchy and white supremacy are, and so i'm not keen to reference those aspects. i think i will try the Louise typeface next, by Ange Degheest (https://velvetyne.fr/degheest/louise.html). analogtara (tara rodgers) talks about this in her thesis (https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/v692t661k) with respect to the history of electronic music - there's a lot more i'm in the process of learning/exploring there