A new look at old tech
With their monolithic facades of cables and controls, modular synthesisers – both hard and soft – can look intimidating to the uninitiated. Even a modest system might contain a dozen or more modules, each one a unique device in its own right and sporting a very particular arrangement of jacks, knobs, and switches. What does one do with them all? And how on Earth do you decide how to connect all those many cables? Surely only the most educated and experienced can achieve anything recognisably musical on the things!
In actuality, it's not hard to get going, but it helps to understand the origins of modular synthesisers, simultaneously but independently developed by American inventors Dr Robert Moog and Donald Buchla.
Before Moog and Buchla, most electronic music was made with primitive electronic test equipment built for the laboratory. Electronic signal generators spat out test tones – simple sine, square, and triangle waves. In order to make anything musical with such a device, the composer would dial in the desired pitch and record the signal onto a bit of tape. The next desired note would then be dialled in and recorded onto another bit of tape, which would be cut and spliced to the first. This tedious process was repeated to create complete musical passages. Along the way, you might tweak the amplitude, use a tone control to alter the spectrum, or use multiple signal generators to add a bit of modulation or alter the timbre.
East vs West
Bob Moog – a builder of amplifiers and Theremins – came up with the idea of using a standardised voltage range to control the pitch of a signal generator, allowing it to be controlled by an organ-style keyboard. Moog also incorporated transistors (a new technology at the time) as the basis for a 4-pole resonant filter.
Alongside musician Herbert Deutsch, Moog began working on his voltage-controlled subtractive synthesiser designs, which would be presented to the public at the AES convention in New York, in 1964.
On the other side of North America, Donald Buchla had been commissioned to build an electronic music instrument for the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Unlike Moog, Buchla was not at all interested in building an instrument to produce traditional music such as could be played from a keyboard. Instead, he wanted to reduce the tedium of splicing tape, a feat he managed by means of a voltage sequencer, a prominent feature in the instrument he delivered to the Tape Center.
While Moog's system was designed to appeal to traditional players, Buchla's system – with exotically-named functions and an esoteric approach – appealed more to experimental, avant-garde composers.
As different as they were, they had much in common. For example, both were comprised of diverse, discreet ‘modules', each fulfilling one or more functions, and both relied upon patch cables to interconnect said modules and functions to form the signal path.
Eurorack attack
As more manufacturers joined in, other methods of interconnection were employed. ARP's 2500 used a slider-based matrix, while EMS employed a 16x16 grid into which pins were inserted to connect one bit to another. However, the patch cord prevailed, and when modular systems began to reappear in the 1990s, patch cables were the de rigueur method of shuttling signals to and fro, not least because they were the approach chosen by Dieter Doepfer when he unleashed his tiny A-100 system in 1995.
Doepfer's combination of Eurorack modules and 3.5mm jacks and connectors have become the most widely adopted modular format, with thousands of modules on offer from multiple manufacturers worldwide. Not too shabby, given that there were a mere ten modules available when the system was first issued!
Voltage Modular Nucleus follows the Eurorack aesthetic and, as such, it uses patch cables to connect between its available modules. Like Dr. Moog's system, it's easy to ‘play' the instrument in a traditional manner, but Buchla fans will find that it's more than capable of producing unusual, experimental music as well. Though most analogue synthesisers are subtractive in nature, there's no rule stating that you must build your modular system to reflect this common ideal.
“Buchla’s system appealed more to experimental, avantgarde composers”