A long-overdue column! This one isn't particularly useful — it's more of a poetic essay. About enjoying modular synths.

How one approaches modular synths — or rather, making music in general — seems to be a deeply personal experience. For example...

"Modular synths? Buy this and this and this, connect them like this, and listen — it makes this sound. Isn't that fun? That's how you enjoy modular synths!"

...It's not really like that. Rather, I enjoy modular synths now because of this background, and then that happened, and then I discovered modular synths, and now I enjoy them in this particular way — it tends to be a story with context.

Me and Modular Synths#

Speaking about myself, Takazudo: I got into DTM (desktop music production) in high school, listening to techno music in chains of related artists, trying to make it myself, creating tracks over and over. This was interrupted after entering the workforce, but now at 42 years old (at the time of writing), I restarted DTM about 4 years ago. That's when I discovered modular synths through software, got curious, bought some, got completely hooked, and somehow started selling them too — which brings us to today.

Now, my thoughts about making music are completely different from both my high school DTM days and even 2-3 years ago. A major factor in this shift was starting to sell synths. When you sell, you need to explain, which inevitably leads to deeply exploring each module. Customers ask questions, and my answers inevitably reflect my personal background.

For example, if someone asks "What modules are good for making TB-303-like sounds?", I'd respond with what I've used, what's available, and what differences I've found.

For me, music was always a solitary pursuit of imitation and exploration. But through these interactions — seeing what customers buy next, accumulating these individual experiences — each one becomes a factor that changes my thinking and changes me. Also, being in the position of selling synths means directly communicating with the people who make them, which is also a valuable experience.

This approach to making music seems to be completely different for each person, even among the people I've met since starting to sell synths. Some started because they wanted to do live modular performances. Others add modular as an interactive element to their music production. Some enjoy cycling through various modules, trying and selling. Others enjoy building electronic circuits to create sound. And so on.

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity#

One frustration I had during my DTM days was not being able to make good tracks. But this is something I've now almost entirely moved past, and that's what I want to write about. Getting hooked on modular synths played a big role in this shift, but recently, after repeatedly reading a book by philosopher Richard Rorty called "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity," what was intuition became conviction.

• Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity | Amazon

I don't have any particular background in philosophy, but I got interested after watching NHK's 100 Minutes de Masterpieces program where this book was featured. While much of it is beyond my understanding, I've been listening to it repeatedly on Audible. Particularly Part 1, Chapter 2: "The Contingency of Selfhood". Each time I listen, I feel new discoveries about creativity.

Modular Synths Are Instruments#

For me, having done DTM: when I restarted 3-4 years ago, I thought "since I'm doing this, I might as well try sending demo tapes somewhere for release!" and kept sending mp3s to labels that seemed to match my music.

Looking back, I was quite proactive, but nothing got picked up anywhere. Meanwhile, I started playing with VCV Rack and found it incredibly interesting. I felt I couldn't really understand it without physical hardware, so I bought modular synths — and that's how it all started.

What hooked me about modular synths was the ability to control each parameter with knobs and CV. There are many details, but in short, I think this is the essential element. So if anyone is wondering how to think about modular synths, I'd say: Modular synths are things where you can tweak various parameters with knobs and CV. They're instruments. That's it.

Before discovering modular synths, I actually avoided analog hardware. Or rather, I kept buying things that didn't feel right and ended up focusing on software. Because software is overwhelmingly more powerful and flexible, and why would you pay so much for hardware? For example, Ableton Live's built-in soft synths are incredibly powerful and flexible, and you can assign anything to MIDI controllers. So why buy hardware? That was my thinking.

But when I tried modular synths, I thought: "Ah, I didn't understand anything." This "didn't understand" — I actually understood it intellectually. I knew what a sine wave sounds like, what FM modulation does, what happens with a low-pass filter, how an equalizer changes things. But all of that was completely disconnected from bodily experience — and modular synths made me realize that.

This discovery was unexpected. My day job is essentially programming, so my thinking leaned toward digital supremacy. But this modular synth discovery is similar to: you can draw with powerful software like Photoshop and do all sorts of things, but the feeling of drawing on paper with a pencil isn't there. Perhaps what I actually wanted was not to make tracks but to play music — that is, to play sounds connected to physical movement. This is the thought I developed.

Perhaps this feels particularly fresh precisely because I work in a digital environment. For example, the simple enjoyment of making blank panels or synth cases might be related to this element.

And that modular synths are instruments. This too was something I couldn't understand until I touched them. Physically, they're more apparatus than instruments — devices that generate sine waves, adjust, and process them. But when you add the design decisions of what controls to make available, what size knobs to put on the panel — it stops being apparatus and becomes an instrument. You start feeling these differences as you explore various modules.

This is fascinating, the combinations are nearly infinite, and just playing around is fun. What if I combine this with that and try this idea? This approach is essential for me. Dynamically exercising the combination of ideas and accumulation of experience — this became what making music means to me. So the goalpost of "making good tracks" had, at this point, completely shifted.

As an interim summary: if I have one thing to say to people interested in modular synths, it would be modular synths are meant to be played and explored, so just get what interests you and try it out. That's enough for now, isn't it? For first-time buyers, I'd recommend simple modules. Complex ones require energy to understand and master. Something like a simple oscillator and filter combination — see, turning this knob makes the pitch go wild, right? — that experience is what matters. You wouldn't typically go out of your way to enjoy doing that in a DAW, would you?

Philip Larkin's Poem#

Oh wait, what was I talking about? Right, Richard Rorty. I was saying I had a discovery from reading his work.

In "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity," Rorty introduces a Philip Larkin poem that he says perfectly serves his argument. He then provides an in-depth analysis:

And once you have walked the length of your mind, what You command is clear as a lading-list. Anything else must not, for you, be thought To exist. And what's the profit? Only that, in time, We half-identify the blind impress All our behavings bear, may trace it home. But to confess, On that green evening when our death begins, Just what it was, is hardly satisfying, Since it applied only to one man once, And that one dying. (p.53)

How does this read to you?

Among the unfamiliar terms here, "blind impress" could be understood as something like one's fate or personal history.

What I felt reading this poem was something like a question: What does creation mean for a creator?

Since we're talking about music, let's substitute poetry for music — what does this mean for a musician?

And once you have walked the length of your mind

This could mean: you know what genres you like, what aspects appeal to you, how to create those sounds, what structure makes your preferred songs — and you've explored all of this to its fullest.

You command is clear as a lading-list

Then it becomes as mundane as a shopping list:

• barley tea
• lettuce
• eggs

...you write it down and go buy exactly those things. Not much different.

Only that, in time, / We half-identify the blind impress / All our behavings bear, may trace it home.

What's the gain? Over time, you might be able to trace back and confirm the path you've taken.

But to confess, / On that green evening when our death begins, / Just what it was, is hardly satisfying

But when death comes, does any of that matter?

Since it applied only to one man once, / And that one dying.

It only has meaning once, for one person, and only for the one who's dying.

...That's how it reads.

This is a poem, a literary work. Its meaning beyond the text is up to the reader. Read in isolation, it might seem like pure nihilism — nothing matters? But Rorty writes: "What makes Larkin's poem interesting and forceful is that it recalls the tension between poetry and philosophy, that is, the tension between the effort to achieve self-creation through acknowledging contingency and the effort to achieve universality by transcending contingency."

The Strong Poet#

The details are explored at length in the book, and I'm only scratching the surface here. But this was the part that made me think: aha!

Takazudo, the person who was doing DTM and sending tracks to labels — suppose this person continued making tracks, exploring various approaches, and eventually became able to make the tracks they wanted. You could trace that personal history, but would you be satisfied facing death with just that? This kind of inner dialogue.

This example can be applied to many things. For instance, if your metric for "good work" is likes on X or YouTube, or if you have some vague goal and keep buying and selling gear while making music — what is the goal beyond that? It's everyone's personal freedom, and I'm not denying such creative pursuits. But combined with my own journey, I had this realization: Oh, right — it's not about the results; enjoying the act of playing the instrument itself IS straightforwardly making music, isn't it?

Rorty also writes the following in his analysis of the poem:

But what is in question is not simply the fear of not being remembered. Rather, it is the fear that one might end up being nothing more than a copy or replica—what Harold Bloom calls "the anxiety of influence which afflicts the strong poet," the strong poet's fear of discovering that he is merely a copy or replica. (p.55)

If you start making music, you'll likely begin with something resembling imitation. With high probability. But as you continue being a musician, you might keep questioning whether this imitative approach is worthwhile. Yet as long as you remain a musician, you continue making music while carrying that anxiety. This is what "the strong poet" means here.

Reading Larkin's poem again with this perspective is quite interesting. When death comes, did any of it matter? Even so, continuing to be a poet is what a poet does.

Rorty's prescription for this problem: "Become a philosopher!"

Only by finding continuity rather than insisting on discontinuity can one find peace. (p.56)

The fact that I create according to my own sensibilities now is contingent on the environment I was born into and lived through. Rather than trying to escape this prison of random contingency, embrace the contingency instead.

This word contingency is one of the major themes of the book, and it seems quite applicable to modular synths. Modular synths have an aspect of being contingency-control instruments. But in terms of contingency, one's current preferences are themselves a product of contingency. Somewhere between that randomness and the desire for universality — that might be what creation is. That's how I understood it.

Speaking of contingency — you know how some music becomes a massive hit, and when you dig into what makes it so great, it turns out to be something that builds on what came before? Among many things that sound like copies, something captures the spirit of the times and fills just the right gap... I feel like that's what's being described here.

What you create and how others perceive it is beyond your control — you can only leave it to others' judgment. However, what gets praised may be something that makes people feel it exists within some larger continuity of the era... perhaps.