Open Hardware, DIY, 80s sonic aesthetics...

... and where they meet

Olivier Gillet

Outline

! History

! Choices

! Congruence

! Moving forward

History

2009

2009

2009

2009

2011

2012

200200

150

500+500+

2200+

Mutable Instruments in december 2012

! 4 products: monosynth, polysynth, monosynth+drum machine, MIDI processor

! Volumes comparable to some established manufacturers

! Organic growth, 100% bootstrapped business, financially in the green, with 0 marketing

Can be spotted in the wild!

Specificity 1

Specificity 2

Open source HW! Circuit analyses / simulations

! Schematics + PCB layout

! Bill of materials, cross-references for up to 4 suppliers

! Plexiglas enclosure design (laser cutting)

Open source code

! Open source firmware for all instruments (~80k LOC)

! Avril / Avril-X: C++ development frameworks for AVR microcontrollers

! AVR MIDI bootloader + tools

The Mutable in Mutable Instruments

Choices

Cursor 1Technological stack

Home/Hackerspace Factory

Cursor 2Toy vs Tool

Cursor 3What is sold?

Bag of parts 1 year of R&D+ Bag of parts

1 year of R&D+ Bag of parts

+ 1 hour of consulting

Cursor 4Which concessions to openness?

Proprietary at the architecture level,open tooling

Open architecture, but proprietary at the silicon level,

closed tooling

Congruence

DIY ♥ music

! Musicians are geeks

! “Solder your cables” = the gateway drug

! Self -expression. Uniqueness

! Workflow customization

DIY ♥ 80s! DIP microcontroller =

computing power of a 80s home computer

! Hackerspace-friendly tech = 80s high-end consumer electronics tech

! Most accessible DIY synth techniques = those used in early 80s product (digitally controlled analog, hybrid)

DIY ♥ 80s! “Survival of the

shortest”. Generative music/graphics trick from the 80s are relevant on low-cost embedded platforms

! Publication of programs as source code in zines = proto-open-source

Electronic music ♥ 80s

! Analog synthesis as a mature tech

! The point after which synths became boring

! British synth-pop, then birth of techno

Electronic music ♥ 80s

DIY in 2012 sends us back to the golden

age of synths

What’s next

Things the 80s got wrong

! Software quality... Thanks C++!

! Discipline

! Zero-cost abstractions

! Idioms and patterns useful for embedded

! AI

Intelligence in 16k of SRAM

! Complicated stuff is offline anyway!

! Boosting

! Bloom filters/maps

! “Lossy computing”

! ... Coming soon in new MI products!

Not a Dogma

If it can make great sounds but requires modern tech...... MI will still build it, with modern tech

Stumbling blocks

! Open source business ! transparent

! Cultural clash between old-school industries and DIY/maker movement

vs

Questions?

mutable-instruments.net

Cursor 5 / Curse #3379

Education Hardcore openness

(I’m not the only one... )

! x0xb0x: Open-source (but clone of existing design)

! MIDIbox: Platform for designing controllers+several synth projects (but not open-source)

! Many modular DIY projects (not open-source)

! Meeblip, PreenFM, Rockit, LushOne (open-source)