Eurorack Knob Idea

Another common pattern is jack + offset. The most useful is when you have jack + offset + attenuator… but most modules pick one or the other for space reasons.

the smartest pattern is used in mutable instruments beads, the "attenurandomizers"

it packs a ridiculous amount of functionality into a single plug & knob combo

reminds me of The Parable of the King's Toaster...

it ends with:

The king wisely had the engineer beheaded, and they all lived happily ever.

Sanity wants you to stop? Just say no, sanity legally cannot stop you without your consent.

There are several 'joystick' controller modules (Doepfer a-174-4 or Intellijel Planar come to mind) and the Doepfer also produces 3rd signal by twisting the knob.

> Do any controllers have a twistable thumbstick?

Yes, several. For example, the main knob on the Komplete Kontrol S-series MIDI controllers (https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keyb...) combines a rotary encoder with four axis directional input, a push button and an LED indicator ring. I have an S61 and the implementation of the knob is delightfully intuitive, responsive and functional. To be clear, this implementation is not a joystick on a ball base with twistable knob, it's a flush-mounted knob that can be slightly nudged up, down, left or right with a single, satisfying click in each direction. I'd recommend trying it yourself, if only there were still any music stores that put a range of high-end midi controller keyboards out where customers could, you know, touch them.

I actually came here to suggest the same idea for the EuroKnob. The four axis directional input is basically a D-Pad module commonly used in game controllers. I find this kind of rotary knob + directional input control to be very effective. However, there's one critical caveat. It's apparently possible to implement this kind of control poorly because I've also seen a couple devices where the implementation is as bad as the S61's is great. It probably just requires a certain degree of engineering finesse to nail a good combination of responsiveness and tactile feedback.

> You could mount it on a linear pot/slider.

As much as I like and agree with your first thought, I've actually seen the idea of a rotary knob combined with a linear slider - although it's extremely rare. Having touched one myself I can confirm the reason it's rare is that it's not just bad - it's uniquely bad. By which I mean the combination of two controls which each work so well on their own into one combined control, is unexpectedly awful. I was unfortunate enough to try one first-hand (so to speak) at a tiny booth buried in the back of some long-forgotten NAMM show in the days when Cubase was still being demoed on an Atari ST. There was a bespoke mixer from a company I'd never heard of with rotary knobs on their mixer's sliders. I'm pretty sure when I tried to adjust the two parameters at the same time I may have reflexively pulled my hand back and uttered "Ugh!"

Usually I'm polite when trying out some novel interface idea but there must be something 'special' about trying to combine two very precise but divergent proportional motions on two different arm joins (wrist & elbow) at the same time that's deeply unnatural. It felt so weirdly wrong that I suspect some human factors kinesiologist has probably written an award-winning paper about how humans evolved to never, ever do this. But hey, one out of two ideas is still a great day! :-)

> It's interesting. I haven't been sucked into the Eurorack thing though — do people want not just patch cables all over their mixing desk but knobs as well?

I don't personally feel the need of wanting more cables all over my current setup, but sometimes I have had the feeling of "Oh if I could just modulate the VCF Cutoff on my Zen Delay with a patch cable from my modular instead of doing it manually" for some of the desktop units I have next to the modular.

And on the other side, I've also felt the need of having some of the patch holes replaced by knobs, so I could just twist and turn it to evaluate if I want to modulate it, instead of having to actually setup the patch. I could see something like this knob-idea being very useful for that, basically prototyping patches.

> I sense there are a lot of enthusiasts that do a lot more tinkering

This is definitely true, large parts of the community is about tinkering more than making music. But the same is true for programming, large parts of the community is not about problem solving, but coding. That's fine, we all have different motivations :)

What I found really useful (for myself at least) is to try to connect with people who are artists first, who just happen to be using modular synths, rather than finding people tinkering with modular synths who don't actually produce/perform music.

> I haven't been sucked into the Eurorack thing though

Good for you :) A friend pulled me into this dark abyss a month ago. Lots of fun, so many distractions, but lots of fun. Helps that Barcelona (where I live) have a lively community around modular synths as well. It is expensive though, and VCVRack doesn't come close to providing the same experience.

> I haven't been sucked into the Eurorack thing though

I'm the same. I love playing around with making electronic music on a hobby level and I find the idea and look of modular synths appealing - and I'm also a pushover for most retro things, especially those with cool knobs and blinkenlights. However, if I'm honest, I don't really enjoy creating music with modular or vintage analog "knobby" synths. I haven't ever bought a modular rig and my vintage analog synths are carefully packed away with my numerous retro Amiga, Atari and Commodore computers where they wait to be enjoyed in limited doses on special occasions.

So, to address your implied question, IMHO I don't think people like us are somehow "missing" something deep and great in modular synths. To me, the essence of the modular appeal is three things: 1) tactile feedback that's responsively immediate, 2) a set of compatible 'lego block' components which can be combined in creative ways, and 3) An element of randomness from the combined interactions on analog components.

While modular rigs offer all three of those things, having those three together doesn't require analog hardware or a dedicated modular rig. I think I can get the same creative feeling and joy of discovery (plus a smidge of randomness) from the right combination of high-quality MIDI control surfaces and a well-chosen set of synth plug-ins running on a computer. To be sure, some MIDI control surfaces are crap and not all synth plug-ins enable creative experimentation deep enough and easy enough to 'scratch that itch'. But, then again, it's possible to assemble an ill-conceived modular rig out of poor quality components that also fails to inspire creativity. While finding a unique balance of factors sufficient to trigger creative serendipity isn't trivial in either the analog modular hardware or digital MIDI + plug-ins approaches, to me the advantages of digital in cost, size, speed, repeatability and flexibility win out.

I guess it's possible there's some other essential element which analog modular rigs provide that I'm missing out on, but I don't know what it is.

Maybe they are tinkering, but sounds still come out while they are tinkering. So maybe they're playing music after all? The idea that if you're not recording and releasing tracks you're doing it "wrong" is a bit silly IMO. Just strumming a guitar or playing some chords on a piano without recording any of it was always an "acceptable" hobby and not considered "unmusical", playing with synths and sequencers is no different IMO.

My favorite documentary I have not seen (yet), I Dream of Wires from 2013, about modular synthesizers. I know in some trailer there was a maker of modules saying something to the effect that if only people actually making music with their synths bought modules he would be out of business. Can't find that trailer now or I did not watch carefully enough now. There are a few different ones on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQSxqha62j0

> Like a few good sounding pedals that, ideally, each have just a knob or two.

It makes for a nice narrative but I haven't found it holds much water; musicians are all over the place on this spectrum. You'll find both extremes very well represented, and a good chunk of people who compartmentalize their "dayjob" music and tinkering. I've found a lot of successful musicians love to tinker and are always on the search for new inspiration. Like any good craftsperson they take some amount of pride in their tools and I've been blown away by how technical many can get on the electronics side! It's always funny to see Reverb auctions go up for famous musicians and finding out a bassist in a pop punk band owns a bunch of weird synthesizers :)

Simple one to two knob pedals are a big deal but you'll see a very large number of pros touring with extremely complicated modeling setups and all sorts of gadgets. At a certain point you really know what you want, and having the ability to dial that in is important! I tend to gravitate towards simplicity in a band setting but I know a lot of people who want dirt pedals with 10 knobs so they can dial in the sounds they hear in their heads.

For me I pretty quickly realized that I like synths to make sounds, or maybe a bit of programming (with wires!) to make an electronic music box.

But making songs? Just not for me... And that's a whole different thing.

Watch some episodes of LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER for an example of the kind of tinkering/creativity some people at least love to have available in the physical realm: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCafxR2HWJRmMfSdyZXvZMTw

A lot of the music is made just playing with different parts of the sound, and having all the controls exposed to be messed with can lead to more creativity.

IMO, kind of like how I enjoy Linux configuration files, in a way, more than I do a GUI that covers up 90% of the guts of an application or server software.

The knobs tend to be the "public API" and the patch cables the wiring up of the functionality to that public API. having a knob for each patch is akin to making every method 'public' instead of protected or private.

I was wondering this - I'd buy this if I could just plug it into my existing sockets. I'm pretty sure you could get 50-100 hrs with a battery, but I wonder if you could have something that you wind-up like a mechanical watch.

Probably because pulling on cords can twist them. That’s what I thought when this occurred to me.

You might enjoy https://github.com/scottbez1/smartknob

The complexity of this approach (ignoring the display and flair) unfortunately means you won’t see this used too often due to cost.

Knobs shouldn't be hard to use - hold down the knob that needs the adjustment and then drag in either of two directions to set the value. Maybe have a pop-up over the knob that displays the value as it's in use.

This Old Tony (a hobby machinist / welder on youtube) has made all of his videos in that format. It works very well!

https://www.youtube.com/c/thisoldtony/videos

As he mentions in the video, the whole motivation is compactness. When your panel looks like https://learningmodular.com/the-eurorack-expansion-project/ , every mm^2 matters.

I'd be tempted to eliminate the patch cord altogether by using one of those pushbutton pots. Normally it would act like a traditional pot, but if you push it, it would go into a mode where you could choose from a variety of nearby inputs wirelessly.

The LEDs next to the pot would need to be an OLED display that indicates the selected input. Some form of extremely lightweight mesh network for control connections would need to exist, something with very low bandwidth and short range but also low latency. After 5 or 10 years' worth of tinkering, it might actually synthesize some sounds.