Musical Notation for Modular Synthesizers

Since my master's studies, I have been researching this topic. I highly recommend Professor Thor Magnusson's book, "Sonic Writing" (https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/sonic-writing-9781501313868/), as well as all of his research.

For example, in this article, he discusses algorithms as "Algorithms as Scores" (https://cris.brighton.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/268697/Mag...).

These concepts have profoundly influenced my creation of Glicol (https://glicol.org/).

Roland's Practical Synthesis for Electronic Music, Volume 2 starts with a discussion of modular notation. To me, it's very well thought out.

https://reaktorplayer.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/...

Even classical music has a similar 'problem'... performances of the 'same' work can be very different. (And I'm sure that would be true even if the same instruments and same musicians are used.) Most of the differences come from different conductors/ensembles. (Orchestas also have 'traditional performances' that they'd rather cling to, and may resist conductors (often younger ones) who attempt any 'wild-haired' differences.)

Music's very fluid. Recordings of performances are probably as close to 'same' as we can get. Non-musicians may prefer to listen to these 'same' performances over and over for the 'fidelity' of their experiences. But it might stop them (as they age) from discovering better ones.

If MIDI is used to create the dynamics, 'patches' and all other modulations, oscillations, tempos, et.al of a synth or ten, then something close to 'same' might be approachable. But that means, oh, say, ten times as much work.

Depends on the listener whether that's a good thing. In my experience, a superior cover of a single recording (same or different singer, different producer) can turn a OK single into a damn! single.

Edit: (Case in point: 'Major Tom (Coming Home)' 1983 version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO0A0XcWy88 )

This seems like a somewhat solved problem. Other domains - like CGI - use node networks that show active parameter values. There isn't a lot of space between a node network and a modular synth patch.

The big difference is that you can save and load patches in a node editor, but you have to rebuild everything by hand on a modular. Even then you're never going to reproduce panel settings exactly.

Some people find this appealing, but for me it's the main reason I stopped using my big modular and changed to Cherry/Softtube/VCV Rack.

It's also true that if you're synth-literate you should be able to recreate many patches by ear. There isn't usually that much going on, so it looks a lot more complex on paper than it really is. Things get more complex if you're using modules that play samples or do something exceptionally unique, but even then you can usually get in the ballpark - if not exactly, then close enough for something that works aesthetically.

The musical part is a different problem. You can scribble graphic scores, but they're far too crude to represent anything beyond the vaguest hint of what's going on.

I attempted to write a program once to solve for how annoying it can be to notate modular patches.

It's essentially a small DSL that can produce graphviz charts of patches. There have been other attempts to do this kind of thing, but they rely on the writer to describe their modules, which makes it quite tedious. I wanted to have a 'library' format that would allow people to specific module interfaces once, and then they could be imported.

I got a basic prototype working in Perl if anyone is interested, but never got around to really polishing it up and writing a bunch of 'libraries' for different modules.

https://git.spwbk.site/swatson/modmark

Interested if anyone knows of / has written something better.

Interesting problem to think about. The beauty of modular for me has always been that you can take voltage from literally anywhere and use it for CV. Modern modules also have an insane variety in controls and control surfaces, even for standard things like VCOs you have a ton of variety and featuresets. Saving the patch state is one thing but actually notating is crazy. Like I can't imagine someone being able to read this notation and play it accurately like someone sight reading a piano piece. You'd surely require familiarity with the setup ahead of time. As for recording it for posterity, being verbose and describing what you're doing in full works, I guess.

I’m both fascinated by notation attempts for modular, and find them refreshingly useless.

I’ve been playing with modular synths for over 25 years. One of my favorite parts is the ephemeral nature of patching. A bump of a knob or the nature of unsynced elements can quickly make actual recall of a larger patch impossible. Due to heat or other variability I’ve had patches change on me over 45 minutes of no one touching them. In a world of digital recall and perfection; this really speaks to me. Immediacy can be relished. It is now or never

I have an easier “solution”

just pretend PCM is notation and that’s that. problem solved

the new problem introduced, however, is that now a “musician” (interpreter) is just a wav player

and a musician creator (singer songwriter, or composer, or producer of some sort) must choose zero or one way too many times in order to “write” one track.

Another example was put out by the DIY synthesizer kit company PAIA [1]. They had a patch notation system in which control voltages and connections were represented vertically and sound signal flow and processing was represented horizontally. The system was presented in a small booklet called The Source, which I have been unable to locate online, except for a photo of it with a PAIA synth [2].

The Source diagrams resemble the Figure 4 example by Allen Strange in TFA.

[1]. https://paia.com/

[2]. https://www.matrixsynth.com/2012/02/1981-paia-4700-modular.h...

I sometimes wonder how western music notation would look like if it were designed from scratch today with all the knowledge we have today.

It feels like the current system is the Imperial system and somewhere ought to be the SI metric system.

Slightly offtop, but a cool [web-based livecoded modular synth](https://felixroos.github.io/kabelsalat/)

> It’s amazing that, through music notation, we know what the music of the medieval ars antiqua style sounded like over 800 years ago

More amazing is that anyone thinks we know that.

Archive link for anyone who like me is stuck in a "Verifying you are human..." loop (Cloudflare settings too aggressive?):

https://web.archive.org/web/20240714160259/https://www.perfe...

Tangentially related is the yearly Graphème publication from Smallest Functional Unit.

It's a curated collection of experimental music scores; part art magazine, part avant garde musical journal, and thoroughly delightful :)

https://smallestfunctionalunit.bandcamp.com/merch

Interesting that Nelson Goodmanis is mentioned. IMO music notation has the same, albeit lesser observable, problem as language and that's context. Regardless if it’s the Köln concert or a modular synth. If we try to capture all context for -let's say- the first second of a musical piece, it’s almost impossible to do.

This is very interesting, however all of this only works if we also know how to build the instruments. Probably we have this knowledge for classical ones, but do we have it somewhere for hardware synths?

Very cool! Synths can 'move' in a bigger musical space than a traditional instrument: it's fascinating how musicians can still manage to convey a written account of the music.

One you drive your patch from a random source, the notion of score goes mostly out of the window—you just have the patch and you adapt to what comes out in the live.

Seems like whatever representation allows a daw to playback a synthesizer in time is the right notation. It’s algorithmic in nature.

Didn't Stockhausen create a notation for electronic music? I was surprised TFA didn't mention it.

coincidentally working on a related problem today, which is how to find if a procedural sequence of notes can be expressed as a function, or if there is a general technique for this.

Oh look my old discipline. I feel compelled to weigh in since my PhD research largely explored this topic albeit in virtual reality.

Innovations and discoveries here (including my own) seem largely pointless. It's a classic example of "you spent so much wondering if you could, you never stopped to think if you should".

The authors final section Does Notation Even Matter hits on the larger points I would make - ephemerality of voltage (tuning), difference in modular systems, etc., however it fails to make a strong case for the need to notate this kind of music apart from form(?).

It is disappointing to see these kind of regressive pursuits still enjoying any kind of popularity in avant garde music circles - they are experimenting with new and novel instruments, why would paper, out of all modern mediums available to the artist, be the best suited for notating this kind of music?