Tuesday development
It started in late summer of 2016. Well actually, it started about 25 years ago with a love for sound and not enough money to buy studio equipment. This lead to programming software synths and Buzzmachines, delving into audio signal processing like only idiots can, building Blok (a software modular synthesizer), teaching game audio, producing scores and along the way piece-by-piece the contents of an audio studio appeared. Both hardware and software. From other parts of life, experience in developing electronics added to a mix that lead to the design of fabulous modular synths. Modules that bring the best of virtual and physical audio signal processing together. Modules that do not exist yet. From late summer of 2016 onwards we dedicated ourselves full-time further develop a few ideas and our procedural sequencer came out as our first product launch. At Superbooth17 we proudly present Tuesday!
Being a big fan of Arguru Saiko and his genius in defining a genre by algorithm, started the design thinking for procedural sequencing. A module that would create melodies in different moods and styles based on algorithms, because all music is math.
Going from the chaos that is all possible sound to that certain something we call music seemed like a giant, fuzzy problem. Some musical styles showed that a small rule set could have enjoyable emergent behaviour. After much designing and reducing of algorithms an emergent complexity with musical simplicity showed itself. The TriTrance and Markov algorithms stabilized into usability first. Many hours and much button-pushing was spent luring musical patterns into sets of equations, that would allow for interesting variations, hook elements and styles.
The module that we were building this on (Sonic Screwdriver – our test platform for interesting CV ideas) turned out to be insufficient to support the experiment. By feeding the algorithms with the connectivity and controls it needed, the physicality of Tuesday took shape. LEDs, buttons and jacks appeared, along with a separate memory chip to store calibration data.
Meanwhile, the first subdivision tiling appeared on the frontpanel of Tuesday in black and white. Then still in a rectangular grid.
It upgraded (with the rest of TINRS design) to a tiling pattern based on the Danzer sevenfold original. The design is created by taking the physical shapes on the board as exclusion zones and recursively subdividing the remaining space. This pattern was first realized in black solder mask on gold-coated pcb.
Later we upgraded in material and colour to anodized printed aluminium. The best looking and most durable fronts we could find.
We like Tuesday and we hope you will too.
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