control. About 20 or 25 of Braids' synthesis
models originate from that time. Then a couple of
things occurred: first I realized that a lot of the stuff I
had written did not really make sense in the context of
subtractive synthesis, so it would be out of place in a
polysynth. And then, around mid 2012, I got really
sick of the polysynth project and ditched it. This is
also the time I was starting to play with my first
Doepfer modular system...
It became obvious to me that all these digital sound
sources would be great in a modular system - there
was nothing like it in the Eurorack format, probably
because the few digital module makers at the time
focused on "deep" modules; while there are many
sound generation techniques that are just tiny islands
of sound you certainly can't package into a big, deep module. Another idea came in... When I was patching the Doepfer system, I often found myself saying "hey I like this patch but it's using all my VCOs and half my VCAs, can I have
this in a box with just these two knobs and CV inputs that stick out, so that I can build something else on top of it?" - there were things I was building all the time like two or three sync'ed VCOs enveloped by the master VCOs for which I wanted a shortcut. I started adding these mini-patches to my "oscillator
inventory" project.
Q) As Braids has developed it's now essentially a full voice. With envelopes
for tone and/or volume control. Was that the original idea? A multipurpose
voice in a small space?
A) No, the original idea was not to make it a full voice. If I wanted to
make a voice module, there would be some kind of looping envelope/LFO
accessible on the front panel - probably an analog filter too!
Originally, I just wanted to give the ability to directly send a trigger to the module and get something to happen - sort of like the "Strike" input on some MakeNoise modules. So the original firmware had a built-in envelope that modulated the TIMBRE parameter, with just a few settings to make it louder and faster... and what happened is that almost as soon as the module was released, people asked me to make this built-in envelope control the VCA too - many were using Braids for percussive hits and they didn't want to waste a VCA and envelope
for that. With each firmware revision I added more and more settings to this built-in envelope - to the point that now it has A/D time settings and amounts for 4 destination.