Modal & Me

I wrote this a while back (mid 2024), and various reasons decided not to publish it, but now I think the time is right.

I had a dream, since the mid 1980s, to design and build synthesisers for a living, it combines two things I’m passionate about, electronics and music.

In 2000 I had my appendix out and as a result I had a few weeks off work, so I built the Monowave based on various bits from projects I’d been tinkering with. I taught myself C for the main CPU and soldered all the parts to strip board (oh what fun that was). The Monowave had two digital oscillators with 256 waveforms, two sub-oscillators and a unique de-rez function, that lowered the wave samples from 256 samples per cycle to 64, giving a bunch of extra harmonics. This fed into a Transistor ladder filter and into a VCA. There were two analogue ADSRs, one for the VCF and one for the VCA, later I added a digital LFO and an arpeggiator.

After showing it to a few friends, I was persuaded to make a few 25 in addition to the early prototypes. Making the 25 was hard work, I hand built and soldered everyone. I sold them, but really didn’t recover the cost of my time in making them, but I was proud of what I had made.

After that I took a break, and a few years later I was back, I got a soundart Chameleon and ported Monowave to the DSP platform with a few extra features. Then I built the GorF MIDI sequencer, it was intended as a tool for testing synths. Then there was Tron a 16 step drum pattern programmer and then Zira, a simple monosynth absed on the Korg NJM2069 VCF/VCA.

Around this time (2012) I began working on a new monosynth, Gauntlet, which was to be a desktop synth based on the Monowave, with patch storage and some more modulation routing, it had two PCBs, one for the voice and one for the front panel, MIDI and patch storage.

At the same time someone who had purchased one of the 25 Monowaves got back in touch, he was interested in starting a synth company. Great!!

The Dream

We spent a long long time talking, and in 2013 we formed “Modulus Electronics”, and work began in earnest on Gauntlet, we quickly realised that if we stacked multiple of the voice cards we could make a polysynth (somewhere there’s a picture of me with a stack of 8 PCBs, smiling as I play chords). This went on to become 002.

I was also fortunate to meet another synth maker around the same time, George Hearn, who had also been working on an analogue poly synth. We had a “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” conversation and we were both impressed with what the other had done. We were able to do a deal with George to port the tech he had into a voice card that would fit in with the architecture of 002, so we could re-use a lot of parts. This became 008.

This was my dream job, I worked hard, 70 to 80 hours a week, but I loved my job, I loved making synths and it was amazing.

When dreams become nightmares

Running a synth business isn’t easy, and things were difficult to say the least, during my 3.5 years at Modal I got paid roughly 12 times, I was running up a large debt. I was also fighting with my depression and slowly accepting that I needed to transition or I wouldn’t be able to live much longer. Around the same time I became aware that my business partner was bullying me, for exampe; ignoring me when he came into the office but talking to everyone else. He also persuaded me that I shouldn’t transition, that I shouldn’t tell any of the team as it would be bad for business, which did so much damage to my mental health I don’t have the words to describe it. I had also been pushed into reducing my share of the company to 25% and I was being ignored when it came to decisions.

I won’t claim I was blameless for some of the mistakes, but I will say when I made a mistake I owned up to it, unlike my business partner who would find a way to blame me or someone else. Other former employees have said silimar things. To sum it up, it was Toxic.

In December 2016 I had enough of the bullying and being put down, I gave my notice and left. I had a nervous breakdown, I came completely undone, I couldn’t function as a person. I was made to give back everything, my 002, my 008, my tools, literally everything. All I was left to show for my effort was a debt of nearly £80,000 and a nervous breakdown. Then the solicitors got involved, this cost me even more money.
In April I found a new job (by this time the debt was growing) as myself and slowly started rebuilding my life.

I attended SynthFest in Sheffield that October, it was good to see some of my friends, and every single one of them accepted me for who I am. Shortly after, I got a letter from a solicitor, seems that my ex business partner thought I was breaking the terms and conditions of the separation agreement by going to a public synth show and that ended up costing me even more money in legal fees.

Life resumes

Eventually, after much therapy and encouragement from friends I begun working on synths again, and after a while Dove Audio was born. I kept an eye on Modal as I was still proud of most of the people that worked there and what they were doing.

Sadly during the “chip-aggedon” shortages of 2020/2021 I had to close Dove Audio. I am still working on things and have a demonstrable polysynth, though not a full knobby version. I’ve also been working with Isla Instruments on their Caladan project, which is a fabulous idea and is coming together really well.

Modal & Me, the future

In September of 2023 I became aware that Modal was struggling, and had filed for insolvency. Since then I’ve had the odd chat with a couple of the people at Modal with a view to finding a way to work together. The new owner is a chinese company, the same company who did all the PCB manufacture and assembly work, which from what I can tell, seems pretty good.
However, due to a number of reasons I have said that I will not work with Modal as it stands today in it’s new form. I appreciate this may seem a shame for some, but I need to put my health and family first and I don’t feel that right now that would be possible with Modal.

I am however helping Modal 00x users with support problems. I don’t get paid by new Modal, I do it because I’m very proud of the synths that we made back then.