MOTM

Ken,

These are wonderful thoughts but the marketing it would produce has its problems...

"MOTM: The modular synthesizer preferred by 10 month-old children"
"Buy MOTM, your kids will love it!"
"Big knobs and jacks for easy use by small hands"

Eric (feeling rather stoogy on a Monday morning)

--- "Tkacs, Ken" <ken.tkacs@...> wrote:
> 
> I did something yesterday that, while perhaps wasn't the smartest thing I've
> done all week, really intrigued me.
> Normally my ten-month-old son is locked out of my studio, for obvious
> reasons, if you've seen the thing's he's stuffed down AC registers and so
> on...
> Yesterday I let him crawl in, and he went straight to my cluster of MOTM
> modules (still wired as they appear in this month's EM, by the way). I mean,
> who wouldn't, right?
> I sat him in my lap and let him touch it. He started spinning knobs, then
> flicking switches. He was bouncing up and down as happy as I've ever seen
> him. I mean, he was squealing. Turning the Coarse knob on the VCO's really
> got him excited.
> My first thought was, "Ahh, we're going to get along just fine, son."
> Followed by, "You know? I feel exactly the same way when *I'm* playing with
> my modular."
> I also thought about what a fantastic tool this would be for schools.
> But then the big one hit me.
> This is exactly why modular synthesizers are so wonderful. Seriously. When
> even a 10-month-old child can get this happy over the user interface of a
> "reality-shaping" device, you know that there's something 'right' about it.
> We can debate about the ergonomics of a 1" diameter bakelite knob over
> increment/decrement buttons on a digital GUI... but when you watch a child
> with only 5 syllables in his vocabulary hopping up and down gleefully
> because he can turn a knob and change a switch with instant feedback over
> what change he has caused, what power over his environment he has... I mean,
> that's *it!* You know? That's why we have the big knobs, the sealed pots,
> the quarter-inch jacks, the big LEDs.
> There's something "right" about it!!!
> 
> 


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