






The strange thing to me about musical instruments is this play with giant transnationals with their own manufacturing and engineering capabilities, and integrating marketing networks. So much of the interesting stuff, the culturally impactful designs, still somehow happens in tiny one-person and several-person boutique operations.

It was single-engineer shops that launched the modular renaissance. It was the monome that wound up in the Museum of Modern Art and re-popularized grid-based interfaces. These are products that ship a tiny handful of units and earn very little money, if they break even at all. The cultural capital is far outweighing the actual sales. At some point, it seems that will create real tension. And, on the other hand, all we do with chips and software – from DSP to microcontrollers to your laptop – rely on bigger-scale operations. Not one boutique maker of software or hardware can claim independence from the larger electronics manufacturing community.

But whatever deeper questions, keep an eye out for MUSIC and TC. A new giant is born.