Keeping a Modular Synth Journal

It’s been just shy of 10 years now that I’ve fiddled with a slowly growing, sometimes contracting, and always morphing modular synthesizer. The playing has greatly informed my work interviewing and collaborating with and writing about musicians — and it’s a lot of fun. I know this anniversary is coming up because Marcus Fischer sent me a photo a few days ago from when I gave a talk in Portland, Oregon, at Powell’s Books, an event at which he performed, along with Brumes (aka Desiree Rousseau) and the OO-Ray (aka Ted Laderas). Fischer used a modular synthesizer for his piece, and the next day he took me by the store Control Voltage, tucked off of N. Mississippi Avenue, to look at what felt to me, for the first time, as meaningfully proximate and approachable — and, yes, enticing.

In the intervening years, I’ve regularly failed at one thing in particular in this regard, which is documenting for myself my experiments with the synthesizer. Recently, I’ve come upon a system that works for me. Now, those last two words are the most important ones: “for me.” There are lots of different ways to track one’s work, and what I’m outlining here is just something that I’ve found works for me. For context, I am a big note-taker, but I am not a big written-note-taker. I jot words on paper regularly, but just as loose fodder for typing. I’ve typed for far too long to be a written-journal keeper. Also, I like the opportunities that computer files provide for searchability and cross-linking.

So, what I use is Obsidian, a free cross-platform document-editing tool that works with files in the markdown (.md) format (if it’s not familiar, more here). I format my synth journal documents very much like the one I use for my daily personal journal, though in this case also employing embedded images. (My personal journal is all text, no pictures — though my success with this Obsidian synth journal may feed back, so to speak, and inform my personal journal efforts down the road.) My system is to keep one file per month, with an entry within that file for each day, including a running checklist of next steps to pursue. (There’s also a separate to-do list for longer-term activities.) The approach yields a page that looks like this:

And if you have had success keeping a synth journal, I’d love to know what works for you.