Latest entry17 Sep 2026
The SMD boss, first try
Through-hole day: seven pots, the jack, the button, the power header. After yesterday's twenty-four legs, none of it was frightening.
FireFlow · Build log
A small ambient groovebox where modulation is the instrument.
The instrument already plays. The software is well underway; now the work is turning it into hardware — a compact performance box currently being planned for the bench.
Track 1 of 10
Chords in the Room
Roadmap · Aug 2026 — May 2027
Nine months from a plan to an instrument you can play.
Three hardware milestones, two board revisions and 23 April as a target corridor rather than a deadline — the dates past the panel freeze get re-anchored once that freeze happens. The graphic below is drawn in two materials, because hardware time comes in two kinds.
Weeks I workWeeks a factory worksMilestoneDecision
H16 Nov 2026The prototype plays
A ten-euro test board and a lasered acrylic panel with real knobs on it. Not pretty, but playable — and the panel layout freezes the same day.
H212 Feb 2027The first real PCB
Two boards and an aluminium front panel, built and measured. Every fault goes on a list; nothing gets fixed in place, or the next revision never ships.
H39 Apr 2027The finished PCB
One correction round, assembled and tested. After this the only work left is firmware, a demo set, and packing a case.
Target23 Apr 2027An instrument that plays
A corridor, not a deadline — re-anchored once the panel layout freezes; the regrouping rounds in Rack come first, before H1. Superbooth opens two weeks later. There is no booth booked and none required; the fair is what happens afterwards.
77 of those 259 days are spent waiting. Boards take three weeks to come back from a factory, and no amount of enthusiasm shortens that — which is why the schedule is built backwards from the last day, and why the cheapest board in the plan is the first one.
Build log
Build log — in the open
Building in public, in sixteen chapters — from the first commit to the whole engine playing on real hardware. Start with what happened last, or open any chapter below.
Every chapter
78 entries in 16 chapters · open one to read its entries
Order
16Anything but the multiplexerTwo mux breakouts lie on the desk waiting for somebody to measure them. What gets built instead: a drone engine, deleted the same week — an FM engine, built at three percent motivation — a knob that lets the two decks hear each other, a button that turns every other knob into its own modulation depth, a knob that pulls one deck’s melody onto the other’s chord, and depth knobs that go bipolar — gliding right of noon, stepping left of it — a resonance leveller built twice and withdrawn the same day — a balance knob that places each deck across the stereo field while the reverb it feeds stays in the middle, and a plate that stops being a blueprint and becomes one dark surface — then, at the fab, the four-layer board that will measure the multiplexers, eight dollars for five, and finally that board on the desk with its printing unreadable, which is how it ends up needing a map drawn by hand — and, at last, a soldering iron, twenty-four legs at the first attempt and one joint that came out as a silver bead — and, at last, a finished board: the through-hole parts, a multimeter over every rail, ±12 V, and the Patch Submodule seated on top with one red LED lit while the measurements it exists for start running18 Aug–17 Sep · 14 entries
- 17 Sep 2026The SMD boss, first trypanelnewest
- 16 Sep 2026Board one, and nothing caught firepanel
- 15 Sep 2026The boards are here, and I cannot read thempanel
- 3 Sep 2026Eight dollars of real hardware, and an argument about SMDpanel
- 30 Aug 2026The plate stops being a blueprintpanel
- 30 Aug 2026PAN, and the room stays where it istakepanel
- 29 Aug 2026TAME, built twice and kept neitherpanel
- 29 Aug 2026Left of noon, and every depth knob grows a second halftakepanel
- 23 Aug 2026The plate stops fidgetingtakepanel
- 23 Aug 2026PULL, and the bass takes the chords with ittakepanel
- 22 Aug 2026Hold MOD, and every ring becomes a depthtakepanel
- 22 Aug 2026The two decks stop ignoring each othertakepanel
- 21 Aug 2026I opened Rack at three percent motivation, and it was already doing ittakepanel
- 18 Aug 2026What I built instead of measuring a multiplexertakepanel
15The plate starts talkingTen LEDs were drawn on the hardware panel and six of them could not light at all — now nineteen lamps read the modulation rather than the knobs, and a take from the same morning turns out to be the same thing heard instead of seen16 Aug · 1 entry
14The accentA pattern that played every note exactly the same finally stops doing that — the first note keeps full strength, DENSE decides how many quieter ones join it, DEC decides how much room they have, and a note played by hand stops borrowing the sequencer’s last one16 Aug · 1 entry
- 16 Aug 2026Every note struck the sametakepanel
13The plateGlow comes out of the tree and half of it turns out to be a front panel for a module nobody will build — then the modulation layer finally learns to go slow, a knob that never had a behaviour gets one, the panel groups draw their own shapes and the result looks like a children’s toy, and the patch you boot into is a different instrument again14–15 Aug · 6 entries
- 15 Aug 2026The plate went darkpanel
- 15 Aug 2026It boots as something else againtakepanel
- 15 Aug 2026Nobody drew these shapespanel
- 15 Aug 2026The knob had no behaviourpanel
- 15 Aug 2026Nothing here could slow downpanel
- 14 Aug 2026Half of it was one filepanel
12The planA date nobody handed over, three hardware milestones, seventy-seven days of waiting for a factory — the panel question answers itself at 60 HP, the first drawing of it is honestly ugly, the second one has an opinion, the instrument that answers at boot is a new one, and then the last lead goes flat7–14 Aug · 8 entries
- 14 Aug 2026No further readingspanel
- 10 Aug 2026Maybe tofu is not as dead as we thoughtpanel
- 10 Aug 2026A different instrument answerstake
- 10 Aug 2026The size of a knob is a claimtakepanel
- 9 Aug 2026The first draft, as ugly as it ispanel
- 8 Aug 2026Tofu is deadpanel
- 7 Aug 2026The first cycles ever counted on the real boardpanel
- 7 Aug 2026The date is mine nowpanel
11The compact moduleSix knobs, one button, a machine that rolls the instrument underneath them — and a day later, v2.20.0 ships it as alpha 0.15–6 Aug · 2 entries
- 6 Aug 2026Glow, alpha 0.1 — it makes sound, and sometimes it makes tofutakepanel
- 5 Aug 2026GlowFlow — six knobs and one buttonpanel
10StandaloneThe residency said no — the ledger, a fork that is no longer a fork, and the last entry on this site4 Aug · 1 entry
- 4 Aug 2026Not selectedpanel
09The bucket brigade · CPU hunt, part IIFLUX stops being tape, two days paying the CPU bill, a delay too strange to stay an effect, and two cracks somebody else found28 Jul–3 Aug · 6 entries
- 3 Aug 2026Every knob says what it doestakepanel
- 3 Aug 2026Somebody read the whole thingtakepanel
- 2 Aug 2026Too strange to be an effecttakepanel
- 30 Jul 2026Two days, nothing to heartakepanel
- 28 Jul 2026It boots hummingtakepanel
- 28 Jul 2026The clock is the instrumenttakepanel
08BODYA resonator from string to bell — one voice per deck, and cheaper than the one it replaces27 Jul · 1 entry
- 27 Jul 2026The engine with no oscillatortakepanel
07The third engineA wavetable scanner, a song form, first sound on the Seed, lanes on the grid and off it25–26 Jul · 7 entries
- 26 Jul 2026Now let them freelancetakepanel
- 26 Jul 2026The lanes stop freelancingtakepanel
- 25 Jul 2026It runs on the Seed
- 25 Jul 2026Three the same, then a turnaroundtakepanel
- 25 Jul 2026The knob we forgot to buildtakepanel
- 25 Jul 2026The bootloader said yes and meant notakepanel
- 25 Jul 2026We changed one part and got a new instrumenttakepanel
06The samplerGrain cloud, a new co-author, Groovagene, a grid that swings20–24 Jul · 6 entries
- 24 Jul 2026It grooved. Now it swings.takepanel
- 23 Jul 2026We don’t need a Morphagene. We need a Groovagene.takepanel
- 22 Jul 2026The sampler engine ships. So do its crimes.takepanel
- 22 Jul 2026The sampler works. That’s the problem.takepanel
- 21 Jul 2026Somewhere in entry 25, I became wetakepanel
- 20 Jul 2026The grain cloud lived forty-one hourstakepanel
05Macros & the panel · CPU hunt, part IChords without a chord mode, 160% of a chip18–19 Jul · 4 entries
- 19 Jul 2026160% of a chip that only has 100panel
- 18 Jul 2026The knob is the centre, not the ceilingtakepanel
- 18 Jul 2026Infinitely many knobstakepanel
- 18 Jul 2026Chords, without a chord modetakepanel
04Making it playableGroove instead of dice, CHOKE, a cutoff you can grab16–17 Jul · 6 entries
- 17 Jul 2026How wild, how fastpanel
- 17 Jul 2026The cutoff you can grabpanel
- 16 Jul 2026Only one may speaktakepanel
- 16 Jul 2026A melody allowed to fidgetpanel
- 16 Jul 2026A groove instead of a dice rollpanel
- 16 Jul 2026One switch, two worldstakepanel
03Finding the voiceA workbench in VCV, and a melody that finally sang14–15 Jul · 4 entries
- 15 Jul 2026The reverb that moonlights as a delaytakepanel
- 15 Jul 2026The melody sings now
- 15 Jul 2026The workbench moved into the computerpanel
- 14 Jul 2026The melody didn’t singpanel
02Sequencing & roomCapture, entropy, the center section, a rebuilt reverb12–13 Jul · 5 entries
- 13 Jul 2026One knob loudertakepanel
- 13 Jul 2026Ambient reverb, rebuilttake
- 12 Jul 2026Center sectiontakepanel
- 12 Jul 2026Entropy sequencertake
- 12 Jul 2026Capture sequencertake
01The engineFork, five lanes, quantizer, first offline render10–11 Jul · 6 entries
- 11 Jul 2026Polyphonic synth voicetake
- 11 Jul 2026Effects & modulationtake
- 11 Jul 2026Scales & quantizationtake
- 11 Jul 2026First offline releasetake
- 10 Jul 2026First tests
- 10 Jul 2026Forked