One time I came to in medias res and found myself arguing with Finn, Anthropic's customer service chatbot about whether Claude was being wasteful with tokens. It was at that time I knew that the 5 hour token limit was a good thing. 🤖

Ask me if the cable is good one more time, Claude. #agentic #fafo #embedded

I'm not afraid to admit it, I love C++! Fight me 🤺 #embedded #synthdiy

A half hour of video games in the morning is such a nice way to wake up 🤗

Where has feedback been my entire synth life?? I guess I was a bit scared of damaging my system or my hearing, but when used carefully I've really been enjoying the spectrum of feedback from adding some tasty saturation to high pitched howling and back! #modular #synthsky

I wasn't super excited about the Make Noise Multiwave because I usually don't gel with wave tables but then I played one at the music store! Absolutely killer sounds coming out of that thing. Pretty sure Tony & crew did it again 🤩 #synthsky #modular

And on the Doepfer topic, I also appreciate the build quality and component selection. Dedicated to keeping their modules repairable by keeping everything thru-hole and shipping boards with DIP sockets for easy chip swapping. I like that. #synthsky #modular

I've never drooled over them like Make Noise or Mutable, but all 3 of my Doepfer modules have quietly made their way into the 'indispensable' tier that never leaves the case. Maths, Pam's, @intellijel.com Quad VCA and Dixie II+. It's not crowded up there! #synthsky #modular

If you're working on a 'for serious' music project, don't forget to take time to play just for fun!

One trend among many that I'm grumpy about is the sustained attack by tech & media companies and prolonged apathy from consumers on the value of creative work. I'm definitely that guy wringing my hands about what endless content feeds are doing to us. We're in a very 'the medium is the message'...

It sucks that modular synths are an expensive hobby, but I absolutely love the community and their willingness to support boutique and experimental instrument makers. For me it's a bright spot in the otherwise soul-sucking race to the bottom in consumer products & expectations! #modular #synthsky

If you're a software engineer or adjacent and you're concerned about AI automation, you might consider that understanding software at the code level is likely to be an increasingly rare skill. Lots of companies will choose the short term profit gains of automation, but I'm skeptical that ...

First power of the Gatekeeper prototype did not result in any obvious shorts or heating! Additional testing and first firmware dump later today! Excuse my awful hand soldering 💀 #synthdiy

My favorite Bruxa patch so far was cranking the resonance on QPAS till it was self-oscillating at a pleasant pitch, then feeding that into Bruxa and playing with the cutoff frequency and radiate controls on QPAS. Really nice gliding effect through the harmonics generated by the self-oscillation!

I'm really glad Neural DSP introduced the Quad Cortex mini because now it can be out of my price range by half as much 🙏

Said goodbye to the Squid Salmple and welcomed a few more members to the Church of Make Noise 🤩 They are beautiful 🚀🎸 #modular #synthsky #makenoise

I knew it! Buying the PO-24 Office was totally not impulsive and completionist consumerism! I knew it would come in handy one day. And she looks right at home 🤩 #modular #pocketoperators #teenageengineering #synthsky

I feel like the Gatekeeper module needs one more output, which is just a normally open direct connection to the CV input, controlled by the gate button. This seems obvious in retrospect 🤔 #synthdiy #modular

I still randomly pat myself on the back for the time I successfully convinced my entire friend group chat and immediate family members to switch from WhatsApp to Signal 😂 It is possible!

I'm not one to long for the past but I do think it would be cool if sticking a feather in your cap was a good reason to puff your chest out and strut a bit 🤷‍♂️

If you find out it's someone's birthday, put it in your calendar and wish them a happy birthday next year! People really appreciate being thought of like that and it makes that day even more special 💕

Making an EP at home is great until you start wanting to sample your own acoustic instruments and perc 😭 I love my wife for not batting an eye at me locking myself in the bedroom closet with a box of shakers and tone woods 😍🤣 #synthsky #modular

For all my griping about MIDI, 2.0 actually looks workable and I look forward to its wide adoption. For now, experimenting with MPE!

I know they're different things, but I can't decide whether to save for an Ableton Push 3 or a Linnstrument! My DAW mixing and control needs are real, but so is my love of strange and expressive instruments 😱 That continuous pitch slide on the Linnstrument tho... 🤤 #synthsky

Sampling acoustic instruments into Morphagene feels like cheating! #modular #synthsky

Great. Now I know about Chase Bliss pedals. My wallet is cooked 😱💀🪦

You know what would be a cool euro module? A Hi-Z instrument input with a good pre-amp, maybe an FX send/return! Turn your #modular into a guitar amp 🎸🤘

The Music Never Stops 🎸🎶🥁 RIP Bobby Weir 😔 I feel so blessed to have been able to attend Grateful Dead 60 last year for his final performance with D&C. Today is a tough one for a lot of people 🥺

So weird to me Flying Lotus has been putting out music for 20 years! 🤯 Can we mention him next to Dilla and RZA in the 🐐 conversation yet?? #flylo #idm #goodmusic

I second guessed acquiring a QPAS for exactly 3.4 seconds, then I started turning the knobs 🤩 This thing sounds insane! I'm kind of obsessed rn with creating vocal formant sounds by patching envelopes into the "radiate" inputs 🤯 #modular #makenoise

If there's one piece of gear I would actually love to hate, it's the Korg SQ-1 but I can't quit it 🤣😤 Sync is broken out of the box but if you're willing to repeatedly scour the internet for a solution, you'll eventually find out about the hidden sync mode setting that unbreaks it 🤷‍♂️

Excited as always to get to the prototype manufacturing stage & wait impatiently for my purple PCBs from @oshpark.bsky.social ! Gatekeeper is coming alive in 4HP! #modular #synthsky #eurorack

One method for getting unstuck when you can't decide what to work on is to get distracted and start practicing Flight of the Bumblebee on electric guitar 🐝🎸 At least it feels productive 🤷‍♂️

Buffered mults are deeeeecent. But what you really want is your output to passively drive multiple inputs. That's the good stuff right there 🤗 #synthdiy #modular

Today I'm workshopping silkscreen art for Sound Byte Labs PCBs! This is Quincy 🚀👾 #synthsky #modular #pixelart

All I want for Christmas is thousands of dollars worth of Make Noise modules and that new @intellijel.com Performance case

Oh hello, Warps 👀 Some days you go to the music store for a MIDI cable and there is a beautiful Mutable Instruments module calling your name from the modular room 🤩 They look so happy together! #modular #mutableinstruments #synthsky #plaits #warps

TIL the hard lesson of not enabling the watchdog timer until the boot sequence is finished 😔 One more brick for the pile! #synthdiy #firmware

I usually avoid menu diving like the plague, but I cannot put down the Dirtywave M8 👀 This thing is insane. I must master it to gain its power. #dirtywave #synthsky #chiptunes

I promised diagrams, so here! Gatekeeper is a utility module with 2 buttons, CV in, Gate out, and status LEDs. The module is in one of 3 application states: Init, Perform, or Menu. While in Perform or Menu, the CV input controls the gate output. In the Perform state, you also get 2-button control

github.com/mjrskiles/ga... Introducing Gatekeeper! A reference project for DIY Eurorack and/or embedded development with AVR microcontrollers. I am still working on rev2 hardware, so there will be bug fixes and updates to the firmware, but it is pretty stable in the simulator now! Enjoy 😊 #diy

New handle! Same modular synth & audio firmware stream of consciousness! #modular #synthdiy #bluesky

Just wanna shout out Raspberry Pi for being real af. I love their place in the embedded ecosystem. Pico is such a well done product line. We need more dual core micros! But I love that they can be the canary on bleeding edge features as part of their business model 👌

Alright so now that VS Code is trying to out Cursor Cursor, who's gonna fork it and un-slop it? I say this as a Claude Code user. I just want a text editor. I want to choose when to interact with AI tools. pls

People who work directly with Makefiles... why?

Well damn. TIL about @adafruit.com Neopixels. This makes things interesting 👀 #synthdiy #eurorack

Where have FabFilter plugins been my whole life?? Oh yeah I used to be broke #daw #fabfilter #vst

Still plugging away on the EP project! Also cooking up a firmware snack for your learning pleasure! Details soon. Anyway, here's a sketch I'm developing! on.soundcloud.com/SpsyX0eYgJdu...

After 10 long years I finally have a new electric guitar! Naturally had to lay down a modular + electric track 🕺🎹🎸 EP-40 Riddim on drums Rings>Beads>Morphagene on modular Electric guitar on electric guitar on.soundcloud.com/qJT62fGJbPvG...

MIDI makes me grouchy, but mostly because of the historical 8 bit-ness of it. I also think it's too tied to western keyboard conventions, but mostly everything has decent fixes or workarounds these days. I'm having a lot of fun controlling the 0-Coast with a combo of MIDI and CV! #modular #synthsky