Beneath the Front Panel, Accessibility? Revisiting the Commercial Modular Synthesizer in the age of NIME

The annual international conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) was founded in 2001 (Fasciani and Goode, 2021) and its community of designers and performers has grown significantly over the last two decades. Reflecting better understanding of the demands placed on players by traditional instruments and how these can limit participation, recent years have seen increased emphasis on accessibility and diversity (NIME, 2023), as well as critique of NIME’s focus on newness (Morreale et al., 2023). However, if there are few examples of widely adopted NIMEs in general, there are still fewer examples of their long-term use by disabled players. This is partly because many candidate accessible NIMEs are player or disability-specific, but it also reflects that the majority of accessibility-oriented NIMEs still do not meaningfully involve disabled people in their design.

Early commercial electronic musical instruments (CEMIs) such as the theremin (1920) and Moog’s modular synthesizer (1964) are seemingly extremely well known (to the extent that they are culturally significant), but there has been little exploration of their potentials as accessible instruments. Drawing on autoethnography as a research method, as well as music-historical and HCI research, the author reflects on their dual experiences as a one-handed (amateur) musician and a NIME practitioner-researcher for seventeen years. More specifically, this presentation examines the potentials of a small Eurorack synthesizer as a one-handed instrument, including consideration of three dedicated interaction strategies applicable to performance and composition. This is followed by broader discussion of accessibility and modular synthesizers, including aspects such as tactility, adaptability, and mass customisability. The presentation concludes with suggested directions for future work.