Design Philosophy

Start with a blank page and design the interface, then make electronics work that way. One part improvised techno live performance, one part Buchla magic. Build on top of years of experience using and repairing vintage synthesizers. Learn from the existing ideas and push the ideas forward.

In a world flooded with “me too” devices and clones there is still room for improvement. Before starting Verbos Electronics, Mark had used a variety of set ups to play live and also in the studio. In the beginning, there were only vintage options. He had used Roland x0x series, Korg MS series semi-modulars, even a sampler. He wanted to be able to improvise completely live. But simple as the goal might seem, there was no perfect solution. 

With most solutions, some part had to be prepared ahead. That could be once a year or the day before the show, but there would be no guarantee that what was prepared would suit the situation at the show. He wanted to improvise, but needed the control to move toward ideas. Chaos and unpredictability do not work. It is ok to patch live if you can count on what the machine will do. 

The solution is to imagine the desired interface, draw the interface and then figure out how to make electronics do that. Decide the range of the controls. The result is an instrument instead of a tool. 

There is a flow to the instrument. The music starts in the user and flows away. It enters into modules at the bottom and left and leaves them at the top and right. This is also true of the system, the way the modules are arranged in the cabinet. 

The modules are very thin, so the cabinet can be laid flat on a table. There is a logic to their arrangement and they are labelled with musical terminology. The interface is designed in what Frank Lloyd Wright called “human scale”. It strives to inspire creative music making, not to smash as much functionality as possible into the smallest space.

Everything happening in the modules is reflected on the panel. No hidden controls, modes, memories or menus. Often times, some heavy lifting is done behind the scenes to make a complicated patch easy to achieve. The goal is to make an instrument that can express the user’s creative ideas.

All modules are designed, built, tested and packaged in our shop in Berlin, Germany. When possible, we source materials locally.