It’s been another busy month of events, an extraordinary album release and crazy/brilliant new program cards. But first, a new project that I’m very proud of: Patch Essentials.

Patch Essentials is a new series of five weekly emails that will help you get to know the Workshop System by building a set of useful, playable sounds — a kick, snare, hi-hat, bass and chord/lead. It’s written by Joe Hedinger (isbn on the Discord) with contributions from many people in the Workshop community.

Patch Essentials is free to anyone with access to a Workshop System. It’s suitable for complete beginners, but I also found lots of tricks I’d never tried on my own system.

Sign up here — you’ll get the first email straight away, then one every seven days, full of patches to try, tweak, play, sample and share.

If you don’t yet have a Workshop System, they’re available DIY and assembled systems from retailers all over the world.

Last month’s Thingking #1 workshop was epic: 80+ Workshop Systems and their owners, learning about Pauline Oliveros and patching in an Oliveros style. Afterwards, people collaborated in transcontinental pairs, swapping field recordings and processing those recordings with their systems. The resulting 65-track album ‘Shared Air’ is now free on Bandcamp. If you download the album you get a 78-page PDF of spectrograms of each track, or you can watch the whole album on YouTube. Check the comments for track-by-track commentary and background notes.

I’ll email you to announce Thingking #2 in the next couple of weeks. I’m really looking forward to it.

Axis Modular’s Toolbelt looks like a very useful accessory for a Workshop System - a set of passive tools including attenuators, a mult, an A/B switch and a neat diode clipper circuit. 42hp, 1U (Intellijel) compatible. Available soon (UK only) from his Etsy Shop.

Thank you Gareth Jones for your kind comments about the Workshop System in Sound On Sound last month: “Its relative limitation is actually its strength. With a smaller, more defined set of tools, you’re encouraged to go deeper rather than wider, and that can lead to a much more intimate relationship with the instrument. Within that, the little computer section has a vast and surprising potential — it opens a door to programmability and variation that can transform even the simplest patch into something evolving and alive.”

If you’re wondering how to do something with a system, there’s probably already a post in the Tips & Tricks channel on Discord. Recent additions:

• How to find custom knobs and nuts for your Workshop System. Here

• How to connect to your Workshop Computer with an iPad or iPhone. Here

• How to make your own custom Program Cards, like Vincent did above. Here

• How to patch a noise generator, because I failed to put one in the system. Here

New program cards

One of my weekly tasks is curating the homepage of computer.musicthing.co.uk which is always a joy.

• Nibble and Nibble-KO are a pair of cards built around the Workshop System’s four buttons, turning them into playable controls for generative melodies, drum patterns and sequences.

• Plantholder is a companion for the Instruo Scion pocket-sized plant-connected synthesiser, adding reverb and allowing the Scion to control the analogue oscillators on the Workshop System.

• Punk Confusion is a ‘deliberately confused’ card that includes an Atari Punk Console emulation with a reverb and PA effect designed to sound like CBGBs.

• Gradual Process is a minimalist composer simulator: set the main knob before startup to choose Glass, Reich or Pärt.”

Upcoming events:

17 October 2026 - Suffolk: Loula Yorke is hosting Patch & Splice: a (brilliant and fun) one-day workshop where you can edit 16mm film with Graeme Hogg then perform an improvised collaborative soundtrack on Workshop Systems. Book Now, only £55

24 October 2026 - Sheffield: I’ll be at Synthfest with the Thonk gang, wearing a blue lab coat and selling slightly discounted modules, devices and Workshop Systems, including some new products. Details and tickets.

15–20 November 2026 - Cornwall, UK: Last year’s Dyski Radio Music residency at the Housel Bay Hotel was extraordinary. I’m going back to Cornwall for another week of radio experimentation. If you’re thinking about coming, these brilliant video interviews with Kenny, Brit and Lucy give a real sense of what the event is like, and prove that it doesn’t always rain in Cornwall in November. Rooms are now available, with some funded places.

If you’re interested in borrowing Workshop Systems, hosting a workshop or organising a build workshop, contact projects@musicthing.co.uk

See you next month,

Tom

It’s been an intense and hot month of events and collaborations and music and code.

First, a big milestone. There were originally 100 slots for program cards, numbered 00 to 99, because I couldn’t really imagine more than that being made. I’m constantly charmed and intrigued and surprised and delighted by the cards that appear every week. They can be brilliant, blunt, intricate, satirical, calm, chaotic, sometimes just funny.

Last week the numbers ran out (two people wanted 48, it was confusing) so we moved to three digits. 303 and 666 have gone, but 808, 909 and 420 are still available.

And yesterday we launched computer.musicthing.co.uk, a completely new way to find and install program cards, developed by Dune & Phil.

Thonk August Sale: 50% off blank program cards, 10% off DIY Workshop System, Workshop Computer, Startup & Mikrophonie (applied at checkout)

Goldfinger, the tiny confusing golden matrix mixer, went on sale last month. Great to see them in the wild — Karlheinz Essl, BayMud, Klang Ensemble. Last week I was at Thonk HQ in Brighton testing the second batch which is now on sale.

Last night 80+ people from Seattle to Singapore joined the first Thingking online event. Ted Gordon, author of The Composer’s Black Box, led us through Pauline Oliveros’ work. We recorded and listened and played patches and worried about our hearing and frightened our pets. It was, as Baptiste said, “extremely joyful”. More events coming soon. Here’s Papierblock’s version of the last patch (recorded to tape, no less).

How to host a Workshop System build workshop yourself: Last month David and James hosted a successful and oversubscribed build workshop at EMF Camp, the huge non-profit geek and craft festival in Herefordshire, England.

If you want to do something similar, you can get advice on equipment, pricing and promotion from me, and huge discounts from Thonk. Buy 5 or more Workshop System kits and you’ll get a 20% discount on the product cost. Order 9 Workshop System kits and you also get a 10th one for free. Contact projects@musicthing.co.uk for a build workshop information pack.

WS-DOOM is a full version of Doom, running on the Workshop Computer. Francisco made it audio-first and integrated with the rest of the system: “Enemies are panned left/right, the soundtrack swells toward the nearest enemy. LEDs are enemy radar, CV outs track health and ammo, pulse outs fire on shots and damage.” And you can connect it to a browser and see the gameplay. DOWNLOAD WS-DOOM.

I’ve been wondering why I like this so much. It shows types of interaction completely different from ‘this is a synth; this is how you play it’. Doom on a modular isn’t in itself terribly useful but it shows how wide the possibilities are, with relatively simple components, interactions and interface, with sound and full motion graphics, controlled by listening and twiddling knobs. Thank you, Francisco.

Sometimes (often) I get emails that fill me with joy. James, a composer who runs the Open Scores Lab in Bath, writes “I thought I’d have a go at porting a prototype bell-ringing Eurorack module I’ve been working on to the Computer. It seems to have worked quite well.” So now you can sequence your Workshop System, or listen to real church bells, using traditional English change-ringing methods with names like Plain Hunt Minimus and Plain Bob Triples. There’s a discussion and audio in the Discord, and you can download the card here.

If you’re wondering how to do something with a system, there’s probably already a post in the Tips & Tricks channel on Discord. Recent additions:

• How to add a power socket and switch to your Workshop System case here.

• How to write a program card from an iPad here.

• How to make a decent video without spending much money here.

• How to understand how Slopes works here.

• How to write a program card without taking off the knob here.

Upcoming events:

Cornwall: November 15-20, 2026: Last year’s Dyski Radio Music residency at the Housel Bay Hotel was extraordinary. We’re back in Cornwall for a week of radio experimentation this year. Rooms are now available, with some funded places.

Coming soon: I’m planning events online and in London, Glasgow and Switzerland. I’ll share details as soon as I have them, or get in touch if you have an idea.

New music being made with Workshop Systems:

• Vincent’s piece Looking Glass, above, is described by one commenter as “the most musical and concise use of the system so far.” It was made using Graham’s extraordinary Lens programming language.

• I enjoyed and was terrified by Sten Sandell’s piece for Workshop System and solo voice.

• Everendnever has used my ‘make an album in an evening’ technique to make an album in an evening.

• Pete Latshaw has released a new album featuring “field recordings, extended techniques on piano and the System as both sound source and sound mangler through various Computer cards (lots of Sheep, Vink, Goldfish)”.

See you next month,

Tom

If you’re looking for new ways to create and collaborate with your Workshop System, or you’ve just wondering where to start, Thingking Workshop #1 is a live, online event, open for anyone with access to a Workshop System.

I’m co-hosting with Ted Gordon, author of the brilliant book The Composer’s Black Box about cybernetics and music and Don Buchla, Sun Ra, Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnik.

This workshop is a bit of an experiment: it will be practical and hands-on. There will be a little bit of talk, some demos, then you’ll use your own Workshop System to explore the ideas of Pauline Oliveros about drones, delay and deep listening.

Afterwards, you’ll be invited to pair-up with another participant to work remotely on a short composition over the next week.

We’ve designed the session to be experimental and informal. No modular or musical experience is required. There will be no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to respond.

If you’re new to the system it’ll serve as a great introduction.

If you’re familiar with the system or a modular expert, recreating Oliveros’ “very unstable music making system” should inspire new ways to think about sound and music.

Thursday July 30th at 7:30pm UK time

20:30 Berlin— 2:30pm NYC — 11:30am LA

Tickets are £10: For the full details and to book your place click here.

Hope to see you there,

Tom

Lots of big news this month.

Goldfinger is a matrix mixer. It’s made of gold. You play it with your finger. The moisture in your skin makes electrical connections between the six inputs/outputs at the top, so it’s an unpredictable way to play a Workshop System or any Eurorack system.

Right now, Goldfinger is free with every Workshop System kit sold at Thonk until 7 July, while stocks last. It's also free with assembled Workshop Systems and Workshop System kits from global retailers while their stock lasts. You can also buy a Goldfinger separately from Thonk for £36.

Goldfinger was inspired by watching people play Workshop Systems at events - patching freely, making connections experimentally, without any theory or goal, finding sounds with their ears. Instead of doing it right, they just wander around to see what happens. It was also inspired by Michel Waisvisz's kraakdoos / cracklebox, Landscape's allflesh, Manifold Research Centre's the map is not the territoire and Guy Debord's Theory of the Dérive (sorry!).

Scandinavian news: You can now buy Workshop Systems and other Music Thing bits from Escape from Noise in Stockholm and Synthshop.no in Norway.

Thingking is a new live online workshop for Workshop System owners.

I’ve been thinking about how to do Workshop Workshops online, so that people who aren’t in Lisbon or Toronto or Deptford or Stockholm can join. Thingking is the first version of that.

The first event is hosted with Ted Gordon, author of the brilliant The Composer’s Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America. It will be a practical session: you’ll be invited to patch, listen and experiment as we explore the work and ideas of Pauline Oliveros. After the session, you’ll be paired with another participant and have a week to work remotely together on a short composition.

If you’re looking for fresh inspiration, or if you’re not sure where to start with the WS, come along. Open to anyone with access to a WS (feel free to borrow one from a mate). No modular or musical experience is required.

Thursday July 30th at 7:30pm UK time (20:30 Berlin, 2:30pm NYC, 11:30am LA) for 90 minutes. £10. Full details and book a place for Thingking #1.

Send any questions or ideas about Thingking to projects@musicthing.co.uk

MLRws, the monome-inspired sample cutting instrument, is continuing to grow, now with a great demo video by creator Dune Desormeaux. If you don’t have a grid, stick around for Gridless Mode, which is an extraordinary Turing Machine-inspired minimal/maximal sample playground. Download MLRws.

This month’s new program cards:

Every month my mind is blown by the creativity and ambition in the Workshop System Discord, and this month is no exception.

• Stretchcore from Infinite Digits is an ultra-gnarly sample player and mangler. Zach was one of the first people to get a prototype Workshop Computer back in January 2024 so I’m delighted to see this.
  Mini demo video | Developer thread | Download & Editor

• Cosmik C1ZZL3 is a polyphonic Phase Distortion synth, inspired by vintage Casios like the CZ-101. The idea came from isbn, the card was developed by nurseryCryme, and it’s been a really inspiring journey.
  Demo video | Developer thread | Download.

• Chorgan is a clever and great-sounding morphing chord generator from Dyski alumnus Andy Jenkison with portamento and really smart chord-changing ideas.
  Demo video | Developer thread | Download

• Lens is… well it is an entirely new programming language called Loupe for creating Workshop Computer cards: sequencers, sound generators and effects. “This whole thing started with an attempt to recreate Brian Eno’s Discreet Music setup on a card,” says Graham. “But I kept generalising and extending until I ended up with what I think is a nice way to create patches in general for the computer module and I'd be very interested to see what others can make with this.” Me too!
  Documentation | Developer thread | Download

• How can I help? If you enjoy program cards but don’t want to write one yourself: Make a demo video, record music with a card (rewarding for designers and everyone else), help with documentation, or suggest an idea for a new card.

I’m loving Daniel M Karlsson’s series of intense, noisy, black-cable-infested Workshop System videos, some of them in the Swedish sunshine, some featuring the huge Serge system at EMS Stockholm.

Upcoming events:

Yorkshire: 3–5 July: Mylar Melodies is hosting his first Dyski Weekend Modular workshop in Yorkshire, with a bunch of Workshop Systems to play. Book here.

Suffolk: Saturday 11 July: I’ll be joining Loula Yorke for Patch & Score: a one-day workshop, improvising live electronic scores to analogue experimental films. Book here.

EMF Camp: 16-19 July: If you’re going to EMF Camp in Herefordshire you can build a complete Workshop System for a very good price. Sign up here or email David for details.

Cornwall: November 15-20, 2026: Last year’s Dyski Radio Music residency at the Housel Bay Hotel was extraordinary (enjoy Hannah Kemp-Welch’s film above). We’re back in Cornwall for a week of radio experimentation this year. Rooms are now available, with some funded places.

Host a workshop yourself: If you’d like to host a build or play workshop near you, or have another idea you want to try, please get in touch.

Finally, here’s an hour of me talking & answering questions (filmed from a very odd angle) at Signal Sounds in Glasgow.

See you next month,
Tom

I’m writing this in the Tate Modern because, unlike the Music Thing Shed, it has air conditioning. There is a lot going on.

The first London Workshop Meetup is on 30th June in the evening at SchneidersKeller on Denmark Street. I’ll be there with program card mastermind Chris Johnson, plenty of systems, lots to talk about. Come down and say hello. Leave your email here for full details.

Monome × Workshop System continues: MLR is the classic sample-cutting instrument from this video of a monome grid prototype from 2007 and being played by Daedalus here in 2010. Now it’s on Workshop Computer as MLRws, created by Dune Desormeaux with a host of supporters and testers in this thread. It does many things that I assumed were impossible. Of course it works with a monome grid, but also has an intense standalone mode that needs nothing but a Workshop Computer and a blank card. Download MLRws.

Legendary English gear shop Soundgas now sells Workshop Systems alongside £22k vintage synths, which makes me very proud: “Think of it as a modern compact Synthi AKS to take wherever you go… The perfect modular synth for electronic music makers and sound designers who don’t ‘do’ modular… this little beauty punches well above its size/weight sonically.” Find a Workshop System dealer near you.

In just the last four weeks, Joep Vermaat has released three program cards that feel like future classics.

• Tesserae is an arpeggio sequencer inspired by Laurie Spiegel’s Music Mouse. Video | Download.

• Motorik is essentially a Hallogallo generator (such a brilliant concept) Download.

• Degenerator is already a hit, a “gnarly, wonderful self-overwriting looper” inspired by William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops. The video above is Laurent Hilairet in France playing his Serge system through it. Šarūnas Kas made good use of Degenerator while playing live on Radio Vilnius this month, and Bay Mud in Canada just released his ace four-minute demo video. Download Degenerator

I’ve updated the What would someone like me do with a tiny modular synth? zine with more pages, better words and a few patch ideas. Physical copies with systems from Thonk, or you can read the pdf here.

I’m in awe of Simon James’ work in Shoreham, a few miles down the coast from where Workshop Systems are made in Brighton. This month: “Young artists from Shoreham gathered field recordings from around Shoreham Port and will use instruments like the Workshop System to manipulate them - stretch, fragment, layer, slow down, speed up, twist, smudge, expand to create a soundscape for an upcoming exhibition.” Simon’s Instagram with a short clip of those field recordings running through RYK’s B77 loop recorder program card.

Do you have a Workshop System or Computer that you haven’t built yet? If you need any help or support to get started, drop me a line.

Chat Card by incomputable is a very playable version of Software Automatic Mouth, a speech synthesiser for the Commodore 64 from 1982. The card comes in a sensible web MIDI version but also the pleasingly bonkers keyboard version above. Download Chat Card

Upcoming events:

Dalston: 16th June: Phil Durrant will be playing Workshop System at Cafe Oto. Phil is sowari on the Discord, and often shares details of his live setup. Book here.

London: 30th June: Workshop meetup SchneidersKeller on Denmark Street, details above.

Yorkshire: 3–5 July: Mylar Melodies is hosting his first Dyski Weekend Modular workshop in Yorkshire, with a bunch of Workshop Systems to play. Book here.

Suffolk: Saturday 11 July: I’ll be joining Loula Yorke for Patch & Score: a one day workshop, improvising live electronic scores to analogue experimental films. No experience necessary. All technology provided. Sound-curious visual artists welcome. Book here.

Cornwall: November 2026: Last year’s Dyski Radio Music residency at the Housel Bay Hotel was extraordinary. We’re almost certainly doing it again, sign up for the Dyski mailing list to get details first.

Host a workshop yourself: If you’d like to host a build or play workshop near you, or have another idea you want to try, please get in touch.

Even more new program cards…

• Grains by Vincent Maurer is an extraordinarily deep and great-sounding granular looper and sample player with a nice demo video, full of blissful moments like this one. Try Phil’s video for a very different take on the same card. Download Grains.

• DivCom by Olivier Divmod is at completely the other end of the spectrum, a tribute to the arcane Serge NCOM module. I love the range of ideas this month, from shiny and digital to raw analogue emulations. The original NCOM was two logic chips and a couple of op amps. Download DivCom

• Wild Pebble by Adrian Vos is a quirky generative sequencer inspired by Jonah Senzel's wonderful Pet Rock. Download Wild Pebble.

• drumdrum by Moses Hoyt is a DFAM-style percussive drum sequencer that can be played with a web interface or monome grid. Download drumdrum.

• Computer Grids by Phil Miller is a straightforward-but-useful port of Mutable Instruments’ Grids, with an awesome gong-based demo video. Download Computer Grids.

• Glitch by Andy Jenkinson is a clocked breakbeat slicer and beat-repeater a bit like my favourite old Ableton plugin. Video | Download Glitch

You can download all the latest cards and follow and test work in progress cards on Discord.

See you next month,

Tom

I’m writing on the train from Glasgow after a fun evening at Signal Sounds, a shop full of vintage synths and new inventions and interesting people. So much to talk about this month…

The Thonk Mayday Sale is on now:

• Workshop System kits with 10 free patch cables and 3 extra blank program cards

• Workshop Computer kits with 10 program cards, including 7 blanks

• Music Thing Modular Eurorack kits 10% off including Mini Drive, Startup, Twin Drive, Turing Machine.

Very proud to see this beautiful video of a monome grid playing a Workshop System - monome grids can now connect directly to the WS over USB.

I also enjoyed this video from Bay Mud about getting into modular synths when you don’t want to get sucked into spending too much money.

Workshop Computer Eurorack modules (now available in aluminium!) started arriving this month, so the Discord has been busy with new and improved and AMAZING program cards:

• Flux is an exceedingly deep synth and multi-effects system from Vincent Maurer. It’s simply 🤯 to me that the Computer can do all this. Download Flux

• Zodiac is a very cool generative sequencer with an ace browser visualiser. Download Zodiac

• VSS is a polyphonic sampler, still beta but so many people have been talking to me about this one. Follow VSS progress [discord]

• Gruv, inspired by Moritz Klein’s brilliant work with logic gates, turns the WS into a little chaotic groovebox. Follow Gruv progress [discord]

  

  Patch the Random is a book of random patches for the Workshop System, one of my favourite community projects yet. Oliver has now released the code which can generate a new book, along with free PDFs of the two editions. I’d highly recommend the printed edition, 200+ pages, only £13.

Host a workshop: In the last month I’ve enjoyed Workshop Workshops in Rotterdam, Croydon and Stockholm, both building (8-12 people learning to solder Workshop Systems) and playing (12-24 people in a room musicking, experimenting and collaborating). If you’d like to host a build or play workshop near you, or have another idea you want to try, please get in touch.

Upcoming events:

Berlin: 7-9th May: I’ll be at Superbooth with the Thonk gang, with a TINY FREE GIFT for Workshop System and Computer owners. Just bring a photo of your system - a selfie, ideally - to the MTM stand W251 in the headphone zone, in the gym.

Cornwall: 22-24 May: Jake from RYK is hosting a Dyski Weekend Modular residential workshop (I’m told first one with Loula Yorke was fantastic), with Workshop Systems on hand to play. Bookings.

Yorkshire: 3–5 July: Mylar Melodies is hosting the first Dyski Weekend Modular workshop in Yorkshire. Bookings.

Music being made with Workshop Systems this month:

• Here are all the albums made at the first three Dyski Sound Maps residencies (the event the Workshop System was designed for).

• t36s writes: “I am so in love with my Workshop System it is hard to put into words. Such a nifty little instrument that is capable of so many wonderful things. This is a generative patch which I recorded and did some very light editing of and also added a few plugins on my mainframe computer.” (Lovely ambient piece, I’ve been listening for 20 minutes while writing the newsletter). `

• I spend so much time thinking about program cards and weird experiments I can forget that the Workshop System can actually sound pretty ace just by itself: This video from carvery_gifthorse reminded me: “I had a go with Chris J ‘s sawtooth-esque trick to try and create a fairly traditional subtractive synth bass. Those humpack filters definitely have vibe, and sound quite lovely.”

• A lovely piece from Jim50hertz: “Work in progress derived from the Sorley Maclean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain) poem ‘The Choice’ (An Roghainn). As ever the workshop system is the hub”

See you next month,

Tom

I’m writing from Rotterdam Centraal after from a series of build workshop at the incredible WORM arts centre. March has been an intense and wonderful month in Workshop System Land: Events in multiple continents and London boroughs, a feature-length DivKid video, incredible new community-written program cards and the biggest program card launch yet.

You can now buy a separate Workshop Computer kit for Eurorack Systems. It’s exactly the same as the Computer in the Workshop System and runs the same Program Cards. The first batch sold out in two days, but the Workshop Computer DIY kit is back in stock at Thonk.

If you’re in London or the South East on 25th April you can build a Workshop Computer with me in a Saturday afternoon DIY workshop with SynthShed.

The other big news is the RYK Program Card Pack: Back in June 2025, Mylar Melodies made his epic video about the Workshop System. At 37 minutes, he pulls out prototype card called called 910. It’s a pitch shifting delay based on the Eventide H910, the device that Tony Visconti told David Bowie & Brian Eno “It fucks with the fabric of time.” That card was made by Jake Knight from the incredible RYK Modular, Jake has now released a beautifully programmed, designed and packaged set of cards for the Workshop System. Available at: Thonk £40+vat and Perfect Circuit $69.99.

• B77 is an audio recorder: record around 1.5 minutes of mono sound onto two separate tracks. Audio is stored on the card. (I assumed something like this was impossible, turns out it isn’t)

• 355 is a pitch tracker - turn whistling, singing, or monophonic guitar into a synth controller with V/Oct pitch output, an envelope follower and a built-in oscillator.

• 350 is a classic 14-band Vocoder with an optional internal 4-note polyphonic carrier synth.

• 910 is a pitched delay has a continuously variable range of ±1 octave for creating harmonised pitch shifting to wild cascading pitched delays,

I was blown away by this 90-minute video by DivKid full of wonderfully musical demos of a big range of program cards, including: Sheep, RYK 910, RYK 350, Simple MIDI, Reverb+, RYK B77, Backyard Rain and Utility Pair, also known as the GOD LEVEL UBER CARD.

Dyski Sound Maps Residency in Canada was a joy: 18 people in a vast arts centre on Toronto Island in -14° using Workshop Systems, gongs, graphic scores, field recordings, singing, plants and guitars(?). Dune Desormeaux ran a Program Card Masterclass, captured in this video, and created Enhance, one of the most fun cards I’ve yet seen - discord link to try the beta version. Find out about future Dyski events.

New program cards and updates:

• Knots is an extremely deep oscillator with multiple ‘engines’: Download it here, or read Jeff’s excellent write up about the AI+human dev process.

• Siren is a huge drone oscillator inspired by the extremly hip Forge TME Vhikk X. Download it here.

• Discord updates: Inspired by _lucyinthesky and DivKid, the Discord now has a big Tips & Tricks section containing numerous how to guides, from patching feedback to finding the hidden attenuator to coding with AI. There’s also now a discussion area for each program card.

Patch tip: I’m often asked how to use the Voltages section. It’s a tiny sort-of keyboard roughtly the size of my thumb. My favourite patch is this: Create a dense chaotic patch. Send the four voltages to points in that patch. Press one button and tune the whole patch so it sounds good. Then press another button and the whole thing falls apart. Here’s the patch, it’s much more fun than it sounds!

Upcoming events:

London: 5 April: Phil Durrant will be playing his Workshop System at Cafe Oto.

Stockholm: 9-12 April: I’m running a series of workshops and seminars over four days in Stockholm, many of which are free to attend. Full details at EMS.

London 25th April: I’m hosting a Workshop Computer DIY build afternoon with SynthShed in Croydon, a few places still available: Details and booking.

Glasgow: 29th April: I’ll be talking about the Workshop System at Signal Sounds from 7pm: Full details here.

Berlin: 7-9th May: I’ll be at Superbooth with the Thonk gang.

Cornwall: 22-24 May: Jake from RYK is hosting a Dyski Weekend Modular residential workshop (the first one with Loula Yorke looked fantastic), with Workshop Systems on hand to play. Bookings.

Yorkshire: 3–5 July: Mylar Melodies is hosting the first Dyski Weekend Modular workshop in Yorkshire. Bookings.

If you want to borrow a set of Workshop Systems to host your own events, please get in touch.

Music being made with Workshop Systems this month:

• I enjoyed this fantastically sinister short film from Pete.

• MicroIndie’s rather less sinister EP ‘Knob per Function’.

• Ben’s Workshop Feedback Studies album continues to grow.

• Femtito, by Klangsemble is drums & self-sampling Workshop System.

• The Backyard Rain card continues to inspire, here’s a trip-hop-ish piece by HyperMelody.

• A quick Digitakt & Workshop System jam from Rocky.

• Finally here’s Thelma Rose singing and jamming with the WS as she prepared for the gig at Spanners in Brixton last week.

• If you’re looking for inspiration to record yourself, Chris’s Score Generator looks very promising.

See you next month,

Tom

I’m writing from Toronto, where it’s -10°C outside. Sound Maps 3 starts tomorrow, five days of Workshop Systems, graphic scores and field recordings on an island in Lake Ontario. Last week I was in Huddersfield for the Electric Spring festival, watching an ensemble of eight systems played through a 64-loudspeaker immersive sound system and joining Chris Johnson to talk at the Creative Coding Symposium. Videos soon. Chris’s talk was a reminder how much inspiring and mind-bending work is happening on the coding side, with new program cards appearing every few days.

BUY a system: Kits from Thonk, Exploding Shed, Perfect Circuit: Assembled from Thonk, Perfect Circuit, Signal Sounds, SchenidersLaden, SchneidersKeller.

TRY a system: Free amazing virtual Workshop System in your browser, or in person at SchneidersKeller in London and Perfect Circuit in LA.

I love that John T made a clear acrylic panel for his Workshop System with LED edge lighting that will (of course) eventually be sound responsive. If you want to try something like this, I’m always happy to share the necessary design files.

New program cards and updates:

• If you haven’t yet used your blank card yet, this little video explains the process (but keep reading for an even easier way to do it).

• Krell from Benjamin Reily is a great helper for recreating the 1950s sci-fi inspired Krell patch by Todd Barton. Nice YouTube demo from Benjamin. This patch was developed using Dune’s Blackbird system, which lets you create complete cards using Lua, which most people find simpler than C++. Download Krell here.

• Chord Organ, by Josh, is a recreation / reinvention of my old Chord Organ module, with loads more features. Here’s a quick hotel room clip of it in action. Download Chord Organ here.

• Resonator by Johan got a huge update with a new web editor to set chord progressions. Download Resonator here.

• The default cards all got minor updates this month - you can overwrite these like any other card:

  • Reverb+: Slightly improved sound, MIDI hosting, lots of small fixes. Worth it if you haven’t upgraded for a few months. Download v1.4

  • MIDI: Small bugfixes to calibration, only really necessary if you’d had any troubles with tuning. Download v0.6.

  • Turing Machine. Small tuning fixes this time, but a big upgrade (clock in!) if you got your system six months ago and haven’t yet upgraded. Download v1.5.3

The other way to write Program Cards. Try this if you don’t like taking off the knob on Computer (it can be fiddly). While connected by USB, remove the program card and press reset or cycle power with an empty slot. You’ll see an RPI-RP2 folder appear on your desktop. Now, insert the card you want to write. Do not press the little button! Drop the .uf2 file onto the folder, and it should write as normal. Magic. (Thanks Dune for discovering this)

The new Why We Bleep is out, talking about Synclaviers, vibe coding, a mysterious new touchplate object, small speakers, Workshop Workshops and church organs with Mylar Melodies and Tim Exile.

Workshop System × Lasers: planet-safe shared this lovely hypnotic clip of a WS running Ruiyang Wang’s wonderful Trace card driving a multi-coloured laser.

A minimal tracker thing: tracker.musicthing.co.uk works in your browser and is maybe a cross between live coding and a tracker, with an FM sound engine. It can send out USB MIDI that will work on the Workshop System. I spent a couple of days vibe coding this as a way to think about different types of sequencers (the kind of thing that a synthesiser designer is supposed to do, I think). I won’t say much more to see if it’s at all intuitive. Let me know what you think. The help system is reasonably useful - try tutorial or euclid help.

Flux is a work in progress mega-card from Vincent Maurer, with polyphonic midi synth engines and effects. And, like utility pair, it talks. You can follow his development in the Discord, or download a recent version here.

Upcoming events:

Cornwall: 13–15th March: There’s still a place left at Loula Yorke’s Weekend Modular residency, which will have a set of Workshop Systems available for use.

Online: 15th March: The date isn’t confirmed, but follow the Meetups channel in Discord to find out about the next voice/video meetup.

London: 21st March: As part of the amazing Sun at Night festival, David Henckel will be leading a Workshop System Workshop at 4pm at St Giles Church in Camberwell.

London: 21-22nd March: Meanwhile, I’ll be across town at the London Synth & Pedal Expo (where I first met David a year ago) showing Workshop Systems and maybe some other things.

London: 27th March: Half-day Workshop System mini-festival at Spanners in Loughborough Junction, led by the brilliant Zheng Hao. Hands-on workshop (£5 entry) in the afternoon with a concert in the evening, including the excellent Thelma Rose. Details and tickets here.

Rotterdam: 28th March: I’ll be leading a full day build workshop at WORM — come, build, take away a working system, open to people with any level of soldering experience (including no experience). There are two €565 tickets left as I’m writing.

Den Bosch: 29th March: I’ll be at SynthForum Meeting 2026 at Willem Twee Studios in scenic s-Hertogenbosch, talking about my design process. Full details.

Stockholm: 9-12 April: I’ll be running a series of workshops at Elektronmusikstudion EMS, KMH Royal College of Music and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. More details to come.

Glasgow: 29th April: I’m doing a Workshop Workshop at Signal Sounds, keep an eye on their blog for details and tickets.

Berlin: 7-9th May: I’ll be at Superbooth with the Thonk gang,

If you want to borrow a set of Workshop Systems to host your own events (probably UK only), please get in touch.

Music being made with Workshop Systems this month:

• Phil Durrant will playing WS a Cafe Oto twice this month. Here’s a great clip of him playing noisebox + Sheep. YouTube.

• Really enjoying Bert Van A’s use of the new Flux program card here, randomness in an interesting way. YouTube

• Klangsemble’s new piece Ett inre rum is “two takes from the WS - a guitar loop through Reverb+ and a cassette tape/flea market find through the ring mod” BandCamp.

• On the subject of Krell patches, here’s Till Bovermann’s particularly itchy and noisy version for WS and MakeNoise 0-Coast. YouTube

That was quite a month, see you next time,

Tom

January was a huge month for the Workshop System. I was in Lisbon watching fourteen musicians, artists and producers spontaneously form three ensembles and perform through João Pimenta Gomes’ extraordinary sound systems, then in Cardiff watching a group of 14-19 year-olds do the same. Meanwhile the Workshop System coding community was exceedingly productive — see below for details of a batch of wildly experimental and interesting new program cards. And it was Jamuary, so lots of music was being made and gigs were played.

A simply astonishing collection of new downloadable free Computer Program Cards were released in January:

• 6-Channel USB Audio and MIDI: Designed by Vincent Maurer with support from the Workshop Discord (and Google Gemini), this turns the Workshop System into a fairly sophisticated audio interface. I assumed something like this was impossible, turns out it isn’t. Download here.

• Resonator: A great twist on the classic Mutable Instruments Rings / Karpluss Strong idea which one of my personal favourite sounds. Lovely demo here of piano through the card. Download here.

• Trace: Is a card that draws pictures on oscilloscopes (“a collection of oscillograph oscillators with two channel outputs, designed to work with X/Y mode on oscilloscope to make oscillographs”) I’m going to have to find a vintage oscilloscope to test this properly. Creator Ruiyang Wang shows an earlier version of his system in this fantastic live demo video. Download here. (Demo video above by planet-safe)

• Duo Midi: A duophonic MIDI-to-CV + envelope card, created using Blackbird (see last month’s newsletter). It receives MIDI note, velocity, pitch bend, and mod-wheel, so for recieving MIDI is much more powerful than the official MIDI card that comes with each system. I might just copy this onto mine. Download here.

• MultiFX: Is a guitar-oriented multi-effects card, including amp simulation, delays, reverbs and pitch shifters. Ported from an open source guitar pedal by busy Vincent M. Early but already impressive. Download from Discord.

• You can see the latest work in progress program cards here or join the Discord.

I love showing people this feedback patch - it’s just the red lines above. Once you have a sound you like, take an output from the mixer (L or R) patch it into Amplifier, turn amplifier DOWN, then patch the output into another mixer input (3 in the picture). Slowly turn up amplifier and recreate this famous Minimoog feedback patch. One of the girls in Cardiff tried this and said “that’s amazing, it sounds like Slipknot”.

Another deeeeep Patch Memory video from David, this time looking at Computer, talking about Backyard Rain, Goldfish and Vink - so many ideas and so much inspiration here.

Upcoming events:

London: 7th February 2026: My beginners’ modular workshop at SchneidersKeller is sold out, so spend the afternoon at Synth Shed DIY build session in Croydon then stay on to see 808 State. Alternatively, if you’re in Norwich, UK, pop down to Synth Picnic, where there will be at least one WS to try.

Huddersfield: 21st February 2026: I’m doing a talk with Chris Johnson, who has helped make the Workshop Computer such a success, at the Creative Coding Lab Symposium, part of Electric Spring.

Toronto, Canada: 2–6 March 2026: Sound Maps Retreat. The first Dyski event outside Cornwall. It’s residential, immersive, a few rooms still available. Full details.

Rotterdam: 28th March: Workshop System in-person build session. I just confirmed this, more details to come.

Stockholm: 9-12 April: I’ll be running a series of workshops at Elektronmusikstudion EMS, KMH Royal College of Music and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. More details to come.

Glasgow: 29th April: I’m doing a Workshop Workshop at Signal Sounds, keep an eye on their blog for details and tickets.

If you want to borrow a set of Workshop Systems to host your own events (probably UK only), please get in touch.

Music being made with Workshop Systems:

• Lovely peaceful piece by Jens with a WS and a Koma Field Kit. YouTube.

• You can also sample the WS use those sounds elsewhere. Bert does that here, very precise sound design. YouTube. (This is exactly how Allesandro Cortini works now, except he uses an original Synclavier as the sampler)

• Joyful to see WS in a live band context: Never Stop in Berlin say: “WS for all bass sounds and some effect processing… Its been touring with us everywhere and hard to not use it all the time for everything.” YouTube.

• Austrian Composer Karlheinz Essl exploring the analogue parts of his WS for 16 minutes, showing what 45 years of electro-acoustic music experience looks like. YouTube.

• And finally here’s an ace (if low res) video of Cowtools playing live under a huge glitter ball: “We are a very noisy fun band with a mc who raps in serbian from perth WA. Ive used the workshop system for a good couple noise/techno shows now and its quite a well known device in our music scene… such a cool and accessible instrument.”

See you next month,

Tom

One thing I’ve noticed doing events with the Workshop System is how fast people get into it. In December I spent a day with post-gradelectronic music students at Goldsmiths, then an afternoon with designers at The Guardian. With both groups, people were very quickly playing with sound with their hands and ears, not worrying too much about their brains. The Workshop System is so deep and complicated, but I’m very pleased people can get enjoyment from it so easily.

Toronto, Canada: March 2–6, 2026: Sound Maps Retreat. The first Dyski event outside Cornwall. It’s residential, immersive, some rooms are still available and the deadline for grant-assisted places is 1st February. Full details.

Vincent’s utterly 🤯🤯🤯🤯 playable online Workshop System has been upgraded in many ways since launching in November. It now has a 4 track recorder, an oscilloscope, a full set of stompboxes, a number of working Program Cards and lots of under-the hood improvements (thanks Chris for the nicer FM algorithm). And the random button is still the best thing ever. Patch Notes Workshop Emulator.

Blackbird is finally here, and now I finally understand it. Dune Desormeaux (of Goldfish and Sheep), has made this feature length and wonderfully clear explanation of the card and the deep ecosystem he’s building around it. If you’re interested in coding (or live-coding) and want to make cards for the Workshop Computer but you don’t want to learn C++ or Python, this could be a great way to start. Learn more and download Blackbird here

Brian has made an incredible 3D-printed case for his Workshop System, including his excellent-if-bonkers labelling system for program cards. Details on the Discord.

Lisbon: January 10th 2026: João Pimenta Gomes is a Portuguese musician and artist who uses modular synths and amazing loudspeakers in gallery installations. On the 10th I’ll be joining him at the Boavista Gallery in Lisbon to run a Workshop Workshop (and hopefully to play the system through that massive Western Electric speaker!). The workshop sold out in an hour, but I’m in Lisbon for a few days so get in touch if you want to catch up.

This Program Card talks: Last year Chris Johnson released a new program card every day in December. This year he combined all (but one) of those cards onto one, with the most incredible voice-based setup menu I have ever seen (heard). It’s surprisingly practical, and of course the cards sound fantastic. Utility Pair 2025 Edition.

I really enjoyed this extended demo video from David Richards, showing only the analogue side of the Workshop System — with some really deep Serge-style patch programming, lots of tips to pick up there.

Song Athletic hired Nancy Chamberlin to make a short film about the modular community at Machina Bristronica, including me talking about tools and creativity while wearing the blue lab coat.

London: 7th February 2026: Saturday night on Denmark Street, I’m hosting a beginners’ modular workshop at SchneidersKeller. Everyone will have their own Workshop System to work on. I’m hoping it will be friendly, creative and hands-on. £20, a few places still left, book now or tell your modular-curious friends

Richard from Axis Modular has designed these handy overlays for the Workshop Computer, and generously made them open-source. Details on the Discord, and some available to buy from Axis on Etsy.

Some recent music made with Workshop Systems:

• Ben’s rather lovely album Workshop Feedback Studies keeps growing.

• Bert’s nice video of Karplus Strong + a delay pedal

• Live Drums + Karplus + Turing185 from klangsemble

• Ambient patching in five minutes from Wirebaby

• Noisy chaos from Oliver / Divmod

If you’re doing Jamuary in 2025, please do share anything you make.

At present, the WS is available as a DIY kit from Thonk in Brighton, who ship worldwide, Perfect Circuit in California, Exploding Shed in Leipzig and from SchneidersKeller in person from their store on Denmark Street, London.

Workshop Systems are also available pre-assembled from Signal Sounds in Glasgow, Perfect Circuit in California and SchneidersLaden in Berlin, and on request from Thonk.

Finally, Marcus Fischer took a beautiful set of portraits of his Workshop System.

See you next month,

Tom

Last week the Workshop System turned one year old. I planned to write a big review of the year and all the ace things that happened (Mylar’s video, Suren’s first gig, Ronnie’s workshop in the church, Sound on Sound, the BRIT school, Denmark Street, all these program cards), but there are too many new things happening to waste time looking back. Onwards!

Blackbird is the deepest and most 🤯🤯🤯 program card yet. From Dune Desormeaux (of Goldfish and Sheep), It’s a complete recreation and expansion of Crow, a eurorack module from Whimsical Raps and monome. It lets you control the Workshop Computer from other computers in interesting ways - using Max/MSP, or the live coding environment druid, or using monome’s norns device. You can create program cards using Lua. Learn more and download Blackbird here. I need to dust off my elderly DIY Norns and spend some time with this.

Unexpected end of year surprise: Vincent Maurer has just created Patch Notes, which includes an almost complete emulation of the Workshop System that you can play in your browser. It is work in progress, but what work, and what progress! Full of treats: the guitar icon launches pedals, the keyboard connects Midi to Computer, there are even program cards in there. INCROYABLE.

If you’re new to the Workshop System and you’ haven’t yet spent many hours rolling your own program cards using Chris Johnson’s Utility Pair , get over there now.

I was grinning all the way through Sound Bureau in a basement vinyl bar in Streatham, South London a couple of weeks ago. Four very experienced improvisers using Workshop Systems in duos and a quartet. They all used clusters of devices around their systems — Tansy played the contact mic with nylon cord and a bow, Phil had a little noisebox, Jon used three handmade pedals. They played quietly through individual speakers, so it felt like an acoustic set, like chamber music. Half the joy was watching the musicians listening, communicating, thinking. Thank you all. Sound Bureau is back on 9th December, without Workshop Systems, but with tap dancing.

Assembled Workshop Systems are now for sale at the legendary SchneidersLaden in Berlin, which makes me extremely proud. You can also buy them at: Signal Sounds in Glasgow and Perfect Circuit in Burbank (which are both equally legendary in their own way).

This is a simply brilliant analogue patch from Vincent (again!) on the discord, turning the system into a chaotic, self-playing, great-sounding, extremely tweakable kick/snare drum machine. He chains three modules (Stompbox, Amplifier and Stereo In) to create enough white noise for the snare drum, triggered by some 🤯 clock divider business using the Ring Mod and a slope. It slips between doof doof doof and weirdness very pleasingly. I made a quick demo video.

The ESP program card by Ben Regnier is a digital recreation of the External Signal Processor from a Korg MS20 (used by Goldfrapp on vocals and Aphex Twin on drums). Includes pitch tracking, envelope tracking and an extra bandpass filter. Demo video. Read more and download the ESP card here.

Also from Ben, Vink is a patchable dual delay program card inspired by the Dutch composer Jaap Vink who died in 2023 and specialised in intricate noise loops. It helps you set up playable, meditative, noisy systems of filtered and ring-modulated feedback. Download it here, or watch me playing it for 12 minutes here.

Upcoming Music Thing events:

• In late February & early March 2026 I’ll be in Toronto, Canada for several events, including Dyski’s first full residency outside Cornwall. I’ll share full details in the next email, or join the Dyski mailing list to hear first.

• On December 7th I’ll be at Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studio in South London, for a full day workshop with students.

• On January 17th I’ll be in Cardiff for a Music Lab event with teenagers, do get in touch if you’re around that weekend and have an idea.

• On February 7th I’ll be at SchneidersKeller in Denmark Street, London, for a hand-on modular-for-beginners workshop using a dozen Workshop Systems. If you know someone modular-curious who might enjoy it, send them my way.

• On 13–15 March, the brilliant Loula Yorke will be hosting Dyski’s first Weekend Modular retreat, a two day residential event in Cornwall for anyone interested in exploring modular music-making. It will include plenty of Workshop Systems, of course.

I took some lightly modified Workshop Systems to the Dyski Radio Music residency in Cornwall last month, set up with Chris Johnson’s AM Coupler program card and a cheap wire antenna. The system broadcasts medium wave radio pretty well across a room. You can broadcast weird jingles or sounds from the system, and sweep the broadcast frequency to move sounds to handheld radios around the room, which is what I’m doing in the picture above.

I enjoyed this lengthy but unhelpful WS-related Reddit thread: Can I make an album with only this?

Some recent albums (and other music) made with Workshop Systems:

• Space Wolf and the Caves of Kratan by Caddow, making good use of the Noisebox card.

• Tapes by Lazenbleep, single takes recorded live using Sheep and Teenage Engineering OPXY

• I can Hear The Universe Breathe by Professor Whom, featuring the Backyard Rain card.

• Finally, Borg is an “insane dialogue between two mountains( and a drum track)”

That’s it, email me if you have questions or ideas,

Tom

A couple of months back, Jake Mehew (a Richie Hawtin PhD scholar at University of Huddersfield) asked if he could borrow the Workshop System loan set. Jake recruited a gang of University of Leeds music students, ran a workshop/rehearsal with them and they performed a 30 minute improvised set at at Belgrave Music Hall last Saturday as part of Computer Club 4.0. It was such a joy for me to watch, some ace noises. I was watching with local lad Mylar Melodies and neither of us could work out how they were each doing what they were doing (I kept saying ‘hang on, there’s no noise generator!’). If you have an idea and want to borrow 1-12 Workshop Systems for an event (probably UK only unless you have a way to ship them yourself) then please get in touch.

Three interesting new work-in-progress Program Cards:

• Dune is developing Blackbird, a Computer version of Monome Crow, a scriptable USB-to-CV device that I must admit I don’t completely understand (but seems extremely chill). You can find his latest version here, or follow the discussion on discord.

• This is a nice thread where BrainlessBoy starts to develop a piano program card, gets some help, makes something that sounds interestingly weird, evolves the idea.

• Johan is developing Six!, a really interesting 6-step sequencer inspired by Jake’s wonderful RYK M185, some nice chill sound demos in this thread.

Love this video by Bark Bark Dog Studios: sampling a flute into an ancient Casio SK1, recording that to tape, then processing it through the Workshop System.

A Symphony of Bureaucracy was an event a couple of weeks ago in Malmö’s Cultural Sound Zone. Data sonification experts Loud Numbers used eight small modular synths (including a Workshop System!) to perform “a data-driven fugue, where eight interlinked melodic lines weave in and out of each other, covering a timeline from the 1950s to the present day”.

Ronnie Deelen writes from an artist residency in Ziyang, China where he’s using his Workshop System to synthesise crickets. I love how this sounds but my wife found it extremely irritating.

If you’re in London, SchneidersKeller in Denmark Street is such a joyful place: You can drop in, play with huge modular systems (or the Workshop System in the corner) and chat to Edd & Jean-Marcel. Then pop over to The Serpentine to look at Peter Doig’s Huge Speakers.

Upcoming events:

• Right now I’m in Cornwall for the Dyski Radio Music residency, I’ll write more about that next time, to find out about future events join their list.

• The Sound Bureau on November 11th at The Hamlet in Streatham, South London: Experimental Improvised Music featuring the Music Thing Modular Workshop System. I’m excited about this one, four very experienced improvisers —  Phil Durrant, Tansy Spinks, John Macedo & Tom Ward — will play an all Workshop System set. Details & tickets.

• On December 7th I’ll be at Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studio, also in South London, for a full day workshop with students.

• On January 17th I’ll be in Cardiff for a Music Lab event with teenagers, do get in touch if you’re around that weekend and have an idea.

• In April 2026 I’ll be at the wonderful Elektronmusikstudion Stockholm for an event, so if you’re in Scandinavia and have an idea, do get in touch.

New music from Workshop Systems:

• Johan playing his WS with the heat from a candle.

• Hardworking families live improv set.

• Dean Sabatino composition for WS and old answerphone messages.

• Nice coastal ambient vibes from Wirebaby

Finally, Gaetano writes from Switzerland: “I used your youtube instructions. Finished in same time. All parts included. All works. TOTALLY beginner friendly! So, with hand on my heart, I herewith thank you very much for giving me this wonderful experience!”

If you’re still reading this, please forward it to someone who might enjoy it.

See you next month,

Tom

I’m writing this the day after Machina Bristronica, the huge and friendly gathering of electronic music people in Bristol, where I grew up. It was fun and inspiring to meet so many current (and future?) Workshop System players - people like Duncan Speakman, who’s been doing interesting things with sound since 2001. Two standout performances were Russell Haswell on Saturday (loud, bracing, palate-cleansing), and Kaitlin Aurelia Smith closing Sunday (lush, sensual, emotional). I also performed a traditional chaotic interview with Sonic State.

Two interesting new program cards from kjnilsson on the Discord (I’ll get these into the main program card repository soon):

• UMel uses the unique serial number on every program card to create a 256-step sequence, with various controls to scroll around that unique sequence looking for treasure.

• NZT is a grain noise source inspired by the Elektron Digitone II and the Nord Modular G1. I love to see this kind of ultra-niche idea, so well executed.

And Divmod (maker of the Patch The Random Book) has created Toolbox, which is “inspired by the utility section of the Make Noise 0-Coast” and includes a mixer, VCA, Clock generator, noise sources and more. In other words, all the useful things that didn’t fit into original the Workshop System design.

This is undoubtedly one of my favourite Workshop System demo videos yet: Bark Bark Dog Studios worked with composer, cellist and improviser Semay Wu. “This is an extract from the musical result of @semay.wu ‘s selection, prompted by the words ‘magnetic’ and ‘bubble’ processed through Sheep, a granular processor for the @musicthingmodular Worskshop System programmed by @dessertplanet_.”

At the start of September the Workshop System loan set went to Whitstable on the Kent coast for a fun, intense, day-long workshop hosted by Coastal Electronauts. We started with Sine Sketches, moving on to the One System Four Hands exercise shown above.

It was nice to see a Workshop System in Sound on Sound magazine again this month (thanks Tom), after their lovely review back in April (thanks William).

Upcoming events and workshops:

• In Leeds, the Computer Club team have the Workshop System Loan Set for the last two weeks of October, leading up to Computer Club v4.0, on Saturday 25 October at Belgrave Music Hall and Canteen, which will open with the Music Thing Modular Ensemble, a 12-piece improvised performance. They’re planning various events — if you’re in Yorkshire and have any ideas, get in touch with Jake.

• Radio Music, the new Dyski residency in Cornwall is completely sold out, but Join the Dyski Mailing List to hear about future events, we’re currently planning a weekend non-residential event in London, a potential residency in Toronto, and something online-only.

• If you have an idea and want to borrow 1-12 Workshop Systems for an event (probably UK only unless you have a way to ship them yourself) then please get in touch.

• And if by any chance you’re in Beijing and attending Modular Commune in November, please also drop me a line.

I’m always blown away by live shows with the Workshop System, this month Lazenbleep played in Dresden with OP-XY and Workshop System with the Sheep program card, and here’s Pablo Ruiz at UFO Bar in Detroit using the WS as part of a full live set.

Four Voltages —  those four red buttons at the bottom of the Workshop System — is probably the hardest part of the system to explain. It has four outputs, four buttons and one tiny knob. Because it’s not random, but it is unpredictable, it’s designed to be played with the ear rather than the brain. Push one button, patch the outputs to a few places (oscillator or filter frequencies, slopes CV inputs) tweak everything so it sounds nice. Then, push another button and the whole thing should fall apart, go back to the first button and it pulls back together. Ben Regnier’s fab video, with just a WS and a Reverb+ card, is a little masterclass.

Finally, a beautiful and chill five minute ambient patch using the Turing Machine card.

If you’re still reading this, please forward it to someone who might enjoy it!

See you next month,

Tom

Here’s an new version of the Workshop System real time build video. Once again it’s extreme Slow TV, about three minutes shorter than Lawrence of Arabia. It is only useful for people with a system from the latest batch - post July 2025. Thonk have improved the way kits are put together — smaller, with less packaging and even clearer labelling. Each module is now an individual kit, which should prevent some common mistakes (shout to ThatHydeKid among others).

Workshop Systems have landed in California at Perfect Circuit and are now on sale and on display in their Burbank store. DIY kits, pre-built systems and program cards are available for prices that seem fair in this post-tariff world. In the EU you can also buy kits and cards at Exploding Shed, shipping from Leipzig. You can also buy (and try) pre-built systems at SchneidersKeller on Denmark Street in London. And of course Thonk ships fast, cheap and safe worldwide from Brighton.

A new version of the Turing Machine card that comes with every Workshop System is now available. There’s now a clock input, which makes it fun to sync with other gear, a fancy-looking new web editor and lots of other new features. It can be clocked at audio rate so, like the original, it makes a good random wavetable oscillator. You can download the .uf2 file here, and learn how to rewrite a program card here. There’s no write protection, so you can write the new code onto the Turing Machine card that came with the kit. I wrote a bit about the coding process on Lines.

Chris Johnson has found a pair of hidden analogue v/oct Sawtooth oscillators in the Workshop System: Use a stackable to “patch the oscillator sine output into FM input of the same oscillator, with FM knob near maximum to get something that looks, and sounds, quite a lot like a sawtooth. Taking the square wave output with this feedback gives you a square wave with a non-50% pulse width.”

In a masterstroke of vibe coding, j__r0d has built a whole new dynamic homepage for the Workshop Computer Program Cards that makes it much easier to use to find and download cards and documentation.

Upcoming events and workshops:

• This weekend, Saturday 6 September I’ll be in sunny Whitstable doing a full day workshop with Coastal Electronauts. Sign up here.

• I’m looking forward to Machina Bristronica in Bristol on 27-28 September. It’s a rare chance to see so many builders, musicians and experimenters in the same place. I’ll be chatting to DivKid on his stage by the main entrance.

• In Leeds, the Computer Club team have the Workshop System Loan Set for the last two weeks of October, leading up to Computer Club v4.0, on Saturday 25 October at Belgrave Music Hall and Canteen. They’re planning various events — if you’re in Yorkshire and have any ideas, get in touch with Jake.

• There is just one room left for the Dyski Radio Music workshop in Cornwall in November, which should be both fun, inspiring and mind-bending. This lovely instagram clip filmed at Sound Maps earlier in the year shows what attending a Dyski event is like.

Over the last few weeks I’ve built a couple of these Computer Programmer units for Thonk. It works like an old-school cassette duplicator; one Program Card goes in, 15 new ones come out. Previously, every card had to be programmed individually one by one, sometimes by me. If you’re developing Program Cards to sell, get in touch and I might be able to get you one.

I’m loving the new Rainbow Blank Program Cards that Thonk have created.

Chord Blimey was one of the first Program Cards written — developed by Tom Waters (who went on to create Twists) on a developer kit in May 2024, it’s a fun patchable arpeggiator. Now Moses Hoyt has updated the code, adding a set of different arpeggio modes. Ace to see this kind of collaboration around the system.

New music from Workshop Systems:

• Dyski alumni and creator of the oD program card Matt Mills has just released a new EP : “Forced myself to master and release something for the first time, track 2 has (somewhat hard to detect) workshop system along with radio music and chord organ.”

• Tom Garnett used a EHX Mel-9 pedal (a bizarre/amazing thing that turns any audio into Mellotron sounds) with a Workshop System to make this. There was a detailed discussion of the patch on the discord.

• I really enjoyed this piece from Bark Bark Dog Studios, showing how to use the contact mic to set up an acoustic feedback loop through the Ring Mod.

• Ben Regnier “took the Workshop on vacation and did a series of recordings” which he’s released a three track EP called Workshop Feedback Studies. “All of the recordings were WS-only; mixer feedback going thru reverb with injected tones from the oscillators. At various times I put this feedback through the band pass filter and/or the ring modulator.”

Thank you for reading all the way to the bottom, see you next month,

Tom

The best thing about making things is when they escape and develop a life of their own. The Workshop System escaped from me last month at the Brompton Cemetery Chapel in West London. Over two days, Ronnie and Sonnie from White Noise took a room full of creative people, mostly non-musicians. They starting with zero experience of synths, modular or music making, but at the end of the day everyone performed solo for 5 minutes each, playing with oscillators, filters, the contact mic, program cards and most of all with the incredible acoustics of the space. I loved it, and if you have an idea and want to use the Loan Systems, get in touch.

Here’s 25 minutes of me at the Crux Festival in April, talking about the design process for the Workshop System.

On Saturday 6 September I’ll be in sunny Whitstable doing a one day workshop with Coastal Electronauts about collaboration, creative experimentation and learning to use small modular synths - not a million miles away from the White Noise event above, suitable for complete beginners or experts. Sign up here

After a brief period out of stock, Workshop Systems are back on sale at Thonk. If you’re not up for building the system yourself, Thonk are selling pre-built systems on demand, just email support@thonk.co.uk

If you’re in the European Union, you can also buy kits from the excellent people at Exploding Shed, although you might have to be quick, they seem to be going fast. They also have the 2mb and 16mb blank cards.

Sheep is the incredible new program card from dessertplanet, creator of Goldfish, BYO Benjolin and Fifths. Details in the description of the video above. “It's a granular processor. It might look like Clouds from a distance but when you get closer it is its own weird thing! It pitch shifts, it stretches time, and more.” The video is fantastic, and it’s set me off listening to Shabbazz Palaces “for … creative use of lo-fi time stretching that inspired this.”

A crack international team of Workshop System users including Depeche Mode producer Gareth Jones and Twists developer Tom Waters have discovered that you can write Program Cards from an iPad using an app called ES File Explorer. And you have a Workshop System but haven’t used the blank program card yet, here’s a quick video to explain how to use it and where to find new program card programs.

Mostly, July and August seems to be inspiring people to get out and make music:

• Lovely chilled Turing Machine sequences in the sunshine from johaneklund.io

• Recordings of ice cracking, warped perhaps through Sheep(?) from SimonSound

• A noisy duet between a Workshop System and a Shortwave Radio from Hardworking Families

• A beautiful snippet of WS + MengQi Wingie from Matt Mills

• A cozy duet between a Workshop System and a rainstorm from Dave Bewick

• A blippy duet between a WS and an O-Coast from Nobuhio Nakayama

Finally finally, if you bought a Workshop System Kit but haven’t put it together yet, do get in touch if you need any advice, support or help. I might run an online build workshop if that would be useful.

Thanks for reading, see you next month,

Tom

Mylar Melodies released his 50-minute Workshop System demo video. Making this was a long and surprisingly emotional process for both of us. It is by far the best introduction to the Workshop System (yet). And with 20k views and hundreds of nice comments, it’s out in the world. Thank you, Mr Mylar. (And yes, the 910 pitch/delay card he uses is coming, but no, I’m not sure when.)

Next week in London: White Noise have borrowed the loan set of Workshop Systems for their first-ever workshop series: “You will explore sound in a creative way. This is not a technical course, but an experiment… a safe, friendly, and supportive environment. No pressure to succeed—just the freedom to fail.” The workshops are on Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th July, £25 for each full day, at the beautiful Brompton Cemetery Chapel, co-hosted by Dyski alumni Georgie West, Sonnie Carlebach and Ronnie Deleen. Full details of the workshops are here - please pass this on to a friend who might enjoy it.

I made a joke about Teenage Engineering and people took it very seriously.

Beta test request: If you have a Workshop System, and you use Windows and MIDI, please drop me a line and I’ll send you a new version of the MIDI card which might solve problems some people have had with Windows.

Last month I spent two phenomenal days at the BRIT School in South London (alumni: Amy Winehouse, Imogen Heap, FKA Twigs, Black Midi, Kae Tempest, etc etc). Day 1 was a miniature Dyski workshop - blind sketching, sine wave exercises, collaboration, noise, lots of laughter. Everyone went extremely deep extremely fast. Day 2 was listening to tracks they’d made with the systems: UK Garage, Eno-esque ambient, gritty breaks. Such a thrill to see the Workshop Systems being used like this. Thanks to David, Chris and Drew for your support. If you’d like to do something like this, get in touch.

Patch The Random is a 200+ page ring bound book of completely random patches for the Workshop System, designed and produced by Oliver / Divmod. These random patches are a surprisingly mind-bending way to escape habits and loops, helping you reconsider assumptions you have about how the system should or could be used. The Second Edition is out now, with an improved (slightly less silly) randomisation system. It’s available worldwide in print here, or as a PDF from the Discord server (login required).

The first Workshop Discord online Meetup happened last week organised by BenjaminReily: “Around 10 people turned up from all over the world, we chatted about programming, music and projects. A work-in-progress card was demoed, music was played and new ideas bounced around. It was a wonderful opportunity to put faces to names and get to know other Workshop users. Hopefully it can be a regular thing, maybe monthly. Meetups will be posted in the general discord channel and the events tab. All are welcome, so keep an eye out if you're interested and join us next time.” If you’re not yet on the Discord you can join here.

The first Workshop Workshop: five brave souls came to Thonk HQ, some with no soldering experience at all. They all left with fully working systems, only a few hours later than we’d expected. If you’re part of a local modular meetup and can find 5-10 people who want to buy Workshop Systems, I’ll come down to help you build them.

Finally, more radio experiments: Prep for the Radio Music: Field recording from the ether workshop in Cornwall on November 2-6, 2025 continues. I’m delighted that Shortwave Collective will be joining us to build open wave-receivers, and I’ve been trying to make my Workshop System sound like an AM Radio (it ended up sounding like a Star Wars communication droid).

Thanks for reading, see you next month,

Tom

IF you’ve ever wanted a Workshop System, but aren’t confident about building it yourself…

OR you bought a Workshop System but haven’t got round to building it…

Come to the Workshop Workshop in Brighton on Saturday 28th June at 1pm.

It should be a fun day. Plenty of time to build. We’ll be there until 7pm but most people will take 3-4 hours. I’ll talk a bit about patching and using the system, there will be lots of time for interesting chats.

It’s £500 or £50 if you bring your own kit. A few places are still left.

Apologies if you got this message twice, I need to work on my mailing lists.

Big news at the top:
Workshop System Batch 2 DIY kits are still available at Thonk
Radio Music: Field Recording from the Ether, November 2-6 2025, is booking now.

Right now I’m prepping for a series of workshops at the BRIT School, the free performing arts school just down the road from me in Croydon, funded by the UK record industry.

I finally have a loan set of 12 Workshop Systems for events and workshops - please get in touch if you have an idea.

Meanwhile, a lot of other things have happened over the last month:

IF you’re a new Workshop System owner, it’s great to have you here.
1. Build it 2. Use it 3. Join the community

I’m inordinately pleased that there is now a Workshop System on permanent display, with some pre-assembled systems on sale, at SchneidersKeller in Rough Trade on Denmark Street, London.

This is history on history on history: Denmark Street has been the home of music since the 1920s, original home of Melody Maker, the NME, the Sex Pistols’ rehearsal space and nearby the sadly lost Turnkey, where Mylar Melodies worked and which had a basement synth museum with a VCS-3 sitting on a Fairlight. Rough Trade is the classic British indie record label (The Smiths, The Fall, Dean Blunt). And of course ScheidersKeller is the London offshoot of SchneidersLaden, the world’s most important hardware synth store.

So I’m delighted Edd & Jean-Marcel (son of the late Manfred Fricke, of MFB the great democratiser of European synthesisers) invited me into their space. They’re open 12-7pm Wednesday-Saturday.

Port Navas Sessions: Sound Maps Two is the album we recorded at last month’s Dyski retreat in Cornwall, out now on Bandcamp. I’m always blown away by the creativity of these events and of course there is lots of Workshop System there.

IF you have a Workshop System but haven’t used the blank program card yet, here’s a quick video to explain how to use it and where to find new program card programs.

Once you’ve done that, try this new card from the unstoppable dessertplanet, creator of Goldfish and BYO Benjolin is back with Fifths, a fantastically melodic and quirky quantizer, pitch and pulse sequence and VCA, beautifully explained in the video above.

Here’s almost an hour of me in a lab coat talking rather nervously about the background to the WS at Machina Bristronica last year.

I mentioned Tristan’s Compulidean program card last time - the first Workshop System generative drum machine, with gnarly 808 samples and euclidean patterns. It’s now been updated and improved with slightly less gnarly drum samples.

The most bizarre, ambitious and illegal-in-most-states program card yet is Chris Johnson’s AM Coupler, which turns your Workshop System into a small pirate radio station. It requires some hardware modification and tolerance to legal risks, but… it works. Keep reading for more radio experiments.

Workshop Systems in the wild: Illustrator, musician and chef Simon Fowler played his WS with Dylan Carson of Earth at Stranger than Paradise records last week: “Completely improvised but basically a C# drone. Extremely powerful though a fender twin on volume 2!” I missed Superbooth this year, but Eric from Landscape was there with a Workshop System at the booth. Mark Pilkington was playing his WS at his own Acid Horse festival in Wiltshire last week, in very good gear company.

This video about the Workshop System - or really, about the box it comes in - has been surprisingly popular. Not crazy viral, but much more popular than I expected. I think there’s something there about the physicality of the WS - about it as an object, rather than just as a set of capabilities. It’s something we talked about in Cornwall, the difference between the universal laptop and the limited but tangible WS. I’m thinking about this a lot, let me know if resonates with you.

Finally, I’m very pleased to announce a completely new Dyski retreat: Radio Music: Field Recording from the Ether, which is happening November 2-6, 2025 at the Housel Bay Hotel on the Lizard Peninsula, where Marconi stayed in 1901 while conducting his first long-distance radio experiments. All the details are here, for both paid and grant supported places.

This means I’m currently deep in radio R&D and planning mode. I managed to hack a CV intput into a £20 shortwave radio from Amazon, then at the legendary Dunstable Downs Radio Club boot sale in Luton I bought myself a Yaesu FRG-7, a beautiful old Japanese radio with a bizarre three-knob tuning process. You can hear what it sounds like on this 58-track dump of sounds from an evening’s scanning.

Finally finally, if you bought a Workshop System Kit but haven’t put it together yet, do get in touch if you need any advice, support or help. I might run an online build workshop if that would be useful.

Thanks for reading, see you next month,

Tom

I’m writing this from Calamansac, just outside Falmouth in Cornwall. It’s the second Dyski Sound Maps retreat, so I’m surrounded by people collaborating, experimenting, making music with many Workshop Systems, graphic scores, field recorders, tape loops, an ad-hoc quad system, three melodicas and an out of tune piano.

It’s amazing for me to see people using the Workshop System in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. Oren & Dan performed an bit of Stockhausen’s Mantra with the house’s old upright piano running through the Ring Mod and my battered Genelec speakers. It sounded immense and alien and I couldn’t stop grinning.

Meanwhile, a lot of other things have happened over the last month:

IF you’re a new Workshop System owner, it’s great to have you here.
1. How to build it 2. How to use it 3. How to join the community

What an honour to get an in-depth review of the Workshop System in Sound on Sound this month, thank you William for being so positive and concluding that the system is “Fabulous in almost every way”.

Suren played another fantastic short set with Workshop System and Kaoss Pad at the Synth Expo in Hackney. Thanks, Suren!

I made a little zine called “What Would Someone Like Me Do With A Tiny Modular Synth?” for the Synth Expo - you can download a copy here - and I’d be interested to know if it successfully answers the question for you.

If you’re in London or Brighton and want to learn to Solder or improve your skills, Simon at Synth Shed in Croydon runs brilliantly friendly regular workshops every few weeks.

A really exciting crop of new work-in-progress Program Cards have been released over the last few weeks:

• BYO Benjolin is a clever toolkit for building chaotic instruments from the designer of the brilliant Goldfish. Demo video. Documentation.

• OD, from Dyski alumni Matt Mills, is a loopy chaotic modulator with fantastically deep documentation. Project page.

• Compulidean is a very fun Euclidean Sequencer which also features the Workshop System’s first drum machine, with gnarly 808 samples. Project page.

• Glitter is a stereo granular looper with a very cool video demo featuring a Yamaha Remie. Project Page.

This epic video from Chris Johnson is a DEEP dive into designing and writing Workshop System program cards. I found it very inspiring — like watching a master craftsman turning a raw log into an elegant chair, and the complete opposite to my own vibe coding efforts. Also - here’s the program card he’s making in the video.

The new 16mb blank program cards are currently in stock at Thonk. There aren’t any 16mb-exclusive programs at the moment (Backyard Rain comes in 16mb and 2mb versions), but more space will make it possible to experiment with samples. Let me know if you make anything you want to share.

If you bought a Workshop System Kit but haven’t put it together yet, do get in touch if you need any advice, support or help. I might run an online build workshop if that would be useful.

I’m currently working on a ‘how everything works’ demo video - a detailed talk through all the ins and outs of each video. Let me know if there’s anything specific you think I should include.

Thanks for reading this far,
Tom

Suren played a short set with a Workshop System and an old Kaoss Pad KP3 at Factory Setting in South East London. I loved it, even if I found the live card swapping moment slightly terrifying.

If you bought a Workshop System Kit but haven’t put it together yet, do get in touch if you need any advice, support or help. I might run an online build workshop if that would be useful.

Every day during December Chris created a new program card with his extraordinary Utility Pair project, which Peter wrote up on Create Digital Music. It’s an incredible collection of new ways to use the Computer. Here’s an hour of my abstract Delay+Delay noodling. If you have a Workshop System but need more blank program cards, there are a few still left here.

Sound Maps is back. The Workshop System was designed for this musical retreat (graphic scores + field recording + great food), in Cornwall last April, and I’ll be back at Calamansac House at the end of April. I think there are still a couple of places left, you can find more here.

Sound Maps alumni Sara Wolff has scored her first short film, Carrot Cake, using “field recordings, strings, synths (including the Workshop System) and lots of vocals”. The world premiere is at my local cinema in South East London, but is already sold out.

Backyard Rain is the coziest program card yet, developed by Brian Dorsey: The card plays ambience which was recorded in Brian’s backyard in Seattle on a rainy night in June 2023, seamlessly crossfading between different intensities. This is exactly the kind of thing I hoped people would make for Computer, here’s a quick demo.

Goldfish is a fantastic looper / sequencer card for the Workshop System, designed in a very modular or patchy way. It turns the WS into a different instrument - a fresh core that suggests new uses for the analogue bits. (Another nice demo from Al)

The Random Patch Generator. While developing the Workshop System I wrote a random patch generator in Python with very simple rules: It understands inputs and outputs, and that modules have to be patched to the output mixer. Beyond that it has no preconceptions about audio vs CV, filters vs oscillators. I talk about it more here. The code is on the Discord, and people seem to enjoy working with it; here’s a series of random patches being played by StoneWare, and Divmod is now developing a physical book of 200 random patches to try.

Finally, if you have a long journey to fill, there is lots of Workshop System chat and philosophy (!) in the latest Why We Bleep podcast with Mylar Melodies.

I’m travelling for most of February, but will post again in late March, with dates and details of Workshop System Batch 2. Please get in touch if you have anything you’d like to share.

Download work in progress program cards here at the Workshop Computer Github.

Join the waitlist for the next batch of Workshop Systems here.

Join the Workshop System Discord here.