1. Music Thing Modular is a range of electronic musical instruments, mostly modules for the Eurorack Modular Synth format. They are designed in Herne Hill, London by Tom Whitwell.
  2. If you want to build a Music Thing module, you can buy well documented full kits from Thonk, a wonderful Hardware Record Label based in Brighton, England. Or you can buy parts and make PCBs yourself.
  3. Newer modules are Thonk Exclusive for a while. If you need the design files, just ask.
  4. Music Thing Modules have been used by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Anthony Child, Thom Yorke, Russell Haswell, Chris Carter and many others.
  5. I’m a former journalist and magazine editor (Mixmag & The Face). In the noughties I ran the Music Thing blog, before working at The Times. Got into DIY electronics after attending a workshop with Tom Bugs, reading Handmade Electronic Music, playing with Arduino and building guitar pedals.
  6. Find me: Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, GitHub, SoundCloud. You can also buy a couple of albums I made on Bandcamp.
  7. Contacting me directly is rarely a quick way to get help with a project or a technical problem. GitHub issue lists are a good place to start (Turing Machine, Radio Music), a search of MW DIY will often find answers, as will looking at the Facebook Synth DIY group.
  8. Most Music Thing designs are published under a CCBYSA Creative Commons license. That means you can build them, share them, sell them, hack them and modify them as long as you give credit and share all your changes under the same license. Many DIY-ers put together Thonk kits as a service for people who don’t solder themselves, charging a fair price for their skill and time.
  9. However, if you are creating new products based on my open source designs, please do not use the brand ‘Music Thing Modular’ or the module names I’ve used for commercial versions. If you are not adding anything to products that are commercially available (i.e. kits from Thonk), consider doing something different. If you’d like to sell a commercial version of one of my products, please get in touch first.
  10. You can read more about Music Thing Modular and open source in this article: Why Open Source Music Hardware works for Music Thing Modular.