Alectrona
MUSIC SYNTHESIZER
Personal venture 2025
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Objective

Alectrona is Kinetic Workshop's in-house project to develop an iPad electronic music workstation.

Current State / 2025

We've allowed this project to evolve freely from fast prototyping, that's one of it's benefits. Currently Alectrona has expanded out from a single synthesizer to include full workstation functions like multi-channel output and master effects. It will also be only for iPad (probably Pro), this UI is entirely meant for touchscreen use. For more follow my posts on X, where I say more than anyone would want to know about Alectrona.

Project History

Phase 1 / 2023

This phase was to be an uplift of the open source SurgeXT plugin.
My "BlueSky" redesign I felt Phase 1 had gone as far as it could, but to really improve the UI it needed to have pages for different controls - it was just too busy. I also felt there needed to be on overall controlling scheme to the UI give visual coherence. I began Phase 2 with wireframe experiments in diffrerent Modular Grid schemes.

This wireframe demonstrates that one module grid can accomodate all permutations perfectly:

This wireframe shows the final layout scheme, top is for audio signals, middle is a variable display, bottom is control signals. In the current SurgeXT, the module roles are entirely mixed up. I added a basic "skin" to see how the color scheme might work. Here are the final 3 pages of Phase 2:
At this point I felt I needed to get feedback before I went further. I found an active Facebook group dedicated to SurgeXT and presented my designs there.

Feedback!

The response was amazing, I got several hundred comments over the course of several posts. It was quite divided in preferences, many preferring the crowded original UI because it gave them full access, and they used large screens at desks. But there was also a lot of enthusiasm for my revision. Also MANY suggestions that were food for thought. I also chatted with the devs for SurgeXT and found they had future plans that were not compatible with my design. Therefore I decided to do a Project Reset.

Enter Alectrona / 2025

Here I drew on the inspiration of one of the inventors of the music synthesizer in the 1960's, Don Buchla. He is famous both a counter-culture figure and the founder of "West Coast" synthesis.

Buchla's approach was to forget about the internals and design his instruments from the front panel first. Which is to say, from the User's perspective. Only when he felt that was done did he design the audio circuits behind the panel. This is of course a 180 degree inversion of the usual process.

So that's where I am at, starting again, with a new name. Alectrona is the Ancient Greek goddess of the dawn, often referred to by Homer as "the daughter of morning, rosy-fingered dawn".

Follow me on X or Instagram, where I will be posting often about each step of the development of the Alectrona Music Synthesizer.

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