January here at Noise Engineering is generally eventful, and this year was no exception. Buchla and Friends is in its third year and this was the best one yet. This year a load of fun events popped up around the show…and then afterward, it was once again Synthdaddi time. Best of all, we got to bring Patrick to LA. For those of you who don’t know, we’re only four people, and three of us are in Los Angeles. Patrick lives on the east coast. We think it’s important to see each other face to face every now and then, so January is the time we do that.

We practiced our socializing skills

In the lead up to Buchla and Friends, things were pretty hectic but we wanted to shout out the SoCal Synth Society for hosting their annual show with raffles and some really amazing performances. We donated a module to the raffle and I hope it ended up in happy hands!

On Friday, we partnered with our pal Eli from Mystic Circuits to host a meetup for the exhibitors at Buchla and Friends. We had enough pizza to feed a small nation (I’m Italian. It’s a mortal sin to run out of food in my family). We love trade shows, but they can be so busy that it can be hard to just hang out with other makers. This was our chance to touch base with other makers and nerd out, chat, and have a glass of wine (or beer or a soda). We’ve been in this industry a long time and we’re lucky to call a lot of these folks friends. It was a joy to get to hang out with old friends and make (so many!) new ones. One of our takeaways from the party was just how many new faces there were. Here’s to hoping that’s a good omen for Eurorack and that we have a great year of cool new things coming.

Buchla has a lot of friends

This year’s Buchla and Friends was the biggest yet with about 100 exhibitors and SO many visitors. It’s free and open to the public, and Peter and Eric at Buchla couldn’t have done a better job than what they put together this year. We talked to several people who came to LA just for the show and it felt like we got to talk to the exact people we wanted to talk to.

And talk we did. Markus and Patrick gave loads of demos of the new Multi Repetitor and some other goodies we had there. We all talked to tons of people (and possibly cooked up a cool collab here or there). There were so few moments when I wasn’t deep in conversation with someone. If you stopped by, thank you! If we didn’t get to chat as much as you would have liked, our apologies! Please feel free to drop us a line!

By Monday morning, we were all totally hoarse. The whole team took Monday off and Stephen and I agreed to spend the day not talking. Because Tuesday was time for Synthdaddi.

What is Synthdaddi? 

Here at NE, we try to have a roadmap for the next year or two. Everything we do is a team effort, so it makes sense to have all of us in one place for a couple of days to work out this year’s roadmap…and laugh at last year’s since they are never very accurate. Still, it’s good to have a plan, right? 

Enter Synthdaddi. Shout out to Party Nails for naming it so many years ago. As is now our custom, we had our friend Kelly Maryanski create a logo for the festivities. She is a multi-talented person, but one of her jobs is doing live illustration. Need someone unique and awesome for an event? Hit her up.

A Day in the Life at Synthdaddi

We hold Synthdaddi at our house these days. A few years ago we realized that starting the day with a nice hike together was a good idea. This may have corresponded to us adopting Alice, who definitely needs a little while to calm down when someone new walks in. We’re fortunate to live near a lovely park so Markus and Patrick get here around 9 and we spend about an hour taking a nice walk with the pups and just generally chatting.

This year, Markus got a kind of absurdly nice grinder (and if you know anything about them, you know they are obsessive about good coffee). So the first order of the day each day was to have Markus brew us some exceptional pourover. 

[Editor’s/coffee brewer’s note: Coffee was ground on a Zerno Z1 using SSP Cast V3 burrs, as they do a good job at both pourover and modern espresso. The beans were a washed Ethiopian and a Colombian Gesha, both roasted by Ondo. Brewing was done with the Hendon water recipe, as it’s a nice all-around water of moderate hardness, and does well on brighter espresso without muting flavors in pourover. Pourover was brewed using a three-pour V60 recipe with a Melodrip, and espresso was brewed on a Cafelat Robot using a 1:4 ratio and fast extraction. We used a different bean each day, and tried both brew methods with each. The group favorite was the Gesha as espresso.]

Then we got down to business.

We talked through our takeaways on Buchla and Friends. I led a discussion on some pretty major change we have to things (more on that in a few months!). We reviewed our mission statement as we do each year and even added a new Core Value: Integritas. 

Lunch time came with Markus hand-pulling some incredible espresso. 

After lunch, we prepared for the cage match.

Just kidding. But our product-planning meetings can sometimes get heated. I am so proud of a team that can argue passionately but still respectfully about products and directions of the company. In past years, we have even had to take breaks! This year was remarkably calm though. Maybe we’ve matured. Maybe we were all on the same page to start with. Maybe we were just beat down by the past 5 years…we’ll never know.

We spent some time pontificating about various product things. We looked at so many products, held them in our hands, and poked at them. Everyone presented multiple product ideas. We adjourned for dinner.

Dinner is one of my favorite parts. In an effort to be sustainable and keep costs down (and just because we love doing it), Stephen and I cook all the dinners for Synthdaddi. That first night, we pulled out our Korean dolsot bowls and went to town. I can’t claim what we made was traditional in any way, but it was fun.

Markus’s birthday falls during the week of Synthdaddi each year, so we have one hard and fast rule: we must get Magpies ice cream during the meeting.

On day two, we started the day in the same way: a nice hike, delicious coffee…and then got back to trying to make a plan for the next year (or two). We put ideas on notecards to help us visualize / remember them. We taped them to the fireplace and arranged and rearranged them. We paid brief homage to the failures on last year’s schedule, and came up with another ambitious list of things to get done. Will we do all of them? Certainly not. But like I said, it’s good to have a plan.

We ended with our annual awards ceremony and closing ceremony (in which we take turns throwing bottles of La Croix off our balcony). The La Croix toss started as a post-NAMM catharsis probably in 2018 or 2019 and has been a mainstay ever since. I had a strong early lead, but was bested by Markus’s explosive toss.

We settled in for a dinner of lasagna (and more ice cream pie), and a few hours to just hang out and take in the list of things we hope to accomplish coming up. 

 As we have repeatedly said, it’s been a weird few years. This year will be another weird one. There’s a lot happening here behind the scenes (more on that soon), but Stephen and I are so grateful to be facing it with Markus and Patrick at our sides. I say every year that we’re excited about what we have planned, and this year is no exception: in fact, I think the list of products that we came up with this year is our best list yet. It’s going to be a wild year, but it’s also going to be very, very fun.