Hardware Overview/Requiem: Mutable Instruments’ Braids

In a recent announcement, Mutable Instruments announced that they were retiring one of the stalwart modules of modern Eurorack analog systems: the Braids digital macro-oscillator. Rather than review a new hardware or software piece, we’ve decided to offer a requiem for this highly influential device - a proper Viking sendoff, as it were.

Let Us Sing of the Braids

While Max/MSP users have been able to dive into the intricacies of wavetable synthesis, physical modeling and granular oscillators for some time, the modular world had always been a place of modest technical means. We’ve seen a plethora of options for modulation sources, but few sound generating tools of equal complexity. While a few companies (most notably, Wiard, Synthesizer Technology and WMD) provided oscillators that went beyond the typical four-waveforms-and-a-cloud-of-dust, it was Mutable Instruments and the Braids oscillator that opened the door most broadly to these modern tools. Users were thrilled by the variety of sounds - and new options for generator madness - provided by this oscillator.

In fact, it might almost be more appropriate to think of the Braids as providing 40-odd modes of synthesis instead of thinking of it as a mere oscillator. Want to talk synthesis modes? This thing was a veritable Periodic Table of the Outputs: detunable oscillator phalanxes (JP-8000!), phase-distortion based synthesis like your trusty D-60 or Casio, classic PPG-style wavetables, Sub-Phatty-style waveform morphing, tuned delay lines, and even a little VOSIM in the mix (which brings a tear of joy to the eye of an old Sonologist like Gregory). Oh yeah – it does Ring Modulation and sine waves, too!

And to ice this N-tier cake, you could use the Braids module as a full standalone voice all on its own, since it had an onboard VCA and envelope generator. Look, Ma! No other modules! As you might imagine, the module was economical – for users with limited rack space and limited budgets, the Braids offered a way to generate complex timbres without needing a separate case for oscillators, VCAs, or filters.

The Joys of Control

But the Braids module was much more than a locus of complexity: Olivier Gilliet (principal designer and owner of Mutable) was able to take very sophisticated sound systems and make them controllable with a minimal set of controls. Each of the synthesis modes of the Braids shared a small number of controls – knobs for timbre and color, an additional FM input with attenuator for external frequency modulation, and a trigger input for syncing the waveforms and triggering some of the physical models.

Brian Eno talks about wanting to have a synthesizer with only one knob – but a knob whose every position produced interesting results. As persons occasionally lost in knobville, we came to trust the two controllable parameters for each of the Braids’ synthesis modes. And in the course of making use of them – either by knob twisting or when using voltage control, we came to respect the module’s design. If you’re familiar with the controls on Tom Erbe’s Erbeverb module, you’ll recognize a similar approach to good design - the control parameters actually mapped to multiple dimensions of timbre or parameters in the algorithm that generate the sound. Regardless of the mode you choose, the knobs were doing something interesting.

This allowed difficult-to-manage operations to become more understandable, opening the door for many people to dip their toes into wavetables, FOF vocal filtering, physical modeling and pulse generation. In any of these cases, if you found something you loved, it provided a launching board into the kind of experimentation that Max, Pd and Reactor use could provide.

But treating the Braids as a dumbed-down exemplar of technologies is giving it too little respect. It was a powerhouse in its own right, with some of the oscillator types (such as the |_|_|_| pulse train and RING ring-modulated options) being among users’ favorite digital modular oscillators. Combine that generation power with a fat analog filter and a rack of modulation sources, and you could get amazing - and often surprising - textures that used to be unthinkable in the modular world.

The Braids was deep, but not scary – in part, this is due to the helpful amount of material out there from users who took the module into their homes and their hearts. For the commercial synth enthusiast, the Braids Illustrated document is your ticket down the analog rabbit hole - it walks you through the entire repertoire of Braids output and links them to the synths you know and love.

From T-Rex to Peregrine Falcon: the Evolution of the Braids

In his farewell post, Olivier suggests that the growth of the digital oscillator landscape has provided more options, or better interfaces, or more controls. He also puts to rest the idea of a “MK II” version of the Braids; it’s clear that he has a new vision for the future of Mutable Oscillators, and I have to admit being both curious and excited for this future.

For you long-time lovers and those bereft at the thought of never having gotten around to putting a Braids in their racks, never fear. The Braids lives on in new and evolved forms. That evolution is, in part, due to design decisions that Olivier made early on in open sourcing his designs. The schematics and layouts for for the module are all out there. There are boards for sale, and several kinds of interesting faceplate designs. I’m sure there are people out there who, for whatever reasons, are willing to part with theirs.

Another feature of the evolution of the Braids - as with other Mutable Instruments products - is the arrival of alternative versions of the firmware for the module. In the case of the Braids, it’s Tim Church’s Bees In The Trees firmware, which only makes a good thing even more astounding, since it adds harmonic modulation, a Turing Machine, and a metasequencer in addition to a second modulator and 2 extra envelope generators. You can grab a copy of the firmware here, and get a good look at what it does in this video.

And finally - an even newer step in the Braids' evolution: The Braids has been ported to Ableton Live. Yes, really. amxd~ here we come!

So let us all praise the Braids, and wait for what comes next. So shines a good deed in a weary world!