Paul Schreiber at CONTROL in 2018
It has come to my attention that Paul Schreiber has passed away.
Pictured: Paul Schreiber at the 2006 NAMM show. Top from this previous post (pic by fr1zz), and bottom from this post (pic by Synthtopia) - this is the first image of Paul on the site. There is one comment in that post: "He's a good guy." Indeed.
Readers of the site should be familiar with his work. He was the man behind MOTM and Synthesis Technology.
To say Paul was one of the greats to influence the synth community would be an understatement. He was pivital to the rebirth of modular synthesizers. He started when modular as we know it today was in its infancy, as one of a very small group of large format DIY modular manufacturers along with Blacet, Modcan, Cynthia, Wiard, Oakley, STG, Catgirl/CGS, Tellun/Lower West Side Studio YuSynth, Jurgen Haible, and of course DIY staples like Thomas Henry/ MFOS, Ray Wilson and PAiA (see this post for some modular formats back in 2007). I focused mainly on those offering DIY. There were other manufacturers including Synthesizers.com, Club of the Knobs, MOS-LAB, Moon Modular, MacBeth, CMS, and more. Feel free to mention others in the comments. This post is about Paul, but I think it's important to reflect on some of the large format modular manufactures he was amongst at the time.
Paul created the MOTM format of 5U modules in 1998. MOTM stood for Module of the Month offering monthly DIY kits. From Wikipedia: "MOTM was created by Paul Schreiber in 1998. The system was created in part due to the renewed interest in large-format analog modular systems that occurred in the late 1990s. Between 1998 and 2021, over 8000 modules were sold. The company, Synthesis Technology, also offered a limited number of modules in Eurorack[2] and Frac[3] format."
He was also helped design the Moog/Realistic MG-1. From Wikipedia: "In 1980, Moog Music was seeking to contract manufacture a mass-marketable synthesizer which could be sold via a large retailer. Moog representatives secured an appointment at the Radio Shack corporate offices for a 5-minute demonstration. Radio Shack approved the concept, and Paul Schreiber (then employed by Tandy Systems Development) worked together with Moog on the synthesizer's design to achieve Radio Shack's price requirements.[2][3]"
He later joined the eurorack scene with Synthesis Technology branded modules. FYI, his site for MOTM was always http://www.synthtech.com/, short for Synthesis Technology. The first post to mention Paul and MOTM was posted just under twenty years ago here on MATRIXSYNTH back on August 26, 2005. If you click through you will see it was a post announcing the MOTM/synthtech.com site was going down for the weekend. He announced he was retiring from the synthesizer business in August of 2023.
I beleive the first synthtech eurorack module was the MOTM E340 Cloud Generator. The first demos were posted on July 14, 2009, followed by a mockup of the front panel on July 20. The first post to mention Synthesis Technology was an Epic Son track by John L Rice in August of 2011. Since then there has been approximately 845 posts to feature MOTM, and at least 398 Synthtech.
You can find a number of interviews with Paul in previous posts here.
It's worth repeating, Paul Schreiber was one of the key figures that brought modular back to the masses. He was both respected and loved by the synth community. It's impossible to overstate his influence. He will be missed.
The following are the first the last video interviews with Paul to be featured on the site:
The SynthSummitShow Episode 2: Paul Schreiber (Synthesis Technology) and A.Dapt (music producer) ...
Streamed live on Oct 2, 2015 Flux302 of Fluxwithit.com. Details previously posted here.
SysEx Dumpster - Episode 44 - a conversation with Paul Schreiber
video upload by Sysex Dumpster on Jul 30, 2023. Details previously posted here.
The first videos to feature Paul presenting a module was back on January 3, 2010, and the first interview on SoundCloud in 2013, and he was of course featured in the modular documentary film I Dream of Wires.
Hi, nice tribute posting! I've been in sort of an odd mood since Paul passed away. :-(
ReplyDeleteSome of the early 5U manufacturers I think you may have missed are Synthesizers.com, Club Of The Knobs, Mos-Lab, and Curetronic. (maybe other's I'm forgetting?) And I'm pretty sure the first Synth Tech Eurorack module was the E340 Cloud Generator, followed closely by the E350 Morphing Terrarium? (not the E102 which came several years later.) The E340 had been previously teased as a new 5U MOTM format module, along with the MOTM-521 Cloud Generator Expansion module that boasted "a user interface to program and load (via USB) 'patches' into the MOTM-520", which is something that finally found its way into the E352.
John L Rice
Thanks John. I had massive list also including Synthesizers.com, COTK, MOS-LAB, CMS, Moon Modular, and others (I think I had Curetronic but I forget now). I also included early eurorack makers at the time like Doepfer, Analogue Systems, Plan B, and so on. The list was massive so I ended up cutting the post back to focus on large format DIY offerings but missed clarifying that. My mistake. I've updated the post to reflect that.
DeleteI believe you are right on the E340 Cloud Generator. The first demos went up on July 14, 2009, followed by a mockup of the front panel on July 20. The post has been updated to reflect that as well.
I remember the E340 being teased as a new 5U MOTM and being surprised it came out as eurorack first.
The current format of MATRIXSYNTH started in 2005. MOTM started in 1998, so I'm missing a chunk there. The first version the site started in October of 1997: https://matrixsynth.com/old/index.html, but that mainly just links to known resources at the time. MOTM is on the list in the MFG section along with a few others. It's kind of interesting as it shows what was around before the blog format started.
Thanks for the extra info on the E340