The Origins of TechTunes

TechTunes started the way a lot of indie work does: one person at a bench, chasing two loves at once. I have always been happiest with a soldering iron in one hand and a song in the other, writing code in the leftover hours because it was the only way to make the gadgets and the music talk to each other. Electronics, DIY, and software were never separate hobbies. They were the same itch. The name is literal. Tech is the tools. Tunes is the reason.

The maker world gave that itch a home. Adafruit founder Limor Fried put it plainly: “Originality comes later, after you've gained some skill. It's totally ok to copy a project to get started.” That is how the early nights went. Kits, schematics, cracked-open radios, small programs that did one thing well. Copy, then tweak, then build something that did not exist until it sat on the desk. David Byrne has a matching warning from the music side: “Computers and technology push us in certain directions creatively and we have to know when to resist that.” TechTunes lives in that tension. Use the tools. Do not let the tools write the song.

Alan Kay said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” That line, from a 1971 Xerox PARC meeting, is the closest thing this studio has to a manifesto. I cannot wait for someone else to ship the little radio, the car companion, the next experiment that sits between hardware and headphones. So I am building them. TechTunes is that practice, turned into a home for apps born at the intersection of circuits, code, and sound.

Sources

• Limor Fried, interviewed in Make: (March 8, 2018): Make magazine
• David Byrne, Louisiana Channel interview (2013): Louisiana Channel
• Alan Kay, 1971 Xerox PARC maxim: Quote Investigator