Workshop Notes: September 2025
Californian retail, secret waveform, updated Turing Machine, new Computer site
Here’s an new version of the Workshop System real time build video. Once again it’s extreme Slow TV, about three minutes shorter than Lawrence of Arabia. It is only useful for people with a system from the latest batch - post July 2025. Thonk have improved the way kits are put together — smaller, with less packaging and even clearer labelling. Each module is now an individual kit, which should prevent some common mistakes (shout to ThatHydeKid among others).
Workshop Systems have landed in California at Perfect Circuit and are now on sale and on display in their Burbank store. DIY kits, pre-built systems and program cards are available for prices that seem fair in this post-tariff world. In the EU you can also buy kits and cards at Exploding Shed, shipping from Leipzig. You can also buy (and try) pre-built systems at SchneidersKeller on Denmark Street in London. And of course Thonk ships fast, cheap and safe worldwide from Brighton.
A new version of the Turing Machine card that comes with every Workshop System is now available. There’s now a clock input, which makes it fun to sync with other gear, a fancy-looking new web editor and lots of other new features. It can be clocked at audio rate so, like the original, it makes a good random wavetable oscillator. You can download the .uf2 file here, and learn how to rewrite a program card here. There’s no write protection, so you can write the new code onto the Turing Machine card that came with the kit. I wrote a bit about the coding process on Lines.
Chris Johnson has found a pair of hidden analogue v/oct Sawtooth oscillators in the Workshop System: Use a stackable to “patch the oscillator sine output into FM input of the same oscillator, with FM knob near maximum to get something that looks, and sounds, quite a lot like a sawtooth. Taking the square wave output with this feedback gives you a square wave with a non-50% pulse width.”
In a masterstroke of vibe coding, j__r0d has built a whole new dynamic homepage for the Workshop Computer Program Cards that makes it much easier to use to find and download cards and documentation.
Upcoming events and workshops:
This weekend, Saturday 6 September I’ll be in sunny Whitstable doing a full day workshop with Coastal Electronauts. Sign up here.
I’m looking forward to Machina Bristronica in Bristol on 27-28 September. It’s a rare chance to see so many builders, musicians and experimenters in the same place. I’ll be chatting to DivKid on his stage by the main entrance.
In Leeds, the Computer Club team have the Workshop System Loan Set for the last two weeks of October, leading up to Computer Club v4.0, on Saturday 25 October at Belgrave Music Hall and Canteen. They’re planning various events — if you’re in Yorkshire and have any ideas, get in touch with Jake.
There is just one room left for the Dyski Radio Music workshop in Cornwall in November, which should be both fun, inspiring and mind-bending. This lovely instagram clip filmed at Sound Maps earlier in the year shows what attending a Dyski event is like.
Over the last few weeks I’ve built a couple of these Computer Programmer units for Thonk. It works like an old-school cassette duplicator; one Program Card goes in, 15 new ones come out. Previously, every card had to be programmed individually one by one, sometimes by me. If you’re developing Program Cards to sell, get in touch and I might be able to get you one.
I’m loving the new Rainbow Blank Program Cards that Thonk have created.
Chord Blimey was one of the first Program Cards written — developed by Tom Waters (who went on to create Twists) on a developer kit in May 2024, it’s a fun patchable arpeggiator. Now Moses Hoyt has updated the code, adding a set of different arpeggio modes. Ace to see this kind of collaboration around the system.
New music from Workshop Systems:
Dyski alumni and creator of the oD program card Matt Mills has just released a new EP : “Forced myself to master and release something for the first time, track 2 has (somewhat hard to detect) workshop system along with radio music and chord organ.”
Tom Garnett used a EHX Mel-9 pedal (a bizarre/amazing thing that turns any audio into Mellotron sounds) with a Workshop System to make this. There was a detailed discussion of the patch on the discord.
I really enjoyed this piece from Bark Bark Dog Studios, showing how to use the contact mic to set up an acoustic feedback loop through the Ring Mod.
Ben Regnier “took the Workshop on vacation and did a series of recordings” which he’s released a three track EP called Workshop Feedback Studies. “All of the recordings were WS-only; mixer feedback going thru reverb with injected tones from the oscillators. At various times I put this feedback through the band pass filter and/or the ring modulator.”
Thank you for reading all the way to the bottom, see you next month,
Tom