Synth Library Portland is a gem in the city’s music community. Opening for the first time in 2016, it was an open and inclusive space for people to gather and create music with a shared collection of electronic instruments. What was once only available to universities and dedicated researchers is now open to all.  Since then, similar groups have popped up around the world: in Prague, Los Angeles, New York City, Beirut, and Glasgow, some of which were started with the aid of former Synth Library Portland members. 

The collective non-profit sparked a global phenomenon. Their operation remains tenuous and fraught however, due to the vagaries of economics and politics. Their story is one that resonates with all artists who are trying to make things happen amidst uncertainty.

The organization began its life in 2016 as part of S1 Portland. S1 cast a wide net within the city’s electronic music community, with an emphasis on concerts and dance party fundraisers. The library itself was located at S1 headquarters on Sandy Boulevard, where members could use the library’s gear during specified hours. The library shut its doors to visitors in 2020, and the organization went into remission, kept alive by only a few volunteers. In 2021 the whole organization re-branded as Synth Library Portland (though I’m told the paperwork retains the old name), narrowing their focus and launching their lending program. Now members could check out the synthesizers, sequencers, stompboxes, MIDI controllers, and other electronic music gear for three weeks at a time to use as they pleased. 

The transition was not simple. Since something like the Synth Library had never existed before, the volunteers had to figure things out as they went. They developed an infrastructure to track lending and inventory, similar to a library’s book collections database. They also had to develop a lending cycle so their gear was leaving and returning on a regular schedule. Trust is essential to their operation: they need to be sure that the lendees bring back their not-cheap gear in one piece. Since reopening, they have not lost a single piece of gear. Some gear may get damaged and need repair, but plentiful volunteers are willing to put their soldering irons to good use. 

When the organization began searching for a new home, the Lloyd Center mall wasn’t their first choice. As the search went on, it became clear that the mall was the right fit. For one, it’s ADA accessible, unlike a lot of older buildings in Portland. The proximity to MAX and bus lines was also a draw, in line with the Synth Library’s priorities of accessibility and equity. The mall also offered a reasonable rental rate compared with other potential locations. The group thus opened its door at its current location in April 2024.

The Synth Library now lives in a tucked away corner of Lloyd Center. What was once a bustling mall with an ice skating rink frequented by a young Tonya Harding is now a husk of its former self. Some typical mall stores still persist–Gamestop, Hot Topic, Claire’s, Barnes and Noble. But many such as Ulta, H&M and Marshalls have shuttered, their cold, lightless interiors laying dormant while shoppers walk alongside their reflection in the glass. 

Lloyd Center has been awash with rumors and speculation about its future for years now. Some want to tear the whole thing down to build a stadium to bring Major League Baseball to Portland; others want to convert it into apartments. But in the meantime, nonprofits and oddball local businesses such as Floating World Comics, Gambit’s Cards and Hobbies, and the Pinball Museum have made Lloyd Center their home alongside the Synth Library. Passers-by could easily mistake the Synth Library for just another room hiding behind shutters and a thick curtain. But the other side hides a small ell-shaped room full of synthesizers, oscilloscopes, CRTV monitors and countless patch cables. 

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The Synth Library now balances the best qualities of both its pre- and post-2020 iterations. The lending program allows members to check out their equipment, while the Lloyd Center space is available for open houses, workshops and jam sessions. Current board member Thomas Fang (who also works at modular synth company 4ms) described the library as a “place of passion and excitement.” Every time I visited, a half dozen volunteers helped out, fiddling with the gear, chatting with guests or just hanging around, ready to jump in when needed. 

Expanding access

An important part of the Synth Library’s mission is expanding access to electronic music creation. For a long time, synthesizers were hard to come by. The first synths, like early computers, were massive, expensive machines housed at research laboratories and universities. These laboratories in Princeton, Milan, Cologne, Paris, and London became early centers of electronic music. By the late 1960s companies such as Moog and Buchla released synthesizers that were powerful and portable, but still prohibitively expensive for everyone except rock stars. Those machines made possible the best of progressive rock and jazz fusion. 

In the 1980s, synthesizers became cheap enough to be used by regular musicians thanks to consumer electronics companies such as Casio and Yamaha. Currently, software synths and emulations such as VCV Rack have further democratized access to synthesis, and allowed even more musicians to explore its sonic possibilities–along with programming languages such as Max/MSP and Supercollider. 

I have been a member of Synth Library Portland for years, but I never got around to checking out anything. In preparation for this article I went to their orientation meeting and checked out the Make Noise 0-Coast (pronounced “zero-coast”) for three weeks. The name refers to its balance between two general schools of synthesis, east coast and west coast. The Eastern paradigm is represented by Moog, and the Western paradigm is represented by Buchla. I know the basics of synthesis and have messed around with software synths before, but this was my first extended foray into using a physical hardware synth.

When the synth arrived at its temporary home, I started perusing the instruction manual. My eyes glazed over when the manual devolved into pseudo-code and MIDI Protocol data tables, but I got enough information out of it to get started. I began plugging in patch cables, seeing where each new control voltage pathway would lead. After a few hours of experimentation, I felt ready to record my knob-twiddling improvisations. The pieces I recorded are by no means masterpieces (or even passable by my high personal standards), but it was fun to record a sonic document of my jams. I even got to indulge in some creative thinking: I had a certain sound in mind, and hoped that patching things together in the right way would get me close to my imagined texture. It didn’t, but the results were nonetheless interesting. 

The evolution from analog to digital equipment created a desire for a return to form. The quirks of old equipment are now part of the appeal. Hardware synthesizers have a tactile approach to creation and limitations that many modern musicians find desirable and liberating in the face of newer machines that can do anything, but lack the individuality that comes with limitations. If you can make it sound like anything, then it won’t particularly sound like any one thing. It also removes the distractions that come from working with digital synthesizers on a computer, where one can get lost down an internet rabbit hole in a matter of clicks. 

Electricity is a powerful but fickle force. We may have tamed it, but it’s never fully within our control. Because of this, we can never be one hundred percent certain of what is coursing through the wires of a synth or what will come out of the speaker. Magnets and radio interference can change the sounds, as can other pieces of nearby electronic equipment. There are unpredictable feedback loops that can emerge. Turn the lights off, and the synth sounds different. Maybe the sunspots are extra active today, or Mercury is in retrograde, or your local classic rock station is blasting some Zeppelin, or the keyboard forgot to have its morning coffee. All of these things will change how the synth sounds. 

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Computers on the other hand, don’t like this lack of control. Computers are, at their core, extraordinarily complex calculators: they won’t do anything they weren’t programmed to be allowed to. Some software companies have tried to emulate the non-linearity of analog electronic instruments, to mixed results. 

Compositionally, this is what I find the most interesting about synthesizers as instruments. There’s a playfulness to messing around with a synth as you find out what kinds of interesting sounds it can make. One takes delight in finding a sound that is pleasant, or nasty, or goofy, or entrancing or harrowing. You never know what you’ll find. This promotes a different approach to making music, focused more on texture and timbre than on conventional harmony or classical forms. The music almost discovers itself, as the composer listens and guides the forces within the synth. There’s a “lightning in a bottle,” sensation: the sounds this synth is making at this moment will never be exactly the same ever again. So either commit it to tape lest it be lost forever, or let the sounds come to life and die at their own will, never to be heard from again, and enjoy their ephemerality. 

Boys club no more

Board member Max Jersak went to the former library when it opened in 2016, but felt too intimidated to volunteer. She described a sort of “boys-club” atmosphere, where certain people took command of the space without consideration for others. After getting more involved, she has now become one of the group’s few part-time employees. This reorganized group has lowered the barriers to entry, and the atmosphere now feels far more egalitarian. 

Arts organizations can have conflicting goals. Two in particular seem to be common, but are diametrically opposed. The first goal is to increase access to concerts and events for audiences by lowering ticket prices or hosting free events. The second goal is to provide a living wage for artists and organizers. The first necessarily decreases revenue; the second requires bringing in more money. Organizations can square this circle in a couple ways: through grant money, subscriptions and donations, through state support (such as Portland’s Arts for All program), or through artists gaining the opportunities to make a living through other means to support their creative pursuits.

Small-ticket subscribers help the Synth Library get by. Some contribute as little as ten dollars a month, but most give more. It may not bring in tons of cash, but it forms a tight-knit community where everyone feels like they can have a say and get involved. They do get occasional support from grants such as Schnitzer Cares to help out too. Grant money can make or break an organization, but the current federal administration has done all it can to slow down the federal government’s funding of the arts. Their policies whiplashed equity-centered groups like Synth Library Portland, who now have to start from near square one to get funding. Yesterday’s keywords are now verboten, so all the grants have to be re-written to suit the new anti-DEI agenda.  

This is especially difficult for a group like the Synth Library, where diversity, equity and inclusion are a huge part of their mission. For instance, they offer a meetup for women and non-binary electronic musicians on the first Wednesday of each month. The sessions are a safe space for “femmes and enbies”–a sentence that would make any member of The Administration toss and turn in the throes of a nightmare. 

Arts organizations also face the dueling imperatives for growth and expansion, and towards forming a tight-knit community. Having more members would mean more money for hosting events, hiring people, and offering quality gear. But that would also bring more people into the fold. 

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I fear the group cannot maintain its current values if it were to expand. It’s easy to be governed collectively as an egalitarian, non-hierarchical group when all the employees and volunteers can fit inside a small classroom. If it were to expand, it may become more difficult for the group to maintain their sense of community. On the other hand, the Synth Libraries need not provide for Portland’s electronic artists alone. It can be just one group among many, working in tandem with others as part of a healthy artistic ecosystem–just like they have done for other Synth Libraries around the world. Artists need spaces in which they can gather, create, chat, gossip and plan. The Synth Library is a hub for a community of great artists in Portland, and every dollar counts for keeping that community alive.