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Thumtronics Inc. Thummer
Thummer is a new musical instrument being developed by Thumtronics Inc. of Austin, Texas.
* The Thumtronics Story by www.thummer.com
How did Jim Plamondon, a non-musician, make what some experts are describing as revolutionary breakthroughs in music theory and music technology? “Curiosity, stubbornness, and pure dumb luck,” he says – but there’s more to this story than that.
After a successful career in the computer software industry – including eight years as a marketing manager with Microsoft – Jim retired in early 2000 to the sunny beaches of Western Australia. When James' wife, Patti, quit her piano lessons after just six months – saying that music was “too hard” – Jim because curious.
“As a computer programmer, I had learned that inside every complex system is a hidden core of elegant simplicity,” he said. “If you can strip away the system’s complex outer layers to expose its elegant core, the result is often simple and powerful. If this was true of music too, I thought, then exposing that simplicity could make music much easier for Patti – and others – to learn. Being retired, I had the time to indulge my curiosity.”Patti recalls this period. “For two years, he was absolutely obsessed,” she said. “Day and night, he was surfing the Internet, reading academic papers, devouring books on music theory – just studying non-stop. We had to move his computer into the family room so that we could have any time with him at all. He’d work at his computer, listening to music through headphones, while the rest of the family watched movies, played games, or whatever.”“Remember, I couldn’t play a note,” Jim said. “I’d been a tuba player in high school, but what little I learned then was long forgotten. I still loved listening to music, but I was no musician. Trying to figure out the structure of music was just something I did for fun, like trying to solve a puzzle. I enjoyed fitting little scraps of knowledge together.”James' breakthrough came when he realized the critical importance of a fact that every musician already knew. Music notation, musical instruments, and most systems of music education emphasize pitches – such as C, D, Eb, etc. – but pitch is completely irrelevant to the structure of music. Instead, the structure of music is based on intervals – such as “octave,” “major third,” and “perfect fifth.” Jim realized that to expose the “simple truth” of music, he needed to turn music inside-out, by emphasizing its intervals instead of its pitches.
Jim returned to the Internet, scouring history for alternative approaches to presenting and controlling musical information – and found exactly what he needed. The “tonnetz,” invented in 1729 by Leonhard Euler, describes harmonic relationships; the “chromatic staff,” invented in 1764 by Roualle de Boisgelou, displays music without the need for sharps, flats, or key signatures; and the “Wicki/Hayden” note-layout, invented in 1896 by Kaspar Wicki, arranges notes so that any given musical interval always has the “same shape” on a keyboard. All of these ideas were focused on pitch, but the addition of “tonic solfa” – invented in 1830 by Sarah Glover – united them in a novel, non-obvious, and remarkably useful way, with the result being the ThumMusic™ System.“Although I had thought that there might be a simple truth at the heart of music,” Jim said, “the ThumMusic System simplified music so much that I thought I must have misunderstood something. Music's structure couldn’t really be THAT simple, could it? I asked some experts, and they were surprisingly enthusiastic, using words like ‘revolutionary’ and ‘ground-breaking.’ That was very encouraging!”However, soon after retiring, a stock market collapse wiped out Jim’s family’s savings. With only a small nest-egg remaining, he could no longer afford to be retired – but there was no demand for his high-tech marketing skills in Western Australia. He was over 40, with a family to support, little money, and fewer job prospects. Jim felt that he’d been “downsized” by forces beyond his control.Patti describes this as “a very stressful time for all of us. Jim thought that he had let us down financially. We loved Western Australia’s climate and lifestyle, but it seemed certain that we’d have to move back to the USA for Jim to find work.”“I was desperate to find some way to make a living in Western Australia,” Jim said. “I tried to figure out a way to profit from the ThumMusic System – which up until then had just been a fun intellectual puzzle – but its focus on intervals didn’t work with traditional musical instruments. I bought a traditional squeeze-box concertina that used the Wicki/Hayden note-layout and considered making an electronic version. However, there was nothing patentable about ‘an electronic concertina,’ and without patents, I could never raise enough money to bring a new instrument to market – or profit from it thereafter. I was stuck.”At this critical moment, what did Jim do? “I panicked,” he said. “For an entire weekend, I completely ignored my other problems and played Halo on the XBox non-stop, without breaking for food, water, or anything else.”After 48 hours of non-stop game-playing, Jim was dehydrated, sleep-deprived, and exhausted. During a particularly intense game, inspiration struck. Jim ripped his game controller out of the Xbox and slapped it on top of his concertina. “I realized that a musician could use a game controller’s thumb-operated joysticks to control an electronic concertina’s musical effects like pitch bend, volume, vibrato, etc.,” Jim said. “The critical thing was that I could patent the joystick/concertina combination. Commercially, I knew that the unique combination of expressive power and ease-of-learning would be unstoppable. The answer to our financial problems was literally under my thumbs.”“I’d been worried sick before,” Patti said, “but once I saw James' drawings of joysticks on an electronic concertina, I knew that he’d found the answer. We agreed to mortgage our home and invest our remaining savings in James' invention. It was ‘all or nothing’ – but I knew he could do it.” Their confidence was bolstered further by the opinions of experts who stated that James' invention – the Thummer™ – had the potential to be the most expressive musical instrument ever.Jim quickly formed a company, Thumtronics, to patent his inventions and develop a working prototype. He planned to throw together a quick Thummer prototype and license his patents to a big musical instrument company. However, he was surprised to find that none of them were interested. They all said, simply, “New musical instruments don’t sell,” and walked away.
Jim knew from his experience in the high-tech industry that the combination of simplicity, power, and a low price could drive new products into established markets very quickly. An examination of previously-proposed “new musical instruments” revealed that none of them had the potential to deliver this combination of benefits to the marketplace (usually being too expensive, too complex, or both). The big musical instrument companies were right that "new musical instrument hadn't sold," but they had failed to think clearly about why they hadn't sold, just as they had failed to think clearly about why music was hard to learn. Jim ran his analysis past business school experts, and found that most of them agreed with him (and not with the big musical instrument companies), which was encouraging.
So Jim decided that Thumtronics would bring the Thummer to market itself, selling it directly to customers over the Internet. "Selling direct to the consumer over the Internet is by far the most profitable way to start selling Thummers. Cutting out the middle-men allows us to offer a high-quality product at an impulse-buy price, which can help us avoid customers’ need to fondle a Thummer before buying one.”
By November of 2005, Thumtronics’ fourth round of Thummer prototypes was ready. After the "Busselton", "Capel", and "Bunbury" designs, the "Eaton" prototypes were smaller, lighter, more flexible, and more expressive. When used to control top-notch electronic music synthesizers, the Eaton-design Thummer prototypes were true musical instruments. Commercialization was still in the future, but the proof-of-concept phase was over.Still, Jim was worried that the structure of music exposed by the ThumMusic System might be a dumbed-down version of reality, tied strictly to modern Western music’s 12-tone, equally-tempered (“12-tet”) tuning system. To explore this concern, he attracted the attention of Prof. Bill Sethares of the University of Wisconsin and Andy Milne from The Tonal Centre in the UK.
Working together, Andy, Bill, and Jim determined that the structure of music exposed by the Wicki/Hayden keyboard:
(a) reflected the structure of a much deeper and more general reality than did traditional instruments, notation, etc.;
(b) had the potential to form the foundation of a Grand Unified Music Theory that could describe the harmonic structure of many different cultures’ music in a simple and uniform way; and
(c) had the potential to control musical effects – such as Dynamic Tuning – that were impossible on any other musical instrument, but which still fit well into the time-honored practices of tonality.
The first academic papers on these ideas were accepted for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals in mid-2007, with publication expected in early 2008. They demonstrate that the Thummer and ThumMusic System gain their unprecedented power and simplicity by revealing the true, elegant structure of musical sound.
Unfortunately, Australia’s Venture Capitalists couldn’t recognize a truly disruptive innovation when they saw one – which explains why their venture funds returned an IRR of 0% (that’s right, zero) over the 1995-2005 period in which the USA’s venture funds returned 41.4% per year. By the end of 2006, Jim realized that to raise the capital he needed, Thumtronics would have to relocate to the USA, where potential investors understood disruption and had the cojones to invest in it.
In May 2007, Thumtronics relocated to Austin, Texas – the USA’s #2 high tech center (after Silicon Valley) and the Live Music Capital of the World – where it has received an enthusiastic reception. The Freedom Thummer can be on the market within nine months of Thumtronics getting the funding needed to finish its design and make its first production run.
Jim and his family are looking forward to sinking deep roots in Austin. "Patti's extended family lives just up the road in Dallas, and one of her grown daughters has recently moved from Seattle to join us in Austin. As a graduate of the University of New Mexico, I am delighted to be returning to the USA's Southwest – the land of chili rellenos, bass fishing, and friendly neighbors. From now on, Austin is our home. I hope that Thumtronics' success will allow us to make a positive difference in Austin's cultural and economic life for generations to come."“We are confident that, in the USA, we can raise the capital necessary to bring the Thummer to market,” Jim said, "creating profits, jobs, and a big cultural boost for Austin, Texas, and the USA. Together, Thumtronics and Austin are changing the world…one note at a time.”
James Plamondon, Chief Executive Officer,
was with Microsoft Corporation for eight years (1992-2000),
first in Silicon Valley and then in Redmond, Washington State