ZEIT Step Sequencer 2003 - 2010, 2025 - present

ZEIT Evolution

The concept behind ZEIT began to form in early 1996. I’d just released my first album, The Infection of Time and, whilst I thought the end result was pretty good for a debut release, we all agreed that the birthing process had been far too long and far too uncomfortable. For the follow up, I wanted something else. Rather than slog away at a musical keyboard into the wee hours every night for months on end, I wanted to investigate faster and more effective tools for generating new melodies and new arrangements. Essentially I wanted a short cut to better productivity.

The obvious inspiration for ZEIT would have to be Tangerine Dream. No denying that. However, I was (and still am) a big fan of Mark Shreeve’s Red Shift project. Mark and I got talking about sequencers and compositional tools on the train between Nijmegen and Amsterdam following an E-Day concert in 1998, and the idea of building a programmable MIDI-equipped version of his big Moog Sequencer came up. There were a few such systems already available but not many, and so we wondered how you could come up a box that would do the job.

Once back in England, I sketched a few ideas and wrote a provisional specification. I also roughed out twenty to thirty pages of pseudo-code and scribbled a few designs for the front panel in a sketch book. Such a machine was certainly plausible and that it would do what was required.

Alas, the pressure to get working on a new album started to build and the design soon found itself pushed to the back of the drawing board in favour of other more immediate projects.

ZEIT Enclosure @ Synth DIY, Cambridge, September 2003
ZEIT Protoype April 2004
ZEIT Protoype @ Synth DIY, Cambridge, September 2004

Skip forward to the year 2002 and I suddenly found myself without employment. In search of a job that didn’t include a five o’clock start and an absolute bastard for a boss, I returned to the sequencer project and began coding all over again. I also knocked together a series of 3D renders in Bryce to try and get my head around the look and feel of the new instrument.

Synth designer Paul Maddox (Modal Electronics, Dove Audio) came up with a design for a CPU board that got the project rolling very quickly indeed and, by early 2003, we had a working prototype, which we dubbed ATEM.

We took ATEM to a couple of trade shows and, of course, the Cambridge Synth DIY Meet up in late 2003 and the initial concept for a Big Sequencer generated quite a bit of interest.

Mark and Julian Shreeve @ Synth DIY, Cambridge, September 2003
ZEIT Protoype @ Synth DIY, Cambridge, September 2003
Infection Music E-Commerce Award Start-up Category 2003

With ZEIT slowly developing a following, we received the news that our website, infectionmusic.co.uk, had been short-listed for an E-Commerce Award. I didn't think we'd win but, we did, and we came away with the first prize of £2000. This meant that the first round of funding for ZEIT was secure and would could move forwards with our plans.

We had most of the electronics problems resolved by March 2004. All that remained was the software. Had I known that developing the software would take upwards of three years then I'm not sure I would have continued. Not as a single-person enterprise, anyway. With hindsight, we should have gone with a progressive, interative build, by getting one section working then selling a few units before moving on to the next software revision. At that point, I was working more than seventy hours a week whilst, at the same time, trying to raise finances for the next build. As I have often said in various seminars and workshops over the years, this approach is neither good for the business nor good for your health. It's certainly NOT good for your relationships.

Ultimately, we developed two versions of ZEIT, the Rack-Mounting and the Desktop, and the Rack-Mounting version of ATEM. All were available in a Standard Blue & White Enclosure or the Retro Black & Red finish..

We certainly encouraged customisation. Of the custom pieces we produced, my favourite was the Polar version, which featured ice-white LEDS and a mix of white and blue buttons caps. I was also keen that customers would have the option to customise their front panels. We experimented with various background images although none of those featured below made it to production.

ZEIT Custom Enclosure #1 2007
ZEIT Custom Enclosure #2 2007
ZEIT Custom Enclosure #3 2007
ZEIT Rack Retro 2007
ZEIT Custom Black & Blue Enclosure 2007
ZEIT Evangelist Norman Fay at the Hampshire Jam Jam 2010

We delivered more than forty ZEIT Step Sequencers in the five years we were in production. We stopped in 2010 when we ran into some significant supplier issues and the market had clearly changed in favour of smaller, menu-driven instruments.

However, as James Bond has remarked, Never Say Never Again. We recovered a small number of ZEIT enclosures from our former supplier's storage unit after they went bust a few years ago and immediately set about re-designing ZEIT with a new processor, multiple MIDI Outputs, USB, SD-Card storage, Ethernet and a whole lot more.

The original incarnation of ZEIT may be long gone but ZEIT II remains a strong possibility...