On May 19th, 2016, I bought my first Eurorack module. Five days later, I signed up for Muffwiggler.com. This all-things-synthesizer forum was started back in late 2006 by Mike McGrath and is a global phenomenon that created the largest online synth forum and repository of knowledge for the field that has yet existed. Two years after starting the site, Mike spoke of his 10,000th post in reverence; now, more than ten years later, the forum hosts over 2 million posts.

Yesterday, it was announced that Mike had passed away. There are no other details; there’s not even a confirmation if it happened yesterday, a week ago, or last month.

The strange thing about his passing for me is that it created a new type of void. Sure, I’ve known of plenty of people dying during my lifetime, including people who have made tremendous impacts, but this is the first death in the internet age of someone who created a global community that I was part of where the main objective was people helping other people. Never before in the history of humanity were diverse people from around our Earth able to communicate as a kind of guild to help one another in near real-time before the internet made this possible. While it is obvious there were many other forums prior to this one, this is the first I was a member of whose founder has passed away.

Muffwiggler generated a minor controversy during the past few years due to its colorful name (influenced by the Big Muff and the Wiggler guitar pedals);  it would also drive many a user away due to some of the juvenile hostility of users. Through it all, though it has been the place to learn about some arcane concepts and discover ideas and methods shared by more than 45,000 users from around the globe. To that end, it has been an incredible resource that I hope continues to evolve and that its vast library of knowledge is pulled forward. Rest in power, Mr. Muff Wiggler.