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Hey all. I'm an absolute noob who just discovered modular synths a week ago. I have been not sleeping since then! I've watched a LOT of youtube videos and just discovered this site. Here are some of the modules I really liked in my short amount of research. What do you think--if I just want to play around, will this work? I have an 0-coast right now as my only piece of gear. My plan is to grab a Minitaur (for bass) and an Erebus (for pretty sounds) soon and this rack would just be for experimental noises. Am I very far off? Anything I need to research more?
Your personal experiences and ideas are super useful for me. Answers in the form of online resources are also appreciated. Thanks!
Well, I personally think the idea of using eurorack just for "experimental noises" is a very limiting and unmusical use for the true extant of its possibilities, but even if that was your only goal, I can make a few recommendations:
1) As an alternative option to the PGH SV-1, I'd recommend the Studio Electronics Tonestar. I think it's more interesting and the quality of their equipment is better than PGH as well as 95% of other eurorack manufacturers. Also smaller HP.
2) I see you already have Quadnic in there..in reference to #1, you might instead try a wavetable oscillator, especially for crazy sounds. The new Erica Synths Wavetable VCO looks great, but there's others, particularly morphing terrarium.
3) #2 Could just as easily apply for Clouds, which seems to me one of those "try to do a lot of things OK" module a lot of people seem to buy and then sell within a few months..so..
4) If you want to play anything other than your self contained voice (SV1), you will need VCAs and envelopes, which you currently have 0 of.
5) If you really only care about experimental drones etc. perhaps this does not matter to you, but you also have no sequencer or quantizer of any kind, thus no way to play notes, music, etc..for me, this is THE most important thing of any eurorack setup or synthesizer, since it dictates the control voltage, which is after all, what this is all about
6) Speaking of which, you don't really have any modifying voltage sources of any kind, it's all pretty much audio. If you don't have voltage out-modules you're missing most of what modular has to offer and you might as well use a keyboard synths or two. My sequencer is the Stillson Hammer Mk2 which accomplishes #5 and #6 in spades. I love it. But you'll need a bigger setup to make it worth it. I recommend not starting with any less than a 104 HP skiff. Make Noise makes a good and cheap one.
Dude! THANK YOU. I don't know if you had the same experience I'm having when you first started, but I'm basically just watching a video and thinking "I like that. I want it." That's how I conceived this rack! Hence, the "ill-advised" tagline.
This was such a great response--thanks for being such a great ambassador to this community I'm joining! I will definitely check out the Tonestar. I will find out what a wavetable oscillator is and check out the ones you recommended. Your thoughts on Clouds made me laugh. With regards to actual modular, I feel like I'm still needing to shed some of my perspectives on synthesizers. I've always thought of them as the thing with knobs and a keyboard that has all the components to make sounds all in one package. You can probably see that coming through in this attempt at a rack.
I did also fail to mention that I'm getting a Beatstep and a Keystep to start. I'm much more interested in making sounds, learning how signal flow works in these things, and learning the theory behind the noises before stepping too deeply into sequencers. For me, I'm managing the amount of info I'm taking in because it can get overwhelming very quickly for me!
What is the HP width of a regular rack that houses my MOTU 828? I figured it was 84 because the enclosure I saw had the little ears on the sides for screwing them into a rack. I figured I'd have all that housed together.
Thanks again for the response. It gives me some more homework to do and I'm happy to do it. Cheers!
Is something like this a little more practical for use with an external sequencer/controller?
-- johnnyapolis
yes, but you seem to have some weird manufacturers I've never even heard of...I would stick with more well known ones. Not that you can't deviate from convention, but sorting module type by "popularity" is a good starting place.
Dude! THANK YOU. I don't know if you had the same experience I'm having when you first started, but I'm basically just watching a video and thinking "I like that. I want it." That's how I conceived this rack! Hence, the "ill-advised" tagline.
This was such a great response--thanks for being such a great ambassador to this community I'm joining! I will definitely check out the Tonestar. I will find out what a wavetable oscillator is and check out the ones you recommended. Your thoughts on Clouds made me laugh. With regards to actual modular, I feel like I'm still needing to shed some of my perspectives on synthesizers. I've always thought of them as the thing with knobs and a keyboard that has all the components to make sounds all in one package. You can probably see that coming through in this attempt at a rack.
I did also fail to mention that I'm getting a Beatstep and a Keystep to start. I'm much more interested in making sounds, learning how signal flow works in these things, and learning the theory behind the noises before stepping too deeply into sequencers. For me, I'm managing the amount of info I'm taking in because it can get overwhelming very quickly for me!
What is the HP width of a regular rack that houses my MOTU 828? I figured it was 84 because the enclosure I saw had the little ears on the sides for screwing them into a rack. I figured I'd have all that housed together.
Thanks again for the response. It gives me some more homework to do and I'm happy to do it. Cheers!
-- johnnyapolis
Sure thing. About HP: it's just an industry standard--5 HP = 1 inch. MOTU is just your audio interface, right? So there's no intrinsic reason to have it racked; but eurorack modules need to go in a case that has a power supply--they attach to the bus boards inside the cases with ribbon cables they come with.
Yes, I've only been in it for 6 months but have learned a lot since then, and I would recommend don't spend too much time planning your modules because your needs will change and evolve over time as you actually use stuff..also, spend some time reading MuffWiggler, even if you don't understand a lot of what people are talking about at first.
Wavetable oscillators basically have a bank of all different types of waveforms that can be chosen or cycled through that an oscillator outputs, many of which would be impossible on most analog oscillators, so you will get very different and interesting harmonics. I'm mostly a pure analog guy, but I'd like to get the Erica Synths Black Wavetable VCO, looks great.
Although I've listened to electronic music for many years, I only owned my first one two years ago, and it was only a short leap to ditching keyboards forever...but I've been playing classical and flamenco guitar for 16 years, so from a music perspective, modular synths make a lot of sense to me. I agree with Suzanne Ciania, Buchla pioneer that "keyboards are an inappropriate interface for synthesizers."
I recommend watching this video for some of her thoughts:
As I see it, from my perspectives on playing acoustic instruments for awhile, the special thing about synthesizers and especially modular is through combining BOTH audio and voltage pathways in all sorts of novel ways which are interconnected and sequenced, you can create movement, motion, changes that would basically be impossible for a person a keyboard or any single instrument; it's more like conducting a mini orchestra.
