Bochner–Riesz - live vid of my first modular-only noodle

Svetlovska

I’m approaching my burgeoning interest in ‘DAWless’ modular in the same way as I approach apps in AUM - pretty much randomly, from a strong, solid base of incompetence and ignorance. (Except of course each ‘app’ here is orders of magnitude more expensive! But lovely… there’s a reason they call it Eurocrack…)

For this reason, I’m setting up the rack to be constantly recording while I noodle, in case coherence should break out at any point. Of course, I haven’t actually got that sorted yet - I think my old Zoom R8 visible in the background there will do the honours when a longer power cable for it shows up - so this time round, knowing I absolutely, positively wouldn’t get this to sound the same a second time round, I, er, ‘captured’ it just on the IPad mic and camera, hence the unintentional Lo-fi vibe. I’m also starting to play around with video coz, you know, why not? So here it is:

Early impressions, fwiw, and I know that these are cliches of the genre by now, but the Mutable Instruments apps, sorry, ‘modules’ are almost uniformly amazing, and the clone ‘u’ versions produced by After Dark pack all the functionality and more ( in the case of Typhoon, for example, their version of Clouds, you get the original Clouds spec plus all the alternative firmwares) into a smaller space. Since I’m not performing with the rig, and am more a ‘tweak a single knob a bit and see what happens’ kind of person, this gain in rack space at some cost in widdly widdly is a good trade off.

Re the cost thing: yes, it is expensive if you compare a standalone instrument against the modules you’d need to replicate it. But you can take a ‘part work’ approach (‘builds month by month into the synth of your dreams’), and, the complete openness of modular (what happens if I plug this into that?) leads to very different head spaces from a keyboard synth, or anything controlled by MIDI instead of cv. I notice this with the physical rack in a way that neither MiRack nor the Holy Drambo managed for me.

Maybe it is precisely because I can’t play a conventional instrument thatI feel this way, but, yeah - modular rules! (Spoken like a true addict.)

I have however resisted the small potted plant.

Krupa

Very nice, good to see the setup as well, looks like a great bunch of stuff to explore!

onerez

Cool!!! I keep getting enticed by the modular aspect and wanting to obtain a few………. Hundreds of items. But then I go to a meeting and admit that I have a problem. 😁😂. No really cool posting. And like the lofi vibe.

Svetlovska

@Krupa @onerez : thanks both Re. ‘enticement’… fwiw my pitch to you, @onerez, is this noob thinks if you go into modular with the aim of doing something different to what you could achieve with conventional synths and samplers, you can in fact get a lot of bang for a (relatively) small buck, especially if you base it off a decent semi modular as a way of getting a few of the basics and less interesting utility functions down at bargain basement prices.

A second hand Neutron would be hard to beat, though my modular 114 https://www.sound-machines.it/product/modulor114/ would be a good place to start too, as it feels a lot more like a compact collection of discrete modules rather than a regular synth with a few break out points (though it can work that way too with the push of a button). Plus it brings goodies like a multifx and a ribbon controller to the party.

Tim Shoebridge shows how you can get something interesting going with a minimal, affordable Behringer 110 clone based set up -

Imagine adding the soon to be released ‘Brains’ £128 oscillator to that (basically a Microfreak in a module) https://www.thomann.de/gb/behringer_brains.htm,

• and you won’t have completely broken the bank. Key point of course, is you can just add a piece as you go.

Yes, I have drunk the Kool Aid. C’mon… the first taste is (almost) free…