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Let's talk modular synths


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2 minutes ago, mate stubb said:

Migraines suck. My wife has had them all her life. It's unfortunate that certain sounds affect you that way. The one thing that I hear that sends me cringing is out of tune singing or playing.

 

There was a guy in elementary school who was tone deaf. When we'd sing in class, he drove me absolutely batty. I was convinced he was doing it just to torture me. I begged the teacher to seat me somewhere, anywhere, other than near him. She said no.

 

Maybe they were both in on it...?

 

But, yeah, I'm a fiend for tuning. Note my mention of the fine tuning on the Doepfer oscillators. The MI critters can be fine tuned also, I think.

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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Migraines - Started getting them when I was 2. 60 years later my older sister still talks about when they were close the curtains and no one was allowed to even whisper. If they did I started screaming. A few years ago I had one the morning of a routine doctor visit. They gave me a Toradol shot. Wow. Knocked it right out. Where was that all of my life. Have not had a migraine since I retired 4 years ago.

 

Tuning - My ear has always been a problem. It is not that I cannot hear things that are out of tune, but that I tend to focus on harmonics. Made it really hard for me to learn songs by ear. Especially songs in which the keyboard parts had a lot of chords with rich harmonics. On the other hand, when I got my MiniMoog back in the early 80's I could spend hours sitting in the floor with headphones and listening to harmonics stepping as I turned the filter, or absorb the difference between the audio-rate modulation of a square wave vs. triangle or saw.

 

I've played with musicians that loved my chord inversions and some that could not stand it. To me, chord inversions were like playing a counter melody in a song. Why play the same block chord as the guitarist when you can counter it? Strange how people are different. I know I am.

 

I left modular about 6 years ago. At that time I was trying to convert the agency over to electronic medical records. 450 users and I was the only degreed professional on the project. Did not want to see anything technical when I come home, computer DAW or modular. When I came back early this year my big surprise was the advancement in digital modular gear. Not just sequencers and do it all modules like Ornament and Crime or Disting. Bought a Noise Engineering Basimilus Iteritas Alter and was amazed at the tonal range. With the Noise Engineering oscillators the slightest movement of a knob can bring wonder or disaster. Sometime during my exile I bought Elements to try and get interested in modular again. When I came back I managed to find four other Mutable Instruments modules before they disappeared. My favorite college programming professor would call these "elegant". 

This post edited for speling.

My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page

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Well, I've got a tentative plan now.

 

If anyone's interested:

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2124117

 

I preferred the Listen Four mixer that RABid mentioned but it wasn't in the library at modulargrid so the Erica Black is standing in. I can start with just a few modules but by the time the case is filled I'll be capable of 4 to 5 independent voices and have two fairly complex control modules to get things going. No midi yet though.

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Moe

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Well that didn't last long. I eliminated the 1U row and came up with something cheaper and better. Pam will have to wait for a new row with the sequencer/performance stuff.

 

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2125414

 

My system design has no stand alone VCAs, which I find weird. But most of the sound sources have their own built in VCA, including the two analog oscillators and filter. 

 

It's amazing that with a jungle of modules to choose from how often I seemed to gravitate to the Mutable designs, and specifically to the Calsynth builds.

 

Here's my current design for the performance row, with an 8 hp hole left to fill.

 

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2125189

Moe

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On 12/23/2022 at 3:11 PM, mate stubb said:

apparently the new hotness is Pamela's PRO Workout

I may have to pre-order this. The addition of the quantizer is big. Keep resisting the desire to get the ALM effects unit. It is nice and small, but so far I have made it by patching in my Line 6 devices. The only negative of this is not being able to lock in the tempo with a clock sync. Would like to have that ZOIA. :)

This post edited for speling.

My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page

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1 hour ago, Jim Alfredson said:

You sold the MOTM?!?

 

Yeah, sad story. I was pretty involved in the MOTM community and for awhile partnered with a good friend to make custom faceplates for various modules from other manufacturers (plus a few custom ones). He and his wife died in a motorcycle accident on the way home from a mini vacation we were on. I lost heart and sold all my modular gear.

 

The sale helped me finance building the organ midi controller.

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19 hours ago, mate stubb said:

 

Yeah, sad story. I was pretty involved in the MOTM community and for awhile partnered with a good friend to make custom faceplates for various modules from other manufacturers (plus a few custom ones). He and his wife died in a motorcycle accident on the way home from a mini vacation we were on. I lost heart and sold all my modular gear.

 

The sale helped me finance building the organ midi controller.

I was part of the MOTM mailing list and was building my MOTM when Larry died, I only knew him through email, but it was a devastating loss.

 

Here's my wall of modular and semi-modular stuff:

ModularLand.thumb.jpg.16ebcd88833dfb99e300a8e5beace030.jpg.c38e079ac3f38e39cddfdba2e48782f7.jpg

 

I have pretty much vowed to never get rid of any of the MOTM stuff, it is still the best-sounding analog synth I have ever used. My system is usually configured as a massive mono-synth, with multiple filter choices. It's a beast.

 

I had a medium-sized Doepfer system that I sold to fund the MOTM, I decided then (about 2005) that 5u was the wave of the future, and that Euro would fade away when people figured out how great the 5u stuff was. Boy, was I right about that!

I got back into Euro about 7 years ago, trying to get modules, like Make Noise and Mutable, that did stuff beyond the capabilities of the MOTM.

 

The Moog Mother 32/DFAM/Subharmonicon came to me in a trade, I did a sound editing/sound design job for a short film for a friend of a friend, it turned out to be a lot larger job than originally specc'd, so we came to a deal to trade my studio time for the Moogs, I love the DFAM, find the Subharm interesting, but am still wrapping my head around it, and the M32 sounds great, but I'm kind of "meh" on it in general, it doesn't really do anything that I can't get from the rest of my studio, and the sequencer on it is so unintuitive. The Make Noise )-Coast, however, is one of m,y favorite pieces of gear.

 

There's also a Behringer 2600 not pictured here, I'm not in love with Behringer as a company, but the 2600 is a killer synth. I've wanted a 2600 since playing with the real thing in college, the B2600 definitely fills that niche for me.

 

I just did a gear trade that will get me a Behringer Go case, and I'm planning on populating it with the new TipTop Buchla modules as they come out.

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Hop, flop, squawk

It's a keeper

-Captain Beefheart, Ice Cream for Crow

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On 12/25/2022 at 5:27 PM, mate stubb said:

Well that didn't last long. I eliminated the 1U row and came up with something cheaper and better. Pam will have to wait for a new row with the sequencer/performance stuff.

 

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2125414

 

My system design has no stand alone VCAs, which I find weird. But most of the sound sources have their own built in VCA, including the two analog oscillators and filter. 

 

It's amazing that with a jungle of modules to choose from how often I seemed to gravitate to the Mutable designs, and specifically to the Calsynth builds.

 

Here's my current design for the performance row, with an 8 hp hole left to fill.

 

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2125189

 

Looks like a wonderful system! I have a few of the CalSynth modules, uPeaks, Pachinko, and uO&C, they are very well built, and the builder has always been great to deal with. Mutable's Rings is one of my favorite modules of all time, I know it has become something of a cliche in the Euro world, but I always find something I like from it.

Turn up the speaker

Hop, flop, squawk

It's a keeper

-Captain Beefheart, Ice Cream for Crow

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Oh, puh-leeze!

Will you kindly quit yammering about Big Knob synths? PLEASE? You're, like, giving me some serious GAS, just when I thought I was over it.

 

Jeez...some people...

 

It's like you're wanting me to go spend a buncha money or something.

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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21 minutes ago, GRollins said:

And while I'm thinking about it...

 

Moe, your hotrodmotm site has a bunch of broken links.

 

Grey

 

Images or links to external sites?  Any links to images on my website from years of my posts to this forum were broken when we migrated to the new software. This forum will accept only https: links and my site is only http:

 

The other issue could be links to other peoples web sites, which may have died in the 15 years or so since I set the site up. 

Moe

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2 hours ago, mate stubb said:

 

Images or links to external sites?  Any links to images on my website from years of my posts to this forum were broken when we migrated to the new software. This forum will accept only https: links and my site is only http:

 

The other issue could be links to other peoples web sites, which may have died in the 15 years or so since I set the site up. 

 

External sites. You've got links to other peoples' stuff and a lot of those seem to be kaput.

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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Mutable Instruments has come up several times in this thread. A Beads just popped up on eBay if anyone is interested:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/275595620246?hash=item402ac76f96:g:gFsAAOSwf-Vjq0h9

 

No, I don't intend to bid, so you guys have at it.

 

Grey

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Never having followed through on my original intention to create a 5U synth, I cannot claim that the thought of Big Knobs is like seeing an old girlfriend; I never got the girl in the first place. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it's like seeing an old lust.

 

I spent a lot of time researching brands and models. Now all of that is probably moot. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

 

Grey

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I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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3 hours ago, RABid said:

I heard a couple years ago that Synthesizers.com was up for sale. Does anyone know what happened?

 

They are still selling systems but I don't know if the original guy is still involved. Their niche was inexpensive modules, and may have steep price competition these days from the Euro makers.

Moe

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They're up for sale, as of this past June. Whether a buyer has stepped forward, I do not know. They say it was the pandemic and subsequent supply issues that did them in.

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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And as a subtext for the synthesizers.com thing, if you look at the math on the years quoted, Roger Arrick, the founder, must be getting on in years. He might be wanting to retire.

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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