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@GarfieldModular -- thanks for the kind words!

@Lugia -- interesting point, very oblique. In a previous incarnation I did all my music in the computer, which meant lots of editing and rearranging to try to keep the piece in motion. What's obvious to me, but maybe not to others, is that in this piece there are a lot of static parts, a lot of thinking-while-recording, which if I was working on a multitrack recording I would edit down. The modular is an escape from all that clicking, but I'm not yet proficient enough on the instrument to achieve the musical results I want. Whether I adopt your idea or not, I am sure that "keep practicing" is part of the answer :)

@troux -- this is really nice.

Much too long, but give a couple of minutes to get going. Sorry for standing in front of the camera so much :(

New things :
+ Beatstep Pro : this is really good. It is going expand the musical possibilities quite a lot.
- Doepfer suitcase : I like its solidity but it's a bit too big for my space. I may have to trade it for something smaller and skiffier.

Patch notes : the main line is produced by BIA with a bunch of modulation from the Beatstep Pro, with an envelope going to pitch to make the kick sound. There are three copies of this one goes straight into the desk, another goes into a compressor to bring out the the thwokk of the kick, and the third goes to the Font bandpass. The cutoff of Font is sequenced by the Beatstep too. The "cymbals" are Hats909 in raw mode, straight into the desk. This is all pretty static. All the other percussive noises, starting with the little hihats and descending into general madness later, are from the DFAM.

EDITED Oct 31st 2020, 18:59

But if you want modules-as-art, I'd have to give the nod to Folktek.
-- Lugia

Ooh nice! I didn't know about Folktek! The panels are amazing, and the modules are interesting too.

Not beautiful sounds, or concepts, or circuits designs, the question is about the prettiest face. Whose front panels could you look at all day, even without wiggling? (Blank panels don't count -- only modules that do something!)

I will nominate (in no particular order)
- Frap Tools
- Xaoc Devices
- Nano modules

Who's your favourite?

Wow! I loved it.

Ah, @GarfieldModular you are too kind. Thank you.

I shall try maintain the quality and convert you into a techno fan :)

Very nice! How did you do it?

Too many modules I don't know here to give any useful suggestions I fear.

Since you haven't changed the voice architecture much I think the audio path from my previous suggestion still works. You just want to insert the Timber somewhere. The BI has a very sonically rich output anyway, so there's not much value in adding it there, but I guess you just have to experiment.

For modulation you have a lot of possibilities -- and still the main target is the Basimilus. So try some different patches and see what you get!

do you need attenuators and multiples in the rack yet - probably not

I'd use the attenuators and multiples to split and control modulation sources of the analog 4. Maybe I don't need them yet in this minimal setup, but they were cheap anyway, and I reckon they will become handy later if the setup grows.
-- SolNoctis

Personal opinion : attenuators are a total waste of money and, more importantly, HP. Instead get an Attenuverter + Offset module.
- Cheap option : Ladik U-012 Dual Attenuverter + DC
- Three channels and it's also a mixer : Happy Nerding 3 x MIA
- Similar but different : Frap Tools 321
- More flexible routing and it also a 4 quadrant amplifier : Befaco a*b + c
If you really want three passive attenuators you can find much smaller and cheaper version alternatives the Behringer inhere. (Cheaper than Behringer?! True!)

In my small setup, I never had a use for multiples -- I use stack cables. OTOH switched multiples are a whole different proposition. This one is no bigger than the one you picked, also has 8 ports and has 3-position switches for all the outputs. It's a kit but it is super easy, even I managed it.

The kick is the DFAM oscillator 1 and filter. The hats and snare are the DFAM noise source, modulated by Pam. The filtered synth stabs at the beginning are coming from BIA through the Doepfer LPG. The other synth is oscillator 2 of DFAM, mixed with some noise from Hats909. All pitches from the DFAM sequencer, quantised by Disting. Everything else controlled by Pam. Off-screen there is outboard reverb and delay.

You can probably reconstruct the patch from the video :)

Hi Garymon,

I'm also doing the "groove box" thing, but with some non-modular assistance. You can do a lot with not very much. 6u should be enough for anyone, eh? For example if you listen to the first minute of :

https://the-erc.bandcamp.com/track/2020-06-28

Except the hihats, every sound is BIA, with a bunch of modulation, and some outboard delay. The sequencer and modulation source is Pam's New Workout. This is my rack, though at the time I didn't have Font. (The bass that comes in after 30s is a DFAM.)

I have basically decided that what I need to take this setup forward is a Beatstep Pro to make it more playable. It can do more than most Euro sequencers in the x0x style at a much lower price, and the buttons are nice and big :) Pam can do Euclidean rhythms and random pitch/mod sequences when those are needed.

Anyway, coming back to your rack, it looks super fun. The only thing that looks off is you've only got one "normal" oscillator for the Percall to chew on; I feel like you want another to justify its hp. By count you have 22 potential trigger/gate sources, before you start making more out of kinks, which is plenty :) A switchable OR bus is very useful thing to combine rhythmic sequences

p.s. Sorry for hijacking your thread to rant about mixers. I think I meant to post in a different thread :-/

Because most of the Ladik modules are "primitives"...they consist of the submodule circuits that you'd find behind the panel of a much more complex device.
-- Lugia

Yes BUT, e.g. :
* Ladik dual attenuverter + offset = €50
* 2hp dual attenuverter (no offset) = €71
* ALM dual attenuverter + offset = €100
There are lots of similar examples! (Not to pick on 2hp or ALM, their prices are the same ballpark as most makers.)

Not necessarily. Ladik has their M-610, six channels, with pan and mono/stereo i/o, for $100,
-- Lugia

Nice -- Ladik to the rescue again! How do they manage to make their stuff so cheap compared to pretty much everyone else? You still get better value for money buying an external mixer, but at least Ladik give you a reasonable cost option.

Everything in Eurorack costs a lot, but for mixers it's ridiculous. Just to pick two things in stock at Thomann today :
* Befaco Hexmix + Hexpander = £730
* Soundcraft Signature 22MTK = £700
The difference in capability between the two is huge. By all accounts Hexmix is a good mixer, but you pay a gigantic premium to have it your rack. If you really need that for your live show or whatever I guess you just have to pay it, although there are lots of mixers in 19" format. In the studio it's nuts.

People often say modular is a bad choice for drums, but at least there are lots of interesting options (like BIA, the WMD modules, the SSF Entities... drool) that don't have obvious equivalents in other formats. Big multi-channel mixers -- nah.

Obvious this does not apply to small inline mixers that can do CV as well as audio. Those are essential.

Hi Farkas,
I did think about the Voltage Block, but I thought -- perhaps wrongly -- that Tetrapad + Tete could cover most of what it can do, and leaves some space for other things (like a trigger sequencer.) But yeah, it's a good choice.

A sequencer? How do you play this anyway? Drive everything from the LFO?

Thanks Garfield! You know it's a small rack, so everything has to contribute*. That means a lot of cables.

*except for the LPG which is just sitting there chilling.

@jingo Nice :)

How did you make the clap?

Forgot to say : here is the rack this one will be controlling.

I'm interested in how you all would approach this "small rack challenge".

The Problem
The main voice in my small rack is the BIA which, as everyone knows, benefits from a lot of modulation. I also want to add an Entity Percussion Synth which, needs even more modulation than the BIA. So far I have been using Pamela's New Workout as my primary sequencer and modulation source, sometimes supplemented by a Moog DFAM. This works but it's not very playable -- it's quite fiddly and it takes long time to put together a decent bank of patterns to make a tune. Also, Pam won't have enough channels once the Entity shows up.

Solution?
Get one of those 64hp Pod cases (or alternatively an Intellijel palette (4u x 62hp)) and fill it it with control devices. Like so :

Constraints
I already have the Tetrapad (but not the Tete) so that has to go there. Pam and Pexp-1 don't have to be there, but getting them out the other rack seems more logical and makes more space for monsters like the Entity.

I cannot get a bigger rack until I get a bigger house; also that misses the point of the challenge!

I'm making techno, but feel free to approach from your own musical direction.

How would you do it?

@Iheartopone -- It only sounds good when you put some good sequences in it, so congratulations :)

The DFAM is making most of the noise here. Kicks and hats are BIA and Hats909 respectively. The Disting is quantising the DFAM's pitch sequencer, and Pam is doing all the triggering and modulating. Full track below.

Well.. I'll ignore Garfield's advice and suggest what I would do with this. I'll ignore the FH-1 since I don't really know what it does, but I expect it gives you many more possibilities!

• Circadian rhythms Clock and Reset outs to the corresponding ins on the Knights Gallop.
• Knight's gallop outs to the triggers of the Pico Drums
• Pico drums out into the Pico DSP, and from there into the mixer.
• All 8 channels of the Circadian Rhythms go into the Basimilus Iteritas, two of them passing through the Invy on the way (I suggest : Pitch and Morph)
• BI output to the mixer.
• I guess you could use the uMod2 for CV mangling, but since everything is under sequencer control in this patch, that seems like a waste. Instead let's use stack cables to take the output of the BI and the Pico Drums to the ring modulator and send that to the other mono channel on the mixer.

Now you can make some techno :)

Thanks for listening Garfield. With enough modulation anything is possible :)

I like the Filterbank a lot but it is less flexible than you might hope. If you want smooth creamy sounds better look elsewhere. If you want disgusting filth, the Sherman has you covered. Probably better to treat it as a distortion box that contains a filter rather than a filter per se. (I have one of the original model Filterbanks; I have heard the mk.2 version has a wider usable range of sounds.) I bought it along time before I got into Eurorack, so I'm sure there is a module that can do similar things, but I don't know what module that it is. It has some decent possibilities for external modulation, but at line level, so it's a bit of a pain to incorporate into a Eurorack setup.

Here is the rack; but the second row does not actually exist -- the Tetrapad is waiting in a box for its time to rejoin the fun.

(Seems that the preview image above is not upto date -- click on it to see the real rack...)

The main objective here was to get the Hats909 to be something more interesting than the 909 high hat, which was mostly achieved with the help of the Doepfer LPG. Disting is playing the drum loop into Font, while BIA is everything else. All sequencing and triggering from Pam's with various switches. (There is also a mixer and a Sherman Filterbank out of shot, supplying extra filth to the drum loop.)

(apologies for all the time my arm is blocking the camera....)

The indispensable Pamela's New Workout, with the Pexp-1 expander. I use it even when I'm not using the modular! (It's my best option for clocking my other hardware.)

Disting Mk4 is not very user friendly but it can do almost everything you can think of. It's a great module for a small system, especially while you're figuring out what you need: whatever you need, Disting can probably do it. It was one of the first things I bought, and I still use it in most patches... most often as a quantiser for the DFAM :)

Pamela's New Workout is a very powerful and flexible module, especially combined with Pexp-1 expander. I would start there and then consider which of the Turing Machine, RND Step, Rotating Clock Divider, and Ochd you really need -- Pam's overlaps with all of them to a greater or lesser extent. Also, since the recent firmware update, Pam's does quantise to scale (which is awesome) so the Intellijel Scales my be less useful. That said, DFAM really enjoys a good quantiser which is maybe reason enough to keep Scales.

On the saving money front : ST Modular Switched does the same thing as the Doepfer switched multiple, but it's a DIY kit. It is also smaller and has the cables and switches at the top and bottom respectively, which is better than left and right.

It looks like you have a lot sound generating capabilities already so let's think about playing live. You have a lot of synth here, but not too many ways of changing things around on the fly. You don't really want to be repatching things in the middle of a performance. So I would add a lot of switches, switched multiples, mutes, OR-combiners, and CV mixers.

I'm assuming you are mixing on a desk, but an audio mixer in your rack would give some extra flexibility.

Is your computer part of your live rig? If not, you may want more sequencing. I don't know the Rene or the Stillson Hammer, but I do know the BIA, and it can easily eat 10 channels of sequencer by itself. Even if you are using your computer you still probably want more sequencing, especially for triggers. I like the look of the Intellijel Steppy, but an external sequencer like the BeatStep Pro might be better for you.

What about hands on control? Are you playing this with a keyboard? You might find something that gives you a bit more expressive control to be nice, like a Tetrapad or a Pressure Points. Even a big old slider can good!

Having done the exact same thing I can strongly recommend Pamela's New Workout (which could replace both the Trigg and the Quad LFO). This is more fun than having the DFAM be the master clock because Pam lets you drive the DFAM sequencer with more interesting rhythms. Combined with something like the Short Bus this is very good.

Also : Disting Mk4 is well worth its 4hp because it can do so many things.

And that's the biggest problem I have with the Disting. .... if you use it to emulate a couple of transformers and four diodes...I dunno, it just feels like a misuse of the module.
-- Lugia

I take your point, but it seems impossible to get even the simplest passive module for less than £25 (if you want a front panel, which maybe you don't) and it doesn't take too many of those before you've paid for a Disting. Of course you can use them all at once, assuming you had enough space in the first place... which I don't. Anyway the Disting earns its keep for me.

I don't really want to say any more since I'm sure there is another thread about Disting somewhere else :)

... and of course Disting can be a ring mod too. It's a shame Disting can't be all the many things it can be at the same time....

Yeah, but ring mods are easy. If you can squeeze another 2 hp in, Circuit Abbey's Twiggy gives you two of 'em. You don't really need any controls on it, so that's something that makes sense as a teensy module.
-- Lugia

To make 2hp of space I'd have to lose my attenuverters, and despite my love of weird clangy noises, I think they are more useful than a ring mod!

Definitely leaning towards the 3xMIA. I guess I'll just hang out on eBay and see what turns up!

Frap Tools 321 is a treat for mixing, shifting and attenuverting.

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/frap-tools-321-
-- bhenry1790

My take on it would be to look at a Happy Nerding 3x VCA, actually. This would give you the CV mixing, attenuverting, AND three linear, DC-coupled VCAs to have CV over your modulation, etc levels. Drops right into that 6 hp hole, too. And if needed, you can split out one or all of the VCAs. The Frap 321 is also a good drop-in choice...it all depends on how you want to do your CV/mod mixing and control and how much control you want vs. what you want the synth to have control over.
-- Lugia

Thanks for the pointers guys -- these are nice alternatives I hadn't considered. With this setup I don't really feel that lack of VCAs -- all the voices have their own amplitude envelope -- so the main use would for modulating some other CV signal. This is intended to be a very hands on, playable system, and in particular I want to be able to switch from the DFAM being the main drums to the BIA being the main drums and back without stopping the music and ideally without repatching anything. For this a lot of manual control is needed.

So the Frap 321 is closer to what I am looking for. However when looking at the Happy Nerding 3xVCA I also discovered their 3xMIA which is even better! It seems to do everything the 321 does, with more inputs, more usable output options, and (major plus) all the jacks are at bottom of the module.

Versus the Befaco, the main advantage of 3xMIA seems to be more channels (also : cheaper); the disadvantage is that it can't be a ring modulator.

Any other thoughts?

I wouldn't put anything in the whole - I'd get the next case first - so there are no constraints on hp

Haha well, quite. But for various reason that next case won't be coming along any time soon. (Although I already am thinking about putting the Tetrapad into one of those little 4ms skiffs, along with its expander and a "proper" trigger sequencer.)

But, if I wanted CV mixing in a case this size I'd be tempted to replace the doepfer LPG with a MengQi DPLG and a DC coupled quad cascading vca (so you have a voltage controlled CV Mixer)

I wouldn't trade the Doepfer LPG for the MengQi one, although that is a cool little module. The Doepfer is also a very fun and controllable filter which I use often. However I think if/when I expand the setup this quad VCA idea sounds quite promising.

I have 6hp remaining in my rack before I have to quit acquiring modular gear (jk!). I'm looking for suggestions for that last space.

The rack is mostly used for the creation of aggressive techno sounds. Some things which cannot be seen in the rack:

• Sitting next to this rack is a Moog DFAM which provides some extra voices, envelopes, and the sequencers.
• All the sound sources go straight into my mixing desk, so no need for audio mixers in the rack.
• I have outboard for effects.

The combination of Pamela's New Workout, the switches, and the DFAM actually provide just about enough sequencing power, although you can never have enough switches! Pam can provide LFOs and Disting triggered envelopes. On the rare occasion I need a VCA I use the A-101-2.

So with this in mind I'm thinking some CV mixing might be the most useful thing to add, so I'm looking at the Befaco a*b+c, which seems to the most interesting thing in this class. (Other similar possibilities : 2 x Malekko Mix 4; Bastl abc)

What would you put in this hole?