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I could listen to this all day. It's great.

I think you've already pinpointed the concern I would have with this rack: the layout and cable management.
I would probably group this by function, i.e. all oscillators/sound modules together at the top, then filters and effects, then modulation, and all sequencing and mixing at the bottom, with sub-mixers and mults interspersed throughout.
Your rack may be a little voice heavy, but unless you feel like you could use more VCAs or a 3xMIA or something like that, I don't see much trouble with your module choices.
Have fun and good luck!

Hi, I'm leaning towards melodic ambient electro. I have a RD-8 close by and a lot of other synths, but I'm trying to keep the modular isolated as a standalone multi voice instrument..

outboard mixing and effects are patched so modular voices can sent to their own own channels outside of the rack. with sends to a timefactor and space, with a analog heat on the master bus..

Nerdseq handles voicing and clock source. when I say handle I mean I'm still new to the nerdseq.. 😂

Hi Radar. What kind of music are you doing? Do you have any external gear?

Edit: Here's a link to the rack instead of a pic.

EDITED Nov 13th 2021, 17:10

Any suggestion for layout here or missing vidal modules.. I've layed it out into 6 voices and drums with modulation close by.. cable management seems to be an issue.

Thanks in advance
Radar

EDITED Nov 13th 2021, 17:34

Thanks you all!

@wishbonebrewery, yep, Seek (the random sequence generator rules) => Akemie => Polaris => FX Aid on one of the bigger reverb algorithms, funnily enough no VCAs involved.

@farkas, those are both favs of mine too, and funnily enough I recorded tons of versions of each of them and then took the second take in both cases. Really glad you enjoyed it :)

Wow, man! I love october 9th acid, but you completely raised the bar with serena. Seriously, I am really impressed. What a great accomplishment.

Serena is ace!
Love wash of sound which I guess is ringing out through the FX Aid.

AND do consider some options to sequence sequences. IMO BossBow2, Switchblade, Verbos Sequence Selector and Befaco Muxlicer are all worth considering. Also running sequencing and/or CV through a sample@hold is an interesting technique. The general idea here is nesting control signals so you have source signals and reader/windows which pass a selection of the sources. That lets you get a lot of aural complexity from pretty simple underlying figures.

See https://www.modulargrid.net/e/forum/posts/index/10644 for case discussion. CBL and Trogotronic are sounding to me like top travel friendly case picks currently.

… GarfieldModular for the win!!

EDITED Nov 13th 2021, 02:54

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Hi JB and Farkas,

Yes, I would do what Farkas suggests. I got a bit carried away here in this one:

You can add as many VCOs as you want in the above example, hence VCO-n, where by n is for example 4 if you want to add up till four VCOs. But the number N can be anything, up to you. Same then for the EGs.

To make it a bit more spicy you could add for each VCO its own filter (filter-1 up till filter-n) and at the end of the CVilization another filter, or if that's a bit too much, just that last filter-n+1.

If your LFOs aren't clockable then don't worry, just leave out those patches then. Have fun and kind regards, Garfield.

Edit: Hmm that inline picture doesn't seem to work anymore... lots of troubleshooting, should work now...

EDITED Nov 13th 2021, 02:30

A few options here:
— the VCA with CV envelope open/closing it can generally be last in the chain. That way you just have one lane of VCA managing all related needs
— you COULD if desired send a dummy/nul channel to your sequence selector, that way you are sequencing in rests on an affirmative/positive basis

BTW sounds like the setup you are running has a lot in common with the Verbos Sequence Selector. There’s a bunch of Verbos videos for that online, those would be helpful and inspiring for you to take that technique further.

Cheers, Nicholas

EDITED Nov 13th 2021, 01:40

A few options here:
— the VCA with CV envelope open/closing it can generally be last in the chain. That way you just have one lane of VCA managing all related needs
— you COULD if desires send a dummy/nul channel to your sequence selector, that way you are sequencing in rests on an affirmative/positive basis

BTW sounds like the setup you are running has a lot in common with the Verbos Sequence Selector. There’s a bunch of Verbos videos for that online, those would be helpful and inspiring for you to take that technique further.

Cheers, Nicholas

Hi Steve,

Congratulations on your first album, what an achievement! Serena is an interesting track, going to check that one fully out! Like Farkas, I am going to make this a very special weekend :-)

Thank you very much for sharing this special moment with us and once more, congrats on this great milestone for you! :-) Kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Sacguy71,

Nice steam locomotive you got there at the beginning ;-) Ha, ha, and at 2:17 that loud kind of guitar sound is kind of cool :-)

It's nice to see you at work with your Shared System and demoing many modules. Thanks a lot for sharing this with us and kind regards, Garfield.

another thing that you may want sooner rather than later is a way to control the modular with your foot - especially if you are playing guitar into it... addac and doepfer make one and there is a diy one available from thonk by a company called 7 dials

look at them carefully though, as you may find that you already have all you need other than the module to get that to work - usually a passive volume pedal - but iirc some of them can also take a switch
-- JimHowell1970

Thanks for this info. I actually do have a passive volume pedal.

If it were me and I wanted to split phase 1:
1a: case, beads, a119 (you'll be able to process your guitar and use the envelope follower and comparator to modulate beads)
1b: maths, sbg

another thing that you may want sooner rather than later is a way to control the modular with your foot - especially if you are playing guitar into it... addac and doepfer make one and there is a diy one available from thonk by a company called 7 dials

look at them carefully though, as you may find that you already have all you need other than the module to get that to work - usually a passive volume pedal - but iirc some of them can also take a switch

@meRichie, your rack above is really interesting in concept and has a lot of modules I would want if I was sample-focused.

I agree with others above on i) your rack design is short on "basic / utilities" modules that will be needed and/or ii) there may be non-modular alternatives that are pretty compelling (especially in the MPC lineup).

IF you want to stick with modular, then I suggest you keep in mind the idea of "balance" of module types and HP. For me, in a small to medium sized rack, I try to keep the balance as follows:
-- 30% or less of HP devoted to voicing, aka "modules that make or change sound"
-- ~30% to CV sources like sequencing, LFOs, envelopes, random/chaos (Sloths) etc.
-- ~30% to utilities (VCAs, attenuverters, mixing attenuverters, mixing, mults, etc.)
--~10% or less of "other" such as finishing FX and in/out
In a huge rack IMO one can get away from the above balance AFTER a good "core" section of CV and utilities is available. In a mid to small rack, I find the balance %s above very important.

My early designs skewed too much to voicing and as a result the rack was very "underpowered." Adjusting the balance towards more CV and utilities gave my rack a lot of depth, e.g. every voicing module I wanted to use had plenty of support that allowed me to explore the range and corners of its capabilities.

Hope this helps, good luck!

Kevin, for your rack IMO Intellijel Triplatt (or MI Shades) would be a better choice vs. Vermona Amplinuator. Triplatt will be more versatile and also less HP. Having something like Triplatt or Shades in your rack is IMO another "no regrets" type of choice, it will be useful on many many patches. I would have one of those in basically ANY rack setup. Furthermore, if you get to using more complex CV modulation, something like 4MS SISM or Tiptop MISO is super handy; those are basically suped-up Triplatt. But Triplatt is super useful and small.

You already have Erica Techno, so that already gives you Mixer Lite, Mixer and Stereo Mixer. That will give you a good number of basic mix channels and should handle your immediate needs IMO. Why bother with WMD Performance Mixer when you already have those Erica mixer units? Yes WMD PM is very good, but it is big and expensive, and I don't see a need for those in ADDITION to the Erica mix modules you already have.

I've read more closely the posts above, now thinking PNW may or may not be a good fit. It's a great module, but I don't know that it makes sense given what else you have. BTW if you need to coordinate a lot of different sequencers the PNW with its 24ppwn expansion plus a mult would be a good way to sync everything; that's what I have to sync my many sequencers. SO my suggestion is PNW goes into your "maybe later" modules.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

You could split Phase 1 into two phases to get to the fun more quickly, as Beads has "attenurandomizers"

Phase 1a: Mantis Case + Beads + S.B.G
Phase 1b: A119 + Maths

Thanks a lot : )

EDITED Nov 12th 2021, 19:32

I have heard that alt of People have a Hard time getting something usefull out of the doepfer 106-1.but it sounds interesting bring able to manipulate it with revers and delays.

Also thinking about adding a plads and beads Combo

And for some control/hands on a tetrapad and tete Combo

Phase 1: Mantis Case + A119 external input + Beads + Maths + S.B.G
...
Well, phase 1 just got a lot more expensive, so time to save and continue playing around with VCV rack.

You could split Phase 1 into two phases to get to the fun more quickly, as Beads has "attenurandomizers"

Phase 1a: Mantis Case + Beads + S.B.G
Phase 1b: A119 + Maths

EDITED Nov 12th 2021, 17:13

Oh yeah the Jomox is the king of kick drums! I love mine and feed it to Hexinveter Hot Glue mixer with compression and distortion sooo good! Now for the Schlappi 100 Grit that is a beast as well and the touch balls are fun. I find that drums benefit from distortion and compression. It brings them to life.

It sounds like you are using the CVilization as a sequential switch to alternate between waveforms into different filters. I'm not familiar with that module but I think what you would want to do is go VCO > CVilization > filters > VCAs with your Beatstep triggering an envelope that would go into the cv input of the VCA (and filter if desired).

Envelopes and VCAs.
-- farkas

Thanks farkas!
I'm assuming VCO > EG > VCA > CVilization?

Envelopes and VCAs.

I am having some fun running several VCOs through my CVilization module...using mode 2 (Sequential Switch) and building up some cool sequences. Have a couple going through different filters and finding its really fun to tweak the filters while the sequences are running.

What I'm not understanding though is when I stop my master clock (Beatstep Pro), the VCOs continue to output sound (I get that's what they do) but how could I get sound to stop once I stop the clock? Is that what an envelope would be for? Would I need to run all the VCO outputs through an envelope before going to the CVilization to do this?

Well, I'm working on a Berlin School project. My professors are Schulze, Froese, and Hoenig. Please finish this assignment for me and I will evaluate the quality of your work.

Congrats @troux!!!! That's awesome.
Looking forward to listening over the weekend.

I forgot to post this, but a few weeks back I finally wrapped up my first acid album, lots of discovery through this process and had a lot of fun.

I've posted a few of these tunes here already, but I hadn't share the last piece, and in particular I really enjoyed it. I cribbed from James Tenney's "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion" for a 20 minute exploration on what the filter means in acid, and if you have the patience I think it's pretty rad.

Made with:

Hope you all enjoy!

One other great source for audio manglers is Schlappi Engineering. These don't just "dirty up" things...they're more akin to aural homicide!
-- Lugia

Thank you again Lugia,
Yes i know about Schlappi Engineering and I’m very interested by their modules ! Angle grinder look very interesting.. pfff need more racks ahhaha

@Tchnondz,

I have Erica Techno & Jomox Modbase MkII (and some other perc stuff and lots of other modular stuff). The Jomox is SICK. Since you are liking the Techno, I think you'll love the add of the Jomox.

The rest of your rack doesn't make a ton of sense to me. A few comments:
-- if Piston Honda and Manis Iteritas are the synth voices that are inspiring to you, sure, go for it
-- Zadar and QuadVCA will be useful in almost any scenario, so those also I see as "no regrets" choices here
-- PNW is superb, but I'm not immediately seeing a need for it since you also have Erica Drum Seq and Nerdseq in the rack above
-- your question "what utilities" ... the answer there is "it depends." Really depends on how many voices you are running, how you will typically patch those, etc.

SO my suggestion for you is i) you already have Techno and a few other modules--cool ii) identify your next "no regrets" modules, get those, and spend some time with them--that will tell you what utilities etc. you need to make those work as you are hoping.

Last, since your focus is Techno / Acid, I should point out (if you don't already know)
-- https://wmdevices.com/products/time-warp Time Warp will let you add slew/glide to anything on demand. The glide sound is a big part of the acid sound. Its very worth considering if you don't already have a satisfactory slew/glide function in your setup
-- I notice a lot in your setup looks like it is to "dirty up" various sounds. If that's your aim, I can recommend SSF Triptych and/or Instruo tahn[3] which can help you get some added brutality on your sounds.

Cheers,

Nicholas

-- nickgreenberg

Hi Nickgreenberg,

Thank you for your reply,

Yes can’t wait to try the Jomox Modbase 09MKII ! Love the Jomox sound (already owned the Modbase11 and the Jomox Alphabase)
Ok so for you i made good choice with Piston Honda, Manis, Zadar and Intellijel Quad VCA. So you said the rest of my rack doesnt make a ton of sense, so i think, like Lugia said me already, you hadn’t choose Vermona Melodicer (too big for my small rack) and Zularic Repetitor.. So I will try those modules and maybe put them out of the rack later for make place for utilities…
Can you confirm or infirm I necessary need an attenuated, something like Vermona Amplinuator, for attenuate signal maybe of Piston Honda and Jomox who are really hot ?
I love WMD, will buy their Performance mixer for sure ! I checked the Timewarp, look very nice, keep it in mind :) Thank you

Like you say, I will try the modules I already own and see little by little what utilities I need..
My fear is if I need something necessary (and what I miss) for make my System work and make a little bit of music.. but I think it will work like this and I can have a little bit of fun.. even if I miss some utilities…

Thank you again,

Kevin

Tagging of the modules (& racks) in your collection

For all kinds of reasons it can be very useful to tag the modules in your collection. E.g. #wishlist, #jamming, #playmorewith, #3modules, #mylar, #colin, #trade, #sell, #field, #untamed, #live, #smallcase, #combo-X (X = a number), #greatwithclouds, #unpredictable, #generative, #starrynight, #stockhausen, #divkid, #hainbach, etc

Multiple lists of modules:
It would be very useful to be able to create multiple lists. This helps when reorganizing your system, keeping an overview of a wishlist, and perhaps grouping modules for particular activities (e.g. 'on-the-road modules', 'live jam modules', 'fieldrecording set', etc).

At the minimum being able to separate the modules that you have from those that are on the wishlist would already be great. And also: 'modules-I-own-that-are-currently-in-my-system' and 'modules-I-own-that-arent'

Thank you everyone for getting back to me so quickly. You all have definitely given me a lot of things to consider. Here are my thoughts so far:

Yeah, the mantis case is awesome. Better to start with a good case and power supply to protect my long-term investment.

Surface vs. Rings: I could go either way here because I like the sounds of both. However, antipythagoras does bring up a good point about the external input and the combination of synthetic and acoustic sounds. That is a direction I would like to go in, so Rings it is.

Bloom vs. Marbles: It seems to me that bloom is easier to get melodies going. That's why I picked that one. Does anyone have experience with both of these modules? I can try to learn Marbles in VCV rack since I won't incorporate it until later. If I gel with it, I may go that route.

Yeah, I don't need the headphones out from the euro rack because I have other gear.

I was hesitant about modules like disting and Ornaments and Crime. My music-making up to this point has been either in front of a computer or electronic gear with lots of menu diving, that I wanted to get away from that for euro rack. I will study this more because I don't want to eliminate helpful gear for the generative aspect.

So far, here is my updated plan for now : )
Phase 1: Mantis Case + A119 external input + Beads + Maths + S.B.G
Phase 2: Bloom (for now) + Rings + VCA
Phase 3: Plaits + Mixer
Phase 4: Further Expansion

https://cdn.modulargrid.net/img/racks/modulargrid_1742735.jpg

Well, phase 1 just got a lot more expensive, so time to save and continue playing around with VCV rack.

Thanks everyone,
Epaphraz

EDITED Nov 12th 2021, 13:01

Awesome thanks Guys.i already got the reseq on my list for modules to check out.will check out those videos

To follow up on this topic, here is my current mess of a system:

And what I think I would really love to get to is a system that allows me to play and record full songs without having to do much with a computer. Just patch something, and if I stumble on something interesting, plug my modular in a recorder and play the song.

Two persons I really look up to are Caspar Hesselager and Comparative Irrelevance. They really represent the goal I'm aiming to with my Eurorack experience:

EDITED Nov 12th 2021, 10:50

Sorry if this has been suggested already. I think it would be great to have a rating system for complexity. A "one" would be one of the easier/less complex modules to fully understand. A "five" would be a module that took a lot of learning to figure out how to fully learn how to use because of its complexity. Thanks for the great website!

Lugia is correct. Another idea maybe get an MPC Live sampler that is newer technology and has cv outs for working with modular analog gear. For modular having plenty of modulation is key. I’m always adding modulation to my setup and support modules. Once you start patching you will soon realize how easy it is to run out of modulation.

One other great source for audio manglers is Schlappi Engineering. These don't just "dirty up" things...they're more akin to aural homicide!

Looking at this, I see a lot of the typical "sexy" modules and scant few utility modules...attenuators, mixers, VCAs, logic (ESPECIALLY with sequencer-based systems!), modulation sources, and so forth. This really sells the sizable sampler section short, as you have sampler hardware here that could really use modulation. I would suggest tossing out the Poly and the F8R for starters, because these seem to not have the sort of analog modulation that would be useful. Could be wrong, though...but at the same time, the Poly looks a bit like a "Max in a box" device. Knowing how complex Max can get, I do wonder if something like that can handle a REALLY complex bunch of objects.

But yeah, these huge modules are really cramping what the system could do. If the idea is to create a multichannel sampling environment, it may make more sense (and be a lot cheaper) to hunt down a complex sampler from the 1990s/2000s and implement that instead. This is why I've got an Akai S6000 here...when all I need is straight samples, it's perfect, and if I want to modulate that, I can potentially send analog modulation to the sampler, although telling it what to do via MIDI can be just about the same level of flexibility.

Something like this: https://reverb.com/item/45970853-akai-s6000-midi-sampler That's pretty much identical to the one I have...18 outs, dual MIDI implementation, XLRs on the inputs, detachable control panel. Then once you have something of this sort in hand, get a floppy replacement from Gotoh or Nalbantov, and you can jam a MUCH bigger "drive" into the unit via USB drives or SD cards. Once the sampler's all set up, then use a module that can digitize analog signals for MIDI transmission to send all of the voice trigger/gates and modulation to the sampler. With that, you can chuck out ALL of the samplers in the build and focus on modules to drive the sampler, the CV-MIDI conversion, timing, some extra VCFs, modulation, etc. You could even use something like the FH-2 to send/return analog signals to your DAW, and then rechannel them to MIDI in there. Lots of possibilities...

@Tchnondz,

I have Erica Techno & Jomox Modbase MkII (and some other perc stuff and lots of other modular stuff). The Jomox is SICK. Since you are liking the Techno, I think you'll love the add of the Jomox.

The rest of your rack doesn't make a ton of sense to me. A few comments:
-- if Piston Honda and Manis Iteritas are the synth voices that are inspiring to you, sure, go for it
-- Zadar and QuadVCA will be useful in almost any scenario, so those also I see as "no regrets" choices here
-- PNW is superb, but I'm not immediately seeing a need for it since you also have Erica Drum Seq and Nerdseq in the rack above
-- your question "what utilities" ... the answer there is "it depends." Really depends on how many voices you are running, how you will typically patch those, etc.

SO my suggestion for you is i) you already have Techno and a few other modules--cool ii) identify your next "no regrets" modules, get those, and spend some time with them--that will tell you what utilities etc. you need to make those work as you are hoping.

Last, since your focus is Techno / Acid, I should point out (if you don't already know)
-- https://wmdevices.com/products/time-warp Time Warp will let you add slew/glide to anything on demand. The glide sound is a big part of the acid sound. Its very worth considering if you don't already have a satisfactory slew/glide function in your setup
-- I notice a lot in your setup looks like it is to "dirty up" various sounds. If that's your aim, I can recommend SSF Triptych and/or Instruo tahn[3] which can help you get some added brutality on your sounds.

Cheers,

Nicholas

Actually, the cab problem might just be dealt with by now. Have a look at https://www.etsy.com/shop/CaseFromLake Case From Lake is probably the best thing going in portable cases right now. They do custom mods (including odd-length rows, tile rows in either format, and so on) and they're BONKERS on power systems, with beefy Meanwells or the Doepfer A-100 supplies...whichever you'd like. Many of their systems fold up to the right size to qualify as carry-on baggage. Now THAT would be reasonable enough so that you COULD go to a larger cab, but still be able to tote it around.

Combo racks would be a huge help for me.

I buy more support modules now than fun modules and they really advance patches. I am putting Livestock Electronics Maze matrix mixer, comparator and quad sequential switch to the patches and really amazing to split and mingle the signal from one oscillator into madness. Plus easier on the pocketbook. Several support modules cost less or same as one large complex oscillator and do more.

Had fun experimenting with Make Noise Maths and Erbeverb to do percussion and weird sounds.

Friends,

So I've been at this modular synthesis business for about two years now and have been loving every bit of it. Over this time, I've slowly put together a rack that I am happy with, one that I think is versatile for my musical interests: 80s synth/techno and ambient generative. Recently, I've decided to pursue the ambient generative route a bit more and am looking to add some modules to reflect this.

Here is what my rack is looking like now:

There are some DIY modules that take up some of the empty space: a Dual VCA, a Quad mixer, the 123ADC designed by Sam Battle of Look Mum No Computer, a Lowpass filter and a simple sine/triangle wave oscillator. I also have an Arturia Keystep that I use as a sequencer from time to time.

Three things I wanted to address about my rack:

1) VCAs. The more the merrier right? My DIY Dual VCA is doing well, but I often find myself needing more control, both over audio signals and CV. Modules that I've been considering for this are Intellijel Quad VCA and Mutable Instruments Blinds.

2) Random CV modulation. This is a big one for me. I've been on a quest to create quasi-random CV and LFOs for my ambient generative patches. I've been able to get away with it a bit using Tides and some CV mixing. I love randomly modulating the voices I use! From my research so far, I hear Mutable Instruments Marbles is great for this.

3) Voices. To me, it seems that I don't have enough voices in this rack. I mostly find myself using Pluck, uPlaits and Rings, but is there another voice that sounds great ambient-wise, especially when passed through Clouds?

Any suggestions, comments or criticisms on my rack would be greatly appreciated. Like I said, I've decided to go the more ambient generative route, but am torn as to what I need to add next. Space isn't an issue nor power supply, as I'm making a larger custom case.

-Uncle Peter

Lugia, i copied your replan and modified it a little bit. Feedback welcome.