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Despite the fact that I have and use a Davolisint, I would never, EVER recommend a synth that has NO VCF. I even got a Waldorf 2-Pole for the Davoli, in fact!

The above build is missing so much stuff that my Davoli actually seems over-featured by comparison. Damn...

Great idea Garfield!

I scored a good deal on the Hertz Donut and Stillson Hammer which is why I ended up getting them. They work well together.

true and also guilty... hahaha

but let's face it, it is generally good advice

start with 1 less module and a bigger case

Hey Sacguy71,

Isn't that a great title for your new track? "The Gun Shots From Sacramento" ;-)

I keep forgetting that you got an Octratrack, you can do beautiful things with that one too!

I wish Hertz Donut was about half the price, I never see a good offer on that one here but I will keep an eye on it, you never know if one day indeed a good offer is available for this interesting module.

Kind regards and take care, Garfield.

Nice Garfield,

Sounds fun. I will do some recordings and videos once my Metron and Eloquencer arrive hopefully by end of next week. I figure that will give me two solid sequencers in my two larger cases and then have smaller sequencer/clock in my 6U case. Now I just a larger studio space house and to get out of the ghetto downtown area.

Hi Sacguy71,

With some delay I received yesterday the E950 Circuit Bent VCO from Synthesis Technology, so lots of (Texas Instruments) speech fun. So busy with that one that my Vector has to wait a bit longer. I need some hours in one stretch so I can give it a serious start at the Vector (I actually did already but I need even more time to go a bit deeper into it); still hoping to return to my Vector soon. So one thing I decided is that I am not going to buy further modules for a while so I have time to explore a bit more the E950 and the Vector.

I hope you receive your Metron soon :-) Kind regards, Garfield.

Thanks Garfield,

Considering I had a few drinks was fun exploring the new modules. Now that I figured out how to record to DAW, I plan to do a lot more track recordings and remix into future album. I love Marbles- it works great for slowly evolving patches like complex drones and generative things. However, it is not precise like a complex sequencer or clock generator so for beat focused stuff like techno, I prefer to use Pamela New Workout or a sequencer. Yeah I need to do that- sample the gun shots into my Octatrack from the video then send to Ableton and use in future recordings! Crazy here in downtown Sacramento, where I live the nut jobs shooting their damn guns off.

Hertz Donut is a beast! Can go from brutal mean to mild jazzy beats per the video demo. Still learning my around it and the Stillson Hammer and how FM synthesis works.

Hi Sacguy71,

Wow, the beginning of this track is fantastic! It reminds me of some superb tv-series but can't remember which one.

So... how do you like Marbles? Looks great in your rack. I got Rings and Plaits, would Marbles be a good side companion to Rings & Plaits in your opinion?

Sample those gun shots sounds and use that in your music, something which would be impossible to do here in Europe ;-)

Thank you very much for sharing and kind regards, Garfield.

Thanks Garfield,

Happy New Year as well. Hope you are having fun with your new Vector sequencer!

Yeah it was a lot of fun last night jamming into the new year on my MDLR modular after having some drinks. Now that I figured how to record to my DAW, I plan to do a lot more to spin off to some albums for my screenplay film project. The Hertz Donut is super mean and aggressive I love it! Funny- Mutable Instruments is the ying to the yang of Harvestman/IME modules. Ambiences vs brutal industrial. I love having both in my rack to craft various types of music. I have a few new sequencers arriving soon.

Hi Sacguy71,

He, he, nice fun track! Thank you, you have a Happy New Year too! Kind regards, Garfield.

thanks yeah figuring out how to record from the modular to Ableton was more work than patching the modular!

Hi there and happy new year!

I recently am dealing with this issue since I want to record my modular to Ableton DAW and remix for a future album. I use a Keith McMillen K-mix which supposedly has a way to do this direct to PC via USB but alas that did not work. SO, what I had to do was send the output from modular mixer to my Babyface RME and get Ableton to recognize the audio and then I was able to record.

My test run using the VCA patch from defragmenteur earlier:

I do have a Doepfer A190 in another case but this method is way easier for me plus no need to take up precious HP for another expensive MIDI to USB to CV module. However, the Expert Sleepers ES-9 appears to be the way to go direct to a laptop or ipad to record into Ableton and receive CV and clocks from a DAW to modular. I will probably pick up this module later next year or get another better mixer like the Roland MX-1 for recording all my synthesizers and modular to a DAW.

Another option is the 4ms WAV Recorder Eurorack Module that lets you record modules directly to an micro SD card and use later.

EDITED Jan 2nd 2021, 03:11

Yeah

Hi Zuggamasta,

Ha, ha, lovely track with lots of fun sounds and it's nice to see you at work with your self-built case and tons of DIY modules. So the Disting Mk IV and the Ear are that your first two non-DIY modules? :-)

Well, thanks a lot for sharing this and I wish you and everyone a good start into 2021 too! Happy New Year! Kind regards, Garfield.

Test recording with Mutable Instruments Plaits into Rings and Marbles using VCAs for a chill track today:

Ha, ha, spot on!

(Said the guilty one...)

Thanks @defragmenteur! That was fun patch to try and deepen my understanding of VCAs, clocks and envelopes!
Now working on recording some patches to Ableton. Here is the result:

EDITED Jan 1st 2021, 23:15

Agree and I have one and prefer my Intellijel and Erogeneous Tones VCAs at least they have LEDs for polarity and activity with CV inputs.

Send a clock to your vca. Send the vca output to the timbre cv input of Plaits. Now send an envelope from radar to the vca cv input. You should obtain a clock that vary in amplitude according to the envelope shape.

Scope view

EDITED Jan 1st 2021, 21:37

I just built this, and frankly, the only thing I really wish it had is LED's to indicate the polarity of the CV input.

Hi Broken-Form,

Wow, great video that Northern Thunder and the music is seriously tense and exciting, a lovely combination the video and your music! That video... is that computer generated or something real? It looks so amazing! And almost kind of scary :-)

I am able to watch that Midnight Moon video too, great one too! It's the same kind of tense music you are creating there too and combined with the lovely video it fits again superb! :-)

Nice work and I am glad you are sharing this with us, thank you very much! Happy New Year and kind regards, Garfield.
-- GarfieldModular

Thanks much appreciated,will have alot of more Dark Ambient finished this month.

the video is just clips from the internet,that i feel suits the music,the video is arranged with the music in Reaper:)

I think you'd be better off just asking actual people (possibly on this forum) regarding the specific rack and genre(s) of music
-- JimHowell1970

Yeah, but with all the love in the world, tell me if this scenario seems familiar to you:

newbie : "What do you think of my choice of modules? I'm trying to make genre music, a bit like artist. Am I heading in the right direction?"

modulargrid, in unison : "GET A BIGGER RACK"

@the-erc, thank you for sharing your methods. I have an external K-mix that I need to send to my DAW to record my modulars. Since I have some time off this week, will try that and share. I also have barely scratched the surface of using my modulars but plan to dig deeper this year to record a concept album soundtrack to go with my screenplay/novel/anime concept project. Modular is the perfect platform for that goal.

Happy new year everyone! And thanks for the the kind words; glad you enjoyed the music.

@troux - I'm very inspired by MylarMelodies approach. I think the key is to have lots of small pieces which can be combined in different ways.

@sacguy71 : the short description of the recording is that everything goes into a mixer and the stereo out from the mixer goes into the DAW. Afterwards, in Logic, I make it a bit louder but nothing fancy : whatever compressor preset sounds good, then a peak limiter. (Actually I make it a lot louder : the raw recording still has > 10dB of headroom)

The long description of the recording is : I have three audio lines out of the modular (Kick, Synth, Hats) which go into the mixer, as does the keyboard. On mixer sends I have delay, reverb and the Filterbank, each coming back into the mixer on its own channel. The kick gets its bass EQ'd up a bit, and everything else gets a dramatic reduction in the bass band. Kick and hats go to the main mix; everything goes to a bus for some gentle side-chain compression key from the kick. (You can hear this quite clearly on the pads near the start.) That sub-mix rejoins the main mix. While playing I adjust the levels of the delay and the Filterbank, but otherwise don't touch the mixer.

The main sequencer is the Beatstep Pro, although some sequences are generated by Pamela's New Workout. I use an OR Combiner
to direct trigger/gate sequences from various sources to the open hat and the Entity. Triggers for the closed hat and the kick come straight from the BSP. Additional triggers from BSP go to Pique, which is set up as two AR envelopes wiggling parameters of the Entity. The two pitch channels of the BSP go into the switched multiple so they can easily be directed to different places. One velocity channel from the BSP modulates the cut off of Font. Some manual wiggling from the Tetrapad. This probably makes more sense if you look at the rack :)

I feel like I'm only scratching the surface of what this rig can do. I didn't use Disting at all. I didn't use the Doepfer LPG at all. I used a grand total of 4 melodic sequences on the BSP and only 4 drum lines. All the modules keep doing the same job throughout the track, especially the BIA is very under-utilised. The only thing I feel that I might need to take this further is more switches!

@defragmenteur,

Oh ok so on my Erogeneous Tones VC8 would you mean to patch the output from an LFO or EG to the CV input and also turn the CV level and CV offset knobs to taste?

Oh and I heard that the Post Office is refusing to accept parcels destined for the EU because they don't know what paperwork is required... this is just hearsay! Not had any verifiable confirmation of anything...

Fun jam session to welcome in the new year 2021 modular style

I realised that if you just want to search for £ or € you can use the browser search in page facility and then just keep hitting CMD-G (on a mac - not sure what it is for windows or linux) to 'find aGain' and very quickly scroll through the items for sale in the UK - well - the ones listed in GBP anyway!

It's not ideal, tend to loop around and sometimes your eye gets drawn to the right hand side of the screen when the search picks up a £ in the description, but it's better than eyeballing hundreds of irrelevant listings (sorry again to everyone in the EU).

Patched up today.
Polyend Present into 2x WMD Sequential Switch works super! Mutes, Build-ups, Effect chains, CV parameters...

Next stage: recording and filming.

Christmas came a few days late. Treated myself a disting mk4 and Mutable Instruments Ears.

After some hours of fiddling with the disting I understand the love and hate for this little module. It is great to take over small jobs in the system but I tend to build my setup around this beast now. But as this thing is for me to have fun, and learn I'm ok with that.

I wish you all a good start into 2021

Hi there,
I'm also interested into this. I'm actually about to sell a case, and I think modulargrid would be the best place to do so !
Cheers !

Hi there,
I'm also interested into this. I'm actually about to sell a case, and I think modulargrid would be the best place to do so !
Cheers !

Whatever CV to VCA Input + Envelop to VCA CV Input = Modulated CV.

If you begin to use VCA to control CV amplitude you will definitely need more VCA's.

Lot of examples in this thread :
https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18390

get a bigger case - you will need it in the long term and buying a mantis now will be a better investment and remove the rack wart

do you really need an output module? probably not - replace with a quad cascading vca - veils for example - most will work as simple output modules - and this will allow you to modulate, for example, one channel of ochd with another - if you need headphone output then consider just a simple headphone out like alm hpo

spend the extra few $/€/£ on the fx aid xl - more modulation options!

personally I would swap the ochd out for a pamelas new workout

i'd also strongly consider links and kinks as they will add a lot of functionality for little cash in a small amount of space

my next module would be maths - work through the illustrated manual a few times - it's a great modular patching primer

Sold my Loquelic Iteritas to @Soundmonk
Great communication and quick payer - highly recommended.

Nope, no ES-3. Just do a little scrounging. and you can beat the cost on that thing. FYI, this IS how you'd hook the ES-3 up as well...but we're going "cheap-n-dirty" here, getting much the same result for about 1/3rd the price.
-- Lugia

Ok thanks Lugia, maybe another silly question but, does that mean I would need a load of 1/4 to 1/8 cables? Also if I didn’t want to go down the “cheap-n-dirty” route, would an ES8 or ES3+6 do the job? Just trying to understand ALL the options :)

EDITED Jan 1st 2021, 10:17

Fun jam tonite to welcome 2021

Mutable Instruments Plaits into Rings to Marbles
WMD percussion

how did you record it to your daw? sounds amazing!what sequencers did you use? Look forward to the video.

Hi The Erc,

Wow, 42 minutes of 500 sweaty people in one basement ;-) For those 42 minutes you have tons of variations, full with high energy, amazing actually to come up with such a long track that never really get bored because you seriously full-packed it with one sonic surprise after the other!

And indeed, those hats are lovely, so jealous :-) !

Thank you very much for sharing this, Happy New Year and kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Broken-Form,

Wow, great video that Northern Thunder and the music is seriously tense and exciting, a lovely combination the video and your music! That video... is that computer generated or something real? It looks so amazing! And almost kind of scary :-)

I am able to watch that Midnight Moon video too, great one too! It's the same kind of tense music you are creating there too and combined with the lovely video it fits again superb! :-)

Nice work and I am glad you are sharing this with us, thank you very much! Happy New Year and kind regards, Garfield.

Nice sounds and videos
Thanks
-- klodifokan

Thanks mate.Much appreciated.

10 minutes in, great stuff @the-erc, I'm aiming for this range myself, hoping to get there soon.

Thanks @defragmenteur- how would I patch that for a VCA? Would I patch and LFO or clock to the CV input of a VCA?
Care to share a patch example? Sorry, I am still a beginner to modular world.

Now this is along one - 42 minutes! The first time I've tried to play a whole set this long. If you feel like dancing your way into 2021, this might help! Assuming you like minimalistic 145bpm acid techno that is. Just pretend you're in a basement with 500 sweaty people and no fire exit.

You can hear :
* Noise Engineering Basimilus Iteritas Alter : the kick and nothing else.
* Tiptop Hats909 : the hats!
* The magnificent SSF Entity Percussion : everything else, sometimes assisted by Nano Modules Font and the Sherman Filterbank, and lots of modulation.
* Oh, the pads at the beginning are from an Ensoniq ESQ1, played badly with one hand.

I have a video which I will post once it is done uploading!

I also have an MDLR case and love it, mine is just 14u but the 1u tile rows are ace for adding modules that won't take up the prime real estate. Nice build! For logic, I am having fun with Intellijel Plog in my setup.

Just a question.
When say dark ambient you reffer to bands like Lustmord, Inade, Kammarheit, Land Fire, Northaunt, Schloss Tegal, Trepaneringsritualen and many other one?

X1L3 Shard is a great module.
Schlappi engineering and Noise Engineering modules too.
Plus a good filter and a huge reverb everthing is said.

Nice sounds and videos
Thanks

Thanks @the-erc! And I've got Insides at the top of my list, seems like some good NYE listening 🕺

nice one

I can't see the video, it tells me it's unavailable, is it just me ?
-- toodee

for some reason i can only link to the one video