10 Important Questions for Modular Synth Beginners.

hello in this video i'm going to try and attempt to answer 10 very common but very important questions for people who are looking to get into the whole modular synth shenanigan and aren't sure where to start where to begin what size of case do you need how do you plan a system what do you get many things of this nature will be answered in the video see below for nice chapter markers and if you're a modular wizard or witch feel free to correct me expand on chip chipping your own thoughts questions and answers in the comments let's begin question one why do i want a modular synthesizer modular synthesizers are open-ended musical instruments you put together modules like this and you build instruments they go in cases lots of people make the modules and you wire them together with patch cables and you make sound the sounds you make could be like one element that's just like a part of a track or it could be the whole track it could make drums it could make the you know voices it could make the reverbs and all the echoes and just be the whole song if you're really clever you can build a modular to be your perfect expression of a kind of music easel for one of a better term a place that you can just sit and create music express yourself in various different ways completely fine-tuned to the way you want to work there are so many modules thousands in fact and if money is no object the possibility is there to make a physical device that you can do almost anything with potentially it's very exciting but it is daunting because there is this infinite blank canvas it can be very seductive and it can waste a lot of your time if you're not absolutely clear why you have one of these systems it might be that you just have it to enjoy the very process of just making sound and playing is very meditative you will find a lot of people who score modular synthesizers because they say that people who own modular synthesizers don't produce a lot of music that may be true but to quote steve from funk of all the people you know that own guitars how many of them have written incredible original songs with them i'll wait so with the modular synth you are the designer you get to choose what the instrument of your dreams is so how do we do that question two what size case should i get and how does the whole power thing work so eurak weirdly is based on an old like server racking standard and the height of modules is always the same it is three rack units high referring to kind of like studio gear one new rack mount stuff if i had three of them here you would see that the height of the module was perfectly three units the height is kind of always the same although within eurorack there is a one use standard which is a kind of it's called tiles which are smaller modules annoyingly there are two slightly competing formats intelligel and pulp logic but for the moment let's just concentrate on the main ones and by the way it seems that intelligent is kind of winning so if i was buying a case i would make sure it had an intelligence shaped 1u strip but 3u refers to the sort of main modules themselves they're always the same height but they're different widths and width is hp horizontal pitch and when you look at the specs of a module you will see it is xhp so this is 8 hp and this case has a hp this is 84 hp which is kind of an old-school standard and i got it because it just with this vcs3 style case just makes it nice and kind of squat i don't want it to be too wide because it wouldn't look like a vcs3 that's just because i'm a nerd but if i was to make a recommendation for your first case it's hard to say i think probably the most sensible generally applicable advice is buy the biggest case you can afford that really is the best advice generally in the instance of a case like this i intentionally don't want it to be large because what i'm interested in is creating like a focused system i don't want infinite options i don't want to just expand endlessly i want to think carefully about what i have in my case speaking personally i think you should get a 6u 104 hp case 6u refers to the fact that it's two rows of 3u so 6u that really means two row and hp case is a bit wider than this this is 84 so it's a little bit wider and that kind of footprint i think i could make a strong case is the size of a case that you can make a really good all-round system with with careful selection perhaps with some swapping and buying and selling but if you can't make an interesting exciting modular instrument in 6u 104 hp i don't think the size of the case is an issue case in point surgeon amazing techno artist he plays a great deal live and is a big proponent of live improvisation uses 6u 104 hp as his size and he said i picked that size and i stuck with it you know i made a decision that this was big enough and i have a one-in-one out policy if i want to change something well then something else has to come out i do genuinely believe 6u 104 hp is a very very good ballpark to shoot for and if you can go bigger great but if you can do nothing else i probably would recommend it unless you do want to absolutely focus down there are smaller cases things like the intelligent palette the 4ms pods allow you to host just a single module in a case if perhaps there's just like the metropolis sequencer or something you just want to try one thing then that is possible um but if you want to have a more big system a system that does things i think 60 104 now there is another dimension that we haven't talked about and that's depth you need to consider the depth of the case because modules have a depth this is the make noise maths absolutely legendary module and you can see it is slim slim as however if i was to look around me here is the 4ms rotating clock divider excellent module but look how deep it is it's like 45 46 millimeters deep and if you look carefully at case specifications you will see there is a depth proponent and if you go on modular grid it's a really good way of speeding at the depth the specs are usually posted for modules and consider the the depth of the modules that you may want to get might mean that the case you're choosing prohibits them and in the instance of diphther who are the sort of one of the originators of the eurorack really the originator of eurorack defer modules tend to be deeper and they're very affordable so you may miss out on affordable modules if you buy a case that is so shallow that it can't accommodate them and i would say as a general rule of thumb if it was six centimeters depth in your case then you'd probably be okay six centimeters should cover most modules it that's quite deep in the grand scheme but it's just safe so i'd recommend if you can get in that ballpark and if you can't just look carefully at the depth of the modules that you're interested in and just make sure that your case can accommodate them and then to mention power we're going to talk about the connectors later modular obviously needs power and so inside these cases um might be a power supply if you buy one with them some of these cases come with internal power supplies you plug a cable in and there are bus boards inside we'll talk again about how the modulus connect sometimes you can find modules like the micro zeus which just have flying bus boards ribbons that run inside the case and they're nice because they can be popped into diy cases i would definitely recommend considering something like the micros use and if you do look at the micros use from tip top i would strongly urge you to purchase their 3 000 milliamp boost power with it because what boost power does is boost the power capability of the power supply if you're on modular grid or any of the modules websites you will see power specifications next to the depth and the width in hp and the power will have a positive and a negative and possibly a 5 volt value the power of eurorack is 12 volts and there is a plus 12 and there is a minus 12 and each module eats a certain amount of current for the plus 12 and eats a certain amount of -12 they're two different things and if you build your system on modular grid next at the bottom at the bottom of your screen you will see it will add up both the eye watering cost of your modules that if you bought them new this at full retail that's what they would cost but it will also add together the power requirements and it's really useful to compare that to the power requirements or power output of the power module you're going to be buying so that you can compare the two you literally add up all the pluses and you add up all the minuses separately and you check both those values and make sure the power supply can deliver over what your modules are pulling from it and if you do sort of strain your power supply sometimes in most cases power supplies are a little underspecified in terms of what they say on the site that's not a given but it is a thing i know does happen so you may find that you're okay you may also find that your modules act a little drunk i think that's probably because you're trying to pull more power than the case can provide one very quick thing to say before we move on is you can actually diy cases there's companies like synthrax who give you all the bits like the racks like the rails that are behind here and the little brackets you know you could buy rails some brackets in two sets of you know 3u 104 hp and then you could build your own wooden case or indeed cardboard case if you're an absolute savage and then get a micro use and the boost power and you have a working system one of the very very very quick point which is a super pro tip using ribbon cables which is what they use and we'll get to them in a bit you can get ribbon cable extensions so that you can extend the micros use and add more ribbon cable connectors so look for ribbon cable extensions at your favorite modular retailer moving on question three oh my god how do i even begin to whittle down what modules i should buy there are thousands of modules with more coming every day it's really overwhelming and it creates buyer's paralysis you know in the whole world of sales there's a sort of technique that you shouldn't give someone more than three options good better and best and that just isn't happening with modular because there's just thousands of modules it is an issue there's only so much that i can say against that issue except that there are certain modules that are really popular and to gauge popularity of modules you can use modular grid modular grid is both for laying out modules but a great way of researching if you go to modules at the top you can search by function that you want and you can search or sort the function by popularity and like width and things so if you think you've got four hp and you want the most popular vca that is for hp then modular grid will let you zero in on that information and it will be meaningful it's fair to say that pretty much everyone on earth who's got a eurorack system is using modular grid because organizing your modular without it is an absolute pain so the data that's on it is going to be pretty good it will help you focus in on what are good modules to have if they're at the top of that list there is a reason and at a higher level have a purpose when you make a modular synth you become the designer so i think it's important to think like a designer you know you don't just arbitrarily close your eyes and start throwing functions at the wall you think a high level about what it is that your customer is trying to achieve what are their musical goals what do they want to be able to do what else is out there is there a bet or what can you do it better than anything else can maybe you can't but maybe you can what is the goal what is the purpose and i think this is the thing if you are seeking purpose and you're not sure what what to look for and you just want a modular sense i would just encourage you to have a try conjure a vision of the way you want to make music is it that you want to explore sound and really smash sound to its absolute core values or do you want to just produce music away from a computer on a completely you know on one device just just make tracks by yourself or are you looking for a specific augmentation of something a kind of super effect or something you can plug your guitar into something that can you can sing into or you know you can find a purpose there is going to be a musical goal that will speak to you and that will fit and complement what you perhaps already own and if you're struggling to sort of zero in i mean even just listening to music and finding sounds that you're interested in and if you go on a forum like mod wiggler and you go on mod wiggler and say i love this track help me find ways to make the sounds that are in this track i'm looking for a device that will help me do that it might not be a modular synthesizer it might be something else i think it's essential to have some kind of focus when you ask questions like what should i get what is your musical goal what is it supposed to sound like and feel like ask those kinds of questions and post them on forums then i think you'll get really useful answers from people another thing that i'd recommend doing as part of this is looking to fixed architecture synthesizers for inspiration synths of legend didn't just magically happen by themselves they were designed and they can teach you things about what needs to be in a synthesizer or maybe what doesn't looking at things like the moog minimoog or the arp 2600 i mean if you want just a master class in how to specify a beautiful fully featured analog modular you can really do no better than the 2600 because it's like a classroom on a panel things like the micro freak which i think perfectly exemplifies the kinds of things that a lot of people are doing with modulars a really flexible digital oscillator married with a really funky analog filter and flexible matrix modulation and some lfos and some modulators and some interaction methods a keyboard to press and to get the human feel into something the microfreak is basically a brilliant expression of what a lot of people have been making with modulus myself included and so that's why i say look to fixed architecture synthesizers and they may well be you know they may be what you really need we're not all going to be purchasing a vcs3 so it might be possible that the modular is the way that you achieve that goal forum wise mod wiggler as i mentioned also lines is an amazing forum use modular grid as a way of researching modules and organizing yours and of course go to youtube perhaps you're already there there are so many useful videos on youtube that tell you how to do things this is very ironic but understand what i'm about to do is give you a list of other people to look for and you will pull up tutorials interesting videos inspirational talks and lectures all on the subject of modular synthesizers they are bana haffa travasi julia bondar lady starlight surgeon suzanne shianni daniel miller div kid lightbath ricky tina's red means recording andrew huang beats ben jordan loop up daedalus dulles jammin to name but a few find their videos they can help you in immeasurable ways and that myla melodies guy god damn it question four why are modules so expensive i mean that's more of an observation really but modules by themselves can be quite pricey if you look at like the cost of complete fixed architecture synthesizers some of them are equivalent to single panel small modules and you might think that's completely crackers the module is expensive i don't think that's fair i think that the fixed architecture synthesizer is cheap and there is a lot to this and you know i have been up and work on both sides of this fence i'm actually very privy to the workings of the industry so i kind of have more understanding of why things cost what they cost and the simple fact is consider how big an industry eurorack really is and i don't think it is enormously big in the grand scheme of the world's industries you know if you look at the size of the industry for gaming and for televisions i mean good grief the scales that these things operate on how about furniture using ikea for example as a yardstick for what furniture should cost ikea not only is a multi-billion dollar company ikea own the very forests that they make their furniture from so it's not fair to compare you know an ikea chair to a handmade chair that one person is making and perhaps he or she are only able to produce one chair every two weeks it has to cost considerably more and there is only a limited amount of people that will be able to afford something like that scale is a massive massive thing and i think it's just completely overlooked and it just doesn't apply to modular in the same way beyond just the issues of scale there are so many other like development and kind of ancillary costs that are factored into the price of things i interestingly shared some words with tony from make noise about a comment that tomorrow mentioned on a lecture which is on the channel and tom at the end of tomorrow's lecture he talks about the costs of one of the modules he actually like mentions the markup that is on the module and tony actually corrected him because he said wasn't quite right all of the factors that tom had put in is tommy's only part of the puzzle of creating something like the herb verb he said tom doesn't account for the front end cost of r and d it doesn't account for the per unit cost of labor for assembly and quality control that happens afterwards operations cost for technical support warehousing shipping of parts employee health care and benefits packages rent that they pay on the building that they have utilities education that is the creation of manuals youtube tutorials and all this sort of educational material that they produce in-house marketing that they have to do to ensure that you even have ever heard of the module that they want you to buy that is social media doing trade shows doing youtube videos doing synth events doing ads and most importantly what we pay tom for his work the cost of tom is extremely significant but well well worth it there are many many many many many factors that go into it and scale is one of them but there's lots of other hidden costs but remember this is a niche and that's actually one of the most beautiful things about eurorack if you have a technical problem with a eurorack module if you write to dupfer you'll probably get a reply from dieter derpfer so and that's a that is just wild you don't get that when you buy a mass-produced thing but the mass-produced thing is able to be cheaper because it's got a bigger market and this is just not the case savor the niche and be prepared to pay for it but there are great affordable things derpfur laddick and diy offer amazing super low cost modules and in the case of dirt for my goodness that are really well made really solid really interesting and best of all with things like dot for they don't do kind of complex stuff you know there aren't they're not these one modules that are doing 50 different things they're some of the best expressions of modular because they just do one thing and by combining things in interesting ways you build modules from modules so that's the real spirit of this system and so isn't it awesome simpler more affordable modules in interesting combinations giving yourself basic building blocks and then from it building complex behavior that's the true expression of modular of course if you are finding this prohibitively expensive remember there is a very very vibrant resale market these things hold their value really well buy second hand you will find amazing deals go on ebay facebook marketplace gumtree uh reverb mod whether killers buy sell trade there's a really roaring trade in modules and you can get them from you know significantly less than retail but they do hold their value and if you really want to play with this stuff and you have no money at all if you have got a computer or an ipad vcv rack vcv rack offers basically a virtual eurorack ecosystem that is free the core part is free and you can have a complete mutable instrument system that is running the actual code from mutable instruments modules sounds exactly like the modules itself and will cost you no pounds and no pence just the electricity to turn your computer on for the time you're using it so vcv rack is an amazing resource um omri cohen makes incredible videos about vcv rack seek those out and learn about it it's a great way of prototyping ideas for modular synths you know if you're thinking about a configuration we'll just build it and see what you think vcv rack can make that happen for free question five what modules do i have to get to be able to modular synth this is a great question and was asked by patreon michael what must you have in order to be able to function as a modular synth and obviously a modular synth can be lots of different things so it's quite hard to give one definitive answer but i'll talk about the types of modules that exist and i'll probably forget some but i hope i will get the main ones and that is to say you know you need things that make sound first and foremost modules that put out noise and they are oscillators in the most case so oscillators can be on one level just very simplistic they're just you know they just basically make super basic tones and possibly their analog some of them have nice octave switches by the way which i really really enjoy being able to switch things up and down octaves and just have like classic analog waveforms you can get multiple ones and you can then build up more complex sounds you can modulate them with each other and do all you know extra sound creation like fm modulation of each other or you can get like complex digital oscillators things like the cycle box which are kind of complete synthesizers within themselves that have multiple voices multiple modes make really complex crazy tones and if you've been thinking about putting together a modular and you're thinking i want analog stuff that's what's cool i could just simply have to urge you to to consider another world that digital oscillators offer a much broader sound palette for less money you know and analog oscillators you may probably already own some analog since you know maybe a couple of affordable ones and by all means use them but i think the modular can offer something more and i think digital oscillators are the key to just the wildest sounds that you've never heard before because you're getting all of the flexibility such a chameleonic ability to sound like lots of things well first and foremost that's just good value because it's gonna give you more stuff whereas you would just have like a few basic waveforms with analog oscillator one digit oscillator could give you a near infinity of of noise and that's without even modulating it and if i had to single one out as i did for my core i would definitely single out the mutable instruments plats mutable instruments plats is just such an easily recommendable module because it's a digital module that just gives you so much so many different modes you know wave table synthesis fm synthesis physical modeling synthesis additive synthesis uh classic virtual analog synthesis there's just like all of the synthesis modes are in there and then there's like you know digital speech it has like a speech synth it's called percussion synthesis it's it just really does so many different things so i cannot recommend it enough as a if you're starting out i think it's just the perfect perfect choice there is an older module braids which is also a fantastic choice very versatile and these are deservedly popular and they're popular because they just do so much so you can't go wrong with mutable instruments plants so oscillators would naturally feed into mixers a word on mixers you can never have too many vcas we'll talk about those in a sec but you can never have too many mixes mixers not only mix together audio signals but they mix together control voltages all of these wires are transmitting voltages from module to module and some of those voltages are moving up and down so fast that we could hear them if we plug them into speakers and some are moving so slowly that if we plug them into the speakers you wouldn't hear a thing but those slow ones are used to move controls without the control actually moving itself and that's control voltage that's modulation and it's through these slow signals that we push things around we emulate what happens when you physically interact with modules and you use things like lfos like this little light that's moving up and down slowly and you use it to control other things and this is amazing because we can build patches that play themselves in really interesting ways but mixers are so essential because they allow you to combine together two different control voltages and put them into one source so from one simple lfo i could have two lfos playing together i could mix them together and i could send them in and you get this very interesting much more complex result so mixers are important they just glue together your system and in general utilities like mixers glue together your system utilities are like the plumbing of your modular and if you have a house and you don't put plumbing in it you ain't gonna be living in your house for very long so it's important so oscillators feed into your mixers your mixers probably go into filters and filters filter sound and there are many many different types and there's no one best filter they're all different they all sound like different things there's lots of filters that are based on classic synthesizers of yesteryear so i'm almost advised if there's a synth you like the sound of then just find you know the filter that's the clone of that that synths filter and you'll find some interesting ones this is the intelligence orgasmatron the dub for sem a105 absolutely amazing filter depth are incredible for filters they're really good they're really affordable the depth expander filter x noe just like wild crazy amazing thing the extreme filter from derp for the a124 wasp filter from dub for is like gnarly and acid i've made a video about that so check out if you're interested but the point is there's lots of really interesting ones depth for an amazing company for that so we've got oscillators going into a mixer going into a filter we then need to like shape that in different ways and so we have modulation and we have vcas and so modulators are modules which will create modulation some are lfos which are the slow low frequency oscillations which we use to push around controls they can have different shapes and if you just go on modular grid and look for popular lfos you'll find in a litany of choices to look through all have different characteristics some can be synchronized some have you know loads of lfos packed into a small module and so on and so forth some have really crazy shapes and then the other one is envelopes and envelopes are modules that create when they receive a kind of input trigger they create a cyclical shape and you can use these to fade things in so that when you push a note or push a key then the note will fade into existence and then when you let go it'll fade away that's an envelope that creates that there are lots of different envelope types and again if you want modular grid you will find that all the popular ones and you can even find modules that are somewhere between lfos and envelopes like the intellij quadrax or the make noise maths are actually weird hybrids where they're both lfos and envelopes and other things depending on how you wire them up and but i definitely recommend having some lfos and definitely some envelopes in your system you can probably never have too many of those things either and if you listen to my podcast with jazz shaw from simeon mobile disco uh he's considering putting together an all envelope modular but then he is the same guy that actually puts modules around the back of his system where he literally can't reach them so take that with a pinch of salt and then this other thing of vcas and all the vca is is a volume control knob that instead of having like a dial to adjust it has a socket and you feed it voltages to control the dial as it were and you can use a vca to take the constant buzz that comes from an oscillator that's just ah all the time and when you plug it into the vca nothing will come out so it's now silent but as soon as you plug an envelope into the center of the vca and you trigger the envelope the envelope will do this shape and that will open the vca so you'll go around you'll hear your sound come into existence and in that way you can shape the volume of sounds over time but you don't have to just use vcas to control volume of audio you can use vcas to control volume of modulation so these slow lfos could be also going through vcas and you could be using other lfos to control how those vcas are being opened and closed so vcas let you modulate modulations so it allows otherwise quite static repeatable patches to really come to life so it's important to have vcas and modulators and to use them extensively and then in other sort of modules that we might want to have are kind of like modules that will really like mingle and smash things together in interesting ways and those are for example wave folders wave folders will take waves and literally fold them in on themselves you feed them simple things like um self resonating filters will just make a perfect sine wave feed that into a wave folder and turn it up and you'll get the very essence of buckler synthesizers there are a whole litany of interesting distortion and like digital like bitmangling modules that you can investigate and it'll all help you kind of process and smash sounds in really interesting ways and then there are also just classic effects as well you know reverbs delays things like the a199 actually has a real spring reverb tank inside to create gorgeous spring reverb you know as well as digital modules all manner of interesting things and then things like granular synthesis you've got things like the mutable instruments clouds which is just gorgeous and an amazing device we also have modules that can host samples like the tip top one or that can like record samples and play them back things like the alm squid sample are like complete sampling kind of engines that you could pretty much play a whole show with so sampling is completely a thing in this format and finally that leaves kind of sequencing and interaction there's lots of modules like planar things with touch plates things that you can interact with and amazing sequences that can create grooves and melodies but then there's like a whole litany of utilities that i think just i want to end on focusing on things like mixers attenuators a attenuverters vcas switched multiples multiples logic modules sequential switch modules and others that i'm almost certainly forgetting now these plumbing modules which take things and route them around cases are absolutely some of the most exciting things you can possibly hope to own they will truly unlock your system and make it do the cool stuff so although they say you can never have too many vcas i think just generally you can never have too many utilities and plumbing modules question six do i need an output module bro this is a really good question do you need a module that bridges your modular and the outside world i'm not going to say you know you don't 100 need one because there are certainly situations where i would like to have one but i've generally had tremendous amounts of success by just adapting the mini jack connectors on the end of your modular to um quarter inch jacks on that go into your sound card that go into your mixer you know as long as you've gone from the output of a module into a mixer that has got a gain control i have really never had a problem mixing together modular signals in just a traditional mixer but i feel duty-bound to point out that modular signals are considerably louder than line level that's the truth they are much louder than line level so ideally you would attenuate to turn them down before feeding them into a mixer but i've just found empirically that mostly it's fine and i'm able to get a signal that isn't too hot into my sound card i use a universal audio apollo uh or mixers and actually i've used like the mackie cr1202 mixer a great deal i used it with my live system for a good time and i just did that i just went straight from modular into my mackie and it was fine so the answer is i don't think you necessarily do need an output module you need one but one particularly really useful thing about an output module is if you were going to play a show and you plonk your modular on the table and you are trying to set up your module and check it's all working and your modular is all self-contained and you do not have an output mixer that you're going into being able to plug your headphones into the modular and just listen to what it's doing you know by yourself is a tremendous asset i have struggled with the monitoring systems in clubs for on many occasions and being able to use headphones is a solution it's not perfect but it's a solution and certainly being able to sound check yourself before you know getting plugged into the monitors because you may not get a very good sound in the monitors is valuable so definitely having a headphone module can be helpful if you're playing out and another point which has been a hard one one is that the di boxes that you may find at venues vary in their quality and if you are feeding mega hot modular level signals directly into a di box it should be fine but that's dependent on the di i bought a radial pro d2 after i had a disaster where i just basically couldn't play because the my modular was not able to be handled by the di that they had and the radial pro d2 i can certainly say has been flawless and i can plug my output my modular into that pro d2 and then it knocks it down to a mic level and it can go into a mic channel that works but if you went from your modular into a you know basic mixer like a mackie mixer like a standard style then that will also knock things down and mean that you're feeding just line level from the mackie which i'm sure the venue are probably much better able to cope with so the answer is no you don't need an output module but you may still wish to have one things like the music things startup module will just give you a whole bunch of facilities in like one module so like headphone pre mini mixer and clock generation which is really useful having a clock generator is is a big advantage and maybe that's why i would maybe mention one other thing which is a module like pamela's new workout or the abstract data octo controller a module is just generalistic and can output lots of different clocks that are related can be a huge advantage when you've got lots of different sequences in one system and you just want them all to sing from the same hymn sheet a lot of sequences do have their own clock outputs and you can kind of daisy chain them across but it's just something to bear in mind that you may find it a lot easier if you've got a module that can automatically generate clocks and related modulations like lfos as well pamela's new workout and the octo controller can both do that and they're really popular modules for that reason question seven patron mark cogan asks are there some things it's better to get as regular gear instead of eurac modules i'm thinking things like effects a compressor mixers mark this is a really good point because i would agree that in the early stages of building a modular there definitely are there are absolutely stunning and amazing drum modules in this format things like the trigger eye are just amazing experiences to mess with they're truly exceptional devices but there is no getting around the fact that building a modular drum machine is gonna eat your budget alive because you need lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of drum channels you need mixers and then you need the drum sequencers themselves and you need the hp to house it and if i am going to stick to my guns of saying that you should get 6u 104 hp then a significant portion of it could be taken up by drums with that said folks like surgeon have really really exemplified like the paring down of drums to just what you need you know if you look at his systems i'm pretty sure if i haven't got it wrong it's basically a kick a hat and maybe a clap and obviously some of the other elements that are in his system can act as drum modules from time to time but if you really pair it down perhaps three is enough sounds you know and so actually it could be a relatively small backline but it's still eating up into your budget and into your available space i have had such tremendously great experiences with things like the roland tr8 and the electron digit act but i would be remiss not to say you should just get a digit act to go on the side of your modular especially something like the digit act because it's a sampler it can receive sounds that you design on your modular meaning that you can have a small modular and you rinse the capabilities of those modules on one moment you're turning it into the most mad percussion sounds ever another moment you're making the most amazing bass sounds ever and then you're making leads you're making weird squiggly noises and the next moment it's talking to you you know just insanity but the point is you've got a small modular and it can only do one thing at once well that's fine if you've got either a sampler or a looper and i have not yet experimented with a looper in a modular but there are too many people that i respect that have for me not to say that you know a looper or a sampler and a sampling sequencer at that are probably very very very powerful assets that you really should consider having next to your modular because they will mean you can have a smaller system you'll rinse it harder you'll be more creative with less instead of having five things to make five voices you could do it with just one set of modules and that is both powerful and it's creative as well so i would definitely say a drum machine is going to help you out massively i think this it's so powerful to hear drums bopping along with your modular and you just need like a midi to clock module to synchronize your midi drum machine to your modular there's lots of choices if you go on modular grid and then in terms of things like mixers i definitely think is a kind of output master mixer that a separate mixer is going to be infinitely better value infinitely better ergonomically there are some great mixers in this format don't get me wrong i just don't think it's necessarily the first thing that i would purchase if i was really really strapped for cash i'd be focusing on the voicing and making one voice that was amazing had all of the interesting elements that i wanted to mess with types of synthesis types of filters types of modulation types of sequencing and i would be syncing it to midi and i would be using the stuff i probably also already own to augment it so it would be this flexible crazy thing in a light table that had a bunch of other conventional things like drum machines and samplers things like compressors and stuff yes you can make them in modular i just think i suppose the only thing would be if you did have a completely self-contained system it is nice to build in sidechaining compression which can be done with clever patching but you can also do it with you know a nice compressor like a really nice compressor literally can you can do side chaining with so it's all possible outside and then you mentioned things like effects yeah definitely i mean using effects that you already have is absolutely viable there are some great effects that are in this format and it's nice to be able to synchronize them i would say it's not the be-all end-all but then certain things like the a199 this spring reverb is just so gorgeous and i've not heard a software or dsp spring reverb that i liked as much as just this affordable depth for module so you know there are certain effects that are unique and worth having and then there's some amazing digital effects in this format like the herb verb i think that the fx aid from happy nerding is so much better than it has any right to be it just sounds great i pulled out to put into another case and so it is just a gorgeous module there's lots of effects that you can consider make a judgment call but i'd probably say if you've already got some effects see how you get on with them first question eight what are the considerations of different voltage standards that i should bear in mind when choosing modules bro you probably didn't really actually ask that question just then this is a question that i think that you should ask ah so sucks um but it's just like one of these weird things that you probably won't think about until you actually are plugging modules in and you're like why is this broken and what i'm referring to is the fact that modules work with voltage we know this the voltages go up and down that's cool but the height of which they go up and down is equivalent to the voltage that they kick out and if you go on the like manufacturer page for a module say an lfo somewhere it will tell you what voltage it is outputting it will say plus or minus 8 volts or plus or minus 5 volts or plus and minus 10 or 12. and what that's referring to is the fact that voltage can be positive and negative so if i tried to mix together one volt of positive with one volt of negative i'd get zero out of my mixer and that's gonna be useful because for example if you had like a filter and it was somewhere in the middle you would want a voltage that goes up and down positive and negative aka bipolar to go up right and then down left and then up right and down left so bipolar voltage that goes up and down very useful and there is also unipolar which is just up and if you plugged a unipolar voltage in it would literally just go to the right to the right to the right never to the left and so there's bipolar in unipolar and then there's height which controls the amount of voltage and why is this a thing why does it matter so consider that there are voltages that these modules output well there must therefore also be voltages they expect inputting and that means that for example with a filter what if the filter needs 10 volts to fully open and your lfo only produces five it literally means that your lfo is incapable of opening the filter more than halfway if the filter is at the bottom of its travel if you input it what you will hear is the filter half opening which is really annoying and there are modules which can like scale and gain voltages things like the abstract data ade 60 here you can actually set it up so that it can add voltage and so it can push things higher and lower but it's important to understand there are these different levels and it can really impact things so for example where a vca needs 10 volts to open and your modulation only creates plus five that means you can never get something loud enough to really be heard which is something i've actually experienced unfortunately but then another consideration is what happens if a modulus expecting five volts and you feed it ten well most designers design these things so that there is protection built in you shouldn't be causing any damage and what basically happens is that if you sent a 10 volt lfo in it would kind of get halfway up its travel and then you'd slice the top of the lfo off it would kind of clip literally and then so you'd hear something go up fully and stay open and then come down a little bit um and yeah you could use attenuators to attenuate that to move it down you know attenuate the height so that you got a bit more movement and it wasn't just clipping to you know fast and coming down so it's just one of these things in most cases it's not a big deal but it's just something that you should be aware of and it might be helpful if you're looking at lfos if you want to be really fastidious it's just just check you know your filters check all your other bits and bobs that you might be modulating it with and make sure that they're within the same kinds of ranges and that i think is just a a little example of why there is real merit in systems that aren't like this where systems that are all designed by one manufacturer will all adhere to the same voltage standards the modules will unify and work together in just a homogeneous way and this is not what happens when you blend modules from different manufacturers such as the nature of this beast because what i've been saying this silly phrase of voltage standards there are no such thing as voltage standards a final tip which is interesting you know i mentioned like if you send something that's too high a voltage it can clip something out on certain controls it can actually push the ranges beyond their stock setting so for example on the mate noise maths if you turn up the rise and fall channels you'll get the slowest lfo that maths can do that's not true if you send negative voltage into both it will push this even further so that you get even slower responses out of maths so interestingly sometimes negative and participative voltage at high levels can extend the range of modules mutable instrument stages also does the same thing so fun thing do bear in mind question nine linear versus exponential bro what does it mean so i understand like the nature of the curves of linear and exponential but i've never really understood like the physics of how it relates but i can tell you this much in practical terms things like vcas in their control inputs will say whether they expect linear or exponential signals to be fed into them linear generally refers to modules designed for adjusting control voltages and exponential refer to modules which are designed for managing audio signals if you try to feed a linear signal into an exponential module the control ranges won't be meaningful and usable and vice versa they won't be meaningful and usable you will find there are certain vcas that actually have linear and exponential switches same with the inputs to oscillators they will have exponential or linear inputs so for example depha have an a138aaa which is a linear mixer designed really for mixing control voltages together but then they also have an a138b which is exponential designed for mixing audio together and you can mix control voltages on the 138b but you'll find that the ranges of the knobs just aren't that meaningful it's hard to dial in just the right amount of mixing because the signals are responding with completely different curves so i hope that makes sense linear things equal modulation and control voltage exponential equals audio you know i just drive these things i don't know what makes them work question 10 how do i plug the modules in bro i made a video a very passive aggressive and angry video about this subject which is about an hour and a half long so if you really want to dive into this subject please don't watch that video i will however give you the short short version which is to say that modular synthesizers use 12 volt power supplies and power is delivered from your power supply to the modules via ribbon cables so if we peek inside the case there is a little strip called a bus board which has lots of little headers in it little like sockets and basically one end of the cable goes into that socket and the other end of the cable goes into my modular and when you turn on the system it should power up and work but there is unfortunately a really awful gotcha which is that there is a polarity a plus 12 and a negative 12. remember us talking about this with regard to adding up the power of our modules well there is a plus 12 and there is a minus 12 and it really matters which side you are feeding into the module if you look at this rotating clock divider if i unplug the module i need to think about which side i'm plugging this into and the red stripe that runs down here generally is used to refer to the negative 12 side i say generally because there is a manufacturer where it doesn't but in the most case the red means minus 12. and if you look carefully on the modules themselves somewhere near the socket unless they want to see the world burn you will see they have indicated minus 12 they might have put a little dot they might put the word red they might put -12 they might say red stripe and what they're doing on the module is they're trying to say to you that i want you to plug the side that's got the red stripe adjacent to where it says red stripe dot or whatever interestingly on this module ah it is indicated underneath this like transistor which is just or whatever this is that's just really annoying isn't it um so i know that it probably is red that side but the grown-up answer is that if you've unplugged a module and there's no marking the only way that you can really know for sure is you should contact the manufacturer go on their site look on the manual and contact the manufacturer that's actually the best way to establish and it's an opportunity to shout at the manufacturer if they haven't provided you with basic instructions such as how to plug the module in and because i think that's quite important if you're a beginner i mean how would you know how to do it unless someone had told you so for example on this make noise maths look it says that well you won't be able to see it but it says minus 12. and so there's a little socket here minus 12. so i'm looking for a marking and there it is minus 12 and i'm looking for the red stripe there it is cool and the gang and then on the inside is the according socket and if there's a little header that is to say like a little box it's got a little socket and this has got a little nubbin so this and that can only go together one way which is great but you should just know one thing which is that sometimes these cables get crimped incorrectly so that's crimped the wrong way around so if you want to be super nerdy and there's nothing wrong with that is take your finger and start on the -12 and follow with your finger to the other end of the cable and as you plug it in there will also be markings on the bus board that say -12 or something like that on the you know one side of the little box header or if you have flying ribbon cables then they will have a stripe as well and as you plug it in ensure that the red stripe is marrying up with where it says minus 12 or where it's red on the ribbon that you're plugging it into they should all line up and if they line up you should be good final word of advice is once you've got everything plugged in and you know ready to go as you turn on the system in the instance of things like the tip top micro zeus there are three lights 5 volt plus 12 and minus 12 volt as you turn this on all three lights should light up if they don't light up turn it off immediately and check all of the connectors because you've probably got one wrong so look the three lights should come on it's basically like a three light traffic light that says everything's fine and if they don't all turn on turn it off immediately you've probably not damaged anything but you should turn it off immediately and in a case like this literally where you don't have a light inside too you can't see the light then you you kind of need to just look at the whole system and be like switch it on do things come to life and look healthy or do they look a bit drunk you know where leds all come on a little bit half lit or lights don't come on you can kind of just grock a healthy system that's just like come to life and you you kind of know when you turn on you're like oh you don't look well friend so so look for that because it can be the indicator that you need to turn it off immediately check all your connections and then start again that's it wow this we really covered a lot of ground i hope you found this useful i have a patreon if you'd like to subscribe i would love you muchly uh it's down below patreon.com forward slash milo melodies it is the best way to support this channel of course if you enjoy modular things you should subscribe because that's what we do here as well as other synthesis related shenanigans hope you found this useful post your questions and your answers down below we'll see you next time thanks very much bye

Channel: mylarmelodies

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Id: p2bo9boedEs

Length: 59min 36sec (3576 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 31 2021