Getting started with modular synths - Step 1: Building a DIY Eurorack case

hi i'm dave hilliwitz so it's finally happening i'm finally getting into modular synths but before i can do that i need to build a case i can't spend a bunch of my hard-earned money on module after module if i have nowhere to put them so that's what this video is about obviously it's possible to just go out and buy a case but that can get pretty expensive i was looking around and i saw a lot of cases that were in the 200 300 ranges and you know up from there i'm just getting started in modular and i don't necessarily want to spend two or three hundred dollars on something uh before i even own any modules so i'm gonna build my own pretty much anything that you want can be a case you can get an old suitcase you can get an old wooden box as long as it has the right dimensions and as long as you have a power supply when it comes to power supplies for eurorack modules there are a bunch of different options you can kind of build your own i mean you're not building the transformer but you're basically rigging it up yourself that total should cost about 40 bucks or you can buy something like i'm gonna buy this uh tip top micro zeus uh which basically does all the hard work for you one of the reasons that i chose not to make my own power supply from scratch is uh that can be a little bit dangerous if you don't know what you're doing um you know you're actually dealing with um the high voltage that comes out of the wall not like the stepped down 12 volts that a euro rack runs on so yeah i just as soon stay away from it okay so now i figured out what my power source is now i need a box as it happens i've got a ton of wooden boxes in my basement i build uh cigar box guitars violins cellos that sort of thing and uh yeah anytime i see a nice box i buy it and yeah i've got a nice stash so before i can choose a box i need to actually do some planning planning is super important in the world of modular in fact it's so important that there's a website called modular grid that lets you spec out your entire system before you even spend any money in the world of eurorack there are several constraints that determine whether or not a module will work with your system first there's width which is expressed in a unit called hp or horizontal pitch before you get started you'll want to measure your rack and see how many hp you have to work with the next most important unit is electrical current which is expressed in a unit called milliamps each power supply has a milliamp rating and you have to be careful not to exceed that the final piece of information that determines whether or not a module will actually fit in your system is depth in my case i'm not too worried about that one once you've got your synth all filled in modular grid even shows you the width and the milliamps that your setup uses they say that when you're starting with eurorack one of the most important things is to define what your goals are with your setup like some people want to use it for effect some people want to have like a self-contained modular system that can like make beats my goal is actually a little bit different than both of those my goal is to have like a self-contained little synth that i can hook up to my computer very similar to the way that i use like an outboard synth like the micro freak or something like that so uh i'm not necessarily looking to buy 27 different modules um so that the thing can like i don't know produce uh cool music while i'm in another room or something like that that's that's not where i am yet um i'll get there um but yeah right now right now i have pretty modest goals so given that i have chosen a tiny box uh used to have tiny bottles of port in it i guess one of the reasons i chose such a small box boxes i know that if i choose a nice big box and i have like the perfect box of course um if i choose that box i know i'm going to feel some pressure to like fill it up and i yeah i don't want that kind of pressure on my wallet right now so i've deliberately chosen a box that's like a little bit too small for my needs okay so we've got our box we've got our power supply what's next now the normal thing to do is once you've got your box you order some rails and you can order them to size so that you know they fit exactly the width of your box or you can buy long ones and then cut them down with a hacksaw yourself i've ordered my rails but they haven't arrived yet and i'm just eager to get started on this so instead i'm going to actually cut up the lid of this box and use it as rails so what i'm doing here is actually not really kosher you're not supposed to mount eurorack modules on wood because some of them actually heat up quite a bit and if you do this uh yeah i mean in theory the whole thing could catch fire i'm not too worried about that because as i said i have euro rack rails on the way but you know for the next week it's going to be wood so yeah my first order of business is to measure the modules and yeah figure out where they're going to be placed my first actual module that's not the the micro zeus power module is going to be plaits by mutable instruments so anybody who has watched my channel knows that i'm really into the micro freak one of the things about the micro freak is it uses a lot of code from mutable instruments plaits so i figured i would order plaits and just kind of like see what the differences are since i know already that's a palette of sounds that i really like okay so back to my project so the rails are done now that i've done that i'm basically just going to drill little pilot holes uh where i think i'm going to want to place the uh the modules um you know i've kind of sketched it in in pencil okay time to screw things in first i'm going to screw in the micro zooz next i'm going to screw in plats but before i do that i'm going to make sure to attach the ribbon cable to one of the sockets that's coming out of the micro zeus if i forget to do that the plats won't get any power okay it's starting to look like a modular rig i'll be at the world's smallest one but anyway generally the minimal eurorack setup if you're gonna make synth sounds let's say is an oscillator a filter a vca which is like a voltage controlled amplifier and then something to generate an envelope the reason you need an envelope generator and a vca an amplifier is uh generally when you buy an oscillator it's just going to be producing a tone constantly like if you were to just turn it on it would be like once you have an envelope generator and an amplifier in the mix you can basically stop it and start it um with a keyboard or with a sequencer or whatever i'm lucky the plat has those two elements built in you can still use them with an outboard vca and i think most people probably do but for the purposes of my super minimal setup right now i can just plug my controller in this case an arturia key step directly into the inputs on plats and use it just like a standalone synth so that's pretty cool so what i've done here is i've created possibly the smallest eurorack setup you could possibly have it has no other components other than this one module that's doing all of the work it almost defeats the purpose of being modular at all there's there's no other components having said that let's make some music the thing about platts is it has a ton of different oscillators eight melodic oscillators and eight percussive ones i'm just going to cycle through them all and find one that feels right [Music] i kind of like that of course i wasn't actually recording i'm praying that ableton live was listening anyway i'm just gonna hit capture and hopefully whatever i was just playing will show up in a clip yeah there it is i think i'm just gonna take that tail end portion and fix it up a bit okay so i'm gonna lengthen this clip also the bit i played was in six eight but i'd actually prefer to be working in four four i'm going to take the start of each chord and place it at the start of each bar line of course now we've got some gaps i'm going to fill those gaps by just kind of adding random notes from within that same arpeggio okay so the next thing i'm going to do is record audio for this bit now that i've got that basic audio i'm going to try to grab some alternate versions of this each oscillator on plats has three parameters that can be modulated to kind of change the sound and more fit i don't have any external envelope generators or lfos so i'm going to do things the old-fashioned way with my hands basically i'm just going to hit record and turn the knobs and see what sounds come out of my speakers [Applause] okay i think that's it uh if you enjoyed this video it'd be great if you could hit like and if you haven't done so already make sure that you subscribe i got a bunch more videos coming so yeah see you soon [Music] you

Channel: David Hilowitz Music

Views: 172,517

Keywords: eurorack, modular, synth, synthesizer

Id: AFhHArHk5JE

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021