[synth music fades in] [drums and bassline kick in] - Greetings! And yes it
is time to talk about my main synth setup,
at least in some form. To be honest I'm really not
sure how to even talk about this where to start, what kind of
depth this is gonna go into. Probably not a whole lot of
depth, but I would like to go over generally what I do
with this and give a bit of a demonstration at
the end of just sort of screwing around, making some
tunes or at least something with some sound. [laughs] I just like cool sounds. And I like computers and
technology and... this kinda stuff. Synthesizers man! Drum machines. Analog, digital, coming together. That kind of thing. It is something that has
highly appealed to me for a very long time. And this right here is a
result of about a year or so of just screwing around with things. I'm not sure I'd call myself a musician or whether or not this is even music that I make on here. I mean, it's something resembling,
it's got beats and tunes and whatnot, but sometimes it
doesn't sometimes it's just ambient weirdness and very
strange noises like this. [strange ambient noisiness] Yeah to be honest, I like ambient and I like making noise/experimental weirdness. And there is that, but
you know, sometimes I also like to put a beat to it
and a little bit of a melody definitely a bassline or two or three. So stuff like this. [bass-driven beats] Yeah, sometimes I make
things to sound like that but then sometimes it makes
things sound like this. [acid-inspired techno] And other times I'm making
things that sound like this. [flatulent Super Mario Bros tune] [cracking up, farts continues] So yeah, it's not always music
that I like to make on here. I just like experimenting with sounds and the various components
here that all come together to make different intriguing
audible noises that come together and does something to
my brain that I really like. I don't know, I just, my brain likes this. Anyway, what are we
gonna do for this video? Man, I still don't know. I guess my main goal with this is to just describe what
the heck I even do with it and maybe get some
expectations out of the way. Like for one I'm not releasing an album, maybe I will someday, I'd
really like to. For now, it's just mostly trying
to keep myself sane learning new skills,
having fun, screwing around making cool sounds. And yeah, I suppose for this
video here, let's just go ahead and dive into the main things
in my main synth setup. And then once I'm done talking we're gonna make some music or something resembling it, and just have some fun
mixing around some things. Let's get to it! [unnecessary airhorn blaring] All right. So we're just going to
begin chronologically in the relative order than I
ended up getting these things for this whole setup. And really
the device that kicked off this entire endeavor
was the Korg Minilogue XD, the polyphonic analogue synthesizer. And the reason that I really
wanted to jump into something like this is because my goal,
other than to just mess around and make cool sounds, was to go DAWless. I didn't want any digital
audio workstations no computers in this whole setup. I wanted to go as analog
as possible. But you know, with some digital effects
and other things to I don't know, save space and make life easier as needed. In a way, the Minilogue XD
is kind of a hybrid synth, a lot of analog stuff, but
some digital things too. The analog portion, you can see it's actually
tuning the oscillators there. You got two VCOs, they're analog. Those have to be tuned. They do go out of tune,
due to ambient temperature and other weird circuitry
things happening. But yeah, tunes itself automatically. You have a third oscillator of sorts, the Multi Engine, that's interesting. And you can add on things to that through software if you want. I haven't really done much with that. You got fully digital effects, you got modulation, reverb
and delay, digital LFO. But I think pretty much all this stuff, like the core sounds are
analog, and they're awesome. [analog synth lead plays] Yeah. And that's just the first preset that it starts up with. That's another thing that
kind of drew me to this is because it does have a lot of
presets built in, you know, if you're going with a pure analog synth, chances are you gotta do it all yourself. And I did want to do it all myself. Really, the appeal was just not having to, mess with any software stuff. I don't want keyboard and mouse I was just really tired of that. You know, FL Studio and Ableton, and even Propellerhead
stuff back in the day. Like almost 20 years I've been screwing around
with just software synths. So it was really refreshing to go nice and hands-on with everything. But because of the preset, one of the downsides is every
time that you change it, you're getting completely
different settings that it's loading in the background. And then all of a sudden,
none of these knobs match up what's actually going on. So it kind of made it a
little tricky to learn. I was like, okay, I want to recreate that sound. I can see it with the handy
little oscilloscope there, but [oscillators oscillating] How am I doing it? Like I said, because
you're loading presets, it kind of switches everything around. So if you do shift+play, now it's just loaded whatever the panel
is set to physically. So now I can see precisely
what the sound is through the switches and knobs. [different sound plays]
[chuckle] Totally different sound to
what it was earlier, but it's a nice 1:1 representation of what's going on here. So now all the switches
and knobs and things will interact immediately with a sound and it's not
going to like play catch up. [oscillator tuning] There we go. [synth plays] Classic analog stuff. With enough digital mixed in, you know? You got -- I love all the
effects that are in here, cuz at the time when I got this I didn't have any
effects units or anything. So you can add some really
cool like plate reverb, digitally, but still. [reverb increases] And of course it's got
a 16 step sequencer here so that's cool. I can't really play piano myself, so it's nice to have a sequencer. [pre-made sequence plays] Yeah. And you can just put things
in, of course, on your own. [short sequence plays] All right. There's a million more
things I could say about this but let's move on to some drums. Okay. So in terms of drum machine,
grooveboxy type things, the first one I ended up going with was this Roland Rhythm Performer, TR-8S. I really like this thing, even though there's not a lick of analog going on. As far as I know, anyway. It's all like digital sample
based, but there are a lot of classic analog-inspired things in there in terms of the drum
sets that it comes with. You know, your vintage Roland
things: 909, 808, 707, 606. Tons of presets and patterns and whatnot. But of course, it's just
fun to make your own, mix up the drum sets
and samples and sounds. And if you want to add more, you can. [kick drum] You've got that little thingie over here to do that. And an SD card slides in the
back to put in your own samples. It's a pain to import them, honestly. So don't do it too much, but you know, lots of good stuff already included. [percussive sound] Anyway. [drum beats begin] And I love the really
fun performance options, which is honestly one
of the bigger reasons that I went for this. [beat continue] And of course, just a
bunch of fun to really create your own drum kits,
stick your own samples in there or just mess with the
ones that are in there and switch around each individual
instrument. And, you know, make cool things happen. [beats continue beating] So really like all the different
trigger outs in the back. So you have a more individual
control over sending out some different patterns and
creating things on here. Again, millions of things you can go into, but we got to move on,
man, we've got to move on. Right, so onto something
a little less fascinating but nonetheless, pretty important. So now that I had a couple
of things going, I was just actually sending the role
in the cord through just something like random
splitter cables and into some old speakers that I had lying around, wasn't ideal, needed a mixer. So this was the one that I grabbed up, I "grabbed up?" Is that a -- I don't care. Anyway, Mackie ProFX10V3, 10 channel thingie, with
all sorts of goodies. I liked the fact that it
has a lot of these effects but I'm just not the biggest
fan of the way it does stuff. You can't assign them
to individual channels. I wish you could. And I know you got some FX and
stuff and some other ways to blend that, but you know what, there's better options out there for what I would like to do. However, I was really
attracted to the individual mute buttons for everything
and EQ and all that, let me just bring in some sound. So there's the Roland drum machine just doing its thing over there with it. I'm gonna sample a bassline. [synth music] So yeah. Individual level controls, mute button, really handy for the whole performance aspect. I love quickly muting and
unmuting things to sort of mix on the fly, left and right. Stereo panning, effects right here. [ambient sound] And then of course, some really basic EQ, but it's nice that it's
on every single channel. So bass, mid-tones, highs, [synth music] good stuff. You got some really simple compression on the first two channels there, a bunch of XLR inputs quarter inch stuff for
mono and stereo balanced, unbalanced kind of things. I only ever have like four
things plugged in here at once but occasionally I'll get more. I just don't have a lot
of space in this corner. If I did, I'd have every
single input filled up. But I don't! Anyway. Oh yeah. Another thing
that I have going over here is different outputs to different things like
speakers, for instance. The main speakers that I've gone with are the KRK Rokits, or really, I think they're just
called the KRK Classic 5s in this respect. I don't know. It's some re-release of them that came out
in late 2019, I believe. Anyway. Lovely speakers. They sound great. [synth music] I mean, I know it doesn't
matter that you can hear them or not right now
because you're listening to it, recording, microphone and
YouTube video, but, so it goes, however, you know what you
really can hear, the subwoofer. [bass synth music]
[laughs] It's this ridiculously huge
overpowered Samsung down there. [laughs] It's a ridiculous thing. Absolutely. Don't need it, but you
know, I like it there sometimes you just want an extra punch and you want to blow out some windows. [bass synth music] I have knocked over so many lamps and bits of furniture using that, anyway. And of course a headphone,
amp and some mixer stuff. It's cool. But I'll probably be
replacing this at some point because I'd like to have something
that also does, you know, more effects control, like
over individual channels but also just recording on the same unit cause I'm trying to go without computers. If I could eliminate
that part of it as well, just getting it all recorded on the fly. I know some of them with
Zoom, the Zoom mixers, with recorders built in,
they look really appealing. Anyway, whatever, this is
the one I got right now. Okay. So the next step on
my synthy setup journey, was getting a central audio rack going. And that is this big thing
right in the middle here which is just housed in a pretty cost-effective
StarTech 12U rack it's just metal with holes
in it really standard 19 inch rack mount type of thing, and yeah, it holds 12
units worth of stuff. And we'll just go from top to bottom starting at the top here, which
is actually above the rack. It's just a LaMetric Smart
Clock and it connects to your phone or other smart device and runs all kinds of apps. Right now at the moment I
just have it displaying, like time and calendar, not connected to the
audio rack in any way. Just, it looks cool sitting here. Next up I have this Yamaha pedal. This is just for turning on and off certain effects that I
haven't plugged into. Get to that in a sec. And then down below that yeah, here is the actual first unit in the rack. And this is just a simple power switcher which I got mainly
because of these switches that are nice and clicky
and they light up. Pretty similar to the one I used in my MIDI RackMountain case. In that video, you might've
seen that on LGR in the past. Yeah. It doesn't do any kind of power conditioning or anything. I actually do have it
plugged into a Furman power conditioner unit before it gets plugged into the wall itself. Down below this though, this is something that I was thinking how I would use more than I am using it but it's still cool though. I leave it in there. This is a Roland A-880
vintage MIDI patcher/mixer. So you've got two MIDI ends
and two MIDI outs right here and then a bunch more around back. And then you have these
different input banks. You can switch between which
input is going to which output and all that kind of stuff. It's really cool. I just don't have that many
things hooked up at once. If I had a bigger table and just a whole bunch of
stuff plugged into that mixer I would use it. Then below that, also not using
it that much at the moment cause I don't have too
many things plugged in, this is a Samson S-Patch Plus, a 48 point balanced patchbay. So it just easily lets me switch around different quarter
inch audio things. So right now I have like
the Minilogue's output that goes into there and
then it comes out here and then it goes into the input of the reverb module down below here. Okay. Moving on down the stack. And let's talk about these three, starting with this one, the
Behringer Ultra Curve Pro, "ultra high performance
digital audio processor." Yeah, it does that. [synth loop fades in] But it does a great job of it. I just got the Minilogue XD running a pattern through there. Now I admit I mostly use it
for the visualization aspect just so I can kind of see what I'm doing when I'm shaping noises. I like it, it's handy and it looks cool, but man, it's got so much more stuff, like, yeah. For the price, I find this just fantastic. But yeah like I said, mostly
I just like these. [laughs] [chuckles realizing
his own easy amusement] And y'know, it's handy too. So like if I started shaping
the sound a little bit. [synth cutoff increases] Just turned up the um, I
think this is kinda cool. So I've just got the
cutoff all the way open resonance all the way down. But take a look at this part here turning the resonance all the way up. You can see that. [synth resonance chirping] You can see it's all the way down, like, you can see exactly where it is. [looping notes continue] I find that awesome to look at, but also handy for when you're trying to get certain sounds in certain ranges and you don't want stuff to overlap. Especially when you start
adding bass and drums and a lot of things, it
starts getting real muddy and this is one way to take care of that. And if we go over to parametric, like say that there is a range, I dunno, right around here that we don't like, just do that Or, yeah. [music tone changes] Okay. Obviously you don't want
to go that much, but you can. Anyway, moving on down
to this lovely thing, the Yamaha Digital
Reverberator, the Rev500. This is another older unit I think mid nineties, maybe
late nineties, I don't know. A little newer than the
Roland up there, but. Yeah, it's just a really
capable reverberation unit in 1U. I wanted something that wasn't huge and terribly expensive either. So, yeah. Tons and tons of effects of all kinds. So right now I've got the
effects muted on here entirely and that's what that little
pedal up there is for. So if I press that. [reverb kicks in] Yeah. [laughs] [effects cycling] Some of these room settings
are just ridiculous, how much you can put them up. [reverb amplifies] 99 seconds of reverberation. [low white noise] It's just going to keep
doing that for 99 seconds. [laughs] And nothing's playing over there anymore. Yeah I'm gonna go with the Wood Room. [synth music] The sound of woodgrain I guess. Yeah, got some springs. [laughs] I do actually do have a real
spring reverb unit over there from like the late seventies,
but I don't use it too much. It's really noisy.
It needs a little work. Anyway, let me start mixing
these with like the delay that's built into some of
the other things in here. Either like on my mixer or just the ones that are
built into the Minilogue. Let me switch it to something cool. [synth music] Turn that back on. [synth music with reverb, delay] Yeah. There's so much
good stuff you can do with just these two things. I mean, that's that and the Minilogue with its
built in delay, that's it. And then the final thing in the chain here is this
lovely compressor by ART, Applied Research and
Technology, the Pro VLA II. I bought it for a couple of reasons. One, it was relatively affordable and I wanted a compressor. Two, it also has these fantastic VU meters, and apparently a tube inside. I don't know, you can't see it, so it doesn't really make
too much difference to me. But yeah, mostly just bought it to even out a lot of the stuff
that I'm putting through here. [drum beats play] And then really compress the crap out of my drums, make them
nice and y'know -- agghh! And it also doesn't have any
kind of side chaining ability. Oh, I wish that it did. That's probably the one reason
that I'll end up replacing it at some point because I love side chaining. And thankfully the TR-8S does have that. If you were to plug something into the external input around back there you can side chain synths and whatnot. And it sounds good, but I'd rather have it over here so I could have
more freedom to do things. But anyway, it's still
a really good compressor for the price and yeah, recommend it. It looks awesome. It's got all sorts of things in terms of visuals that
I appreciate as well. And then here at the bottom of the rack we've got two oscilloscopes, or I guess vectorscopes
to be more accurate. They look fantastic when they work. Right now they don't,
don't know what's going on. This one, the input does weird things and the X-Y no longer does anything. That's why I got this one. This is a Tektronix 760A
Stereo Audio Monitor. And it just doesn't do what
it's supposed to at all. And this one, the display is, I guess the power supply maybe
is doing some weird stuff and it's just not displaying. Here's what it looks like though from some previous
videos that I've recorded of this and it looks great. It's also very useful for, you know, just visually getting some
feedback in terms of the sounds you're putting it through there, Especially wish it still worked. It doesn't right now. I don't know what's going on. And then right here I've just got a little
handy drawer full of crap. Tons of cables and adapters
and all sorts of things. With some stickers. You gotta have some
stickers on your A/V junk. And then kind of next to last before we get to the modular setup. And got the acid smiley face because this is a Roland TB-303 clone. Well, not really a direct clone more like a modern interpretation
built in the same style with the same type of old 303 programming. And that is a fascinating
thing to experience but it gives you that classic sound. [TD-3 begins playing] But that's just a really dry,
"nothing going on" kind of thing with that. You know, who leaves a 303 dry? You gotta have it wet and squelchy! Give it some reverb
over here at the mixer. [acidic pattern] Okay. That's getting
there, but come on now, distortion, that is
something that they've added straight into here so you don't have to mess with external distortion, and well. [distorted synth loop] Give it some drums. [synth music continues] I like this thing a lot. And I don't use it in
a lot of songs [laughs] But when you need the sound,
there's nothing else like it. Just a fantastic little thing and a weirdly affordable one like so many other of
this company's products. And just briefly a few
more items before we get to the modular setup and play
around with making some music. This is the Arturia
Keystep, which I enjoy using as a MIDI controller
when the need arises. It's got a bunch of nice sequencer and arpeggiation situations
going on over here. And yeah, it's just great for controlling things
that don't have a keyboard or a sequencer, or just, you
know, any kind of MIDI stuff. It's got 16 channels
selectable here, but on its own it doesn't make any sound. You have to connect it to
something either through MIDI or through any of the different
triggers that it has here. Really, these are more CV outs. So we got modulation, gate, and pitch there. You can connect to the modular or really anything else that supports
it. And synchronization, so clock in and out. If I don't use MIDI to
synchronize things, you know, make sure they're in beat with each other. Then I'll often be using this instead. So for now we can just plug in some MIDI output and we can do that. [FM synth playing] And that's what that does. Now, what is it plugged into? Well, that is this right here. This is a version of the Sammich FM. I say "a version of it" because it's not the original design. This is something that I
found from somebody who was making them, I believe
in Hong Kong and just putting them together in kits
and selling them off that way. But yeah, what's interesting
about this is the fact that it uses the same sound
chip that was used back in the day on so many
different PC sound cards the OPL3 or YMF262 from Yamaha. So this is used in the AdLib
Gold, Sound Blaster Pro 2, Sound Blaster 16, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, and like a billion clones.
[sound card-related chuckle] So you know, chances are if you heard AdLib
music back in the day, you were hearing something in this line [random notes] or something trying to imitate it through emulation later on, but. [FM synth guitar sound] Yes, that classic FM synthy goodness. [looping notes play] Yeah. Neat little thing. I haven't really delved too
deeply into getting FM synthesis doing weird FM synthy things yet. But there's this and
another device I have, we'll get to that here in a sec, that does FM and it's a
lot of fun to play with. But just don't really
know what I'm doing yet. Another fun device that I
like messing with, with this and really any other synth that takes MIDI, is the Conductive Labs NDLR. So this is fascinating man.
You got pads, drones, and motifs one and two, and
then you can mess around with all sorts of
different components here in the mod matrix and then
different settings and clock dividers and patterns. And it's just got a lot of
different things built in here to make things sound more or less musical, depending on what you want to do and different chord progressions and patterns and ranges
to screw around with. So we can just start motif
number one or two here and just playing whatever instrument that that channel is set to. Give it some reverb. [ambient synth music] And if we want, we can
start changing things around like we can take it to
a triad. Or sus4. Or seventh. Yeah. [chuckles] Now we can bring in these
others, so motif number one. [synth music continues] And then we've got the pad and drone, which, I don't know how this is gonna work cause I don't know what
those are set to over here. You can have it go out to
different MIDI Instruments and such, but, [synth music] Okay. kind of a bell sound
applied to the pad there. [synth music continues] So, yeah. That's the drone or
what is treating as a drone. Anyway, the better
instruments that you give it, the more cool it sounds, honestly this does amazing things with a wavetable, sound
sample-based synthesizer. Not so much with something
like the Sammich FM or even the Minilogue XD. But plugged into something
like a Sound Canvas, I've had a lot of fun with this. So anyway, this is just
a thingie that again doesn't make any noise on its own. It just controls other things
as an alternative sequencer. And before we get to modular
stuff, let's just briefly talk about these couple little guys right here that I've been rather enjoying as well. This is part of Korg's Volca line. So I've got the Volca Sample 2 here, a digital sample sequencer.
And the Volca FM, which does frequency
modulation goodness in the Yamaha DX style. And
kind of in the same style as the Sammich FM from earlier,
but not, at the same time. Because it uses different
analog FM chips to do its thing. Go ahead and get them turned on. And they are battery powered, so that is quite convenient.
And you can connect them via MIDI, got clock in
and out synchronization. This one now has USB, which is cool. So you can actually load
your own samples a little more easily than you could
in the original Volca Sample. But yeah, this is just, it's
a sampler, just going straight back to the nineties, man. I think there's only like
eight megabytes of storage. So you gotta put these
little bitty WAV files that have been crunched
down and they're pretty low fidelity, but man, it sounds cool. And I enjoy the limitations. I really really do. And you get all these knobs
to individually mess around with each of these steps, or really they're parts, in the case of when you have something going, so. [drum samples play] Yeah. So you can change these into [evolving percussion] whatever you want and of
course mess around with them. [sample warping] Oh yeah. All kinds of good stuff to mess with. You can really fill it up
with whatever you want. Whereas this is pure FM synthesis, it's all analog goodness, so [FM synth plays] Lots of classic sounds. A little capacitive touch, these are both capacitive touching, so. I kind of like that though. It makes them really easy
to just play around with. You don't have to worry
about velocity or anything. [cycling through FM programs] Lots and lots of good sounds and you can get Yamaha DX patches in there, Yamaha DX7 and whatnot, and make it sound like that too. It's just a really really
enjoyable thing that I don't really understand
the full depth of. Cause programming FM, oh my goodness. It is a thing. So anyway, I mostly just
download my own patches or fiddle around until something kind of
sounds good and don't really know what I'm doing yet. But it's neat. And it's got a sequencer, and
then you can pair them together as well, which we'll do in a sec. But you know, just to give
you an idea of, you know, this on its own just [synth notes play] Plays through 16 steps, not
a whole lot going on here. Whereas this has individual
parts up to 10, more or less. Nine and ten sort of cover each other up. And then 16 steps as
well here for a pattern. Load my 13 here, I like this one I put together right when I first got it, I think. [lofi beats] So. Yeah. Muting, soloing, really easy stuff to just
play around and do things in live sense. [beats continue] Yeah. Tons of fun to mess around
with, but let's connect them together and see what that does. And just as a quick
example of what you can do with them connected together,
I've got the sync out going into the sync in on this one. And then just over
to the mixer over here. So. [FM synth and sampler playing in unison] Yeah anyway. [laugh]
I have a lot of fun with both of these together,
or just on their own. You can do a ton with the Sample 2. And a ton with this, even
though, like I said earlier I'm still learning the whole
FM synth programming thing. Figuring out what in
the world all this does. I can get it to make cool noises but I don't always know
why it's making the noises. Anyway, let's move on. All right. So last but absolutely not least
this is my latest obsession in terms of hardware and music stuff. This is my eurorack setup and
yeah, it's completely unique. This is something that I've put together using all these individual
Eurorack Standard modules. And let's go ahead and turn it on. This is in a RackBrute 6U case by Arturia but really you could just build your own. Doesn't really matter. 6U just refers to the height. So it's got 3U height, 3U
height here, getting six. That's following just standard
audio/video rack stuff like we had for the rack back there. A lot of those are 1U units. And then each module is measured
in HP in terms of width. I don't know what HP
stands for in his case but it doesn't really matter. You just have a bunch of
different modules made by all sorts of different
companies, individual creators following the eurorack standard. And the whole appeal of this is that you get individual modules like this. That's just a bunch of circuitry
and cool things going on. And they I'll use these
same ribbon cables. And there's like a strip in the back there that you
can just plug these in. And then that connects everything in terms of giving it all power. But they're not connected
in any other way. At least not in this case here. The only way to have them communicate with each other at all is
by using these patch cables. And these are just effectively three and a half millimeter
mono audio cables, and you can patch them together. And then some of them I have just going out to
the mixer from earlier. So I have some analog drums here. [drum sounds] And then this one is just a
mixer that goes to the mixer. But none of these other things
are gonna make any noise, like, it's not gonna do
anything until you connect it to something with output
and then making something trigger the noise and make
the oscillator do its thing. And yet each of these little modules they do something different
that really you could get in a standard synthesizer, like
the Minilogue XD over there, you know, instead of
having VCOs and the filters and the sequencer and
envelope generator and effects and all that kind of stuff in one unit here, you don't get any of that, unless you get an
individual module to do that. Or you have multi modules, some of these do a whole ton of things, some of them just do one thing. Some of them make noise or, you know, output sound that you can audibly
hear and do something with. Like these here, these are oscillators. But a lot of them don't, some of them are just
straight up utilities like amplification and freezing, sample and hold kind of stuff. You got a mult right here to
multiply different signals. It's just all electricity and
voltages and analog stuff. It's great. I love it. And the logic of it has
gotten my mind working. I cannot stop messing with it and sinking all my money into it. I'm gonna go bankrupt
because of this stupid thing! Anyway, doesn't really matter. It's all cool sounding stuff
and controlled by voltages. So if we wanted to hear this
right here, the BIA module [synthetic sound plays] There we go. That's just the most simple patch, to get the output of that in terms of the audio output
anyway, plug into the mixer. I'm not gonna go into what
every single one of these does. If you're curious about
what each of these are check out my Modular Grid page. I'll link that in the description. I could seriously spend like
14 hours going over all this. I mean like this thing
down here, for instance here's another thing it's
a really key to all this. Instead of using a traditional
keyboard or sequencer, I love using this right here. The Make Noise O-CTRL or zero control, no control, whatever, by Make Noise. They are a local company,
to me, which is pretty fun. They're uh, them and Moog
here in the Asheville area. And in fact, Make Noise is just down the road from one of
my favorite coffee shops. A dangerous and convenient thing for somebody who into synths
to have these companies nearby. So this has its own clock. It's got a clock in as well but we're just gonna use a clock out and it's just gonna
send a little gate pulse and we're gonna send that
out to the trigger of this. [weird sound] There we go. [weird sound continues] So that's again, extremely
basic in terms of a patch. So it's just being triggered by the no control and
then going out to here. Okay. Say we wanted to shape
that just a little bit. Well, we can take the output of that and go into the input of
the Cinnamon module here which is just a cut off
in resonance and such and a low pass filter, going output from that into the input. And you notice they got a lot quieter. You can adjust that with input level. But [weird sound] it'll start doing some
weird stuff there with that. The voltage is kind of
making it clip and whatnot and that's where things like
the VCAs will come into play. So you can really attenuate
that and get that in there. And it's got an attenuator here. Really, it's just a matter of
getting all of these voltages to do what you want, not
go too high or too low, or unless you really want to blow them out and make them sound all crazy over driven you can do that too. I don't know. Sometimes that's appealing. And something I added pretty recently too is this little tiny little
ZeroScope Oscilloscope. [chuckle] So this is handy for seeing
what exactly you're doing. [weird sound returns] And now we can just sort
of see the wave form as we're modifying it. [weird sound evolves] Yeah. Notice I've turned it off,
but it's still doing that. And that's because things are
still happening over there. I've just muted the output. So this thing is endless. You can just patch things forever and get all sorts of crazy outputs going [random drum sounds] [laughs] Whatever. Let's go ahead and move on to one last thing, which is just, I don't, mixing something together probably a lot with this
modular and let's just get a whole lot more patch cables in there and do some sounds. Okay! I don't know where to start. So I'm just gonna start. I've got a patch going here
that I had heard a little bit of at the beginning of the video and I'm not gonna be using everything. I mean, really just a few things. So I've got the Minilogue
to do some kind of stuff and the modular doing most of
the work, honestly right here. I'm not gonna be using the
TD-3 or the Roland TR-8S, I got drums on here and
I got some other lead type things going in base and whatnot. So yeah, don't need this. I mean, I could stick them all together and you'd get a bunch of crazy sounds and there's a whole ton more
sounds out here I could use, but I'm just gonna really be
using two or three, or four. I don't know, whatever. Let's just do stuff. Let's fade in some things
going on. So, yeah. [ambient synth pattern] so that is just this module right here, the Basimilus Iteritas Alter
and it's, I mean, it's going through a whole bunch of
stuff, but at the moment the main thing that's
affecting it is this filter. It's just connected to low pass. [synth music continues] And a little bit of CV
stuff being taken care of by the blend over here
on the chance module. So that's giving it that
squelchy kind of sound that I quite enjoy. [synth weird sound] And if we were to adjust the
decay, we'll get a lot more [ambient weird sound] Yeah. [weird ambient sound] These two modules
together, way too much fun. But anyway, let's add some daggum drums. I'm gonna turn the volume up here and I've got the Endorphin.es Blck_Noir that I'm using for drums. Cause I just liked the
way the analog drum sound. So you've got like -- [drum hits play one after another] Yeah. Good stuff in here. You can of course mess
with the sounds a lot. [drum beats kick in] I like the way that sounds, I mean there's a million other controls but we're not gonna use them. So... [synth music] And this right here is the uGrids. So it's just a little cut down and kind of smaller module that gives
a different chance to run through different drum patterns, but just a few different knobs and CV and a bunch of other things. But these three main
knobs you can control, the way I have it set it here is a kick, snare and hi hats. So.. [synth music] Yeah. [synth music continues] And finally I want to take this and adjust the pattern that
the drum is going through. [synth music] Yeah look at that. [synth music continues] That's awesome. [chuckles] Okay. We'll keep that going. [synth music] And bring on the Plaits
here because, yeah. [synth music] Adjust the timbre, really, I mean, it's doing in
the background, in fact if I were to just do that, that's what it sounds like [laughs] just as it is, but I like fading it in. [synth music] So yeah, forget I did that. [synth music continues] Here's what I like doing
with that one, just, [synth music] There we go. Anyway, I'm already getting lost in this. So what do we want to do here? I could add some different sounds. So I've got this Pamela's NEW Workout. I like giving different outputs for the different parts of drums. So I love the way this
particular part sounds. [synth music] So yeah, I like those a lot. Let's add just a little bit more. [synth music continues] Yeah. [synth music continues] Yeah. So that's that, I
can just do that forever. And that's what I do here [chuckles] just screwing around with sounds man. And that was one patch and if
I take these things all apart, I'll never have it again. So. It's kind of ethereal.
And it's this ever-changing, ever-evolving thing that
can disappear in a moment. And I like that, you know, there's something about
getting a specific connection going on with everything
and it just comes together in such a way that, it's emotional. Like these things feel
like they're alive somehow. That's just the beauty
of analog and voltages and a little bit of digital stuff, tastefully tossed in there. But yeah, that's pretty much what I do with my synth setup. So, I guess that's it. [laughs] Thanks for watching. [synth music continues synthily] And if you enjoyed
seeing this kind of jam, then, I don't know, check out my LGR Twitter,
I post more there. I haven't really done
any other main videos on the main channel here like this, but perhaps I will in
the future, I don't know. It's just something I
like farting around with and I enjoy and I felt like sharing. As always, thanks for watching!
The rumors are true. LGR is a synth geek
I just figured you all would like this video of LGRs setup!
Very impressive. 3+ minutes. Longest "let's get to it" I've ever seen.
I am a little bit disappointed that his secret passion is not 'voice-over actor for prohibited parking announcements at the airport'
Who is lgr?
Love it, he collected all this in the last year!
I love him
Lmao I guess this is where all the LGR Thrifts money went to.
Hah, I had no idea he was into synths!