Planning Your First BUDGET Eurorack Modular System (UNDER $500 DOLLARS)

[Music] [Music] today we're going to be taking a look at getting started in modular now obviously we've covered this topic on our channel a few times actually and those videos are still excellent resources and wonderful perspectives on getting started in the modular environment so today what i'm going to do is provide my personal experience and my personal perspective on getting into the modular world and having fun now almost any time that i approach a modular synthesizer or plan one out or use one in my music i try to identify or include three main factors and these factors are what i would call categories that almost every module is going to fall into the first type of module that i always include is going to be a sound source these are going to be your oscillators samplers noise generators anything that's going to make an audio signal if you're thinking about planning a modular synthesizer to be an effect rack or something that's going to bring in sound externally and mangle it up then for your sound sources you're going to want to look for external inputs envelope followers things of that nature the second type of module or factor that i'm always going to include is things that affect the sound these are going to be your vcas your filters and your effects the third category or type of module is going to be modulators these are going to be your envelopes lfos sequencers anything that can create an active or static voltage that you can use to control your other modules your sound sources and your effectors or even your other modulators after all it wouldn't really be modular synthesis if we weren't modulating things so what i've done today is assemble a eurorack system that while being minimal and kind of bare bones it features every key point that we just discussed and it's fun as heck in addition to being fun as heck it is also incredibly budget conscious and it leaves you a little bit of room to expand if you so choose so let's take a look at the modules that i put in here and i'll go over my choices and tell you what's cool about them and why i put them in this rack so for my sound source i've chosen the blue lantern dco this is an incredibly powerful oscillator that features a sub output this really cool wave morphing and also a big crusher in addition to all of these cool things it's also got a quantized input if you're interested in learning more about quantized and unquantized voltage then you should head over to signal and check out the article that we've got over there but in the meantime what you need to know is that this oscillator is going to step to musical notes when it gets input voltage and that is incredibly handy for a first oscillator because it means you can play notes and scales with no additional modules for my sound effector modules i've chosen the a106-5 sem filter from doper which is an oberheim style filter that is just creamy but aggressive and i just love it directly to the left here we've got the tvca from supersynthesis this is a great two input vca that features uh your initial volume on a slider as well as a really nice soft clipping style distortion for my modulators i've chosen the phraser from super synthesis which is a very fun knob recording two lane step sequencer for my other modulator i've chosen the ataxia from dreadbox which is a super powerful dual modulator or envelope that is also a wonderful shade of pink so this module selection alone clocks in at a price tag of just a little under 500 which is pretty awesome and i chose these modules with the goal of staying under that 500 mark now that price does not include the case which is a 4ms pod 64x because i think it's important to also bring up the fact that as far as cases and power go you have a ton of options in eurorack specifically you could build your own case there are a bunch of other companies who offer a la carte style cases like tall dog intelligent and of course tip top audio for our purposes though this pod was more than enough room and gives us a little bit of space to expand should we feel the need there's no need to get this exact same setup of modules as long as you're getting modules that cover the needs of the three categories that we discussed earlier so now let's start to dispel a few myths about eurorack in my opinion folks will tell you that you need an output module and while it is best practiced to have an output module you don't actually need one you could use a quarter inch to eighth inch cable and go directly into a mixer just watch your gain or something like the dude here is more than capable of handling modular level signals even things like an audio interface will often have some sort of pad on them which you can employ if the signal is a little too hot for your liking what's absolutely wonderful about this format and the modular workflow is that you can combine multiple different parts and create a unique system that is much more powerful than any of them would be individually so let's say you're a keyboard player and you want to get some of the modular workflow into your system you could grab a key step pro which has cv outputs and you could easily control a modular system like this so if you've already dipped your toe into the world of hardware electronics you might already have some of the components to get rocking with modular synthesis things like keyboards sequencers mixers and other components that you can repurpose to be helpful in your modular journey all right so enough talking let's get patching and see what this little system can do so in this first patch we're using the system as its own self-contained device all of the voltage is coming from the modules included in the system all the sound is being processed here and we're just taking the audio straight out of the vca and into our little dude mixer wow [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the second patch is also very similar to the first one it's another self-contained patch and as you can see on both of those patches i did a lot of interacting with the modular synthesizer having a ton of modulation is really wonderful and nice but there's nothing quite as precise as just getting your mitts on the synth and moving these faders and knobs exactly where you want them to be it's a really fun and performative way to play with your synthesizers and i would highly encourage you to do it this third patch here is what i would call a pretty typical sequencer into modular synth patch we brought in my friend the pocket operator to provide us with a few drum sounds and everything but other than that we're just using this sq1 to sequence voltage and gates and using the additional modulation to mess with the wave shape of the dco as well as wiggle our filter around and some other fun stuff [Music] [Music] this fourth and final patch is going to utilize the original key step we're going to make it fire off some arpeggios into our oscillator we're also going to use the sub output and our second vca input in order to kind of beef up that sound a little bit and we're using sort of an interesting modular workflow here because while the main sound of the oscillator is going through the filter the sub output is not so it's just providing us with a little bit of that low end character unfiltered in raw [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so yeah that's kind of my take on working in a modular environment i really like to emphasize the fact that a modular workflow doesn't mean that you're exclusively using a modular synth it means that you're using multiple pieces in a modular way to achieve your goals and hopefully make some fun music and put a smile on your face if you didn't jive with my perspective on things we've got a few signal articles and a few other videos and this is of course youtube everybody's got an opinion uh why don't you leave yours down in the comments like and subscribe and we'll see you next time maybe we'll have somebody else's perspective for you 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Channel: Perfect Circuit

Views: 87,791

Keywords: Perfect Circuit, eurorack tutorial

Id: bntsTd2YLAU

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021