modular synthesis

steevio · Post by **steevio** » Sun Apr 25, 2010 4:57 pm

oblioblioblio wrote:yeah I think the last thing you are getting with modular is 'value for money'.

one last thing i must say bro is i disagree with this, and it all depends what you mean by value for money, and even if value for money should be an issue when it comes to musical instruments.
i dont know many musicians from other fields who without question wouldnt spend top money on the best quality instruments for their style of music. this is why names like Fender, Gibson, Ludwig, Zildjian, etc.etc. continue to dominate the pro market.

in terms of the inspiration and speeding up of the tune writing process for me its worth ten times what i paid for it, and having awesome sounding, deidicated pieces of kit almost custom made for your own personal way of working is priceless.

oblioblioblio · Post by **oblioblioblio** » Sun Apr 25, 2010 5:13 pm

steevio wrote: one last thing i must say bro is i disagree with this, and it all depends what you mean by value for money, and even if value for money should be an issue when it comes to musical instruments.
i dont know many musicians from other fields who without question wouldnt spend top money on the best quality instruments for their style of music. this is why names like Fender, Gibson, Ludwig, Zildjian, etc.etc. continue to dominate the pro market.

in terms of the inspiration and speeding up of the tune writing process for me its worth ten times what i paid for it, and having awesome sounding, deidicated pieces of kit almost custom made for your own personal way of working is priceless.

yep i agree with that too mate.

I feel comfortable with investing money into products which are completely contrary to conventional ideas of "value". MacBeth oscillator has completely changed my views about what an oscillator is capable of.. both in terms of workflow and sound. To me it is completely valuable. (though that is a completely extreme example... probably there are better things to use as exmaples... like sequencers which offer limited feature sets but off infinitely larger creative possiblities and much more immediate and accessible workflows)

It becomes difficult, as the sound of a person and machine expressing themselves is not always profitable... we all know the story there.

So yeah I agree with what you're saying. To a certain extent discussions of value are meaningless.

oblioblioblio · Post by **oblioblioblio** » Sun Apr 25, 2010 11:19 pm

the money argument is difficult.

the only way to explain to someone the value of modular is for them to have a small system and spend some time getting to know it.

which obviously isn't such an easy thing to acheive.

I agree with what Steevio said earlier. It actually does represent value for money. It's deifnitely requires a bigger investment than adding some software to a pc you already own. But to me it has been infinitely worth it. My whole concept of making music has been thrown out the window. Everything I did before feels a bit like it was practice.

Modular is total open ended. It's natural and it's alive. But there's no way to eplain it without sounding like a dck.

You don't need to spend silly money to start a modular system. I had the possiblity from my personal circumstances (I don't pay rent or go out very much and I could sell old gear) to spend a pretty high sum. But you can get components that are more than perfect without needing to do that.

Modular is good.

Salomo · Post by **Salomo** » Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:23 pm

anyone here tried/had/has SND SAM-16? pricy but looks very promising. wonder if it would be the best investment to do, considering a minimoog can be bought with 300E more, which i unfortunately don't posses yet. dillemnas.

pce

oblioblioblio · Post by **oblioblioblio** » Fri May 14, 2010 6:13 am

@ salamo. your best bet is to check on muffwiggler. search it first and if nothing ask. there's some proper sequencer nuts on there.

i think most analogue sequencers can be very interesting. with modular components they work in harmony with other modules an awful lot.

In normal synths each peice kind of does it's own thing, but with modular, and especially with sequencing, you can take something simple, and with the right machine friends it suddenly will some alive and be everything that you ever wanted from a machine and more.

Just as another point. For me, modular is completely IT as far as musical machines are conerned. All around the internet there are people discussing various machines... software, hardware etc etcetc. But I can finally ignore it all and be happy that I'm exactly where I want to be.

I feel like i was alive in the 80s and just found an 808 and 303 (or similar) and knew instantly that nothing else mattered. This was IT.

It's kind of a lost cause blabbering on about this, and i don't really feel confident in my wierd little music to show the greatness of these machines. But I just wanna say one more time that if there's any way you can check this stuff out fucking do it do it do it do it.

oblioblioblio · Post by **oblioblioblio** » Fri May 14, 2010 6:26 am

@ salamo again.

I've not used that sequencer, but I can say a couple of things about what I know. 16 steps is probably too much. Modular sequencing is not like any other sequencing. You can make a really long and complicated sequence with just 8 steps and ways to modulate those steps.

I've got Doepfer a-155 and it's totally awesome. I don't have the 154 yet, but once I do, paired with some other sequencing machines thats gonna be a lot of my sequencing needs covered forever.

€2000 will go very very far with other modules.

And another point. Buchla was a fucking don. It's a crime of humanity over the last 40 years that only a few people were using his machines. You can get hold of modules inspired by them now for reasonably cheap and laugh like a maniac at the Pandoras box of brilliantness and you might even have enough money left over for icecream or something. Just read the descriptions of his modules. You can tell he was friends with Ken Kesey and some of the other guys in the West Coast. (not that the only reason for his greatness was being friends with a load of guys eating acid... he is/was a fucking genius)

Buchla inspired people specifcally are Wiard/Malekko , Make Noise , and generally most modules have a little Buchla magic worked into them.

Here are some demos. but they don't show how deep it all goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCK--bs6FYY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zra0EOXRe3A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEOf9Ox4 ... re=related

steevio · Post by **steevio** » Fri May 14, 2010 11:07 am

i agree with oblio that you dont need 16 steps, 8 is perfect, because its really easy to get more complex sequences in conjunction with other modules, but you only have a small and easily manageable interface for live tweaking.
it also gets you out of that boring old 4/4 16 step mentality.

@ oblio - the A154 is an absolute must with the A155, i cant describe how much it opens everything up. ive got two A155 s and an A154, but rather than linking both A155s up to the A154 to make it a 16 step sequencer, ive only got one linked up, so that i can run one in 2/4 as a sort of grounded rhythmic bedrock, and the other A155 in any polyrhythm and mad sequence i want. then if you start mixing the triggers, and CV's you've an infinite number of sequencing possibilities.

A154 ---- a must have bro. sell your furniture !

Phase Ghost · Post by **Phase Ghost** » Tue May 18, 2010 11:41 pm

My Maths (after being on backorder for a month) came in today. Holy balls dude. I've only been playing with it for an hour and it's already my favorite module. It's made for the fuckin rotating clock divider. I've just been letting those two modulate off each other for the last 10 minutes and it keeps morphing.

Funny how one new edition to the set changes everything.