Tried the gate out and the cv out from the beatstep but can't get the behringer 182 sequencer to sync to the tempo i set in ableton,
Yeah, I agree with Lugia. You're on the right track, but you've got some modules that might not be the best use of time, space, and money. This kind of reminds me of my original plan, which changed drastically as I started actually putting it together. My advice would be to go slow. Start with a sequencer (doesn't have to be Eurorack, but could be a Beatstep Pro or Korg SQ1), something like Plaits, Maths, and Veils. Then see what you are missing. Need a filter? Buy that, and then repeat. Need a big a** button? Buy that, and then repeat.
Unless you really need the phantom power of the Little Mikey, the Doepfer A-119 is an external input/preamp with envelope follower that can be had for about $70 used. I kinda hate working with Disting, but adding one to a small rack is a decent idea. It will help you understand a bunch of different functions (albeit, not in a very fun way), and give you some ideas for the next fully featured module you should buy.
Have fun and good luck.
Well, that's certainly a pile of modules. But that's ALL it is. You're missing things that can make this build stand up and howl, such as attenuverters, submixers, logic and other clock modulators, and so on. There's also a lot of audio sources and modifiers, but the modulation sources are pretty lacking. And WHY are you taking up 8 hp in a small build like this with a BUTTON? Put something useful in that space!
Also, that's the wrong sort of input module for external signal processing...it's JUST a preamp. You need something with an envelope follower to really make that work optimally, so that you can do things like opening/closing filters with your volume level, etc. And two Distings? If you have a problem with menu-diving, especially on a minimal-feedback UI, you're really going to regret that. I like the idea behind the Disting, but I think the implementation is cryptic and crummy...not anywhere as immediate as you'd expect from a modular synth.
One more thing: if you're all about the DIY thing, DON'T build your tile row for Intellijel spacing! You'll find a much better selection of tile modules, including a pile of DIY ones, if you stick with the "original" 1U row spacing.
This is why, when I did my "classical training" in theory/comp (which was a bit looser than hardass conservatory definitions of this, mainly because where I did my undergrad was far more open to things other than the typical "serious music" and what that entails), I thought it was CRITICAL to get some audio engineering under my belt, in addition to my required electronic music coursework. These sorts of things aren't what I'd view as "electives" anymore; composers in this century need to know how to work with this technology, given what's been replaced by it. F'rinstance, I haven't scored anything with a pen since the mid-1990s...using scoring suites is so much better, plus I can check my work instantly; previously, doing a playthru check would entail sticking paper in front of a bunch of players who'd probably not looked at their parts until that very minute...in short, a real nuisance! Composers these days ignore tech, popular musical forms, etc at their peril!
Could you explain what you've tried thus far? There's a few ways to use these, but unless we can see what you've tried already, we could wind up rehashing things you've done already. Or, conversely, if you HAVE done this right and still don't get a proper result, that could indicate a fault with the module or whatever you're using to get a clock from the PC to the sequencer.
Neither of those. Try this on instead: https://www.modulargrid.net/e/percussa-mssp
I'm just starting out in the world of modular, and to be honest while it's been confusing a lot I think I might have made a rack that functionally works, but I'd like to check with some people who know things first! I'm a classically trained musician, so getting into this synth world is an exciting way to find new forms of expression, but also as a steep learning curve.
The main idea behind this rack is I want to build it over time, I don't expect it'll be finished for a couple of years, starting with the bottom row and building up. The end goal is a modular that will be a stand-alone synth voice I can play with MIDI keyboards, as well as being able to process external audio for effects, like my electric bass. I tried to design it so the bottom row is a full modular synth voice, and the top is a second voice and effects rack, with some sequencing that will let the whole thing play on its own.
I'm also trying to be quite DIY with it, partly because it should bring costs down and also because I really want to be involved in the creation as much as I can. It'll also help me bring some family who don't really get the whole 'synth thing' into my world a bit, since they work with wood and electronics a bunch (I'll be making my own case as well).
Thanks for any advice!
Nice and fat sound @mowse, how're these two fitting in next to the SoundStage?
Big thumbs up @Quantum_Eraser, looking forward to more.
Looks great and I love Kinks/Links so useful. I need more logic modules too useful besides VCAs, sequential switch, matrix mixers and attenuator/offset/inverts. Support modules are the secret sauce of modular.
Hello I got a behringer 182 sequencer and having trouble tempo syncing it ableton.
I have a behringer neutron, arturia beatstep, arturia keystep. PC running ableton 10, presonus 24.4.2 and a moog Subharmonicon on the way.
Can someone help me how or what I need to do to get the 182 sequencer to sync.
Many thanks Rickard
EQ and compression in-rack using WMD SCLPL and MSCL instead of Logic Pro.
I have used the 2020 Veils now for a couple of weeks and simply love it. Having the illuminated sliders gives a very quick overview of how the different channels are set up. The feel of the sliders was surprisingly satisfactory.
I don't understand why someone just rated it with one star - an explanation would be nice.
I'd like a feature, where one can add power capabilities to a rack. Further the current power consumption of the added modules can be subtracted and the difference can be shown directly below the rack.
Owning a couple cases, it's hard for me to remember the power capabilities of each case, so I have to look them up. This feature would help a lot and make MG more intuitive around power consumption.
Ideally, we could even add power capabilities for each row. This is especially handy for bigger cases, where each row has its own power rail. Worst case is that overall you might not be exceeding the power capabilities of the whole case, but still running one rail over the limit of that particular rail.
Thanks again (and as always :) ), Garfield :)
hi there,
i'm looking a good module for granular synthesis, anyone have an idea or an utilisation feedback?
thanks a lot
I am leaning toward IME Stillson Hammer as it does lots of things and plays well with IME/Harvestman modules for techno and industrial plus less expensive than other complex sequencers. Plus I want to get a Hertz Donut and Piston Honda and larger case. WMD Metron and Eloquencer would be great for drums/beats.
Thanks Garfield,
I am really into experimental type music which a lot of people fail to understand unfortunately nor appreciate. One clown named Klaus Walter in Germany who goes by NextG on his Youtube channel hates my music but he is a trance ambient chord perfection weenie lol :-) I had to block this jerk from Facebook modular forums as he kept insulting me and comes from Germany. But greats like Subotnick are very experimental so go figure.
Actually my favorite module is a three way tie between Kermit, Noise Engineering Basimilus Iteritas Alter and Intellijel Quadrax with Dual Borg filter getting high marks. Kermit just does soo much for one module, even though the manual describes it as a wavetable oscillator it can be a quad LFO, S&H, track & hold, random noise generator, complex oscillator and more.
the Mixsequencer is comeing! it is one of the more interesting modules that are comeing in the 2500 series !
-- musiqueconcretelover
Oh, HELL yes! That one module has a lot to do with the 2500 sound; in a way, it's very much the antecedent of recent modules such as Intellijel's (discontinued) Linix or Mutable's Frames. But it has quirks that those don't have...and hopefully, if AMsynths was true to form on the redesign, those will still be in there.
But a 2500 clone without the Mixsequencer? That'd be like having a Minimoog with no LPF!
https://www.amplifiedparts.com/products/new-products
Oh, lookit this! Amplified Parts is a DIY and parts supplier here in the USA, and recently, they've added product lines for Eurorack stuff in addition to a plethora of DIYer fun. But in this latest round of new additions...well, just LOOK! Not only do they have the Spin FV-1 in stock now, if you look further down...yep, the SSM clones!
Now, for those of you who don't know, Solid State Music was a 1970s-80s firm that, similar to Curtis Electromusic, created an iconic synth chipset. The lushness of those early Prophet-5s? You can thank SSM for that...but when they went under, that only left CEM...and even they left the market for a space. But recently, the CEM circuits were revived and now they're easy to get. As for the SSM set, that was elusive, and people had to rely on NOS supplies until Sound Semiconductor revived it.
And now, Amplified Parts carries these in an ample supply. But the REAL fun is the price! The NOS stuff was getting psycho-spendy...but now you can have that SSM 2044 VCF smoooooooothness for only...
...hang onto your brain...
$6.50!
Pretty jazzy...now, hopefully we'll start to see a lot more DIY activity using this chipset too! Sure, the SSI versions have been around for a little while now, but this makes 'em SUPER easy to get...and they even do bulk pricing! No reason to risk an expensive-as-hell NOS SSM chip now!
farkas: Read that...quite interesting. Takahashi-san almost seems to be of a split mindset about the general direction of electronic instruments. On one hand, he's worked with Polyend to develop amazing new things there. But on the other, he also seems to understand the gravity of keeping older synths, and reissues of them, out of reach of the general public, and how this can be a problem.
His statements about Korg itself, though...also a bit telling. He mentions how Korg is able to take risks...and also, how Korg is a family-run firm that keeps a foot in tradition. That's a bit of a dichotomy, and it makes me wonder what he'd say OFF the record about Korg. This pretty much confirms my suspicions about Korg, actually...it's felt like there's been quite a bit of infighting there in recent years over the company's direction, with very forward-thinking ideas (the Volcas, for example) sitting side-by-side with some pretty egregious f**kups (the KR55 reissue comes to mind...an excellent redux with one GLARING flaw that's doomed it: no sync I/O, and this from a firm that WAS fastidious about having clock sync on most anything).
I don't think we're going to see the end of this mess anytime soon. And the fact remains that Korg angered the HELL out of many people with the KARP 2600 FS stunt; my sales guy at Sweetwater, for example, said that there's been a firestorm of interest in B.'s 2600, and many have mentioned that they'd felt screwed-over by Korg's "Ain't it neat? But you can't have one!" crap. Korg may have actually lit a fuse on the powderkeg they're sitting on with how that was handled, and Uli has (I can't believe I'm actually SAYING this) EVERY RIGHT to burn Korg to the ground with their version, IMHO. If a company makes such a massive miscalculation as Korg did with the not-really-a-reissue, they deserve whatever happens to them next!
Hi Mog00,
Wow that's nice, you got there a very nice sound and a cool rhythm!
Thanks a lot for sharing this and kind regards, Garfield.
Hi Mowse,
Nice one! Yet again, I recognise the Moog sound and your style :-) Lovely!
By the way, beautiful rack view picture... Mother-32... is your Mother 32 years old? ;-) Do you have a Grandmother too? :-)
Kind regards, Garfield.
Hi Sacguy71,
Nice jam and in this video I love your cable-spaghetti view, beautiful :-) Looks to me that Kermit is your number 1 module, isn't it? :-D
He, he, that kind of boat-horn just a bit before 6:00 sounds good and funny, a little bit of a high pitch, if you would give that a bit deeper pitch you could fool all boats on the sea out there, nice sound!
You can produce faster jams than I can click on the play button ;-) Thanks a lot for sharing and kind regards, Garfield.
Hi Lugia,
I actually was kind of joking but I really do appreciate that you explain the details between 2500 and 2600, it's very interesting to read and to learn about. Thank you very much for that! :-)
Kind regards, Garfield.
Yeah, very nice. Our taste in ambient seems to align nicely here. Your thoughts on Desmodus Versio? Is it living up to the hype?
Thanks for the kind words. The conflicting thing about being the boss is knowing when to fire myself. One of these days, I'll have a few beers, get brave, and tell me what I really think about myself. :-)
Can't be certain what the 2 hp module next to the midi is but this is the rack as best I can tell from the recently posted tech talk. She also uses a lot of outboard gear: 707, bass station, various pedals, etc.
Wow!
I am not usually up for these Behringer clones, but this looks incredible! Thanks for the heads up!
I haven't bought anything Korg for a long time, I think maybe it was Gadget on iOS, maybe one of the other software versions. They are pretty good to be fair. I have no interest in hardware from them though.
What do you make of this quote from Tatsuya Takahashi of Korg in Attack Magazine?
Attack Magazine: Would you like to do more Eurorack projects?
TT: If I can contribute to the community, yes. I love the Eurorack ecosystem.
Korg is bigger than any of the major players in the Eurorack community, so we have to be careful about entering it. Not because we are nice. It just doesn’t make any business sense to enter a market only to destroy it, unless you are very short-sighted.
As Jacques Attali puts it, “Altruism is the most rational selfish behaviour”.
Full interview can be found here:
https://www.attackmagazine.com/features/interview/tatsuya-takahashi-i-just-tried-to-design-products-to-be-the-best-i-can-imagine-them/
Well, if the goal is to replicate an ARP 2500, yeah, much of the synth WOULD be mults! I should note that Uli has issued a couple more 2500 modules, also...but the Mixsequencer is still not among them.
-- Lugia
the Mixsequencer is comeing! it is one of the more interesting modules that are comeing in the 2500 series ! https://i.imgur.com/wIOjg6L.jpg Even AMsynths shows the Mixsequencer here in this photo
dixie II fm1 modulation provided by I-o47 and fm2 modulated by saw output of dixie mixed with disting wavefolder attenuated by 3xMIA. Envelopes by Maths, drums by BIA. Sequenced by Mimetic, LXd makes an appearance as well.
Not much free time tonight but managed a few minutes with the Moog stack. A little modulation help from eurorack.
Came up with fun industrial soundscapes today after work
Kermit is considered a super modulator and can be a quad LFO and many things but in the IME manual it is technically described as a complex wave table oscillator! Really love wave tables.
Right...take the release of the Wavestate. OK, it's cool and all...but at the same Winter NAMM they were touting that, they ALSO had an algorithmic FM polysynth that, from what I saw, fixed the obtuse user interface issues that have long plagued FM synths. Did they put that out? No...they put out the Wavestate, which is a retread of their older Wavestations, of which there's buttloads on the used (and NOS new) market.
So instead of doing something that would be welcome, and also something that synthesists would fall all over themselves to get, they opted for rehashing old turf. That's not just annoying, it's also fiscally irresponsible. But it's just another bag of trash on what seems like it might be a bit of a dumpster fire over in Hamamatsu as far as Korg's concerned, I suppose.
Nope. Not the same instrument at all. Although I'm in line for the initial shipment to Sweetwater at this point, having both a 2600 and 2500 side by side at one point was really revealing. The 2600 works like pretty much any other patchable from this period (such as the EML 101) and was designed to take on the Minimoog. Very straightforward architecture...3 VCOs, LP VCF, etc.
The 2500, though...that thing is the "OG 0-Coast". It has filters...AND LPGs in the form of the Filtamp. Then there's that Mixsequencer...sheer brilliance, and key to a lot of the 2500's mojo. And on and on with the divergent architecture, which was presumably to position it as the "Moog alternative", but which also made it pretty unique...there's not really been a lot of stuff since it came out that replicates what a 2500 can pull off. Plus, the matrix switch setup, though buggy and prone to crosstalk if you didn't keep the contacts in the sliders clean, allowed routings that were simply not capable on anything at the time; it would be a few years later, when Serge Tcherepnin cooked up his system, that you had that same "route it to everything" sort of capability.
There's definitely reasons why those 2500 main and wing cabs go for prices that rival the GDP of some third-world countries on the used market!
Hi Gabor,
Now this is something completely else! What a variation on sounds, deep, high, unexpected & mind blowing. This is beautifully composed, very original!
I loved this at its full length and going to listen yet again, thanks a lot for sharing this and kind regards, Garfield.
Hi Musiqueconcretelover and Lugia,
Why not waiting for the Behringer 2600 to be released somewhere next year (March)? Wouldn't that be easier and nicer? ;-)
Kind regards, Garfield Modular.
I agree with you @Lugia, Korg has really dropped the ball as of lately. Don't get me wrong, I still like my SQ-1 sequencer as it is a cheap and quick modular portable sequencer but a lot of their moves lately have been in the wrong direction. Same with Elektron and Moog. One more reason why I made the move to modular as there are way more choices and the smaller modular companies are more responsive to feedback and customer support.
Interesting. This is a problem I've also been at work on, but in my case I'm trying to add onto just a Subharmonicon and a DFAM:
In this case, I DID want the quantizer, because it allows me (along with the clocking utilities) to alter curves coming off of either the Maths or Quadrax into scalar voltages. But with this, the two Moog skiffs with the Eurorack modules aren't intended to be capable of creating sound in of themselves...they're "addenda" for the Moogs. Very nice of Moog to cook up that four-tier skiff frame...
Anyway, the two Euro-populated skiffs are pretty mission-specific...upper is mainly for clock manipulation of the DFAM and Subby sequencers, the lower adds extra mod sources + a pair of VCAs for those.
Actually, I find that the early investigations of AI-generated (Open AI Jukebox, specifically) pop by a few vaporwave producers is pretty interesting. For one thing, it eliminates the copyright law worries. But more importantly, it provides a sort of template in which there's certain known factors that appear in the result while, at the same time, it also features loads of uncanny valley-type results that are more difficult to predict. As such, it still acts very much like a "proper musical instrument" since it has its own variants on leaky pads, sticky valves, or a gnat down your throat due to the nature of the process.
As for the "is it artistic" point...well, consider this: an AI algorithm is just as capable of being a "composition" as is a score by Mahler, et al. The architecture is very different...but I was always taught that creating a scored work is very much analogous to writing program code. The "computers" might be different, but the underlying cybernetic process is essentially the same.
Well, if the goal is to replicate an ARP 2500, yeah, much of the synth WOULD be mults! I should note that Uli has issued a couple more 2500 modules, also...but the Mixsequencer is still not among them.
Yup the Arp 2600 and Korg MS20 are staples in synth history.
-- sacguy71
Which is one reason why I really went off the hinge when the truth about the KARP 2600's not-really-availability emerged. It, the MS-20, the Minimoog...ALL of these have what you'd call "performance practices" at this point, playing techniques specific to those individual synths, which means you'd be inclined to treat them as specific instruments and not merely "a synthesizer". I thought it was one of the most short-sighted decisions, and I still think how that was handled was a total botch-job. That's why, at this point in time, I'm NOT buying anything else by Korg. They're behaving weirdly...going from the zenith of the Odyssey, the MS-20 Mini, and the Volcas to this fiasco, the chronic issues that the Prologue had, reissuing the MS-20 in several Uli-esque colors for over twice the price of the still-available (and basically identical) Mini, and the retconned "improved" Minilogue XD, etc. That's not a good developmental arc.
Ahoy!
I too like XAOC, Harvestman - esp, the original panels - that Double Andore is stunning - also sounds incredible too!
I'd suggest Monome for a totally minimalist look, Vermona and Feedback modules (their 1-bit delay is lovely) for a retro bakelite knobs aesthetic, but recently the ones I have been enjoying most are Instruo - something very pleasing about those all day!
