Hi,

I am building this and I am just wondering how should I go from there ?
The only thing which I don’t want to take off are the hermod, plaits, L-1 VCA and the DFA-2. Beside that I am not really sure of where to go in the sense I should add some space for other VCO, effects (which?), utility or whatever.
One thing is that I don’t need to have a power module & lastly this is to do some house and some experiment (for which specially I really need the hermod and its flexibility). Finally the drums are made with an MK2.

Thanks a lot !
Cheers,

ModularGrid Rack


whatever an mk2 is? some sort of drum machine?

you are mixing out of the box ?

if you do not own the cwejman already you do realise that they are near unobtanium/really fucking expensive, don't you?

saying that and assuming you are doing final mixing externally -

modulation sources!!!!! you have none other than the hermod -

what do you think your quad clock distributer is distributing to - do they really need envelopes?? in a lot of cases probably yes

utilities - plumbing - you have a lot of shiny expensive (see note about cwejman, above) modules, but there is nothing to connect them - everything and anything from matrix mixers to sequential switches research research research - which might be as little as reading a dozen other, older noob threads

it's easy as a noob to overlook these types of modules (I've even seen people write that they don't want to 'waste' money on a mixer ffs) because they are not immediately obvious in the construction of fixed architecture synths or softsynths

however, this is one of the major areas where modular synthesis has advantages over those 2, it exposes the plumbing

imagine your synth is like an apartment block - what happens without plumbing? and that's what a modular synth without utilities is

saying that go slowly grow organically

start with 1 sound source, 1 modulation source, 1 sound modifier, a way to play (hermod), and a way to listen (the L1 vca) and maybe a disting (fills holes 1 @ a time, and great for learning) and learn to patch what you have once you are very familiar buy another module and repeat - sooner or later you will reach for something you never even thought of - and then buy that module

"some of the best base-level info to remember can be found in Jim's sigfile" @Lugia

Utility modules are the dull polish that makes the shiny modules actually shine!!!

sound sources < sound modifiers < modulation sources < utilities


Yeah, I'm down, Jim. 100% on dumping the Cwejman stuff. F'rinstance, if you really have to have something along the lines of an ARP 2500 Filtamp, just get two of the B. ones.

Oh, wait...you'll have to do that anyway, as that specific Cwejman module isn't actually available. Even so...two B. Filtamps = $178. One Cwejman whatever = second mortgage.

Then the L1 mixer. Uhhhhhhh...why, exactly? It's actually a crippled version of what you have in the Mutable Veils or Intellijel Quad VCA; you have every bit of the functionality the L1 does, but these two offer a variable response curve as opposed to the L1's fixed two-position selection. It's also honkin' big, and in 2 x 104, MINIMIZING things (within reason...don't make a boxful of 2hp, for example) is critical. Dropping down to a 8 hp Veils clone would actually HALF the real estate in use here, still cost less than the L1, and give you better functionality.

But I'm down with Jim here...this build seems like a black hole for money, but won't yield results. My solution is probably different from Jim's, but we're solid on a major rethink here. Fact is, you DON'T need high-cost stuff to get good results. F'rinstance, MY main modular synth (set up for integration with everything else in the "modular sandbox" here) doesn't have a single module that cost more than $100...because my main modular synth is actually an AE. 160 spaces...and it still comes in at less than the above. It's not as sexy...but y'know, I give exactly the amount of f**ks about that as there are pages in that famous tome "Famous Antarctic Television Personalities of the 16th Century". The SOUND is what matters...not the price tag.