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Well, that "another guy on saxophone" is actually a veteran on Philip Glass' ensemble; I have Richard Landry playing on some of Glass's early works such as "Music in Fifths".

Process music...yeah, that's a strange topic. I think you can trace back to the point where it forks off of minimalism if you look at La Monte Young's "Compositions 1960", although the inspiration for this goes back to John Cage and his own procedural methods. Young managed to strip down the idea of "process" to simple, koan-like fragments that delineate the framed procedure for the work.

It's interesting that this set of pieces came about after Young's studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1959, because they're not exactly "Stockhausen-esque"...at least, not yet. Instead, Young was inspired to investigate Cage's procedures by Stockhausen, who was quite taken with Cage's methods and results at that time. Stockhausen himself wouldn't hit this stride until 1968 and "Aus den Sieben Tagen" after his own process-based methods grew to a massive level of complexity with "Kurzwellen".

Hmm very nice !!
Thanks :)

Disting don’t like the menu driving but it’s really a super useful model. I always use when I wanna try a module a don’t have .

Does exist a pdf with all the sequencers modes etc like the Disting has ?

-- Saramago

I went to the webpage
https://ornament-and-cri.me/user-manual-v1_3/
Then I printed the page as a PDF and saved it to my computer.

Hi, thanks for your reply. Could you be more specific?
my questions:
Noise - Why not the noise of MS20 and Dfam?
Sample & Hold (optional) - Yeah thought about that, is the Doepfer 118-2, 148, 184 a good option?
Dedicated LFOs? - Whats wrong with the Pam´s LFO´s?
Dedicated ADSRs? - I prefer using ad. So maybe in a future rack but for now im ok with quadra. Or is there a specific reason like something that is not possible or complicated or... ?
VCAs? - How many would you add?

Thanks a lot for your input.
cheers

Hi there,

thank you for helping me out.
I am new to modular and am planning to buy my first rack for live performance.
I wish to have the ability to create sequences with midi keyboard (Hermod), or randomly generated phrases with "70's dark analogue tone" (that's how I describe it, but it's basically Juno-60 kind of sound)(Roland 512), also being able to make ambient pads (Noise by Bastl). Is there anything that is better for my purposes?
From the posts I've read, I know it's good to leave some room for later expansions so I didn't fill the space, and it might be a good idea to fill it with your suggestions.
The only problem is that because of where I live, it's kinda hard to get less popular modules so I am just gonna stick to the popular ones I guess, but feel free to recommend me the best options in your mind.

Is this something ready to go? Or am I missing somethin' important or fun for live performance?
Thanks again for your help.

Disting don’t like the menu driving but it’s really a super useful model. I always use when I wanna try a module a don’t have .

Does exist a pdf with all the sequencers modes etc like the Disting has ?

Yes , everytime we buy something we should spend time to learn the machines . Unfortunately I don’t spend as much time as I want but gonna check some more tutorials about the “O_C” Turing machine

-- Saramago

You really should. I have the O_C as well as the Disting. The O_C really isn't too too bad as far as menu diving. Most everything is one page away once you get used to using the two rotary encoders. The Disting drives me bonkers in trying to navigate it. If you're willing to put up with that... the O_C is really easy... and it's really powerful at what it does.

Check out the sequencer section as well and what's possible as far as modulating it to play back different sequences etc. I think you'll find that it's a beast if you know it well.

I tried to wrap my head around O_C sequencers and the Turing machine mode but I do hate menu diving . But should try again and again

For sequence I have a Beatstep pro and Make Noise Rene .
What I’m looking for is a more generative melodies type so I can record and choose the happy incidents
-- Saramago

The two strategies that I suggested are all about happy accidents. You are influencing the melody rather than creating it. Put in the work and learn the module you already have.

-- Ronin1973

Yes , everytime we buy something we should spend time to learn the machines . Unfortunately I don’t spend as much time as I want but gonna check some more tutorials about the “O_C” Turing machine

I swapped the Rene for the Nerdseq sequencer... and heaven on earth!
Very playable... and much, much more possibilities for musicality.

No menu diving, everything 1 layer deep.
-- jjterbeek

Wow that “Nerd sequencer” looks a lot more complicated but many thanks for the reply :)

Thx, man! In the long run probably something like 12U. Will start with 6U by building a 2x case, throw some power in, then get a couple modules, and start from there. I think the ER-101 will be the biggest outset in terms of cash. So I'll probably start with a VCO or two, envelop, maybe a filter or waveshaper, VCA: just basic meat and potatoes to learn how a synth voice works. Then just flesh it out from there.

What's so great is that you hear composers like Caterina Barbieri using some of the same process music method developed during. Process music is a form of minimalism that arises from a process, usually a very strict process. If you listen to interviews of Ms. Barbieri, she talks about an approach very similar to methods first pioneered back in the 1960s.

EDITED Feb 20th 2020, 23:40

Hi Funbun,

Interesting examples indeed. Funny those 6 pianos and amazing regarding those saxophones. That modular system imitating the music of Steve Reich is quite nice and amazing too.

Did you already made up your mind how big you are going to build your rack? Good luck with the build and once ready show us a picture, I am pretty curious! :-)

Kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Dharmabum,

Ah yes, that explains quite a bit :-) Looks like you have thought this already over so, things should be fine then.

If you are not sure yet about the Antiphon and didn't buy it yet, perhaps you can leave that one out and save some rack space?

Good luck and I wish you a lot of modular fun, kind regards, Garfield.

Thanks again for good advice!
You are right about the Slew limiter. I newer use it so there I got 8 HP more space.
But I keep the A-183 Passive Dual Attenuator as I use it in most of my patches.
I have three LFO:s that gives random waves so I wait with a dedicated S&H module.
But I will buy the ”Ladik Bool2 – logic module” and ”2hp Multi-Scale Pitch Quantizer” as soon as possible .
When I have learned these two modules it is maybe time for Pamela's New Workout or Temps Utile.

bought from @theartstrip and it was perfect! fast shipping and accurate shipping cost! buy with confidence.

Yeah, minimalist music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_music
Here's a good example from Steve Reich's Six Pianos:

To me this sounds it would be best done a programmable synth like the ER101/102. I nfact I found a fellow who recorded his Phase Piano on an ER-101:

Again here's another guy on saxophone, minimal:

Also basically everything I hear in what synthesists call "ambient" or atmospherics is what minimalists were doing back in the 1960s. They just didn't have access to modular synths. They had to use traditional instruments. That why guys like Hans Zimmer and all his film scores he uses a 5U synth. All that music from Batman Begins and Interstellar, a good portion of that is 5U blended with the studio orchestra, but the heart of it is modular.

EDIT: added another example.

EDITED Feb 20th 2020, 10:56

Thanks for the suggestions!

I've already have a lot of the modules in a Arturia Rackbrute 6U case but already filled it so I'm thinking of upgrading to the Behringer Eurorack Go when it comes out eventually.

In terms of the modules I've fallen in love with the West Coast approach to modular so both the Quadrax and the Falistri are there to act as many things depending what I need, envelopes, LFOs, Voices etc.... So it basically is my modulation section whilst the VCAs will mostly work as CV and Audio mixers for making complex modulation shapes. The Scan & Pan is there to act as the output module.

I have two filters, Optomix which is a vactrol based LPG which sounds fantastic and the Stereo Dipole acts more as a traditional dual filter that you could combine to create a Stereo one. Intruo is actually quite small considering its functionality compared to other complex oscillators such as "DPO" or "Furtherrrr Generatorrrr" so I'm already very fond of that however the Antiphon is very big and hard to tune so I'm not completely sold on it.

René of course acts as my main sequencer for everything while Pressure Plates could act as another sequencer or a trigger for the system. Pam's is the main clock device that can do some modulation stuff as well, and uO_C is there to expand on whatever I'll need for the patch such as a quantizer or shift register etc...

Hope this explains my thought process for the rack! Cheers!

Hi Funbun,

Toodee's comments are spot on. You actually can't go too big if it comes to the rack (but you can go too small easily). However I know from one of your previous posts that you are looking into minimal music (or how you call that exactly?) so you might get "away with it" ;-) with a medium rack. Advisable is at least 3 rows (3 x 3U = 9U) and since you got already those 104 HP rails, 3 x 104 = 312 HP, it might just work out for you but on the bit longer future it might be still too small. So if you have the space and enough wood :-) Perhaps you could consider a 4 or 5 x 3 U case, as I mentioned in the other post, you don't have to fill them up straight away, take your time to get experience with modular and slowly try out more modules.

Good luck and kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Dharmabum,

Wow, difficult question, interesting rack but somehow... I don't know, I feel it's difficult to get a grip on it, might be just me, I had traveled today quite a bit, so I might be just too tired. So take my below advice not too hard, it might be just me, being too tired.

On one hand I have the feeling you take a few main brands and take from them one or two of their best modules (except Make Noise, you took a few more from them) and put that all together in this rack of yours (I put below here the link to your rack, that's easier than providing a link to a JPEG picture; we now straight away can see where we are talking about):

What I think I am missing here is a bit of "how is this suppose to work all together" or at least most of them in some kind of harmony? I am not sure to be honest, there are certainly nice modules between it, actually a lot, and that worries me a bit... it looks a bit too much like nice fancy and sexy modules but I am not 100% getting it here.

So a few suggestions:

At my main local dealers I can't find that Dreadbox AntiThon module, are you sure that you still can get it? Anyway, my suggestion is to remove this AntiThon module and the René module and put instead blank panels. Blank panels? Yes, blank panels ;-) You need some space left for (near) future extension, that's one of the things I am missing here. Also these two modules are pretty large and save you some space for perhaps other modules you might need in the future.

I haven't accurately counted the total width but it looks like a weird total width for this casing, are you sure such casing exists?

With that and with perhaps taking a few lesser "fancy" modules and a bit more classic modules, yeah, it might be something you could use. With classic modules I mean the usual "suspects" like oscillators (okay I see that Instruo module there but quite a big one), LFOs, envelopes, filters, VCAs (yes that quad VCA you got there might be all right, I guess you can leave that one in there) and perhaps one or two logic modules.

I see some components that have some LFO capabilities so that might work out, not too sure, or you get rid of one of them and get instead just a classical LFO for that. Did I overlook it or do I miss filters and (basic) envelopes?

You might want to have a look into an audio interface input/output module too; depending on what you might have or might not have externally (external mixer?).

Some of the modules, I do think are more for seniors or at least for medium till high experienced users, not sure how much experience you already have with synthesizers in common and modular specific but you might want to reconsider a few of those modules, are you really ready for all of those modules you have chosen here?

I am not saying you are not allowed to buy all kind of modules, nothing against it :-) However I think it makes more sense to start a bit more simple (leave space left for future extensions) and start to grow into modular, build up your experience and then slowly and step by step get a few more modules. Don't buy the lot in one go!

Anyway, without more input from you, it's difficult to advice. I don't want to discourage you either because modular is fantastic but it requires quite some homework, like investigating into synthesizers in common and particular all the modules you choose, check them one by one, what they do, what you think you need of those and keep reading and checking about those modules.

So welcome to modular, have fun with it and take care, kind regards, Garfield Modular.

Maths was one of my first modules, purchased before I had a clue as to what I was doing. For months I used it for little else than its LFO capabilities. But as light bulbs started to go off over the course of my self-education, I realized that Maths can do this...and this...and this. It's in virtually every patch I make, for a variety of tasks.

Also check out Mutant Brain Hexinverter.

I'll add that not only does it take time to learn, it takes time to figure out HOW to learn. When I started, I was completely frustrated because dammit, it took forever to find a quick resource re: how to make a simple patch. And even once I found it, I quickly realized that the wonderful semi-modular I bought didn't teach me much about what was happening under the hood...because I couldn't see the connections! Over time, I found my "teachers." The select handful of people whose Patreons and YouTube pages I subscribed to and who, through the process of my listening to literally everything they put out and learning through osmosis and practice, have taught me how to get going with modular. There is no beginners book that says "Ok, step one. Patch this from here to here. Now do this. Now this." etc. etc.

In other words, it's not enough to set aside time to learn. You have to set aside an enormous amount of time to learn HOW to learn.

And this is a language no different than English, Spanish, or Japanese. Be prepared to watch/listen to videos you don't understand. Look up words you don't know. Attenuverter?! You'll have to look that up. Ring modulation? Same. It takes time to learn a language. BE PREPARED FOR THIS.

EDITED Feb 19th 2020, 23:03

I'd look into quantizers, sample and hold circuits, and definitely LOGIC modules. I'm not sure if the MiniBrute has any of this.

I would also consider a Pamela's New Workout or Temps Utile as they are great for creating and manipulating alternative rhythms like Euclidean. Xaoc's Zadar is also a great source for modulation that evolves.

The modules you could part with (IMHO) are:
A-170 (you have the Maths)
A-183 (check out Kona for attenuator cables)
A-180 (passive mults can be done outside of the case with all types of splitters)

If you get stuck for room, they would be the first modules I'd pull from this build to put more modules in.

A sequencer will be a big part of what I want, but after looking at other sequencers, the ER-101 seems the one to fit the build/bill. Are you still using the 101? Have you had time to incorporate the 102?

I know it is impossible to make generative music with a 6U x 84 rack ;-)
But I try anyway.
I have 27 HP empty space left in my rack.
What shall I fill it with for making as close as possible to generative patches?

If you go to the regular module finder section, you can use the "Available in Marketplace" menu, together with other search criteria as "Manufacturer" and/or "Function", etc.

-- KNYST

Thanks

I've tried that alright

Doing so just leads me to Page 1 of the Marketplace without including the preferred module as a search criteria

Cool video as always! Keep up the good work! Waiting for you in Barcelona ;)

Maybe this has been asked before but why is there no text search field in the Marketplace?
-- realeoin

If you go to the regular module finder section, you can use the "Available in Marketplace" menu, together with other search criteria as "Manufacturer" and/or "Function", etc.

EDITED Feb 19th 2020, 13:54

Maybe this has been asked before but why is there no text search field in the Marketplace?

I started with an Intellijel 7U. Nothing bad about that one in particular (good starter option, in fact), but indeed I thought initially that the ambitious plan I made before having my first rack wouldn't change too much. I was of course very wrong and as soon as I had my first evening with my first rack, a lot changed and I ended up making more plans. I now have an MDLR 14U and can

• try out modules that a friend lends me
• swap modules in my rack without having to worry about replacing it with a module of the same size, and not necessarily the same function. I may end up with a weird rack layout if I have to place my modules in my rack to make everything fit
• find space in the rack for "cable rivers" that would otherwise cover several modules entirely, reducing playability
• plan more rack evolution plans as I experiment, without worrying about the cost of a new case

I sense that to end up with a small setup that is efficient, interesting and playable, one needs quite a lot of Eurorack experience. Thus the advice for beginners: plan a wayyyy bigger rack than what you have in mind at first, especially if you've never touched modular before.

Hello!
Thanks a lot for all your detailed answers and attentive listening!
It is very important for me to read such thoughts and analysis. Sometimes seems that it's not interesting to anyone except me, and it’s a little frustrating. But such reviews support me not to stop and continue to experiment.
Thanks once more. New videos coming soon!

Random is the most important kind of modulation for granular.
-- richc90

No. You need smooth, SLOW modulation waveforms to make scanning through granules easier. Do it too fast, and you don't get the right sorts of textures.

-- Lugia

Speed/smoothness has nothing to do with whether the modulation is random (think of Sloths).

Random modulation to things like position, panning, grain size, amplitude, pitch etc are all standard practice in granular synthesis (go look at any software granulator with built in modulation, or the Supercell module which has internally generated random modulation normally to the CV inputs). Whether a given kind of modulation will give you "the right textures" (whatever that means) will depend alot on the specific audio in the buffer and what results you want to achieve. That's why (for instance) the Granulator software offers you ways of randomly modulating parameters as well as more standard LFOs.

FWIW I'd get Batumi and Blinds rather than QPLFO and SISM.

My choice here would be the 4ms QPLFO, actually...since that gives you LFO periods that can exceed an hour in length. Plus, this can be backplane-patched to a 4ms SISM for CV-controlled mixing/inversion/etc which also makes patching simpler, definitely a plus if this is intended for pedalboard use.
-- Lugia
The QPLFO looks like a good candidate too. The 4ms site says it is only available in DIY kit form. That is a bit beyond me at the moment but I imagine there are some available on the used market. Thanks!

I'm thinking Xaoc Devices Zadar and an Intellijel 1U Quadratt to attenuate or attenuvert the outputs manually.

I believe the Zadar can loop and play at very slow rates. The Quadratt ensures you can adjust the amount of modulation on the fly. You could also use the Quadratt to mix waveforms from the Zadar as well.

I think that would be fast to set-up in a pedal board situation.
-- Ronin1973

Awesome. Had not heard of the Zadar before. Looks very interesting. Thanks!

Random is the most important kind of modulation for granular.
-- richc90

No. You need smooth, SLOW modulation waveforms to make scanning through granules easier. Do it too fast, and you don't get the right sorts of textures.

My choice here would be the 4ms QPLFO, actually...since that gives you LFO periods that can exceed an hour in length. Plus, this can be backplane-patched to a 4ms SISM for CV-controlled mixing/inversion/etc which also makes patching simpler, definitely a plus if this is intended for pedalboard use.

I just received a pair of rails, rack ends from Synthrotek: 104 hp. This was smaller than I imagined it would be. I've decide to go 9U instead of 3U. What size case did you start with, and what did you regret about going with whatever size you chose at first?

Thanks!

Does anyone have experience with this one? Is it getting very hot? Looking for something to support my submodular case with some power and not sure if I should try the Endorphin.es P or go for a 4 ms ROW 40. Any suggestions?

Random is the most important kind of modulation for granular.

I'm thinking Xaoc Devices Zadar and an Intellijel 1U Quadratt to attenuate or attenuvert the outputs manually.

I believe the Zadar can loop and play at very slow rates. The Quadratt ensures you can adjust the amount of modulation on the fly. You could also use the Quadratt to mix waveforms from the Zadar as well.

I think that would be fast to set-up in a pedal board situation.

EDITED Feb 18th 2020, 18:11

New to Eurorack but not new to signal processing and digital effects. Looking for advice on modulator/LFO modules for an ambient/granular/delay/looper rack to be integrated with my pedalboard. Not looking for random or S/H so much, just a variety of waveforms, prefer slower speeds than faster if there has to be a choice. My taste leans more to the serene than chaotic.

PS. Not planning to use this as a sound soure, so no VCOs etc. required.

Thinking for me the Intellijel pallete is a good starting point.

Rack so far is here:

https://cdn.modulargrid.net/img/racks/modulargrid_907968.jpg

This is the rack I'm planning on building, I already have some modules but will start expanding soon. Is it something you think is missing or something that feels odd in the setup? Thanks!

Trying to build a "smart system" with 50/50 preset/hands-on control:

• Nerdseq + expanders (with upcoming CV expander) controling soundsources:

• Assimil8or (Drums)

• Chimera (Percussion)
• BIA (Bass)
• Scanned (Drones)
• A-111-4 (Melody, arps)

Polyend Preset controling:
- 3x CV channels Assimil8or: with one CV channel controlling 8 banks of 8 drum samples = 64 drum samples.
- 1x WMD sequential Switch matrix Controlling: BIA, A-111-4/1-3, A-111-4/4 & Scanned in
Sending in matrix to: Clean channel, Erbe Verb, Chronoblob, Warps
- 2x Filters Cut-off freq
- 1x Chimera Decay
- 1x Warps algorithm

Mixing 16 channels in 4x Intellijel Quadratts:
- Stereo left > into panned left mixer (Left out: A8, Erbe Verb, Chronoblob, out-Warps)
- Stereo right > into pannend right mixer (Right out: A8, Erbe Verb, Chronoblob, aux-Warps)
- 2x mono

End mix with VCA sidechaining kickdrum & 2HP Verb.

Hands on control:
- Varigate 4+
- Voltage Block
- Batumi LFO's
- 4 Robots & Streams Enveloppes
- Event boss
- Switched Mult
- And all the knobs...

Solid advice! Thank you so much. Take away points: (1) consider building a 6U or 9U case from the start; (2) ax the second A-111-6 for a second or third VCO for variety; (3) Consider a couple EGs instead of Maths; verify the mixer's capability for input and output.

Yeah, I can see how that would be a good bit better, just the kind of direction I was hoping for. Thanks!

Hi Yalivec,

Welcome back with some more great music! I took the effort to sit in my "listening" chair listening at your latest and above music track here. Once the music stopped (the track came to an end) I was just sitting there... not knowing what was going on with me, what I just experienced and what I wanted to be continued but I had to get my lazy arse out of that chair and now I am listening to your first track (beginning of this post) again :-)

To cut that short, this latest track, I feel it's better balanced, the guitar is still doing a fantastic job here (I love that guitar sound that almost sounds like a bird that's calling or something, beautiful sound!) however you give your modular a better chance to let it come through too, yeah on the view of having it balanced I like this latest track.

Listening at your first track again (from this post), it's less balanced perhaps but you are definitely more daring there, so that's challenging the listener more and makes the listener (okay me at least) exciting about what's coming next. So both tracks I like it pretty much. I think my favourite is your last track but they are both fantastic.

To summarise: I just can't wait for your next track you are going to surprise us with!

Kind regards and thanks a lot for sharing this, Garfield.

Hi Senor-bling and Lugia,

Senor-bling: Thanks for your thoughts and that crosstalk "thingy", hmm, yes, good point. I was hoping to solve that (partly) by using at least Cat 6 Ethernet cables (i.e. shielded), but I am not sure if that's sufficient and yes, this is going to be an experiment... hopefully a good one :-)

Yet another good point: It's modular, if there's no jungle, it's not being used, yes! You are totally right about that :-) But if you get feelings of rather wanting to be an octopus than a human being to handle all the cables... not sure then ;-) Or perhaps it's a deal that one day I will hold all your cables so you have your both hands free to handle all the modular stuff and the other day you hold all my cables so I can use my both hands using the modular? ;-) Of course I am joking and enjoying modular whereby the patching part is almost half the fun for me.

Lugia: It's good to hear that your suggested setup holds up on complex patches too, that indicates to me that I have to serious consider that setup. Well, I will be honest with you, I am pretty lazy and not looking forward in changing quite a bit of my modules' position, unscrewing the modules, moving them, etcetera, that is what I try to keep to a minimum. I still see the benefit of your setup, so I guess I will struggle a bit longer till I can't hold it any longer and then, most likely during Christmas holidays or so, removing all the modules and start with a complete new startup, your idea might be taken then :-) !

Thank you both for your input and kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Funbun,

Nice river with beautiful surroundings, so jealous :-)

Music wise, I think you are going to give yourself a hard time to limit yourself on such a small case. Since you are good with wood, the additional costs would be limited if you would straight away make a 2 x 104 or 3 x 104 HP case, saves you later the trouble of extending it and you really don't have to fill it up fully, you can even leave two rows empty and just start with one row but at least you are prepared well for the (near) future.

Instead of two Doepfer A-111-6 modules you might want to consider just one and the space that the second would leave free use that for one or two more oscillator modules to get a bit more variation.

Maths is a very big module, sure it's nice but if you want to use it mainly for envelope purposes you might want to consider just one or two envelope modules that might be A) cheaper and B) perhaps a bit smaller in space.

I don't know the Unity Gain Mixer module, are you sure it's enough and sufficient to be used as an audio interface (input/output) module too? You might want to verify that, depending on your needs of course.

With your small rack you might not be able to get very complicated music, but then again, if I understand you right, you like to focus more on minimalistic music and for starters that might be a quite good beginning but as I said, please consider making directly a bigger case, that saves you near future extension issues :-)

Good luck with your nice youtube projects, keep up the nice videos and kind regards, Garfield Modular.

Hi Ronin1973
Thanks for your reply. I think i am gonna get the quad vca from intellijel. Having read plenty on the subject and Lugia’s advice no vca would indeed feel like leaving the best part of modular out.

The only concern i have withe quad (because i am not fully understanding its modus openredi) is that it has a mixer functionality. I understand that if i were not to use the vca it would operate as a mixer but if i use it as vca, can it still serve as a mixer? If i were to plug in plaits in ch 1, but yet use vca 1 for marble, would plaits on ch1 have marble vca setting applied to it?
-- Jays

The "mixer" portion of it all has to do with the logic of what you have plugged into it and what you don't. All the jacks have normals. If you insert a patch cable, it breaks the normal.

So yes, if you want to use each output individually, mix them all, or create a two sub-mixes... you can do all that. You can read the documentation from Intellijel's website if you're still cloudy or worried. But it will work without an issue once you understand the logic behind the normals.

Hi Ronin1973
Thanks for your reply. I think i am gonna get the quad vca from intellijel. Having read plenty on the subject and Lugia’s advice no vca would indeed feel like leaving the best part of modular out.

The only concern i have withe quad (because i am not fully understanding its modus openredi) is that it has a mixer functionality. I understand that if i were not to use the vca it would operate as a mixer but if i use it as vca, can it still serve as a mixer? If i were to plug in plaits in ch 1, but yet use vca 1 for marble, would plaits on ch1 have marble vca setting applied to it?

Be very careful when window shopping for modules on Youtube.

The biggest mistake people make is not understand how many additional modules are required in order to get "that sound" out of the module(s) being featured. You'll often see someone reviewing or demoing a module with that module focused in the shot. But the rest of the kit and cables are off screen. Often the featured module is doing the least amount of the "work" going into that sound.

As far as the kit mentioned in the OP. The Plaits module and much of the Mutable stuff does not need a VCA in order to create a volume envelope for itself. It has its own built-in envelope should you choose to use it. Braids and Plaits are a staple of module because they are great for self-contained sounds that don't require additional modules to tease out. So while it's possible to get away with not having VCAs, you're leaving the best part of modular synthesis in the synth shop.

"What's missing?"

Noise source.
Sample & Hold (optional)
Dedicated LFOs?
Dedicated ADSRs?
VCAs?

I tried to wrap my head around O_C sequencers and the Turing machine mode but I do hate menu diving . But should try again and again

For sequence I have a Beatstep pro and Make Noise Rene .
What I’m looking for is a more generative melodies type so I can record and choose the happy incidents
-- Saramago

The two strategies that I suggested are all about happy accidents. You are influencing the melody rather than creating it. Put in the work and learn the module you already have.