Tag: gear

I’m happy to say that I rearranged my modular case with a relatively simple organizing principle with only a couple of minor fudges to make everything work. This might be a good time for a fresh walkthrough — not of the “what is it?” kind but more how I feel about each module.

Top row: FX, and a little space on either side for further expansion.

Phonogene: its crude lo-fi nature, particularly when slowing parts down, makes it charming. You can grab almost any audio and turn it into some kind of interesting noisy texture with this.

Desmodus Versio: currently shipping to me. Desmodus itself sounds great but I was going to wait for the VST plugin — but the recent addition of Electus and Ruina firmware and the likelihood of even more in the future put this over the “must have” threshold. And I’m pleasantly inclined toward Noise Engineering after interviewing with them and getting a Manis Iteritas again.

Mimeophon: it has great character, works very nicely as a resonator and is very friendly toward modulation. It’s most of what I wanted in the ideal delay module.

FX Aid XL: this is like having a whole bunch more effects plugins, many of which sound great, and with the benefits of no latency and the ability to mess with and modulate the sample rate it runs at.

Beads: an endless abyss of possibilities. I experimented a bit with hardcore granular techniques, but am happiest using it as a way to add space and texture to other voices, or occasionally for its wavetable oscillator.

Rings: yes, I’m counting it as an effect because I use it that way more often than not. It’s a massively parallel set of bandpass filters or tuned delay lines with particular spacing. One of the first modules I owned, and I will use it as long as I use Eurorack at all… unless some other developer picks up the torch and takes modal synthesis to the next level with a true successor to Rings. So far, other developers’ idea of physical modeling is either just a delay, or a “complete” voice with no audio input.

Row 2: the oscillators.

Akemie’s Castle: a serious drone monster, and a ticket to the FM synthesis sounds of the late 80s/early 90s that I love so much.

Manis Iteritas: throbbing sometimes, noisy often, dark at its best, unique. The Smash parameter was the aspect I once liked least, but I’m finding ways to make it work for me. Very glad to have this back in my rack after a 3 year absence.

Odessa: brilliantly different. True additive synthesis, which can be twisted to many purposes. It can sound “very digital” — mostly in a good way! — but if you want to start sonic riots, just detune the partials a bit and feed it through some distortion.

Shapeshifter: it’s not just a complex oscillator, it’s a complex² oscillator. A huge parameter space to explore, and it can be hard to find your way back to any given point. I suppose that’s why it has a preset system, but I never use that except to let it boot up to a “safe” default setting.

Ensemble Oscillator: I think where people get lost with this one is that the quantizer isn’t for melodic control, but controlling the ratios between its oscillators. It’s sort of a hybrid between additive synthesis and “West Coast” sine-FM-waveshaper territory, and sounds unique and fascinating to me. I often use it for gentler chordal pads at one extreme, or noisy weirdness at the other.

Row 3: mainly modulation.

Mazzatron Mult+PassThru: with a 1HP gap on its left for cables to escape from behind it, this is a super handy way to patch from the modular into my audio interface. Getting it was a good idea.

Maths: you’d have to combine the features of 5 or 6 different function generator modules to get the ideal one for me, but Maths is a pretty solid “close enough.” Usually the first module I turn to for envelopes (looping or not) and sometimes does audio rate duties.

Stages: I probably use it more for basic LFOs than anything else, but occasional simple envelopes or slew, and rarer sequences, S&H, or more complex envelopes and hybrid modulation. I would probably be 95% fine with Zadar instead, but I don’t feel compelled to make that change.

O’Tool+: (with Shades and P-075, I put these utilities on this row instead of the bottom to make them more physically central.) Super useful for learning new modules or figuring out new techniques, checking levels, tuning and calibration, and generally knowing what’s going on. SCIENCE!

Shades: my favorite of the simpler scale/invert/offset modules, it has a good feel and is very precisely 1.000000x gain at max knob level.

Ladik P-075: simple but clever, with both latched and momentary switches for mutes. Or with Shades, sudden transitions from 0V to some other level, which is great for transposing drones.

Clep Diaz: musical and smart. I don’t have a lot of experience with it yet, but I like what it’s done for me so far!

Kermit mk2: easy to use, flexible wavetable LFO which also sounds gorgeous at audio rates.

Marbles: the module that changed my mind about random sources, mostly because it’s so good at taming randomness. And more quantizers should be as musical as the one in this, prioritizing notes by their consonance.

Teletype: anything Pam’s New Workout can do, Teletype can do better. And also a lot of other things that you might want to do with gate or CV processing or generation. As a full-time software developer, I find its simple scripting language to be refreshingly simple — but I recognize a lot of people just won’t want to interact with modules in this way, and that’s okay.

TXb: just a doodad to let Teletype query the Sweet Sixteen’s fader values. If I need to free up exactly 1HP of space in the future I could “hide” it inside the case and leave a gap instead.

Bottom/front row: utilities + misc.

ES-3 (and hidden ES-6, thanks to the Mult+PassThru): channels of communication with the DAW. I use it for audio much more than CV. I can’t imagine going back to only having the analog audio inputs now.

Gozinta: rarely needed, but sometimes I do want to boost a signal a lot.

CVilization: as a basic matrix mixer it’s dead simple to use. Getting into the more advanced possibilities requires looking at a cheat sheet, but it’s not a bad experience. This is a tool I definitely don’t need in every patch, but can do some clever things and once in a while it really justifies itself.

Natural Gate: I don’t use it as much since getting more into drones, but it is gorgeous. Demand vs. supply is so skewed that I could easily resell it for almost 3x what I paid for it new, but I would probably regret it immediately if I did.

MSCL: good for when I want a signal to be hotter, but not too hot — protecting inputs that tend to clip in unpleasant ways for instance, or keeping feedback loops right on the edge without exploding.

Tallin: still a favorite VCA thanks to its distortion options, and compact size without feeling cramped.

Drezno (and space reserved for Jena): amazing as a waveshaper and noisifier. Very good as a pattern extractor/maker/mangler.

FM Aid: not often used for its stated purpose, but as a variation on a wavefolder. I have a lot of FM stuff already, but once in a while it’s good to mix things up or do the impossible.

Blinds: like a super-Shades, but also a ring modulator/crossfader. I should have had one earlier in my modular journey.

Ana: multiple ways of taking two signals (or one signal and a reference level) and doing something to them makes for some fine waveshaping possibilities and alternatives to FM.

Portal: this should really be in the FX row I suppose, but I’ve used it to generate impulses and noise to drive other things. When I got it I was worried it would be harsh and not very commonly useful, but it can be tamed and put to good use.

Planar: there is no more fun way to crossfade between sounds, or tweak a couple of parameters together, or both at the same time.

Bonus level: the Pod60

Blades: overall favorite (dual!) filter ever, due to its considerable versatility. I like my filters to be more than filters, and this has a heavy drive or wavefolding stage, can act as an analog complex oscillator with phase modulation, etc.

Angle Grinder: another example of versatility, as an oscillator it can sound remarkably wavetable-like thanks to its “grind” section. It can be really stable or chaotic and weird depending on how you dial it in. And the highpass just sounds really great to me for some reason.

Sweet Sixteen: the control center for my recording sessions, I have it handling mix levels in the DAW, effects amounts and parameters in both hardware and software, custom/quantized pitches in Teletype, and simple attenuator duty all at once.

Last night I “buried” the Expert Sleepers ES-6 inside my case, but it’s connected through the Mazzatron Mult+Passthru — so now all of the inputs to my audio interface are on one module, I renumbered them to match, and it gained me 4 more HP.

And then this morning I was decisive for once, and bought a Doepfer A-110-4 Quadrature Thru-Zero VCO, and a York Modular rHPF to go with it (since the FM input is DC-coupled). That fills up the remaining space in my case.

And I’m declaring it “done.” My plan is this:

• Sell/trade no music gear until at least May 1.
• Sell/trade a maximum of 3 Eurorack modules throughout 2021.
• Buy only what can fit; no more/larger cases or putting stuff in storage to make room.
• Don’t buy any non-Eurorack hardware synths or effects.
• I’m allowed to sell (but not replace with other gear) the DAFM or Purple Rain if I feel like I’m just not using them at all (this seems unlikely.)
• Exceptions: beta testing, equipment failure/replacement, unambiguous version upgrade. (Also unlikely.)
• Buying software is okay but I should really consider whether I need it (and I probably don’t)

Overall, I want to move away from thinking about what I should get next, what I can sell to make space for it, and so on. I’ve gone through a lot of hardware since 2016, and… yeah it was fun exploring all of that stuff, but it’s time to break that habit.

It didn’t get in the way of my music-making, but it is kind of a drag on my confidence — almost a kind of constant second-guessing, and a lot of personal energy expenditure. That quote about “commodity fetishism” and “agential inversion of musician and instrument” really struck deep.

I have explored pretty much everything in the modular domain that really interests me. To practice some of it I need to use software rather than hardware, but I’m okay with that. I really like where my setup is now, the music I’m making with it and the inspiration and possibilities it offers, and I don’t need to keep shuffling my deck just because there are other cards out there in the world.

Perhaps once the incoming stuff settles, and more likely after the final Mutable Instruments module (which, yes, I’ve been beta testing) is revealed, I’ll go over all the bits and how I’m using them.

There are some module brands which can instantly create a holiday atmosphere among Eurorack geeks by announcing a new module. Mutable Instruments is one of the prime ones.

I did not see this coming at all. I had misinterpreted a previous hint and expected another successor to an existing module. But it’s a pleasant surprise!

Yes, I already have three Eurorack filters, which seems odd for someone who claims to not use subtractive synthesis all that much, and yes, I ordered this one too.

The cool things about this one are the continuous blend between lowpass, bandpass and highpass configurations — which, when oscillating, allows phase modulation. And the routing between the two filters, from single to parallel to serial, is also smoothly controllable and can be used as an input mixer. And the drive sections are smoothly adjustable from overdrive to wavefolding. And a button switches filter #2 to follow #1’s frequency but with its own offset, making variable-width bandpass or notch as well as harmonically tuned resonant peaks/oscillation easy.

In a sense, this is not just a dual filter but an analog complex oscillator, and those are magic words to grab my attention.

I think my protest about subtractive synthesis is a little misplaced. There have been several times where I used both Angle Grinder and VCFQ in stereo, mid-side, or serial HP/LP configurations. Or Angle Grinder as an oscillator, and VCFQ and Shelves in stereo… and so on.

My plan at the moment is to keep all these filters around, unless there is something specific that really calls to me more later. (More on that when I write up my goals for 2021.) VCFQ has a lovely sound to it and its pings are very nice. Angle Grinder of course is a great oscillator and weirdness maker. Shelves… is not quite what I expected but can be patched in some surprisingly cool ways, and it’s very possible it will make sense to pair it up with Blades for even more serial/parallel goodness.

---

The other bit of modular fun is Mystic Circuits Portal, which arrived yesterday. It claims to be “harmonic distortion” but what it is is a glitchy weirdifier, yet more useful than I first thought. The idea is it’s like a wavefolder but wraps instead of folding — but the “track” parameter causes it to crawl along and add motion in its own unstable way, enough so that with no input it can still burble and tick and hiss and sputter. And it also seems to pick up and amplify noise and exaggerate small motions in the DC range.

The second output is a sample+hold of the input triggered whenever the main part folds, and that includes the crawly motion so it’s this cool animated sample rate reduction effect.

The third output sends quick little triggers whenever the main part folds, and those can happen frequently enough to make a buzzy oscillation of their own, or with the feedback setting, act as a crazy little burst generator. I’m looking forward to trying a few experiments with this.

It’s a weird module to be sure, not something to use in every patch — but I feel like I have slack since all my actual needs for the music I make are well covered. So why not have something odd, unpredictable and sometimes inspiring in there?

My (replacement) DAFM Synth arrived, and it works just fine. Apparently, the one I returned also works fine in the hands of the seller, which is weird because it definitely overheated its USB power cable within a few seconds and wouldn’t turn on for me at all… but whatever, I definitely have a working one now.

The interface, while far from knob-per-function, is pretty clever. Rather than one mid-sized display it has four tiny OLED screens; in most modes each shows the parameters for its associated FM operator. The preset loading screen is different, and a bit weird and hard to figure out at first with the sparse documentation.

The navigation can be a bit awkward. FM synths have this challenging aspect where sometimes you want to divide up the parameter space functionally — setting all the ratios on one page, the envelopes on another, etc. as this does — and sometimes you want to to divide it by operator, so the ratio, level, envelopes etc. for a single operator are all together. I think if I were working with this physical design, I would have had the left encoder always “move” (selecting parameters, or press-and-turn to change pages) while the right encoder always edits whatever the cursor is pointing to. But this is still a million times better than trying to edit on an old-school DX synth.

There’s a tiny 11-note keyboard at the bottom, which is best reserved for emergency “no MIDI controller” purposes. The chip of choice — in my case the noisier YM2612 — is on display behind a transparent window, while the rest of the top is dark tinted acrylic.

That chip has a weird design flaw called the “ladder effect” that gives it its characteristic sound. There seems to be a ton of nerdy analysis of this and maybe not that much agreement on the details, but it comes down to: some Yamaha engineer cut one or two corners too many. The upshot is a sort of a characteristic digital fizziness that is not simple low bit resolution or low sample rate, and sounds pretty nice with some kinds of ambient pads and bass sounds. You can also set very long decay times that sound a bit like stuck notes, and it just kind of flows nicely with the noise and a touch of reverb or delay.

Possibly the truest and most universal trope from cyberpunk is “the street finds its own uses for things.” It can be an important principle in design in general, and we definitely see it all the time in electronic music. I’ve got my favored way to work with Bitwig, which absolutely baffles some other Bitwig users. I’ve got specific roles I like to throw at the Microfreak, which it might not have been designed for but it wasn’t designed against. And here’s this budget chip from an 80s game console, built into a mini synth with a cheap MCU from 2007, (mis)using USB as a power supply, and I’m using the synth in specific limited ways to serve my music.

---

I’ve entangled myself in deeper uncertainty about how to divvy up the remaining space in my modular case. As a result, I took the Euphoria off my wishlist (but hey, if you’re a family member reading this and you bought it for me already, worry not, it will not go to waste.)

Noise Engineering is doing cool stuff. Desmodus Versio has gone from a cool reverb to a whole platform, it seems, and the temptation is rising. (Although I think they misstepped when they didn’t put the USB port on the front to make it easier to flash; perhaps they will offer an expander that helps with that.) Some things I’ve read and watched about the Serge SSG or its cousin the Sport Modulator make me ponder that. The idea I originally had, to put in a Doepfer 256-stage BBD, is still there, but the much smaller Erica option would allow some other choices… and of course I still don’t know what the mystery release from Mutable Instruments will be.

So, I’ll just wait, and play with what I have, until a path is clear. I have a fine set of delays (and reverbs) already and so some of these, despite having a different vibe, might not really be the best choice but just FOMO.

I’m basically completely used to the new headphones now, and appreciating the extra detail I’m hearing with them.

Voxengo just released a plugin called TEOTE, an acronym for “That’s Easier On the Ears.” It adjusts the spectral balance of the input to bring it closer to a theoretical ideal — with minimal adjustment it just magically makes stuff sound better. This one uses multiband dynamics, which is a bit fancier than Soundtheory Gullfoss, and to my ears it seems to sound better on most material.

Tools like this are great for me. My mixing process isn’t the meticulous, surgical adjustment and perfect fitting together several individually recorded parts — rather, it happens partially as I build up my parts in preparation to record, and partially as a big part of the recorded performance itself. A tedious manual search for places in the spectrum that could use a tiny boost here and a narrow cut there would take me out of the creative flow, but slapping an automatic plugin onto the channel to see if it sounds better does not. (If there’s a drastic improvement, that means there was a lot to correct in the first place, and it’s probably worth a little of my time to investigate.)

---

Two things arrived on my doorstep today. First the bad news: after nearly a full month of shipping, the DAFM synth arrived from Spain. Its wonderfully crisp OLED display showed something for about 6 seconds and then died, the USB power cable unusually warm. Switching cables and chargers didn’t help.

Since I have had second thoughts about even needing another synthesizer, I’ve written to request a refund rather than a replacement. We’ll see how this goes.

The other thing is much happier: u-he CVilization. I spent about 90 minutes playing with the matrix mixer mode before even looking at the others, and… it’s a game changer honestly. It handles audio quite well, and is as easy and intuitive to dial in as I had imagined and hoped. But it also encourages taking control voltages to new places, and that seems to be its major strength.

It is a very good friend to a sequencer, especially something with multiple channels and not necessarily its own quantizer, like the 0-Ctrl.

Mode 1 can mix audio of course, but also CV, with handy muting, inversion, quantization and sample and hold. I had a patch going where it:

• served as a feedback mixer for Mimeophon-as-resonator (with mutes for the original input, the feedback, or the final output, and the option to invert the feedback for a different character)
• selected between or combined (using mutes) two pitch CVs from 0-Ctrl, with sample+hold and quantization. And also, allowed for mixing in some audio from another channel — which served to slightly randomize the pitch while staying within the scale and maintaining the overall melodic contour. It was gated by 0-Ctrl’s dynamic gate output, so I had control over the rhythmic pattern as well as swing/timing.
• routed both pitch and audio to Mimeophon’s frequency control, so it simultaneously tracked pitch and added FM… again with a mute switch.

That’s a heck of a lot more than an analog mixer can do. And also, since it’s 4×4 rather than the AI008’s 4×3, it’s easy to set up stereo feedback matrices with ping-pong and so forth.

Mode 2 is the sequencer and sequential switch, and though it took me more time to grasp it, it’s also a very powerful friend to 0-Ctrl. Rearranging incoming control signals and interposing other values (fixed or random) into the sequence, driven either by a clock division or using a different sequence length, can really extend and bring variations into what would otherwise be a short and very repetitive sequence. I didn’t even mess with self-patching, which could potentially be really useful with the sample+hold feature. (It can also route audio, switching different sources and destinations around or silencing it, and that is probably going to have some use as well.)

Mode 3 is the “Mucorder”, which is purely for control voltages. It’s less like Marbles than I first thought — but again, a really good companion for 0-Ctrl. Record up to 16 steps, and let it mutate either by overwriting with values from its own input, another channel, a random shift up or down, or harmonization with the first channel. Each channel can have a different recording length, which allows a lot of polyrhythmic interplay. It’s another winner.

I haven’t tried mode 4 yet, but rather than manipulating CV quite as much, it pans/routes its four inputs smoothly across four destinations. Planar can either pan one signal to four outputs, or four inputs to one output… but I suspect it will be a good controller to rotate multiple things around the world with CVilization, and likely a powerful tool for drones.

So, wow. I was expecting a mixer and a quantizer, but I got quite a lot more than that.

The Medusa arrived yesterday — a bit late, box damaged, but synth intact.

It’s the sort of synth where, if I tried it for five minutes at Knobcon or something using its factory presets, I’d almost certainly have walked away and not looked back. Probably in under five minutes. The presets are, for the most part, awful.

But once I figured out what I was doing with both the synth section and the grid, and started exploring a little… this is one extremely cool piece of gear.

I understand why so many of the demos and several presets are bland: the analog oscillators only do the classic simple shapes, the digital ones are raw and basic but not in a particularly gnarly or exciting way, and the filter doesn’t have much character of its own. It’s a clean slate and you have to do your own color mixing, to mangle some metaphors. With judicious tuning, use of the oscillator sync, FM, copious modulation sources and all sorts of clever tricks available with the grid sequencer/performance controller, if it sounds boring it’s the musician’s fault. Synthesis means the assembly of smaller parts into a whole, and that’s what has to happen here. It can certainly do beautiful, brutal, quirky or scary, and it’s not even difficult to get there. It can’t do everything, but that’s why I have more than one synth… 🙂

As with most synths it really benefits from some reverb or delay. Every other Dreadbox synth has one of those built in; this doesn’t. This is not a problem for me at all, but it does contribute to some of those lackluster demos since people seem to think it’s “cheating” to add external FX.

The grid is brilliant. Note mode lets you select (or create) a scale, and also set the layout to the interval of your choice (or a “guitar” mode); it’s a combination that is really great for jamming, thinking differently about intervals and chords, or playing runs that would be (almost?) impossible on a piano-style keyboard. The velocity setting doesn’t work very well with the onboard synth and honestly is best turned off, but pressure and X/Y movement can be assigned to various parameters. Grid mode is a sequencer that’s mostly intuitive (with a couple of odd quirks) and lets you assign not just notes and chords to any individual step, but ties, steps that randomize on each playthrough, and parameter settings. Between that and the paraphonic modes — and the way those modes interact when you’re using FM or sync — it’s definitely got some unique capabilities.

The Lyra-8 was inspiring and influential, leading me toward the 0-Ctrl and certain techniques. But I do think the Medusa is the better choice for me now and for the future.

Carefully Introducing Problems was released in early June. I recorded nothing new in June, and two tracks in mid-July. Things have broken loose though; in the last couple of weeks I’ve finished 6 tracks. Perhaps it’s the big refresh that my modular synth went through, or perhaps I’m just coming out of a funk.

I mean, it’s still the Corona year, America feels more like a failed state than ever, and I’m still tired and tense all the time, and I feel like everyone’s just trying to hang on and survive. I was thinking today about a former coworker who said (many years ago now) that she admired me because I was always trying to improve myself, and I kind of wonder when I stopped doing that. But still, I feel like making music.

Phonogene arrived Saturday. An old one, with the ugly knobs Make Noise originally used (but with the wrong colors) and a panel that looks as if it was dirtied and cleaned a few times in its life. But it’s got the firmware update from 2013 at least. I’ve got some replacement knobs on the way, and might pick up the Grayscale replacement panel if I feel it’s warranted in a couple of weeks or so.

Phonogene was discontinued in early 2018 and was succeeded by Morphagene — which has higher sound quality, more memory, stereo, multiple layers for true granular synthesis, SD card saving and loading, etc. But there are those who prefer the Phonogene’s charm and simplicity, and I believed I’d be among them. For smooth granular I’ve got Clouds; for blurry spectral time manipulation there’s the E520. Phonogene is more for raw 90s “clicks and cuts” style manipulation, combined with synchronization of other modules. As I’ve found, it suits my music quite well.

I don’t have much thought about what could go in the remaining space. (18HP, plus a possible 8 more from the MG-1 and a possible 4 more if I “hide” the ES-6 inside and access it through the PassThru.) I don’t need another oscillator, that’s for sure, nor more effects, and I think I’m fine on modulation sources. I figure, I should hold off to see if something else brilliant comes along, or my musical needs evolve. So I’m declaring this “version 4.0.”

Quick summary:

• “0.0” (Exploration) was learning Eurorack and exploring.
• “1.0” (Suitability) was when I thought I had a fairly stable system I could live with, which would only mutate slowly. The focus was on complex oscillators, wavetables and resonators.
• “2.0” (Consolidation) replaced a lot of stuff with an ER-301 Sound Computer, and moved it all into a single case with a lot of empty space.
• “2.1” (Effects Dive) had me trying out a Rainmaker, Erbe-Verb, Doepfer BBD and more pedal effects.
• “3.0” (Focus) was realizing that Version 2 was kind of wrong for how I want to make music (even though I learned a lot), and reverting to what I liked best about 1.0.
• “3.1” (Integration) switched me from Maschine to Bitwig and the ES-3/ES-6.
• “3.14” (Harmony) saw me adding the Lyra-8 and think more about the performance aspect of my process.
• “3.2” (FM Overkill) was sort of a refinement phase, a further refocusing and embracing of what I liked. That began in late 2019.
• “4.0” (New Waves) includes selling off my effects pedals, adding the 0-Ctrl and Planar and the Pod 60 case, and switching from the beloved Hertz Donut and E352 to Shapeshifter and EnOsc.

I’m still feeling that time is crawling and flying simultaneously. Maybe that’s just the new normal. It’s probably always been true, but maybe the pandemic made me notice it more.

The partially formed concept I had for the album I’m working on is related to time — entropy, the “arrow of time” and how it relates to life; the opposing but complementary forces of Preservation and Ruin, from which Harmony arises, from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series.

Except that the tracks I’ve recorded really aren’t that much in line with that. I’ll just keep recording stuff, and see what happens I suppose 🙂

---

I wound up with the 4ms Ensemble Oscillator (ENOSC) and am hugely impressed with it.

Trying to keep the technical description part of this short — ENOSC begins with the basic concept of additive synthesis, but instead of fixed harmonic frequency ratios between the partials, it lets you choose from preset or custom-defined chords, scales, or non-octave repeating interval sets, within or outside standard Western 12TET tuning. The idea is to explore the whole spectrum between additive synthesis and music theory. You can also detune them for lush chorusing effects.

On top of that, the partials can FM each other, using the root or highest partial s the modulator, or each modulating the next higher. Combining that with different frequency intervals can give extremely rich results!

And on top of that there’s a phase shaper and a wavefolder, each with three modes.

The sets of partials have three different output assignment modes, but unfortunately each of them can suffer from phase cancellation issues. Thankfully I’ve built up a pretty good roster of ways to deal with those, it’s just something I’ll have to keep an eye and an ear on.

Overall, the sounds this thing can produce are diverse and… kind of alarming to be honest. Pipe organs are easy, and as others have said, using it for drones feels like cheating. I’ve accidentally created really brassy horns with a sort of grace note attack, with no envelopes at all, just as a consequence of the crossfading as the Root input changes along with cross-FM. It’s done vocal formant “yai yoi oay” type stuff, 808 style hi-hats, a combined bassline/chord stabs, wild FM percussion, and some almost Karplus-Strong like power chords. The thing is full of sweet spots and it’s very easy to get something good out of it, but I feel like it’s going to take a while to familiarize myself with it so I can more or less predict what will happens when I change one aspect of its current state.

ENOSC is 16HP, and feels like it’s deceptively small — like it’s trying to fool people into thinking it’s humbler and simpler than it really is. It also tends to eat attenuators for breakfast — any CVing you do needs to be really cut down to size to work well. So it probably should have been 26HP, like the 4ms SMR and SWN as well as E352 and Shapeshifter. It deserves the larger stature 🙂

I’ve gone ahead and put the Faderbank, HD mk2 and E352 up for sale. The kinds of sounds I’m getting from my current rig without them are perfectly suited to what I want to do, while giving me a whole lot of mad ̶s̶c̶i̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ engineering exploration.

I also bought a used Phonogene, for semi-lo-fi varispeed tape loop stuff — something I have missed since trying W/. The looper and Spectral Time Machine in E520 are their own things, good but not the same as that; Clouds is granular and also different; Mimeophon is not quite there with its hold feature. Bitwig doesn’t really do it live or in such a hands-on way, though I’ve made decent use of its sampler in the Grid.

I’m going to pass on Casper/Bastl Waver, after watching a video demo where the sounds are just not very appealing, there was some nasty clipping and some thresholds where the level suddenly jumps.

My past few tracks have used a LOT of moderately slow LFOs, which made me think a bit about maybe Zadar or a DivKid 0chd — but I do have plenty of available CV outputs and can assign them to LFOs in Bitwig, so I won’t go there.

I feel I’m at or near a “version 4.0” of my modular synth, and maybe I will write up a summary of it, like I did with what I had near the start of this blog.