Need a better desk to set this all up at. I whipped this up out of some old shelves today, but I need more space! And a better way of organising the cablefest.
I’m not 100% sure that having the keyboard is a good idea, or even necessary.
Nice. What are thingamybobs on the desk used for?
- Snark tuner that I wired a minijack to for tuning the synth oscillators
- 3 cool little passive modules called “Workmates” by St Modular - an LED clipping circuit (the one with the little cat face), a Low Pass Gate (which is a really cool little shaping tool that uses a vactrol to control the envelope), and a touch strip (which is essentially a switch that uses touch pressure to make the connection).
- the little blue calculator is a lo-fi sampler.
I’m quickly outgrowing the yellow modular synth, unfortunately, so may end up selling that to fund some weirder stuff.
Ok… getting a bit out of control now. Out of shot is an Arturia drum machine, a couple of pedals, and a small Eurorack
Modular rack.
Oof! That Hydrasynth looks like fun.
It just arrived today, so I’ve only had a short fiddle with it- sounds great so far though! I’ve been wanting to add a Polysynth, and this is one of the few (that aren’t massively expensive) that has control voltage ins and outs for controlling modular gear. My aim is to try to make some music without using a DAW.
IMG20230917181425_BURST001_COVER.jpg (1.01 MiB) Viewed 27365 times
I think this is the most fun I have had with my clothes on in recent years (within the bounds of the law anyway). Running it W/D/W. The mighty Samick is handling the dry modulation from the Synesthesia, and the M-Audio monitors are doing a sterling job of managing the stereo delays from the Volante and D500.
The middle layer makes sense to me.
But only the middle layer.
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.
I'm going to be expanding the modular over time too. The one thing I'm not sure about at the moment is the Hydrasynth. It sounds brilliant, but is a little bit too menu-divey for me.
Oh man, it's a whole heap of fun. The Random knob is brilliant.
Cool. There's one on TM at the moment I have a sneaky eye on. I'm trying to get my head around syncing and how that would work between the brute and beats. Seems like midi is the way rather than cv. Do you run the beats through the synth filters etc, or run them dry to your output?
Considering what it can do, most of the parameters are right in front of you with the Hydra. I've got a desktop as well, which I leaned towards for the cv inputs and having all eight knobs on the face. I do think that the explorer might have been a better option for the polyphonic after-touch keyboard.
Would love one of the bigger ones one day. There was a deluxe just offered out for 2k on trademe...
The Arcturia Microfreak is fun with modular. It's almost worth its price just as a controller and a midi-to-cv converter, but with a synth engine attached.
Oh man, it's a whole heap of fun. The Random knob is brilliant.
Cool. There's one on TM at the moment I have a sneaky eye on. I'm trying to get my head around syncing and how that would work between the brute and beats. Seems like midi is the way rather than cv. Do you run the beats through the synth filters etc, or run them dry to your output?
In my setup (Keystep as the master clock), MIDI is definitely better, but CV clock works well too.
If Drumbrute is the master clock source, CV clock out to the microbrute would be totally fine.
I’ve set mine up so I can fairly easily patch anything anywhere. Drumbrute through the Clouds and MMG filter is super cool.
). Running it W/D/W. The mighty Samick is handling the dry modulation from the Synesthesia, and the M-Audio monitors are doing a sterling job of managing the stereo delays from the Volante and D500.
