#1944

I have an 0-coast. I love it. I was thinking I’d start a little rack to compliment it but x-pan is sold out everywhere and that was the module I thought I’d start with and build from there. Therefore, I’ll probably grab a 0-Ctrl instead, but I would love any perspective you can give me on what the experience of that combo modules might be like as I try to plan ahead.

I have an old beatstep I use for sequencing, it’s great but the touch plates and time per step of the 0-Ctrl excite me.

I’m interested in chord because of how it harmonizes from notes, but eventually it might be fun to sequence those voices independently with an awkward combo of the beatstep, 0-ctrl, Keystep 37 and Logic.

Basimilus’ 8 gate inputs and the 8 gate outputs of the 0-Ctrl also interest me, maybe paired with the wogglebug it’d be fun to see what kinds of weird drum-type sounds would come out.

Hopefully that’s some more perspective. Thanks for your response, I appreciate your advice

#1945

X-PAN is fine, but not what I’d think of as an early or casual purchase. You have to be really interested in cross-fading and/or panning multiple parts.

0-CTRL is pretty cool, and will always be useful down the line, even with other synths.

I’m not sold on Chord 2’s “harmonization” feature, and as a quad oscillator, it’s quite limited—other than pitch, all the oscillators follow the same controls. The module fills an extremely specific role for me for pads and stabs with the Sinfonion. Otherwise, I consider it just another half-baked Qu-bit design. (That’s my opinion.) In any case, Chord 2’s outputs just drone, so you need quite a bit of additional hardware to manage and shape those signals.

Basimilus is a great module. With enough modulation, you can make one Basimilus sound like an entire percussion kit. It does pair well with modules like the Wogglebug, but you may need attenuators. Maths will get you started with attenuation and offset, but you may quickly find you need more. Many good options, there. I think Klavis Mixwitch is a particularly good value, given it is inexpensive, provides decent visual feedback, and has some interesting additional functionality.

Oh, and buy used whenever possible—you’ll save a lot of money.

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#1946

A YouTube video will not tell you about its strengths and limitations; it will only show you what one person has learned to do with it. A system isn’t inherently good or bad in absolute terms, but rather in terms of what it can provide you. I can talk about the modules a little.

Chords (module) is interesting if you feel you must have chords (musically) but that power comes at the expense of some flexibility in the voice. You’ll also need to play it live or have at least 2 channels of CV to control it (chord type and root note). Playing it through one of the optomix channels should probably provide what you expect: a 4 oscillator paraphonic chordal voice. This isn’t something that fits my use case but you might like it.

LPGs like those in optomix and elsewhere can seem appealing as a “VCA and VCF + Envelope” but they aren’t as flexible as having all 3 of those things piece meal. They provide a certain shape and sound which can be appealing but I probably wouldn’t want them to be my only way to envelope voices (having said that I personally like optomix).

Basimilus iteritas is a very interesting voice, but in this context I think you’ll want to control it in various ways of which you might not have enough. I’m sure you can have fun with it, but more modulation sources or sequencing will probably help get the best of it: an interesting and distinctive module that probably needs more support to shine.

Maths and X Pan are both interesting and flexible modules that can do quite a lot of things so they may make sense, irrespective of the rest of the system, though they are both quite opinionated meaning you’ll have to enjoy and embrace their quirks and features to get the best out of them. The 0 Coast and 0 Ctrl make an interesting duo and are quite featureful but how that integrates into the latter system depends on how you work with it. Similarly the sound and style has to sit where you want.

On the whole I’d say this system is getting more coherent, but for me, I’d want some more rhythm and CV generators or sequencers, more modulation sources, more VCAs and probably a filter. In the end you won’t know how it works for you until you have it in front of you. After a while of use, you’ll know what to add, remove or change. If you start out with only the 0-Coast first, learn it, then add the 0-Ctrl and learn the duo you’ll probably understand what makes sense for you. A few months of that and you’ll have a much better idea of what to put in a rack to build it out.

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#1947

I love my Basimilus. It’s more versatile than it seems from most demos too. Feed a square wave into the trigger and it drones nicely with some reverb. Definitely agree on the attenuation though. I have a Lapsus Os that I use for that (and inversion, which comes in surprisingly handy with the BIA).

#1948

I am strangely obsessed with stereo panning, even with a mono output like the 0-coast. Not sure how tame-able the results will be with Maths alone, but the online videos have intrigued me. Do you think the 0-coast and Qpas would be a more immediate place to start for mono to stereo fun if I’m jumping the gun with x-pan?

I was initially interested in Bloom as well, but advice from owners has steered me away that “fractal sequencing” needs to bake a little longer.

When you say “all the oscillators follow the same controls” you mean in a timbral sense? You use it in addition to the Sinfonion? How are you using them together? Sinfonion gives you more control over the chords and Chord v2 does some simpler accents? That’s helpful about the drone from each output, I guess I hadn’t really thought of how much wrangling it would take to get useable voices. Thank you. Why aren’t you sold on how Chord harmonizes from a single note? I’ve looked into Telharmonic a little, but it seems much weirder (in a cool way) but without 7th chords.

I’ll check out Klavis Mixwitch. Thank you!

#1949

I always appreciate your responses. Gonna mull this over today. Thank you.

#1950

Quoting myself from another thread. I think it makes more sense to put this post here:

Similarly to @frenteluminoso, I am also assembling my first eurorack setup. Actually I am going towards a split system for ambient/drone, with a NiftyCase for whatever is sound creation (oscillators, filters, VCAs, sequencers, etc.), and an Intellijel Palette dedicated to sound manipulation only (granular synthesis, time stretching, effects, etc.) to be used both as a complement to the first and also to process incoming sound in real time as a standalone unit.
My question is: how would you complete them? I was thinking about adding a filter to the NiftyCase (Three Sisters?) and a Monsoon to the Palette.

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#1951

QPAS is way more interesting than X-PAN, and there are lots of inputs you can patch to from 0-CTRL. QPAS is really designed for creating a stereo signal from a mono signal, and that’s a good thing, although it’s not exactly about “panning”. (I’m not knocking X-PAN—it does what it is intended to do quite well. I use X-PAN as a stereo submixer, in front of an effect module.)

Re: Chord 2: yes, timbrally all the voices are doing the same thing. The only reason I have Chord 2 is that it’s cheap and small and easy to tune as a chord voice for the Sinfonion. I have low expectations of the Chord 2 in my specialized setup. (I made a video.) As far as auto-harmonization goes, I don’t think there’s all that much magic out there—better to learn to do it yourself or with another human than rely on an algorithm.

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#1952

There is no “complete”. Less planning, more playing. No plan survives first contact with the enemy (which in this case, is all you do not yet know). Start very small. Grow slowly. Don’t get hung up on preconceived notions about cases or case sizes—cases come, cases go. Getting into 1U tiles right off the bat might not be the best idea.

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#1953

I see what you mean, and I agree. It’s easy to get carried away, and the only effective way to go ahead is to keep using my current setup, learn new things and then decide if it’s time to add a new module.
Thank you for the tip.

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#1954

Completely agree.
When I started, I basically wanted to have as many physical modelling (Rings etc) things as possible. The thing is, Rings, great as it is by itself, truly shines when it’s getting modulated up the wazoo, which I hadn’t taken into account.
Simple LFOs are great, but something with squiggly waveforms can then lead to the most wondrous sounds coming from your sound sources.
Attenuators/attenuverters are supremely handy, too. Thankfully many modules have them, but having a few attenuators to tame some wild fluctuating madness is something I hadn’t considered until I needed them.

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#1955

I think this is what people need to hear nowadays. All the forums say buy a big enough case to grow into, make a set plan of what you want to do, or buy every piece you need to do everything you can dream of wanting. The fact is that everytime I sit down at my system I do something different. And after having a 3U case, I’m more excited about just finding the right modules for me than buying a monster case with every module.
I’d almost say limit yourself and buy as you need. You’ll be way more focused on getting what you actually want instead of what will make a complete system.

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#1956

My general understanding right now is that this format is at its best when dealing with limits. How can you achieve a certain outcome with a confined set of tools? The danger with Eurorack is that options seem infinite but I find that the root of productive creativity is making strange, unintuitive, and unique connections to pose new ideas, sounds, and frameworks.

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#1957

I personally get annoyed by this mantra of don’t buy modules. It’s a valid advice, but sometimes it’s repeated almost religiously.
Firstly there doesn’t have to be two polarities like one module a year or a monster case.
Some things just don’t make sense in isolation. There is a certain amount of modules needed to make a cohesive system. And what’s cohesive is very personal.
Most popular modules resell well.
And advice to get a reasonably sized case, like 6u 104, is very practical. I think it’s just unreasonable to populate a lot is small cases with modules only to end up with a bigger case one was told to avoid.

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#1958

Those are not exactly unique possibilities, more like different takes on one idea. Different interfaces. In some places they are less important - like VCOs, and in other define the experience - like sequencers.
And then comes personal vision how one wants to interact with a system.
Someone is content with sampling raw vco sounds and shaping them elsewhere, and one module is enough for this usecase. Someone else might want to do multivoice polyphony with drums, all in modular. And that can’t be done in a palette case without certain compromises or maybe can’t be done in a palette case at all.

#1959

My opinion, based on pretty recently getting into modular, is that it is much easier to make music with an assortment of modules, and much easier to learn synthesis with fewer. I knew quite a bit about synthesis before I started with modular, so the advice that I was receiving to start slow seemed weirdly out of step with what felt natural to me. I do resonate with the idea that a module’s character is unique and in order to learn it to its expressive potential you need to be relatively undistracted by the rest of your system. The fix for that, for me, is to sometimes decide in advance whether I’m sitting down to learn, or sitting down to make.

I think the advice I’d give someone else is spend the amount of money you are comfortable spending on the modules that seem cool to you based on videos, keeping in mind that utilities are as much or more important than sound generating modules. Then have a great time learning and making and maybe don’t buy anything else until you’ve made a few things that you like and feel proud of.

10 Likes
#1960

You’re very right on this. Maybe it comes from the ways we typically consume the media around modular? Lots of pictures and videos of a person showing off their tight minimal ambient rack, or a person with a monster case making feature length tracks, when in reality, most people are probably in between.
But you’re right on aquiring a bunch of small cases. Surprised expandable cases aren’t more of a thing (I guess the Moog and Frap skifs can be linked, same with Mantises). I DIYed my case and made it easy to add another box ontop and still reach the busboard below. Seen some 3D print stuff developing as well.

#1961

I started in June and have filled 80-90% of a 2x84 case. Patching and the quality/texture of CV interested me more than unlocking new capabilities, so I mostly ignored the “clear goals required” pablum. “First contact with the enemy” is spot-on. My purchases took a few odd, compulsive twists, mostly due to interest in DIY kits. I’m ready to let go of 3 or 4 modules already, simply due to details/preferences I overlooked as well as freeing HP - I don’t want a bigger case yet. This all feels pretty natural. Planning was the most painful bit, and mitigating that is worth losing $20 on the odd awkward fit here and there.

Limits are crucial and they can be anything: for me, I’m staying mostly (cheap-ish) analog and I plan to add only what I can’t code/upload into Crow. I like sparse, so less happening at a time is just fine. I enjoy my nearly-full case, and I did when I only had 4 modules (Maths, Cold Mac, Sampling Modulator, and Dual Xfade, maybe?) The brain bending, perspective shifting, and problem solving are almost as fun as the random surprises.

I would warn against overlooking quirks in case power discrepancies, though - I wasted some postage due to thinking my 3 Sisters was busted when it just needed fuses swapped :slight_smile: I’m glad I got that sorted - I use it in every patch!

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#1962

Sorry in advance for this simple issue with my Mother 32.

This has been driving me nuts trying to figure out a way to do this…I’ve got the M32’s LFO set for a decent amount of tremelo. All I want to do is use CV from somewhere to modulate the VCF Mod Amount so that the LFO (Trem) comes in and out slowly.

Was thinking I should be able to use the LFO TRI out from another M32 to do this, but there isn’t a set CV patch in for the VCF Mod Amount sadly.

There has to be a way to do this, right? What am I missing? Do I need to look outside of the M32 patchbay options?

#1963

If I understand right, you need two LFOs: one that is faster, which determines your tremolo, and a slower one that would bring the level of that first LFO up and down.

If you have a second M32, or an LFO from somewhere else, you can use the VC Mix on your first M32 to create the kind of signal you’re describing. Put your tremolo LFO (presumably coming from your first M32) into Mix 1, and nothing into Mix 2. Use the second, slower LFO into VC Mix Ctrl; this will cause the VC Mix output to oscillate between nothing (Mix 2) and the tremolo signal (Mix 1). Then route VC Mix out to what you’re trying to modulate.

I don’t think there is a way to do what you’re describing with a single M32, without a second LFO; but the raising and lowering of the tremolo control you’re describing can otherwise be handled on-board.

(I no longer have a Mother 32 but I’m looking at the panel. This should work!)

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