I did a search here and didn’t find a topic dedicated to the Moog semii-modular boxes. If I missed please collapse this into it.
Here’s a general topic for them.
I’ll start with a question: Anyone know what kind of power/audio cables are on the inside?
I’d like to mount mine in their cases upside down because of how I am arranging a workspace but I don’t know the part name to search for a longer replacement.
I can post a picture later if that helps.
Sorry this doesn’t address your question.
I am helping a collaborator think about getting a bit deeper into modular. He’s got a Mother 32 and an Arturia Microbrute, as well as Ableton, a small external Mackie mixer, and a bunch of guitar pedals.
Mostly I’m wondering what folks have liked as modules to complement a Mother 32. He’s particularly interested in sample manipulation.
While we’re at it, any suggestions for small and relatively inexpensive cases. He’s a decent woodworker, if that helps…
Thanks!
I have both DFAM and M32 which led to a full modular rig. I can share my use case for sample work. I have phonogene and Morphagene. For mother 32, I have loved throwing soft notes into MG with gentle attack and decay. Turn up morph knob and get the pitch shifted grains in stereo run through a delay to get lovely texture beds. Combine that texture bed with a punchy M32 bass line and you are off! Side chain the bass line and texture bed to get the sounds interacting further with something like an Optomix. Endless paths really. The phonogene in broken echo mode pairs nice with a sequence coming through the M32, giving it organic glitches and and delay lines with tone qualities that stand up to the fat moog oscillators. But the DFAM is my real favorite for pairing with those sample modules. Use pitch and velocity out to modular slide and grain size on preloaded samples and you get this highly musical synced modulation that feels married to the beat from DFAM. The moog semi-Modular’s are very intuitive and stable core pieces of kit that my modular can then mess with. Check out sylvan Esso backstage patch videos from @madeofoak as he carried a cv bus case on tour with a mother 32 supported by lots of sampling modules. Might spur some ideas. Happy patching.
First off I’d suggest all the basics, like @Gahlord said. Maybe tell him to swap out the Microbrute for a Minibrute 2, since he’s looking to get into modular- that would really give him most of the basic bits to work with. And with the Minibrute, Arturia has their own line of two different Eurorack cases that you can attach to the Minibrute with a handle; and that’s how I started.
For modules, Mutable Instruments’ Clouds is a fantastic granular audio processor that i’d recommend.
I’d also potentially recommend Chase Bliss Audio’s Mood guitar pedal. And to round it out, since you said he has a bunch of guitar pedals, ALM/Busy Circuits has a module called S.B.G. which is basically just a guitar pedal breakout, lets you adjust outgoing and incoming signal levels, as well as a floating ring patch point for pedal expression inputs.
Long time for this thread to get some love. BASIC of all questions, but how do I bypass the normalization and use an external EG module to control the amplitude of the M32? I have it sitting next to a MN Function and Maths. I cannot figure out the patching, and have done a good amount of reading. Thanks for the basic help.
This might be a dumb answer but can you not just take your EG module output and put it into the VCA CV input on the M32?
Yeah I tried that but the internal normalization doesn’t seem to break when doing that. Took the gate out to trigger the EG. weird.
The normalization between the EG and the primary VCA cannot be broken, but there is a workaround available using the vca in the VC Mix.
To bypass the Mother’s main VCA, take your signal directly after the filter using the VCF out patch point. Patch VCF out into MIX 2. Now patch your external envelope signal to the VC MIX CTRL. I believe the VC MIX knob should be set fully counter clockwise on MIX 1. The VC MIX will be your new signal out. I think this should do the trick.
I’m sure this is really stupid but I’m trying to send pitch CV from a Korg SQ-1 to my Mother 32.
The pitch is way off. Does anyone have any simple tricks to get it to track pitch accurately? I have a vague memory that it needs to be stepped up or down by an octave or something. I haven’t had any time to research it yet so I figured I’d ask first…
Thanks!
I haven’t used the SQ-1 with a Mother 32, but I have used one with a Subharmonicon.
Similar to the Subharmonicon, the Mother 32’s VCO input is “summed internally with the VCO FREQUENCY control, the Keyboard CV and any VCO frequency modulation”, so any CV value will be treated as an offset, rather than absolute.
The other issue is the SQ-1 outputs 0 to +10V whereas the Moog expects -5 to +5V so you’ll only be able to achieve half of the ten octave range without extra hardware.
If the pitch tracking itself is off there is a section in the Mother 32 manual that details how to recalibrate the VCO (“VCO CALIBRATION”, pg. 51).
Also if I recall when I’m doing this I have to hit middle C on the M32 keyboard so everything is aligned voltage wise. Another thing to remember is the offset requirement if you are driving external VCOs as well.
