Kickoff

After a long time of dabbling with electronic music, various DAWs (FL Studio, Ableton, Jeskola Buzz, trackers of old), synths and drum machines and semimodular systems (mostly Moog), I finally dipped my toes into modular synthesis. Hence the name of this blog.

Now, I don't know about it much. But I find the possibilities intriguing. One of the coolest things in music is sound design, but unfortunately the software and hardware I've had never fully supported me in that. Recently I've sold a lot of it, or left it in a storage, and focused on mixing with my hybrid DJ setup. It's been fun, but I've never lost my appetite for building a modular setup.

Just few days back I finally pulled the trigger and ordered or otherwise gathered the following modules:

• ALM Busy Circuits MCO
• ALM Busy Circuits Pamela's Pro Workout
• Befaco Output V3
• Behringer Brains (tried to get Mutable Instruments Plaits, but they are surprisingly hard to come by)
• Doepfer A-118-2
• Expert Sleepers Disting mk4
• Happy Nerding FX AID XL
• Intellijel Quad VCA
• Intellijel Mixup
• Make Noise Maths
• Mutable Instruments Links (clone, because Links is even harder to come by than Plaits)
• Noise Engineering Ataraxic Iteritas Alia
• Tiptop Audio Forbidden Planet

The road that took me here was filled with discussions in Reddit, watching hours of Youtube videos on modular synthesis, music theory and modules themselves, diving deep into Modulargrid, chatting with ChatGPT and Claude, you name it. What I ultimately wanted was to have a setup that offers tons of variety and possibilities for exploration, is a bit on the harsh side sonically and let's me design even chiptune sounds and pretty much covers all the basics: solid sound sources, ample modulation opportunities, effects, filters, mixing, outputs, the works. I finally got all the pieces together and here it is. Well, not all the pieces as there are hundreds of options from where to choose, but this is a good start and should keep me busy for quite a while.

This setup will be a part of a bigger setup as in my hybrid DJ setup. Most of the controlling, sequencing and such is handled by Arturia Keystep Pro. The sound that this thing produces is routed to Tascam LM-8ST line mixer that gathers also other sound sources, synths, drum machines, etc. That line mixer is routed to two channels in Allen & Heath Xone 96 DJ mixer. Two other channels are connected to a laptop that runs Traktor Pro DJ software that is controlled by MIDI controllers (in a more conventional DJ setup these would be decks). The extra channels in Xone 96 go through various FX loops. Everything is in sync via MIDI or clock signals, and the Keystep Pro acts as the master clock.

Lots of moving parts, but nothing too crazy. Fits on one table and is still quite easy to control. I'll post some photos later on.

The reason I wanted to start this blog is to document my learning process and possibly catch some killer patches when fiddling around with the modular setup. I planned on taking photos on the patches so that I wouldn't lose them, so I might as well post them here. Perhaps I'll post some sound samples too. Perhaps something that resembles music. You'll never know.

The most important thing is to have fun. If we manage to stick with that, the rest falls right into its place.

I'm glad to have you with me in this adventure. See you soon!