You could replace it all with modular but the cost would be exorbitant, especially the Digis. For the price, polyphony and drums and better sought elsewhere than modular.
Eurorack is contained cable chaos: what people don’t talk much about is unpatching and repatching. Kind of exhausting ngl.
Keep with that until you know exactly what you want. Create a budget, decide on a case a bit bigger than what you think you need and stick closely to. A lot of people go into modular without a gameplan and it can go awry. While one can buy Legos in large, random quantities, you don’t want to do that with modular, and anyway building the set you want is more fun.
For sure. I’ve heard it’s Arp is amazing.
For me, like @plragde, I heard a sample of a complex osc (DPO wavefolder) and melted; had to have it. I tried to temper it with semimods, but nothing stuck. So I dived in very slowly, modeling my initial steps off the make up of the Make Noise Shared System. Over time and learning what I personally needed / wanted I’ve filled 6u 84hp.
I originally got an Erica MIDI-CV (it served my original aim of a kind of duophonic monosynth) to integrate with my OT and AR. But have recently switched to a CV.OCD (and Keystep 37) which serves my changing desire to improvise one day and sequence the other nicely.
I like it a lot. Endless source on exploration and inspiration. And has taught me a ton. But - as mentioned with unpatching and repatching, coupled with the sheer amount of choice in modules and existing between them subtle, infuriating differences (-5-+5, 0-5, 0-8, 0-10v ) - it’s not as straightforward as the boxes you’ve come to know.
Take it slow and focused. And always feel free to ask questions.
That’s the way I started out too. After that I’ve build a 7U case (104 hp) with mostly Make Noise modules, because I wanted to get away from subtractive synthesis after 10 years. My aim: make sounds, not tracks.
I was planning on combining the case with my OT and DNK, but most of the time I just fire up the modular and start patching with little idea of where I exactly want to go. If I’d be making techno or something and aimed on finishing tracks, I would not use modular in my setup. I’d use it for creating and sampling basslines, blips and bleeps and atmos, then arrange stuff in the OT or Ableton. With modular I wouldn’t want to be stuck with a patch too long, because I need it in a set.
Absolutely true. Modular took me to places I had never been before with grooveboxes/synths.
The drums part is exactly the thing I wish I understood in the beginning.
Everyone is different but I don’t like patching drums to be triggered. That’s the only thing that seems a waste for time to me (keeping in mind I’m a trained drummer).
I definitely prefer doing this on DT or ST.
Lately, just for the exercise, I’ve been setting up Euclidean rhythms from PNW and Running order and the part I enjoy is designing drum sounds but not the setup.
I will say that I found Plaits/Data Bender/Overseer impressive for kicks.
for drums in modular, I like the WMD Metron sequencer and Winter Modular Eloquencer sequencers. Easy to use and create patterns live and on the fly and create sequencer presets to store for recall.
The attraction to modular is the freedom from traditional step sequencers. Have to let go of a bunch of traditional approaches while keeping them in mind at the same time. It depends on what kind of music you want to make too. I’ve made systems that essentially make music for me and I get to tweak and expound along the way. If one wants ultimate control though it’s gonna be in the DAW, not as fun.
For a small system you at least probably want to have them clocked together, so Pamela’s Pro fits the bill here, but Pam’s has a bunch of functions that not many folks use it for like the Euclidean rhythms, but more so the ability to essentially have Turing Machines spit out quantized or unquantized voltage tied to those rhythms.
Next bang for the buck and size is uOrnament and Crime. I use TB3P0, but it can do a ton of other stuff which is too much to even get into.
Next a voice. Either a complete voice or split apart into its elements, and that’s a personal choice. My favs are Verbos Complex OSC, Piston Honda, Kermit which also does envelopes and random voltage/noise.
Lastly some fx. I like FX Aid cause it’s Big Sky and more in 4hp , but one would benefit from having something g highly modulateable like Clouds/Beads, NE Versio platform etc to get something you can get in regular hardware.
Pam’s, uo_C, Kermit, and a Versio would be awesome rig in what? 38hp…shit I have these and I’m gonna go home and build this exact rig now that I think about it
Pams can approximate a Turing Machine: you can set a channel to stepped or smooth random, and you can use the loop parameter to indefinitely repeat the last x steps of CV it generated. It’s definitely not as usable as a Turing Machine though, since it’s missing a big knob you can turn to lock a loop precisely.
It’s a technical point. A Turing machine in modular (the name makes me cringe as a theoretical computer scientist, but anyway) uses a shift register to triangulate between independent random and deterministic sequences. Pam’s doesn’t do that. It just locks the most recently generated values, so it’s all or nothing. Still a very useful module in a small skiff, though not as playable as I’d like.
Jumping in here to say if you can find a Clank Chaos, that module is fun AF as a Turing machine, as well as random source and tons of other nice features
Yeah that’s what I meant by approximate: I think for a lot of eurorack users what they really want out of it is “randomly generated stuff, but I can lock it in to repeat when I like it”, which Pam’s can do an alright job of.
lol yes, also a computer scientist, cannot fathom the choice of name.
I’ll got into modular after buying a Minibrute when it came out. I was curious to use the cv outputs and wanted it to have a extra oscillator to mix in with the external input. Bought a doepfer minicase along with A110 oscillator. Didn’t took long before i broke the warranty by modding the Brute to get some extra cv outputs from the lfo, envelopes and raw oscillator waves. After that i builded my first case and locked myself in the garage to build some yusynth modules. The dayjob and hunting for components left me with too little time to keep on building, so i started buying modules and solder ready kits from Thonk: Once i started adding drum modules and sample players i realised i would end up needing my third case and a lot of extra modules to end the journey. I decided to sell my drum modules and bought a DT for the drums and never looked back. Elektron’s are the centre of my setup and the clock runs into modular.
My approach was a bit different perhaps, but I just like getting off the grid, so I usually will use an Octatrack audio channel with an MPC click clocking my modular. Obviously you can use MIDI too, just…you’re more locked into the grid, which I find less inspiring.
You can make a modular system do whatever you want really though it takes time to figure out what modules you want. It only takes a few years browsing modulargrid.net and watching vids, buying and selling etc. But ya Pams, uo_C are SOLID picks and a great start that anyone would be happy to have in their systems. Then you kinda figure out what you want from there. Careful though…it might consume you. It happened to me and I never thought I’d be into it. #eurocrack
As a drummer, do you have any fav settings on the Euclidean sequencer in the Pam’s? I never know where to start. I use the Pam’s mostly for synced modulators, but I need to practice more with the Euclidean part of it. Actually, Euclidean modulators is another idea!
I don’t have any specific settings I like and before Pam’s Pro it was just numbers so had to visualize what the step sequence would be. But I would say it’s necessary to set the number of steps and the number of activated steps to the CV inputs 1 and 2 and send constant voltage to both with something like 4tten or quadratt etc. Then this allows you to change the pattern without having to navigate the 1 knob interface. The. You can get weird and send it random voltage maybe even from Pam’s itself to cart those things.
My fav thing to do though is to have stepped random, then have loop length controlled by CV1. The. I can use 4tten at 0v and it does random voltage. But as you turn up the voltage the loop locks in and the length gets longer. Then when you want a new pattern you drop it back to 0 and back up to get another loop. Which is how a Turing machine module works. Though Turing machine can ad a little more variation, but I can have 8x and also quantized with Pam’s in 8hp…pretty incredible.
I loved the clavia micromodular and so I thought it would be cool to have the “real” thing. Turns out I hate cables and Drambo is really the better micromodular, so now I have a eurorack modular that I don’t really like to use but I keep buying modules from time to time in the hope that I’ll finally like the outcome of that spaghetti incident.
) - it’s not as straightforward as the boxes you’ve come to know.