I went down this rabbit hole after buying a 0-Coast in October. I bought a 104hp powered skiff (also from Make Noise) and started ordering modules here and there. I started with Mutable Instruments stuff (which is such a common path as to be cliché) Rings and Clouds. Rings is a fascinating and unpredictable synth in its own right, Clouds—ignore the hype—is a bizarre and inscrutable effects unit that is either inaudible or smears your signal with something gunky that’s neither reverb nor delay. Both of these units have cost me hours and hours of productivity as I grappled with both their peculiarity and with learning modular in general. It’s clear that Mutable Instruments products are well-designed and well-made, but they are intended for a user with more modular knowledge than I had.
If I had to do it all over again, I would start by adding utilities that interact meaningfully with 0-Coast and understand the theory before moving on to “luxury” modules. I would purchase LFO/envelope/function generator, clock divider/multiplier, and voltage utilities (mult, VCA/attenuator, random voltage thingies).
It’s only now, after abandoning the very specialized Mutable Instruments stuff, that my understanding of modular is growing and that the 0-Coast is playing more of a part. The more you know about modular, the more you realise 0-Coast is a spectacularly good deal for the $$$$ and contains a ton of functionality. Forget the fancy stuff and focus on learning the theory and basics.
Fantastic answer and not just because I have been particularly interested in the Mutable Instruments stuff but you are coming from a beginners angle, just like me. Hmm ok I will go into a bit more research for items like utilities that will expand my knowledge of modular instead of going for the fancy stuff first.
Clouds is worth digging into, it gets slated for various reasons and is under represented in its scope in 99% of the demos I’ve seen.
Modular environments are by their very nature a ratio between function and user imagination. If you have those, knowledge comes with exploration. Or vice versa but the ratio remains, but maybe shifts.
Anyway 0C is genius and Mutable modules are too, even without Easter eggs and parasites
Yeah sorry, didn’t mean for that to seem like an endorsement of that particular case as a starting point. Although it’s lovely Make Noise stuff it’s definitely more costly. I chose it primarily for the quality of its power supply (and the rad backlit logo cough). One of the fears I had about getting into modular was related to flaky power, perhaps inherited from a stint building and repairing PCs in the 90s.
Another thing I would do over if I could would have been to buy standard Tip Top thingy and uZeus power supply. As it stands I will outgrow the Make Noise skiff in 3-6 months whereas Tip Top racks could just get bolted into a larger enclosure.
Make Noise stuff is super rad tho. I’m gonna keep it and fill it with Renes and Pressure Points
No its ok, I was just shocked for a second, but it gives me things to think about, things I will need to think about because its best to have it planned out before purchased, Im sure you’ll agree.
Ye was looking at the Tip Top Mantis since you mention TT, seems very big for my initial needs, I want to keep it small and as resourceful as possible for as long as possible…even though I’m aware how these things usually end
Yeah its a love/hate relationship with Mutable modules.
Love that they cram so much in including Easter egg, parasite modes etc.
Hate that the cram so much in as you generally have some silly cryptic combination of button pressing to get from one mode to the next, and it becomes quite annoying and unintuitive.
And yes I agree Clouds is the best module available to actually make your patch sound worse. Generally whatever is fed in comes out the other end a washed out mess. I’m still yet to hear a good example of it. It’s actually the only Mutable module I’ve never owned, for imo it just sounds terrible in all the demos I’ve heard.
Rings is ok, can sound really good but can be quite time consuming to find its narrow sweet spots.
Make Noise modules are great, complex but extremely well thought out and great fun to mess with. The O Coast looks and sounds really good and is deceptively powerful for such a small synth.
It really is great value when you add up the amount of functionality Make Noise has crammed in there.
Yeah still sounds terrible in those demos unfortunately, just not musical to my ears. We obviously all have different tastes which is cool, there are a million other modules out there also
the Ripples filter sounds amazing, but the rest of the Mutable modules seem to miss the entire point of modular… which is having access and lots of control over the building blocks… not macro-modular gameboy devices.
agree that the clouds make things sound 2-dimensional. its overhyped IMO. too much sameness.
I must confess 0-Coast totally dried my lust for modular. At least for the moment.
Clouds seemed to be capable, but I might have missed what modular is about, indeed.
No need to question what modular is about. It’s what ever you want it to be. That is the beauty of it. There is no right or wrong. It’s like art we all see or ‘hear’ things differently. If something sounds good to you then it is.
So far i have been driving the 0 coast with Midi from the Octatrack. Can someone explain to me the advantage of using CV from the A4, something maybe Im missing?
I don’t know if either has an advantage, there just different. One thing that comes to mind though is that OT midi is 128 increments, CVs are continuous giving buttery smooth changes to parameters…
I’d probably use both at the same time…
Edit: Or rather, they both have their own advantages, for example cv: finer control/zero latency, midi: a lot more things happening on one cable. As far as A4, what LyingDalai said…
Blimey, sorry for my late reply!
Using the PO to clock the 0C, running the 0 into the PO input and the other way round. Dropping the PO into the external and using the looped env/rndm to cross fade between the external and internal engine for some weird noise.
I was also designing Drums by clocking them together and again mixing in the drum sounds from the PO and underpinning them with random shit from the 0C, all 16ths recorded for 4 bars into the OT and then slicing it up to use the best hits. Do that for 4 channels/sounds and you can write quite a few crazy beats before jumping off the grid to make strange fx with random slice to sequence or whatever it’s called!
I know it did a lot more but it was so long ago I forgot.
I did the same with an ND1 too but honestly the bass from the 0C is so hard I decided to stop layering and just use the 0C, I have quite a few photos of patches for drum and perc sounds but my phone was attacked by a pavement and I lost them!
The 0C is nothing short of amazing, I bought another off some kid who didn’t know what he was doing with it, totally blew his mind, even after I tried to explain it to him! He understood but couldn’t get into a mindset where he could think up a patch or something to try, totally intimidated by the fact it was so different to anything he’d used before! I offered to buy it off the cuff as a joke and he got the box out like I was doing him a favour! Think I paid 420 just before the prices went nuts.
He looked
The weird thing is, I’ve not even properly used the 0-C with my A4 yet; I’ve just been to enamoured of the random possibilities of hooking it up to the Erebus and letting things interact as they will with some slight timing interventions from the A4 sequencer.
