I love my 0-coast. It’s great sample fodder for the Digitakt especially paired with some guitar pedals and a looper imo
I’m afraid it’s a gateway drug though, because I love the freedom it provides so I’m either going to pair with another semi-modular (mother 32, erebus 3 or whatever namm brings this year) or take the plunge and get a maths, marbles and morphagene. (not necessarily want another synth voice but something that complements it)
This is the other thing; I’ve been convinced I’d regret my decision to not just get a proper case. I guess my reason for omitting this bit was Unifono’s claim that it’d run over a grand in individual modules.
That said, I think my New Years’ resolution for 2019 is to sell the French horn and go euro.
Agreed, though it frankly requires more time than I can justify investing to maintain my chops. That and it’s a chore to record, given it absolutely requires a decent-sized/ treated space. It’s been sitting in my closet for a decade now.
The primary reason for having not sold it is:
I struggle selling something that won’t be losing value any time soon on things that will depreciate — euro seems better than most in this respect.
Might be worth noting it’s also somewhat of a gateway drug in reverse…
I bought an 0-Coast, then built a full system and sold the 0-Coast because its form factor was awkward sitting in front of the modular.
At this point the modular is overwhelming and I sometimes wish I had my 0-Coast back to use in conjunction with one or two Elektrons (which was how I worked before).
I can not recommend euro as time saving strategy. On contrary, euro can eat your time like anything else I know. It can be powerful sound design tool but it takes huge amount of skill and time to get good sound out of it. Even with pre patched semi-modulars like 0coast, half the time they are drowned into reverb to compensate the lack of sound design.
If i was you, I would find a way to combine your acoustic skills with live electronics, instead of going ‘all in’ to euro. There are several ways to do that, also involving euro.
FWIW, I can actually play devil’s advocate a little here. I recently sold my 0-coast, which represented the last bit of Eurorack / modular gear I had. Initially, I liked the 0-coast quite a bit. It was more fun to use than my ill-fated eurorack system, and offered a lot of wild routing options that led to some crazy sounds. However, it really needs some external sequencing, or keyboard (like Keystep) to take full advantage. Some effects also go a long way, but that can be said about many synths. I hooked it up to my digitakt a few times, but ultimately found the midi setup a little tedious and frustrating. I’d have to use the manual, and try the button combos and then hope I got the sequence correct. After a while, I found the sounds I was getting out very “samey”, but again, you get out what you put in. I don’t think I was a very creative patcher. I ended up having more fun playing with the Digitakt itself. Then, I got a Digitone and basically have only been playing with that for the past 6 months. Hitting the new year, I’m on a minimizing kick, and have sold several bits of gear that weren’t getting much use. That’s part of a bigger plan, though, and not necessarily related to why I sold 0-Coast. It was a tough decision, as there is a ton of potential in 0-Coast. Basically, be prepared to pile some supporting gear on with 0-Coast, to unlock that potential.
I guess I should clarify that I do see ROI with euro, whereas I don’t so much with the horn. The french horn was used from 6th to my freshman year of college – I ended up transferring from pursuing a BA in Music/ Performance to a BS in Audio Production/ Engineering. I currently see little reason to try incorporating it into my productions, whereas I’m quite interested in euro.
I obviously appreciate the heads up, but I assure you – I’ve been contemplating doing this for years; this wouldn’t be an uninformed decision.
doesn’t sound dumb to me… sounds awesome!
I’m not sampling here… but I’m using the Octatrack’s arp to sequence the 0-Coast… mixing in some random LFO’s to the arp’s parameter’s at the end.
Maybe my question was dumb, in other words, what i need to sample the 0-coast with octatrack? Is the sequencer of mother good for 0-coast and last is mother good buddy with 0-coast or do i need it at all or is there some other synth which is good with 0-coast?
Can I make a counter offer? My portable rig is Octatrack plus 0-Coast and DFAM. 0-Coast compliments and extends the DFAM (MIDI to CV conversion, LFOs, stepped random voltage) and the DFAM offers things the 0-Coast doesn’t (white noise* and a classic Moog filter).
This would cover your melodic and rhythmic bases nicely, though the 0-Coast can make all manner of drum sounds if you’re patient enough to sample one-shots (I’m not).
*You can get white noise out of 0-Coast, but not easily.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that you should purchase a mixer of some kind—like a Mackie—and run your synths into there before the Octatrack. Directly running mono sources into OT needs cumbersome workarounds to monitor in mono.
I would second the recommendation to get DFAM instead of Mother. it’s just more interesting. but if you need mono synth Moog sounds, the Mother will definitely provide them. and work well with the 0-coast.
as far as sequencing goes though, if you don’t have one I would highly recommend a Korg SQ-1. they should be included with every 0-coast purchase. the manual even explicitly describes how to use them together.