If the capacity to not misinterpret the clearest of statements is any indication of one’s ability to offer meaningful advice, I respectfully suggest you stick to popcorn, Ronin.
Although I intentionally imitated your responses a couple of posts ago, I haven’t mocked anyone. I’ve criticized advice, not the people giving it. I’ve tried to clearly and politely express my points, have apologized when my criticism seemed harsher than it need to be, and even apologized if my posts weren’t helping as much as I intended to. All of this talk of political correctness, behaving like a “social justice warrior”, wanting to create a “safe-space”, “policing”, being the “master of forum etiquette”, etc, has all just been totally irrelevant.
For my sake, and anyone reading with similar questions, I’ve brought up several issues that I believe could be potentially very helpful to discuss, clarify, and answer. I might search elsewhere, and perhaps others should do the same, but for sake of clarity here are some of them:
Starting out with a semi-modular synth seems like a common, affordable, and potentially great way to get into modular. With something like the OP's setup – a Mother 32 and a small rack filled with Disting, Tides, Maths, and Shades, would adding some effects modules be a good idea for someone interested in making ambient drone music? Lugia agreed with this suggestion, referencing Eno’s Thursday Afternoon (one of my favs). You wrote that doing so amounted to “piling on the bad.”
Lugia’s response to a proposed rack that contained Elements and Rings was that having both is a waste of space and told the user they should “lose one or the other.” Lugia does seem very knowledgeable, but there seem to be many people benefiting from using both, even 2x Elements or 2x Rings.
https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=167755&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0Is it really unreasonable to put thought into the design of one’s rack? One is, after all, spending thousands of dollars on it and will hopefully be using it for countless hours. Is it really so superficial to want an all-black rack? Is that really tantamount to a “decorative prop”. If so, a Make Noise shared system seems like an awfully expensive decoration.
Is the belief that a specific piece of gear is necessary for a particular result really so harmful that a musician who believes this should “quit immediately?” If so, (and I doubt I’m alone here) it seems some of my favorite artists should stop making music.
Given that regardless of one’s musical background, getting into modular synthesis and designing one’s first rack takes a certain level of guess work, is it better for someone with a specific goal to try to design a “purpose-built” system or to opt for something more versatile. I think there may be pros and cons to both, but I’m guessing that with either scenario, it’s very likely the user will end up having to replace several modules and redesign their rack. IMO, depending on how certain someone is that they’re after a particular result, it might actually make more sense to aim for designing a rack that can achieve a specific result at the expense of versatility.
It seems people understandably design a rack with the hopes of requiring the least amount of redesigning and with the least likelihood that they'll encounter problems/mistakes. But even to the extent that this is possible, might there actually be some value in making mistakes? Several months ago I nearly posted a question here that in retrospect was painfully easy to resolve (not so easy though, I should point out, that sales reps couldn’t offer much help). I ended up having to return two modules (though I payed zero restocking fees) and was frustrated for days, but I ended up learning a lot that I didn’t intend to.
Anyway it’s been real… //