Jim!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this incredibly resourceful reply, and educate me on some badly overlooked basics! Truly, I've learned so many things from your message.
I've reworked a (hopefully) improved setup here:
(if you have the time and patience to check it out – I don't want to stretch it here.) In a nutshell (or rather, a 500€ case…):
- there's the Mutant better MIDI input you suggested
- just beneath it are an offset module and a Disting module (the idea is to be able to generate parrallel chords from a keyboard, which, come to think of it, is the main/only way I currently use "chords" in my practice). Disting seems nifty, but maybe something cheaper would work just as well for this application.
- OSCs are now all resonance filters, which is a great, elegant solution, and I love it. I find I really love sines and at that point, don't care much about other waveforms in terms of timbre
- there's the Intellijel quad cascading VCA/mixer, which should allow for a number of mixing uses?
- then an apparently quite clear, clean multifilter
- a basic quad LFO
- I followed your perceptive advice and ditched the ring mod. Instead I guess I could FM the VCFs sines for instance?
- then a MATHS module which seems to be so convenient for all sorts of operations (including VC envelope generation and many other fun things)
- and a noise source which I suppose would come handy for all sorts of things
Your signature is truly a well of wisdom… not joking here. I think I'll post-it somewhere.
I'm still thinking about the sequencing part of operations. I guess I could either use that cheap SQ1 with the parrallel chord thing (this covers most of my uses of chords really), or plug in a keyboard. For other, more 'experimental' play, maybe just use a square wave from one of the LFOs to trig something on MATHS for instance?
Then maybe invest in a more sophisticated sequencer when I feel the need for it.
Is there anything you would think is redundant? Sorely missing?
And lastly, would you have any good personal book recommendation to go through the basics of modular synthesis?
Again, many thanks for the help you gave me. It's truly appreciated.