Needing a lot of advice :)

Hello. :)

okay well to start, I have had a love for analog and especially modular synths for a while now. about a year ago I decided to purchase the mother 32 and 0-coast to start my modular journey. as these are two great platforms to learn from. now I am on the move to start my eurorack.

1. what I'm hoping to achieve with my eurorack

first of all I'm a huge lover of techno and house music and have been producing for about 7 years now in Ableton. I want to make more organic and raw sounds. thats one reason I love eurorack so much. so thats a big thing I am wanting to achieve with my eurorack. integrate it into my production set up and rely on modules making up about 80% of my tracks.

second, I want to be able to make an entire song with my eurorack.similar to Colin benders or steevio. obviously not as amazing as them though and with a smaller set up. I am going to add in a DFAM more them likely in the future for my drums as well.

third, I am wanting it to also be able to be a bit of an ambient monster for days I just want to relax and listen. hints the clouds module and the rainmaker.

finally, I am wanting to add two more rows far in to the future for more of a live set up.

2. the case I am going with

I have decided to go with the intellijel 7u case because I love the for factor, the fact that you can put the top on while its patched, and the audio ins and outs on the case as well as the midi ins and outs.

I am basically a beginner in all of this so I need as much help as I can get on this journey. and I know how close nit and passionate the modular community is. I really want to know what I am going to need to make what I am wanting out of my eurorack possible. maybe tell me things that I have in my sketch that I don't need or that don't make any sense. things that I don't have that I should add. and modules that I don't know about that may help me achieve all of the things I want to do.

any advice I can get will be amazing.

thanks :)

not sure why its not showing all of the modules in the forum. :( but just click the rack and it was show everything I had selected so far.

If you're going with Intellijel 7U, get the 104 case. You will eat up module space much faster than you think. Also, be aware that the power supply eats up a lot of room in the lower 3U row. You won't be able to put modules that are very deep in that row.

You might think about replacing the Intellijel MIDI interface with an Expert Sleepers FH2. The built in USB/MIDI connectors on the back of the case are nice. But the FH2 will offer you a better interface with Ableton Live. Plus you can edit your set-up via ES's web interface (optional) and expand the FH2 for even more CVs and gates. Plus the FH2 can do LFOs, arps, and envelopes. They aren't as easy to set-up as a dedicated LFO, ADSR, but they are useful.

In your initial set-up, you'll probably want to add at least one filter, a set of VCAs, and at least one LFO... unless you're going to rely on the Mother-32 for that.

It may be a little early to add the Metropolis until you get some wiggle time in. You can always sequence via MIDI through Ableton to begin with. Maybe a Pittsburgh Micro Sequencer to start with?

Looking at the actual build (which will show if you go back into the designer, select 'snapshot view', then refresh until the correct version loads), there are some very glaring problems:

1) Do you have a Clouds? If not, and if you can't source a used one, then you'll have to either go with a third-party build, a DIY version, or consider something else.

2) The Doepfer A-138p is great...as long as you have its output module. Otherwise, it's input-only; you shouldn't think that you can backside-connect it to the Intellijel Line Output tile. Best advice here: try something else stereo...and make sure it has outputs.

3) That's an expensive quantizer you've got there, with four channels...and only two VCOs, which really should be paired together in the same voice. Basically, that ADDAC quantizer isn't appropriate for a small build like this; if you had something like 8 or more VCOs to feed, it would be a lot more sensible.

4) You have a lowpass filter and another lowpass filter. Yes, they're different, but not that different. Plus, since you'll obtain a much more interesting and fuller sound by tandemming the VCOs, why not just one filter? And for that matter, why not a multimode so that you can get some different filter topologies to use other than the 1 1/2 that's there now?

5)...ok, just stop. Hold it. Are you sure this is a rabbit hole you want to dive into? Modular is expensive. It's quite complicated. You might think it can solve a lot of musical issues, but if you're running Ableton (which I do, as well) with all of its capabilities, especially due to MAX for Live, and its extendability...do you need this device? Sure, you want it, and you want to sound like these other people (which I think is a really stupid, stupid, STUPID reason for plunking down big buxxx for gear, frankly; learn to sound like YOU do first!), but on something that's as much as a blank slate as a modular synthesizer really is, you probably haven't got a lot of hope of pulling that magical transformation into these other artists' clone off without a metric f**kton of practice and...especially...research beforehand to ascertain the best way to do this (which, again, I think isn't anything approximating a good idea).

From my experience in music, I can tell you that there's a pile of other people who want to do what you want to do here, too. This doesn't mean that you should do the same. That's not creative, nor would it be anything indicative of who YOU are as a musician. You'd just be a clone...among other clones...in a zone awash in clones. Which will, believe me, suck more than you know because the results won't fool anyone.

If you feel that you have exhausted the possibilities of Ableton plus the patchables you have now...well, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din. But my guess is that you haven't. Having worked in electronic music for some 40 years now, I can tell you that there's not a day that goes by that some new wrinkle doesn't pop out of the musical framework for me to mess with, even with devices I've had since the 1980s. So, my advice...ultimately...would be to stop, soberly take a look at your musical situation and development minus the "I want" attachment thing, and really consider what you're doing. First. THEN...and only then...if you think this is what you need to do, again...stop, do research that helps you understand what a good electronic instrument is about, and THEN...and only then, again...start building on MG toward a final build. Expect to fail at this about...oh, eleventy-billion times, but eventually you'll arrive at something you just know is correct. But by doing this this way, you're not simply building a shopping list and/or future debt, you'll be taking assessment of who you are as a musician...and this is infinitely more important than any piece of gear you can buy! Trust me on that.

Ronin; thank you for responding man. Sorry I didn’t upload it right so you could see everything that I had really sketched out. I’ll definitely look into that expert sleepers module and do some research on it. Thanks again man :)

Lugia; thank you as well for responding and being real with me about my choices.

I guess maybe I should clarify a few things from my initial post. I know I brought up Colin Benders and Steevio and said that I would like to be able to eventually do something like them. But I guess I really should have made that statement more clear. I don’t want to sound like anyone. That has always been my mission the 7 years that I’ve been producing music. I always strive so sound different and have my own style. I want everything that I make to show me. No somebody else. I used them as an example because I love listening to them and I really want to know how to achieve a similar work flow with my modular. I know those guys are like fucking geniuses when I come to this stuff and I can’t try to be like them. That would just be crazy.

As far as me producing in Ableton; I feel like in my 7 years with the software I have barely even scratched the surface of all of the quirks and features of Ableton. But when I got my M32 and 0-Coast, I fell in love with the anolog and modular world. The sounds and different ways to get sounds out of just those 2 semi modular units has brought more smiles to my face in the year that I have owned them, then creating inside Ableton and using plug ins and operators to creat sounds for the last 7 years ever has. I am in love and passionate about sound. That is why I have decided to pursue creating a Eurorack. For the pure pastion of sound. And the endless possibilities that come with Eurorack.

Finally, me submitting this forum is to gain knowledge from people like you and the other brilliant minds of this community. I learn the most when I talk to people that know much more then me on a subject. And I understand that it’s expensive. And very complex and complicated. But that’s why I am here. To learn :) No one can scare me away from pursuing this. But I will need help and gidence to get me going in the right direction. Thank you for your help this far. It has opened my eyes to a lot of my choices thus far. If you can help out any more or give any more suggestions to me now that I have clarified my ententions, that would be amazing.

Thanks so much.

EDITED Sep 12th 2018, 16:42

OK...makes sense to me. A lot of what I was hearing earlier sounded like the usual "I wanna be X"-type of stuff, which was a bit worrying. Those are the people who buy in massively, then suddenly realize "my god...what have I gotten myself into!?", and that's never a fun position to be in. I like to warn people off of finding themselves in that sort of hyperexpensive quandry, as it does them no good, does the craft of musicmaking no good, and so on. So, yes, I get blunt...but that bluntness has reasons. However, you do seem to know the hole you're digging, and why, so...

So...first four critiques above still apply. Then the next would be: think smaller. 2 x 104 is actually a pretty crampy space, and dropping big hp-count modules in unless they're utterly essential (Maths) isn't the best way to utilize limited space. So, go back to the individual module types and look into how you can get close to the functionality you have but with a smaller footprint in the rack. Or...go bigger. Granted, the Intellijel 7U is a pretty ubiquitous case, but in a similar price range, there ARE others. So...the 7U is $650-ish street, with 208hp in 3U and 104 in Intellijel tiles. But then...here's this case from Erica for the same price, street, but you'd have 378 hp (126 x 9U), fully powered as well with 1.25A on the 12 volt rails per row. Plus, it's expandable, and since you have later expansion in mind, this makes it easy as all you'd need is a second cab, plus the dual-cab cheeks from Erica, to then have a nice angled rig. Yes, you lose your tile row. But when you have far more 3U space, that's not going to matter as you can easily replicate the tile functions in that format and still have room left to go.

Given that you mention later expansion, my choice would clearly be the Erica. Also, it's easier to 'hack'...let's say you want a couple of deep rows in addition to the two 64mm depth cases. Easy enough: just get hold of a woodworker who can make you the appropriate cheeks to mount all your 126hp-width stuff together as a unit. Need more? More woodwork. And woodwork is cheap compared to trying to expand into bigger and bigger racks each time you want to grow. Just grab another Erica 126hp, send the specs to your cabinet guy, get the cheeks back, and bolt away. Theoretically, that could go on for quite some time. Plus: you can stay with bigger footprint modules like you have here AND get the room you need to keep on going. Then, with that space, going with more signal paths becomes a reality, and you get way closer to the sort of complex device you need from your descriptions of usage.

So, my first suggestion at this point: tear it down, start over, go larger and with a modular case concept that you can get from the Erica gear. As for portability, that's simple enough, too: just keep your cabs separate, with separate cheeks, and get cases for each such as the ones you can get custom-built from Thomann for not a hellacious amount of $$$. Takes up more space in the studio, but gives you pretty smashproof cartage options. You'd really need to try hard to fubar an ATA case.