The Heck - first ever modular

Hi,

I am a total rookie in modulars. I have started digging more into them about one month ago, so I probably still lack a lot of knowledge. Anyway I would like to begin my modular journey as soon as possible and your help here would be greatly appreciated.

I am not planning to buy everything at once (probably 3-4 modules) and it would be nice if you helped me to chose what do I need first. So this is my modular idea for now:

My main goal is to have flexibility in sound design and big randomization options. As one of my main inspirations would be Tim Hecker's sound:
What I started with is Intellijel Designs 7U Stealth Case 104 HP, which seems to be an easy to use and good looking case. As sound generators I wanted to have some plucked audio that could be resonated in many ways, but also something that could make the sound a bit darker. I think that with Rings, Elements and VCO2 I can achieve a lot and easily switch from light tones to dark and a bit more depressive ones.
What I would also want to add in the future are delays, reverbs, maybe more distortion and modulation options.

I hope that you got the idea what I would like to achieve here. It would be amazing to hear what you think about it. Please let me know if I am missing some key components here.

Hi there !

Didn't know about Tim Hecker, pretty nice sounds, thanks for sharing :)

With regards to your rack, I would personally miss at least a few VCA's, a clock source (I don't know the Voltage Block that well but Steppy won't advance without a clock, Pamela's New Workout would provide that and some more, or you could just use of Maths' channels in cycling mode) as well as a mixer since in your plan there seems to be no way to hear all your sound sources at the same time... Also, what was the reasoning behind the buffered mult, what do you plan to use it for ? These are generally only used when you need a very precise copy of a signal, otherwise inline mults could do and save you both space and money. Finally, as a very personal choice, I would not go for a Zeroscope in such a small setup. For me, but that's just me, an oscilloscope is needed when creating very complex signals, I don't think I would get a lot of use out of it for a "small" setup like yours, although that may be due to my lack of experience with such devices.

If you want to start with just a few modules based on the above, I would go for the classic Rings into Clouds + Steppy and Voltage Block for sequencing, some fun to be had experimenting with these very deep and complex modules I think, although I have never owned any of those except Steppy in my setup.

Have you tried VCV Rack ? It's free and while you might not want to make music on a computer in the long run, I found that some time with it helped me understand some modular synthesis concepts before diving into the actual pool. It's a rather good option as it allows to better decide for yourself where you want to go, rather than entirely relying on advice from the interwebz.

Hope this helps !

Cheers,
Diego

Hi Diego,
Thanks a lot for your response it opened my eyes on few factors and it was greatly helpful. I have to agree with you with everything you said, thus I had to change my setup a bit. Also to answer your question, I was messing around a bit with VCV Rack but certainly not enough. I will spend more time with it although I still would like to order first modules pretty soon.

https://i.imgur.com/o8L85kA.png

So this is how my current setup looks like but honestly, first I am mainly focusing on modules that I plan to buy soon as there are too many things to talk about otherwise. My first modules would be: Rings, Clouds, Varigate 4+ and Quadratt 1U.

I guess it should be enough to start my modular working? I chose Varigate instead of New Workout because of the integrity with Voltage Block which might become handy in the future.

I know that I am a bit messy in my ideas here but modulars is such a huge topic that I think that it would really work well for me if I could actually start creating my patches using some modules. I have a very strong urge to start having trials and errors even if it means losing a bit of money.

Regards,
Rajmund

EDITED Jan 8th 2020, 19:48