Modular Ate My Brain

One of the aspects of modular I have noticed is how all-consuming it can be. I think about modular a lot, and I have been neglecting my other synths. Another thing about modular I've noticed is that it has changed the kind of music I listen to and also the way I approach more traditional synths when I play them. I'm 'thinking' more modular and 'playing' more modular. This isn't something I've chosen, it's just happened. I filmed this little performance on my Roland SH09 which highlights the change in my style of playing.

This is great, ModLifeCrisis. Thanks for sharing.
My relationship with modular is like a pendulum. For long periods of time it is all I think about, and other times I focus on other hardware and guitars. Hope to find a happy medium someday. :)
Take care.

Hi ModLifeCrisis,

Ha, ha, I love your videos, especially those introduction videos where you provide us first with a great introduction and then some cool sounds. Both video is funny and great and then those old Roland sounds, wow, to die for! Seriously nice to listen at :-)

Thank you very much for sharing this and kind regards, Garfield.

Yes, I am right there with you. My synth adventure began in ernest about 18 months ago and I've hardly touched any of my guitars or basses or my drum set since. I sold off a bunch of stringed stuff (and a Ducati) to pay for synths, and I have absolutely no regrets about how synths and subsequently modular have affected my life, my musical tastes, my composition and my production. It's been the most awesome musical journey I have ever taken. You are so right that it can be all-consuming and I have to be conscious that it's a hobby and restrict play-time to after hours (or before-hours). But that's not always easy (it's 9:40 am and I should be working...).

Love your videos and the performance on the SH09 is excellent! Stay the course! Embrace the Crisis!

Modular forces you to learn how to program a synth. There are no presets to recall, tweak a little, and then resave as your OWN creation. Nope... every bit of it is you.

Modular has made me hyper aware of modulation even in virtual synths, the importance of even subtle modulations, and even evaluating self-contained synths' features.

Interesting you mention how it makes you "think". I've found modular a bit analogous to film photography in a way. I got back into film a few years back when I, on a whim, bought a film SLR to bring with my DSLR on a trip to Alaska. Turns out my favorite photos were essentially all on film, but I digress. Point is, I was hooked, and one thing it does is make you think differently and more into concepts. Partly because you can't see the immediate results, partly the real per shot cost of film, partly the look, etc. etc.

Full disclosure, I don't have a modular rig yet but even with doing research, reading manuals, watching videos, listening to samples, playing with VCVRack, etc., I'm starting to understand and appreciate more of what goes into integrated synths. It's already made me more creative and focused and has led to some really creative "AHA!" moments. A silly example, I've always been frustrated with doing automation of the volume/pan of channels in Ableton. You can't offset these easily so when I'm doing mixing/mastering work, it's always been a frustration. I mean since I started using Ableton. Well, getting into modular got my out of my rut here and the answer has been in front of me the whole time. Just add a Utility module to the channel and automate THAT. Then the global channel volume/pan I can freely adjust without worry. So simple! I feel silly I hadn't figured it out but honestly if I wasn't thinking more about modular, I might've never connected those dots.

Another example is I realized I could stack CC effects in Renoise (that's what I'm currently using to run my MIDI synths - a sort of experiment over using Ableton). So if I want to control a filter manually, I can do that. But literally yesterday I realized, "oh! I can add an LFO and mix it in to my automation! Oh and I can then modulate the LFO speed!". Then just making patches on the synths themselves - I dunno I just am starting to think a little differently now that I sort of know a bit more about how these all can fit together (and how I can fit them together differently).

It's all been very enlightening and I don't even yet have a eurorack yet! I'm working on that. I'll start simple, perhaps even just the bare minimum to do some effect routing (I really want to use some SSM2044 modules, long story that and I've already rambled on enough). Excited to see how I, hopefully, break out of my creative shell even more once I can mess about with the real thing.