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Swapped the VCF303 for my Polaris to see how a different filter sounded and with a bit more modulation capabilities, also trying something new with the MSCL, interesting module 🤔 This is an excerpt from a longer jam but I like the structure of it ok even if it starts out a bit slow, hope you enjoy!

Bundled the last couple tunes I made with this (along with the @TumeniKnobs collaboration) onto a mini EP which you can check out here https://stevehand.bandcamp.com/album/september-acid

Made with:

Metropolix with the gate expander is worth considering here too.

I can see the temptation of another filter here but I'd probably add more modulation or utilities, maybe a Turing Machine, Links or Kinks (even though those two are out of print I guess? what do we recommend now???) or barring that a different end of chain effect, maybe a Beads.

I have a Falistri and a Maths and like them both. Falistri does a ton for 18HP and it does have some really unique features. One thing I will point out that I don't like about it though is that the green and yellow sections are not actually function generators, they're envelope generators which means that some of the cooler things Maths can do Falistri can't. So from my PoV if you're interested in learning some of the basics of analog synthesis, if you value tactile interaction (IMHO Maths is the more ergonomic of the two) and you have other support utilities Maths would be the pick, if you don't have much room for other utilities and you just need a module to get 5/6 different things done pretty well, then Falistri is a solid choice with the bonus that it can also function pretty well as an oscillator.

Beautiful rack, FX Aid gets a +1 from me, it's a great module to round out a build like this.

Always worth checking out Wiggle Hunt as stock for a lot of manufacturers seems to pop up randomly

https://wigglehunt.com/?query=pressure+points+-chain&condition=&stock_status=in_&price_min=0&price_max=5000¤cy_code=150&sort=price

@wishbonebrewery, per your request @TumeniKnobs put together a sick lead for this 🤘, check it out:

Eurorack meets a Moog Sub37!

EDITED Sep 4th 2021, 20:48

I wanna see the @Lugia take 👀

Went ahead and made another version of this track tonight, similar but a different vibe for sure, for those interested check it out:

Thank you @farkas, I've been listening to Richie for a long time so that's quite the compliment!

@GarfieldModular, both the bass and the lead here come from the Akemie's Castle. The lead is going through the VCF303 and the bass is going through the Takaab LPG. Speaking for myself, I find the AC one of the most enjoyable modules out there. It's easy to get crazy stuff out of it, and it's not tooooo hard to get really great beautiful sounds out of it either, and when you think about it as 4 different oscillators, or 2 complex oscillators, with a chord mode!, that 38HP feels quite worth it.

Still messing around with Akemie and the VCF303, this is an excerpt from a jam that I think turned out pretty well, hope you enjoy!

Made with:

Notice I swapped out the Links and the Rnd Step for a Scales letting me generate better bass lines using the Turing Machine. And worth noting (again) : the Takaab 2LPG V2 is pretty incredible 🕺

EDITED Sep 3rd 2021, 00:02

Great sound design and some groovy beats here @Gworn, well done!

Wow @TumeniKnobs, fantastic track, super human and with a nice nostalgic feel. Looking forward to the album!

@TumeniKnobs I wanna hear that!

Thanks @Gworn!

Agreed with @farkas, lovely journey here, if only I could get sounds like these out of my Chainsaw!

Nice to see some new music from you @farkas. It sounds totally different but I got some Studio - West Coast vibes on this around the middle, fun stuff. That said... I'm looking forward to hearing some of your more refined work too 🧐🧐 don't keep us waiting

Thank you both! And @GarfieldModular we'll see about some 17 minute tunes, hopefully soon!

Updated the rack a bit, swapped the DUSG for a bunch of utilities including some lowpass gates (go Takaab go) and think it turned out pretty nice. More than most of my tunes this one might benefit from headphone listening if you have em handy. Hope you enjoy!

Made with:

EDITED Aug 31st 2021, 01:00

This is lovely @GarfieldModular, looking forward to more!

Thanks you two!

@TumeniKnobs, the rhythms here are driven by three modules. Firstly uGrids is doing its thing without much modulation going on, so it's pretty 4/4. Crow is running a custom Euclidean script with its Euclidean note count modulated by the Tirana, which is actually triggered by one of the Crow's own outputs. So I'm not sure I could say what time signature it's in because it's constantly shifting and having the Euclidean note count adjusted on the fly! Lastly, the Metropolis is set to have one extra step in its sequence while its VCA envelope is triggered from the Crow, so the pitch values are constantly rotating one step at a time while the rhythm is following the logic I laid out above.

@farkas I was having a lot of trouble getting Akemie + VCF303 to work, I ended up setting the Akemie's voice to some simple wave forms (after all a square wave plus a VCF303 is close to a TB303) and then added in the FM as triggered or hand adjusted modulation here and there. Starting simple and then tweaking made it a lot easier.

Wanted to see how my Akemie's Castle sounded running through the VCF303, turned out ok!

Made with:

Thoughts: sometimes the DUSG is great in this rack, sometimes it doesn't get used, uGrids seems neat, custom euclidean script in Crow helps add a lot of action, Akemie's Castle rules so hard, and Metropolis still kicks ass even with the Metropolix around.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy!

EDITED Aug 19th 2021, 01:24

Anyone else have this problem? All the time I'll be looking at a rack and think, "That's supposed to be a Links, how'd a Kinks get in there!" I used to think it was me, that I was picking the wrong one, but it keeps happening no matter how intentional I am about clicking on Links...so... I'm wondering... are there gremlins in the site swapping Links with Kinks... it's the only possibility that makes sense...

Three very simple use cases off the top of my head:

1) Sample and hold => slew => control CV

Rather than have an immediate jump when the sample and hold is triggered you will get a descent or ascent to the new value over your specified duration.

2) Bass drum => slew => inverter => compressor sidechain

The slew generator here will function as an "envelope follower" for the bass drum. When you invert that and pipe it into your compressor's sidechain input the compressor will make everything running through it quieter allowing your bassdrum (mixed elsewhere I think?) to boom in the mix.

3) Sequencer 1v/oct => slew => oscillator

You can use a slew generator here to create a portamento affect. Some slew generators have different values for up vs down, so you could have your portamento only appear as notes go up or alternatively if they go down, you could have different slew lengths up vs down, or you could dynamically gate and vary the slew length over time to have your portamento constantly changing.

There's way more possibilities than these three, but they're some simple examples I could think of.

@modulargrid the use case for me is that I version racks a lot, including saving their state at different points in time or different future trajectories, and would love the ability to keep all that around for future reference. I like the cert idea though :p

Re: bandcamp I seem to be the main user around here but I would love to see that working 🙇

If you're looking for classic 4-Op FM I can't recommend the Akemie's Castle enough. Just a beautiful module with some great FM sounds.

Thanks for listening @GarfieldModular. I liked wednesday acid a lot too but the mimeophon parts on galaktoboureko are pretty sweet I think. It's hard to pick a favorite!

Thank you both!

Second feature request for the day: Bandcamp embeds!

Still working on some new tunes, the first one on this EP I shared before, but there's three new ones, including the first track I've recorded with the Metropolix, galaktoboureko acid. You can check em out here:

EP isn't finished yet, I'll probably add one more, something a bit more uptempo, but I thought I'd share anyway. Hope you enjoy!

Current version of the rack:

EDITED Aug 11th 2021, 21:12

Feature request: add the ability to archive racks for when you're tired of looking at them but don't want to delete them!

Looking at the Metron, it does make sense that you'd have some trouble since it's primarily a trigger sequencer. Thinking through the original question a bit, the Intellijel Scales can function as a dual quantizer and also as a sequencer I think, worth checking out along with the Metropolix.

EDITED Aug 7th 2021, 14:46

Well done @farkas, I'm a big fan of exploratory jams and this turned out great.

I'm not really familiar with the Metron so I can't speak to it very well @CardiacTasty, but I can share at a high level that on my own journey here sometimes it's not the modules. It's possible that your rack can do a lot of what you want as is and there's some growing pains there? Certainly that has been the case for me at various points along the way. So I'm curious, what exactly are you finding clunky here? What's not working?

Yes, there's a little GAS in the tank @farkas 🤣

I just bought a metropolix though I've not had the chance to use it yet, but it seems to be close to what you're looking for?

Y'know, what we REALLY need here is a multichannel quantizer that can accept/understand Scala tuning tables. Maybe blow 'em in via a USB connection...? I don't think such a critter exists at present so if any module developers are reading this...well, you get the idea.
-- Lugia

This would be pretty simple in a Monome Crow...

Nice vibes @wishbonebrewery, cool cat cameo too! Thanks for sharing

If you want to avoid spending money on R*S I may be the wrong person to talk to @toodee! I'm a huge fan of the Res EQ and would probably suggest that as the place to start with them, particularly if you're looking for a unique module that can really spice up a patch, especially drones, feedback patches, or things based on field recordings.

Re: my personal 303 one example of it patched up would be like so:
Metropolis CV => NTO
Metropolis Gate => Maths Trigger 1
Metropolis Clock => Algorhythm Clock
Algorhythm Channel 1 => Maths Trigger 2
Maths Trigger 1 => Quad VCA CV 1 (cascades to CV 2)
NTO Variable => Quad VCA channel 1
(optional) NTO Square => NCOM => Quad VCA channel 2
Maths Trigger 2 => VCFS or VCFQ CV, Q, or Slope in
Quad VCA channel 2 (mix of 1 and 2) => VCFS or VCFQ audio in
VCFS or VCFQ => out or to effects

There's a ton of variations that can work from there but basically you have a sequencer with a multi osc voice (though it's integer ratio subharmonic) through a filter that you can then add accents to. In the tunes posted here I'm using the M303, but in other tunes on my bandcamp, in particular Live Jams for Scotland, all the synth sounds basically follow the guide above.

EDITED Jul 21st 2021, 05:05

Thanks for listening, and for the welcome back @GarfieldModular!

@farkas, nice, I'll give that some thought and let you know.

@TumeniKnobs, thanks! On this tune the bass and snare (or clap, I forget right now) are the Salmple and the hi-hats are the Hexinverter Mutant Hi-Hats whose sound I just can't get away from, I love em. The Salmple has a ton of different banks though so if you want another example you could check out this other tune I made a few days ago, same rack but different bank.

https://stevehand.bandcamp.com/album/poolside-acid

@farkas you are modest as always, looping experiments are just my cup of tea so my hopes remain high lol

Also @toobee, for some reason I can only get emoji to work here if I google them and copy it from the results page, so here's some hearts back, thanks for the love ❤️❤️❤️

@toodee I went on a real Serge tear awhile back and that's a big part of the why, but the more proximate cause is that I really super love the VCFS (which I had first) but find it also has a pretty distinctive sound, and one that's kind of smooth rather than aggressive and super resonant. So, I wanted to have another filter to mix it up for when I'm building my own 303 (instead of relying on the M303) and to get a little more intense and a darker vibe. That said, I was looking at the rack today and wondering if a Plaits or a 4MS Ensemble Oscillator might make more sense over the VCFQ there, especially if I could sneak in something like a WMD C4RBN. Future plans, TBD!

Stepping back and putting aside my particular acid journey, they are both really unique and interesting filters that don't quite sound like anything else I've used, so if you're curious I would definitely recommend them both, and I have a ton of love for the R*S modules in general too. Hope that helps!

EDITED Jul 19th 2021, 16:03

Thanks @farkas! I saw you were posting again too and have your songs in the queue, looking forward to listening to them. Re: the Salmple I bought it a bit before my hiatus so I haven't used it a ton ton, but so far I've been pretty impressed and I still have a lot to learn, for example I'd love to spend some time working to use it for live sampling. Overall though if you're aiming to make a live dance rack I'd say it's a pretty nice addition because its does a ton and the cohesiveness of the different drum banks and the ease of switching between them helps in experimenting quickly to find the right sound.

@toodee, thanks for the welcome back, and agreed, sometimes a break can really get the creative juices churning. Hopefully I can keep it up 🕺

EDITED Jul 19th 2021, 13:47

Life, as it does, has its way of intervening and getting in the way of things, and so I spent the last two months with the synths set aside and not making music. But! I did a lot of thinking in that time, and had a boatload of new ideas, and got to try a few this weekend. Here's the one I'm happiest with, hope you enjoy and you're all well!

https://stevehand.bandcamp.com/album/after-beach-acid

Made with:

Excellent @yunyun, really pristine and delicate for eurorack, well done!

Lots of good ideas there @nickgreenberg, will definitely add some of that in!

I'll second @cmb_, we're sending good vibes @baltergeist!