Hi all,
I would love some feedback on my first rack. I've built a little over half of it already (basically the top row and the left half of the bottom, all of the 1us) and I'm loving it so far but would love overall feedback from some experts.
My goal in this rack was to build around the arbhar to create a synth that excels at 1. strange granular beats and sound design, complemented with 2. some freaky FM. I'm pairing this with my Minibrute 2S (which is why there's no dedicated sequencer). I really wanted a self-contained small(ish) system that I wont need to keep adding to. I'm patching into my UAD, so all the reverb/delay/etc duties are handled in laptop (doing more recording than live performance).
As far as patching style goes, I really love the discovery of self-patched and cross-patched feedback and stretching modules past their obvious uses (using Maths as a subharmonic quantizer, turning Planar into a droning feedback machine, etc).
A few of my odder choices:
- Other than Arbhar, I have two main sound sources (Generate3 and Pitt Primary). I like this pair because Pitt's analog "wavetables" sound incredible FM-ing the Generate. (Also, I'm a pittsburgh boy, so I absolutely must represent). Additionally, I can coax some great drones out of the Pitt (which I love to feed into Arbhar and chop up and layer).
- Just Friends is often on related-envelope duty turning a simple beat into a series of strange rhythms, more great fuel for my granular core. Additionally, JF is a second through-zero voice which means I can cross-modulate it with Generate and get some tightly tuned feedback chaos.
- Triple Sloths drives the waveshapers and Planar. Really it can turn almost anything into a drone and when i throw it into the instruo waveshaper I basically have a semi-regular noise generator.
- Plancks is both a secondary mixer and a secondary sequencer, which helps round out my MiniBrute when I need faster/dirtier/extra channels of sequence. Also, it's paired with a tanh and can serve as a quick-and-dirty feedback mixer.
- Probably the strangest choice is 100 Grit as my only filter (other than the static high-pass module). However, I love the way it sounds, it can become a monster kick, and when it's not in use it becomes a distortion box. What's not to love!?
Anyway, would love to hear some feedback. Thanks in advance.
Best,
Erik
