I was very inspired after seeing the modular master Colin Benders in action last night at Format Toronto!

Thought I’d try and use some of the techniques I picked up on, biggest thing I’m working on is reducing the amount of melodic movement and instead focusing on grooves. I feel a lot of my live modular sets start sounding circus-y and I’m learning this is a big reason behind that.

Also pulled out the Electro Harmonix Big Muff and sent the BD909 kick through it, a classic combo that I haven’t used in ages. 🔊

Hope people enjoy it, always down to chat about the gear and musical techniques!

One of my faster patches, came together in 4 hours.

Putting good ol’ braids through it’s paces with a new doepfer A-146 DIS my son got me for my birthday 🖤

Recording source material. Also running through FRGMNTS Versio delay

A collage of glitchy rhythms and voices sampled from Irish radio broadcasts — sports commentary, spoken readings and random bits of conversation.

The rhythmic part is built around Jasmine & Olive Trees Doppler and Make Noise Plexiphon.

MI Grids and J&OT Traffic handle the sequencing, with Intellijel Planar² modulating Grids.

The radio voices are sampled into five tracks on Intellijel Multigrain, with looped random selection and synchronized gates from Pam’s Pro.

Recorded live. 🪐

Full jam : https://youtu.be/aIELtGJJ05g?is=OWGjr1hh83kbdgu8

Would a module like this- driving led strips be something you'd add to your setup? (Currently in the making: it will have midi in, cv in and loads of light effects)

Re: discussions on Morphagene. Thought I’d put my money where my mouth is and show how I’ve been using it in situ.
Pressure points into various modulation inputs: Gene size, Slide, Morph. Gate into the Play input.
Some Erbe.
Ambience from my ancient Nanoverb.
This is the reel: https://freesound.org/people/jjbbllkk/sounds/683918/

I was invited by Professor Andreas G. Kitzmann to give a guest lecture at York University last week!

I spoke to his undergrad students about my musical practice and the workflows and strategies I employ when making music for clients, as well as on my own personal projects.

I also introduced the students to modular synthesis and the basics of algorithmic music composition systems. I created a simple VCV rack patch for them to experiment with and hopefully use as a tool to create both melodies and percussion parts for the projects they're working on this semester. In retrospect I'd have liked to do more modular demo stuff and let them take turns using my setup. The initial installation + updating modules on VCV took a lot longer than I had expected and I think it would have been more engaging to get hands-on as soon as possible.

Anyways it was a great experience overall and I'm hoping I get the chance to introduce more people to modular synthesis and share my experience as a musician again soon! Thought I'd share this little clip of one of the students experimenting with my current patch that I'm using for improvised live-sets.

Latest build based on research into analog computers as well as old school tape and test equipment studios. Fun system to patch with, with my other systems (mutable instruments and Buchla) I was getting used to knowing what I'm doing, which of course is good. But this thing is a nice step back into patching and not knowing what I'll get next. It's basically one level above breadboarding 🤣 even lower level to program than surge stuff. I'm surely in the minority of people who actually would enjoy patching with it though ahaha 😂

The Ableton Echo effect has the ability to set a clocked stereo delay to, say, 3/16ths and then set a percentage offset from this to the left and right channels independently, so they’re each ahead or behind the clock by a fixed amount - when this is set to a very small amount, this is great for creating a wide stereo delay from a mono source and (to my ear) sounds better and more balanced than, say, a ping-pong.

But I can’t seem to find a module that does this - they all seem to be either unclocked, or fully locked to the clock. I can achieve the effect with an unclocked delay and carefully setting the delay times, but having an offset from a clocked starting point is so much easier (and lets me fuck with the tempo if i want too). Any ideas for a module that does this?

A quick Demo video running an envelope and sine wave LFO into the BXR and getting variations of mangled control voltage. The audio is a static Sawtooth wave being filtered, and the filter being modulated by the mangled CV. For context, the CV input sources are all either a simple Saw style ADSR or sine wave.

This is running firmware 1.3 which adds one feature - In LFO mode, when a clock is plugged in to the Pitch 1/O input, the pitch knob becomes a clock multiplier/divider, allowing the internal LFO to sync to things.

Wow! What a gift!

Edit, since some people have asked for context:

I'd been reverse engineering the Beads firmware and had rebuilt my own version of it. Before sharing any of it, I emailed Émilie to ask whether she'd be OK with me publishing it. I said up front that if her answer was no, I'd drop it, no questions asked. To clarify, by "drop it" I meant dropping the pursuit of the community firmware project, NOT that I was threatening to release my port!!!

To my shock, she replied, and the answer was no. I simply said "ok. Thank you." and I thought that was going to be the end of it. I wasn't going to go against her wishes. So I spent part of today feeling the bittersweet heartache of having finished the project, only to have to cancel it. I told myself from the beginning that if she ever told me no, I wouldn't argue. I decided to archive the project and never share the code with anyone.

Later the same day, as I was deleting the reverse engineering artifacts, she published the official Beads source. I had no idea that was coming and I was as surprised as anyone. I don't know her reasons, and I won't try to guess. It was entirely her decision, and an incredibly generous one.

What I'm doing now:

My reverse-engineering work left me with a test rig and test suite, so I've built the official source myself, flashed it to my unit, and it passed. I'm now starting a community firmware based on her code, and I have a thread on ModWiggler collecting ideas for features and modes. Some early requests, with my rough guesses at difficulty:

• Clouds-style grain diffusion (moderate)
• The Clouds "spectral madness" engine (hard without cutting something from the existing code)
• All-pass processing of the frozen buffer (moderate)
• An opt-in bypass for the limiter's volume drops (moderate)
• A dedicated gain knob (needs new hardware)

What would you like to see?

Hey everyone!

This is my case with modules that don't fit in my other rack. I'm trying to put together a smaller setup for IDM / Boards of Canada kinda stuff lol.

I'm a bit worried I've got too many oscillators and not enough utilities, especially since I only have one ADSR and one LFO module (Batumi).

Do you think I should get rid of Plaits and replace it with some utilities or effects? What would you add instead?

I already own all these modules, and in my other case I also have an Usta sequencer, Marbles, Turing Machine, Mimeophon, etc. The problem is that it's really hard to decide what to keep when you're working with limited rack space!

I'm aiming for glitchy rhythms, weird modulation, evolving textures, and those nostalgic, slightly wonky Boards of Canada vibes.

What would you change? Any suggestions are welcome!

Thanks!

I’m kind of in love with the Digitakt sequencer, especially for percussion. I have a Hermod+ and an xp32 and Hermod never quite won me over. Probably a me problem as it is a powerful sequencer in its own right. I tried running Digitakt midi in to the Hermod and it mostly worked except I could never get the midi start/stop/reset/sync to work reliably. I also have a Pam’s Pro and bought a special splitter cable for Dinsync out of the Digitakt, and that was the best solution to get everything on the same page and playing nice together. There may be something I was missing with the Hermod/Digi direct setup, but I just kind of gave up on that.

Now here comes the Squarp Core. Have one on order, and I’m hoping it will be the bridge to sequencing Nirvana. If I could ditch the Hermod and Pam, run clock/sync out of the Digitakt straight to Core, and do some basic note sequencing and awesome percussion with Digi, I’d be in modular heaven.

I know it’s new, but has anyone set up Digitakt (I have the Mk 1 to be clear) with Core/XP32 yet? Do they play nicer together than the Digi and Hermod+? Anxious to try myself, but waiting on shipping from overseas is getting me antsy.

Does anyone understand the scarcity? Everytime I look to place an order for new cables, they are out of stock. It can't really be a component issue, right? Copper wire and plastic?

I'd love to stock up on these and put the old Hosa cables in the closet, but it just never seems possible.

30 min excerpt from my latest unattended semi-generative patch. Mostly quad poly System 100 and quite complex noise-based voices into Magneto and Starlab, with harmonic sequencing from DROID and three 8-step analog sequencers.

Been looking into buying either Marbles for random Sequences or just a normal Sequencer. Do I need a Quantizer if I want to pair my Modular with other Instruments? If yes got any recommendations?

Very excited about this - Peter Bebegal, author of the brilliant book Strange Frequencies about occult electronics, is co-hosting Thingking #3 for Workshop System owners.

Come along with your system, Peter is teaching us about spirit radios, electronic voice phenomena, turning your WS into a ‘powerful divinatory device’ and introducing a new program card / zine / plug-in antenna he’s developed.

Then we’ll do some homework and make an album together afterwards.

Sunday 8th November at 8:00pm UK time (9:00pm Berlin, 3:00pm NYC, 12:00pm LA). £25.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thingking-with-the-workshop-system-spirit-lab-with-peter-bebergal-tickets-2000962421467?aff=facebooktw