Day 4 - Thoughts on Eurorack + Bonus First Patch!!!

I would say that perhaps the thing that attracted me most to the Eurorack format (as opposed to Synthesizers.com or Buchla or one of the other many formats) was that I read that Eurorack modules were less expensive. When I say "less expensive", I really mean to say "slightly less expensive than a dental implant" but that is not always the case. Some of the entry level packages for larger format synths cost roughly as much as my car cost, often lots more. And all that's great, but I think it would be a hard sell to my wife if I wanted to go down that route. Granted, you can still dump a considerable amount of money into a Eurorack system, but based on a cursory search of the Internet, your dollar/euro/pound/kroner stretches every so slightly further.

To my delight, there are other great reasons for going down the Eurorack rabbit-hole rather than some other, more costly rabbit-hole. Firstly, it's a crazy popular format right now. There are dozens of manufacturers of modules from all over the world getting into the market. You can even find modules on Amazon.com, which was a welcome surprise.

And because the format has a somewhat lower price of entry, more people are using it and therefor a lot more resources exist on the YouTube, bulletin boards and so on. It's easy to find information about given module you are learning how to use, and some really great patch help, jams, tutorials, etcetera.

Perhaps most crucially, there are some very interesting things being down in the Eurorack format that I wager are not being done on other formats. Just take a look the gear made by Make Noise Co. 'm not an expert at this stuff or anything, but I am pretty sure that their design for a Cartesian sequencer (the René) rather unique, turning the whole sequencing workflow on its head...and on its side and folding it in half multiple times... great stuff. Mutable Instruments also is bringing some serious game to the space of physical modelling and granular signal processing. And there are of course many other fine examples of designers bringing outside-the-box designs to life, and in looking through all of them it's caused me to greatly rethink everything I know about synths and music and crap.

So now the fun stuff. My first patch! I mean, sort of. The first I'm willing to share, I guess. I apologize if my bony old-man hands gross you out. ):

So here she is. As you can see, I've build everything out with a few more boring but useful modules, such as the Doepfer Quad ADSR envelope generator. It's not super exciting, no, but it's a good value for the number of envelopes you can generate. Also new is the Intellijel Linix linear mixer (Linear. Mixer. Lin...ix... clever, right?) which I understand is a pretty good module to have around for attenuating control voltages, something I intend to do with reckless abandon in the future. Also new is the Chronoblob delay, which is a pretty sick digital delay with some fun features.

So, like, patch notes:

Quantized random voltages from the Expert Sleepers Disting provide the "melody" on the Moog Mother-32, Doepfer Quad ADSR provides envelopes for both the amplitude and filter cutoff. Melody is run through the sweet Cloudblobs delay and back out to the Intellijel Linix linear mixer. Volca Kick and Volca Beats (not shown) provide the percussion. The Pamela's Workout module is the clock source for everything and then some.

And here's an obligatory video of my trying to control this machine:

It's far from the worst thing I've ever done. Not especially superb or anything, but an adequate early effort, I'd have to say.