Day 12 - Still no idea what I'm doing...

...But I'm getting there, little by little. The rest of my modules have arrived. My choices of modules were largely the result of hours on the YouTubes and the MuffWiggler forums, trying to get an idea for the sort of thing I might need going forward. This process is complicated greatly by that I'm not totally sure what kind of "sound" I'm going for in my modular experimentation. It is my impression that without these sorts of goals, I can expect only a lot of pain and heartache. Perhaps given that my ultimate goal is boundless experimentation, I shouldn't be so self conscious about not having a specific "sound" in mind. But I dunno. In any case, it's too late to back out now; the modules have all arrived, I've cut up my credit card, and I'm ready to really dig in. So what do we have?

Voices - Owls trapped in a steel drum

The Make Noise DPO seemed like a pretty obvious, regardless of what sound I'm going for. As a dual-voice complex oscillator, I can make just about any sound, or so the Internet would have me believe. In regard to the concept of complex oscillators, I'd like to emphasize the word complex which doesn't quite do justice to just how much tweaking is involved. Still, I think I'm getting the hang of it thanks in large part to the plethora of materials provided by Make Noise on their YouTube channel. I'm still not sure what a "vactrol" is but it sounds awesome.

The Intellijel Cyclonix Shapeshifter is perhaps a less obvious choice. As complicated as the DPO has proven, the Shapeshifter is crazy complicated, but I am madly in love with the sounds coming out of it, sounds ranging from cats screaming underwater to owls trapped in a steel drum and beyond. My only complaint is that (owing a lot to my ignorance, I suspect) it is very difficult to tune. Am I crazy for thinking that (as with the DPO) the fine tuning knob should be larger than the coarse tuning knob? I think that an oscilloscope might be a great investment during my introductory period. It might not make my music sound any nicer, but at very least it will at least let me see what's going on with the waveforms I'm folding over each other. I might post an in-depth sort of look at this, because I'm sure it would be hilarious to see what it looks like when a n00b like me takes a stab at shifting shapes on this bad boy.

FX and Filters - Making waves

In many of the various modular setups I've seen lately, there seem to be a lot of Mutable Insturments Clouds, a so-called granular texture synthesizer. Though not totally clear on what all that means, I will say there's some pretty nice textural drones and reverb-type effects possible. With only a single voice and the deft application of some CV, I can see this producing some pretty great sounds. A sort of ambient pad generator, if you will.

I've also ended up with a number of filters, namely the Optomix, the LxD, and the MMG all from Make Noise. The Internet makes it look like the various low-pass gate filters from Make Noise play pretty well with the DPO, and perhaps other VCOs as well. I won't enumerate all their functionality, but since they all have a strike control thingy, it seems like they lend themselves nicely to percussive sounds, something I might find difficult to attain with my percussion-free setup. So far, I get a lot of great squelches and blurbles, but I'm still working it all out.

Putting it All Together - Noodles like a boss

And here's the obligatory "noodling" session on my new toy. There are a few modules I haven't really talked about above, but that's only because I am not ready to talk about them and I'd much rather save myself the embarrassment of having tried. Patch notes in the YouTube description. Please forgive the horrible, dopey expression on my face, but I'll tell you, children, that this is a function of age; the older you get, the more dopey your face becomes. Time destroys everything. Enjoy!