all hardware setup

[AK]

the thing i hate about software is the GBs of samples and presets that come with every product.

I was surfing thru VSTs, stuff which was all fascinating technology, but it very rarely lived up to it's expectation creatively. I could get some interesting results, but I could never motivate myself to fully explore it.

Camel Audio Alchemy, that was supposed to be the Dog's Bollocks, and conceptually it was fascinating, but after the initial awe subsided, I just couldn't click with it. I loaded in a few samples and frequency analysed them, and thought hey wow thats great. You can now make a voice... but then... to compose like that is so conscious and mind driven... You have to plan ahead every mode. Modular is much more intuitive, you can kind of drive the process, but you don't go 'ok I want this kind of sound', you just patch it and then get surprised and then just go with the flow. And before you know it there are cables everywhere and the machine is playing itself and the music is beautiful.

Reaktor and MaxMSP were my favourite things, but even with them I lost huge amounts of time to construction, and the cross between musical creativity and patching was non existant. It was either mindfuck headache stupid geeky drawing lines and trying to understand things. And then once you had a patch, it was always reasonably conventional synthesis, but more fine tuned and interesting than commercial vsts. I would spend lots of time down alleys working out how to distort digital filters, and building a granulizer. Kind of interesting, but for me using prebuilt modules that some weirdo has done all that work to make the machine perfect and set it in stone is just perfect(some guys even take 10 years to perfect a design)... It fills that niche in my soul of playing a 'real' instrument, and being so happy with it that I want to play it all my life, like some Jazz guy.

And then when using it ,patching is totally fluid. I have to sratch my head, and sometimes stop to think about things. But it's nothing like the uphill struggle of building a max patch.

I loved analogue machines, but everything out there had so much work to do, to be able to use it exactly how I'd want to use it. Had to convert Roland machines to take gate in, but then you can't use the sequencer which itself is interesting. Dave Smith, quite frankly is just software with a bit better sound.

Modular is my perfect happy creative middle ground. I'm gonna skip and dance around here for as long into the future as I can see.

I couldn't click with any of it full stop really, but Absynth was a big favourite of mine for rhythmic/looped oddness and completely other world type sounds. I spent a while with that. Also had the Korg legacy Collection and got a lot of mileage out of the Polysix and MS20. Was fun at first as I had the controller ( which came with patch cords ) but, as Korg is so feckin sh!t, it broke after 18 months, started sending random midi messages and then just packed up ( as did a bunch of other Korg products I owned ) fck Korg.

[oblioblioblio]

hmmm... the stuff I mentioned, I mean I got varying mileage out of everything I used. Ableton Operator, that was kind of alright, I liked the cycling envelopes. U-He Zebra2. That was a good synth, well designed, nice sounding. Used that loads over a few years. Did some nice programming.

But I just couldn't find the depth in it, and a feeling of kinship and harmony like I feel with my modules. And the best thing.... modular actually ends up sounding better te more you explore it. Almost every softwynth I used I got past a brickwall and a wow factor, and reached the core realisation that theyre all not that particuarly different.

I mentioned earlier about surfing presets... in lots of ways software forces you into that mentality. Everything has all these features buried in non-intuitive layers. Modular the exploration is natural and easy.

[dubgil2]

Steevio or Oblio...

do either of you have some example of the music you've made with modular systems you can share; even if it's not full tracks. I appreciate it, but understand if you don't.

[::BLM::]

I really don't get all this vst bashing. Vst's are fantastic, to say they all sound the same is just stupid really. I have different ones for different things. A synth for Bass, then one for strings etc... they are all completely different.

[steevio]

Steevio or Oblio...

do either of you have some example of the music you've made with modular systems you can share; even if it's not full tracks. I appreciate it, but understand if you don't.

yeah i know ive been rabbiting on about it and not posted any music, the only reason is that i'm recording stuff for release on 4 different labels in the next 6 months, and i'd rather be judged on that when it comes out, i'm a sad pefectionist, and i hate posting unfinished half-assed music on the net.

i was thinking about posting a video of a tour around my modular to explain a few things and show what it can do, but i'm not sure i'll have the time, it seems somebody needs to do it to explode all these weird myths.

[::BLM::]

What labels bro? Can you say?

[oblioblioblio]

If you're on the fence. the best way to see what modular can do is to try it out. it's always gonna sound like someone elses music when they're making it and modular is capable of 1million different things. ANd I think it stresses the creative process to try and show off what modular can do. The music has to exist on it's own.

Go to schneidersladen in Berlin or London, maybe a friends studio if thats possible, a modular gathering (they seem to be happening all over europe, look on muffwiggler). Dunno where you're based. There's stuff in America as well.

[oblioblioblio]

I really don't get all this vst bashing. Vst's are fantastic, to say they all sound the same is just stupid really. I have different ones for different things. A synth for Bass, then one for strings etc... they are all completely different.

but they all use exactly the same technology at the core. I believe all oscillators are just simple digital mathematical waveforms. Most of the filter designs are based on the same core algorrithms, I believe.

I'm just waiting for a DSP head to tell me that I am wrong there... I would welcome it... but as far as I am aware the only difference is in how much extra code is used to make the basic code 'fancy' or 'imperfect like analogue'... in analogue there is nothing there to make anything fancy or like analogue... it just does what it does in it's own physical way, depending on the circuit design and the components used. These building blocks of oscillators and filters are the core of a piece of electronic music, and I didn't find too much that was massively excitingly different in their design across different vsts. Whereas analogue the differences are striking. Although, I believe there is probably good stuff that you can do with computers and code. I just didn't really hear it in the vst universe yet.

I also think that vsts are extremely limited by the interface of a computer. It's just not made for making music.

I should take back some of what I said... there are a few things that I will miss in vstland. Reaktor had some great stuff, and there were bits and pieces that I still think could be interesting, or that I have a small softspot for.

But to me nothing comes close to my modular.