By the way, @StarboardVenus (Sam) if you would be interested in starting a thread about your Spectrum in the DIY section, I’m sure a few photos showing the current state of the kit would stimulate advice and encouragement.
Sorry if the following sounds condescending, but I’m a dad and you’re still in school: please make sure your synth work doesn’t get in the way of your exams.
And vice versa, of course
Hiya hello hi there,
Following my fancies and interests has recently led me to electronics. Right during a huge chip shortage, of course. Not the best time to get started, but fancies aren’t concerned with practical matters.
Previous fancies led me to record music, I would describe it as “Baroque Technopop”, “Pastoral Industrial”, “Digital Fusion”, or “French House” (as I live in France, and record music from my house). I use a lot of tools and never allow the creative process to go stale. Lately, Renoise + Reason have been a comfy combo, I like how trackers let me see all harmony at once, and let me be playful with time signatures.
Last few years, I’ve taken a greater interest in live performance of aleatoric music, which has led me to an interest in modular synthesis. Here’s an example from last year:
I’m using aleatoric and procedural techniques, dirty Reason patching hacks that are almost forgotten lore at this point, and unusual controller bindings: the mixer faders control the chords and melody (nobody needs a mixer when low-pass filters exist).
This is the sort of stuff that’s led me to start exploring real electronics, beyond the world of software.
I wanna bring this sort of playful attitude to my explorations, so naturally I like LMNC’s scrappy fun projects. It’s a vibe far removed from the bourgeois mediocrity of €200000000000 boutique eurorack systems used to make pad sounds that sound worse than what I could coax out of Mario Paint and a banged up guitar pedal.
I’m still very much an electronics beginner, with only one completed synth DIY project. Wanna be horrified by my duct tape skills? Peep my build video from last month:
It’s a little arduino-based aleatoric fm synth, normally in Volca form factor, but I had to print a bigger box to make my mess fit, heh. (3D printing has been another of my recent fancies.)
So, this place seems like the place! Almost everyone who’s buiding cool stuff right now seems to be here. If I’m gonna end up here this often, I might as well make an account and say hi.
I’m not sure what I’m building next. No idea if it’s in Kosmo format or not. I’m not too delicate with my big fingies, so building it chonky is appealing. My next step is to bootstrap a minimal modular system. The hard way, of course, without using commercial gear or kits as a scaffold.
We’ll see where it leads. I’m not in a rush, but I’m in this for the long run.
I also made some music software in the past, my most recent explorations leading me to Unreal Engine 5’s impressive audio engine. But if my name rings a bell due to some entirely unrelated disputes in the synth software world over a year ago, no it doesn’t.
Hi Aria! We chatted on the “Why I’m not making VCV Rack modules anymore” thread on reddit, I agreed and said I had moved from Rack to DIY hardware modular… welcome home…
I had to look that one up:
Welcome, Aria.
Welcome to the forum 
Pastoral industrial reminds me of my childhood growing up in in the middle of missouri on a large scale agricultural complex.
Welcome to the forum!
Aleatoric music sure sounds stuffy when you allow Wikipedia to bore you with all the big brain academic underpinnings of it, doesn’t it? But to me it’s more, bring in enough turing machine style modules, some sources of noise, a bunch of quantizers, have no clue what most cables are even up to and shove them somewhere at random. With a bit of experience with the method, you can dare to call the results music.
Alea iacta est. Rubicon in the rear view mirror.
I had to rack my brains for a minute to remember where I’d read your name before… it was your blog post on the woes of the VCVrack community. Welcome to the hardware world! You’ll feel right at home here, this is a really friendly forum.
I’d much rather be a blank slate and establish a reputation for making new things, haha. I’m not here to bring with me this old story!
You’re not the only one, Aria. This is the most welcoming community I’ve ever encountered. We’re not interested in old grievances.
Well, sorry, I did google up your blog article and read it, or at least the parts directly about your dissatisfaction.
No need to discuss it, I just want to say I think you’ll find this forum is vastly different from the environment you describe. It’s about the only online forum I participate in, because most others strike me as being too full of fluff or too much burdened with condescending loudmouths. Or both. For reasons I cannot fathom that has not been the case here. It’s 100% friendly, welcoming, and informative. Well, maybe only 99.99%. Close enough.
Hello! Im a guitar and keyboard player, and although I’ve been lurking a bit - gearwise, I own/play korg, modal, nord, aodyo, and audiothingies synths, and sequence my drum 3p and the audiothingies, on my beatstep pro . oh right and i play with serum sometimes. guitar gear wise I use boss sy300 and helix. oh and i have a yorick tech lfe i use with the nord which is pretty fun [but havent made new patches on it in a little while], and got a couple nice guitars. Ive thought off and on to get a zoia, to get started w/modular, but I fear how much time it would take to figure out…
I started watching LMNC around 2019 i think. I have a friend in my area, another synthesist, [is that a word? It is now] who got me interested in the forum here, but ive just lurked awhile just not sure how to get started w/modular related things [i know its prob not just modular but thats one area ive been curious about].
I have a vocoder on my roland juno di synth, which I record on some song projects Ive made in the past. Dont have a website, but put a couple songs out a few years back onto the bandcamp site. But ive not really tried using other sounds with it [only poss w/the roland sounds via the kinda clunky software editor].
But yeah, right now Ive been getting more into sound programming, mainly it seems w/wavetable sounds, just fascinated with them for some reason.
wishlist wise, Im actually considering a geckotool, but for sliders. dont know if it exists [yet]. its funny about 3 years ago i only really played guitar and maybe the roland, now im probably playing synth a lot more. if i ever do break into modular, i just fear i will amass all sorts of wires and switches all over the place, hence why zoia kinda appeals to me, or at least a simplified yet flexible version. nord modular kinda appeals, yet doesnt due to needing software to program. I tend to like programming in real time on hardware vs software.
anyways, hi there!
Chal,
There’s loads of ways to go about modular. What I’d say is before you get something decide if you enjoy it on your desk (the main thing is don’t get things that physically make you distance from them) and if the depths of the synth can do what you want. If programming something regularly requires going through multiple levels of strange user interface it depends how much the sound is lovely enough to commit to that thing. If you are getting into one modular thing it’s probably not about copying the recommended patches for getting recommended sounds. So what I like to do is not expect to get exactly what the most well known users get but to research the modules’ function and decide if I like how they’re going to play with the other modules. Zoia may be perfect and I don’t know. It always seemed to me like MAX but with far less usable way to build a new patch but then again maybe they figured out a far more streamlined way to build MAX patches. The only thing I find again and again seems to be the best option to learn is just buy building a V/OCT / GATE SEQUENCER, LFO, VCO, ADSR, VCF and VCA which will put you past the stage of not knowing how the different modules actually work. Those 6 modules are the basis for any modular and will get you going immediately. It’s also kind of what a lot of topics on the forums are. I wouldn’t be intimidated to think you can’t bring any other topics as there’s a lot about bringing broken things back to functioning even non-modular things. So if you want to fix some digital music instrument you’re in the right place.
-Fumu / Esopus
Welcome to the forum
Theres always things like VCV Rack on pc and if youve got an iPad theres miRack. Ive been using it to try out ideas and see what my build needs. Which is currently effects =D
Welcome to the forum =)
Howdy,
this is &/or I’m ShedSynth.
ShedSynth,
Welcome to the forums.
-Fumu / Esopus
I like the clockwork! Okay, I was actually hoping for something with a big key you have to wind up.
Close enough though.
