Well, I have been talking about my return to modular synthesis, and building a modular from scratch, as a way to chronicle the journey of small beginnings, and hopefully potential grand future. I did this partially as a way to encourage others like myself, who felt like an initial purchase of a preconfigured modular system from Doepfer where a “Mini System” costs $1649 and a “Basic System with MIDI” costs $2599 of being too big a first step in an arena that often seems a little foreboding and uncertain. Since my last post on this topic, I have already outgrown the diminuitive minicase with the addition of a TipTop Z3000 VCO, & a Doepfer A-140 ADSR Envelope Generator. Now that I am regularly reading the Eurorack support forum on Muffwiggler, I am glad I am going slow, stepwise and deliberate in my purchases. The reason being, there are so many product offerings from so many different manufacturers, that to go with a preconfigured system from any single manufacturer would create too much homogeneity, and postpone my discovery of alternate offerings from other vendors that in many cases surpass those same functional units from Doepfer. Don’t get me wrong, Doepfer was my original motivation to go this direction, and they are still the most complete line of modules out there. This makes it easy initially to ignore a module maker that only makes a handful of modules, but what I am already discovering is that when a synth manufacturer only makes a few modules, they are often quite powerful or specialized to a certain subinterest in the modular world. If you are going with Eurorack modulars because you want to make Buchla type sounds, then there are modules catered to feeding that specific craving like the Make Noise QMMG and its 8 “vactrols”. I find that reading up before I buy, allows me the chance to minimize or eliminate buyer’s remorse by reading other people’s experiences and making the best choice for my needs the first time around, rather than replacing one module with another one, and having to sell the old one off used for a loss. I already wish I had forgone the A-120 VCF and had made the TipTop Z2040 my first VCF since it also contains a VCA, and as a dual function module, would have been a more efficient choice in such a tiny case. I have tweeted a lot of things to the effect that a tiny minicase system was more satisfying a small beginning than many would think, but of course when you say something like that, people want to HEAR the results, which up to this point have been zero, as far as public posts on the internet are concerned. That is precisely why I did this:

from the youtube description:

“redvoid& funky49 testing out the minicase doepfer modular synth with a basic acid groove. the modular has only 3 modules a TipTop Z3000 VCO, a Doepfer A-140 ADSR & a Doepfer A-120 VCF. MIDI-cv/gate conversion is being done through one of the 4 channels on the Syntechno TeeBee, though it makes no sound. The drums are abasic beat made of TR-909 samples. The synth part never changes, and the drums are one pattern plus or minus an instrument. Drum pads on the Akai MPK-49 are being used to trigger Ableton scenes but only really change the drum parts. Akai faders are employed to add effects to the drums or synth. This is just a quick experiment to see what variations we could get from two simple parts and some effects performance, and synth tweaking.”

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