This is the latest installment of my eurorack modular synth build process. Its been about 10 months of buying and learning new modules and understanding the new permutations that come with each purchase. I am still a little cloudy on the Maths module but otherwise feel like I have a solid handle on most everything else. I had started a new track and let it languish a little as other commitments were getting in the way, but the purchase of a used Fender Jazz Bass was enough to get me back in the studio playing with some sounds, and the modular patch I was working with started sounding interesting, so I rolled a little video.

Image via Wikipedia

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image courtesy of WebTreats

This week I had a kind of “ah ha” moment, where no matter how semi savvy I am with a multitude of various social networks, and with the music business itself, every so often there is a use that eludes me, especially as it concerns the integration of multiple sites to create something systematic that is beneficial to me as a musician. Such was the case when I realized what youlicense could do for me.

My first exposure to it was via Twitter courtesy of @MarkMosher and @HethFen who were already avid proponents, the latter of which has written numerous articles on the subject on her blog.  I already had a songwriter publishing account with BMI, a Soundcloud page, and this blog. I have also been trying to come up with a good strategy for tying them together to sell my music digitally online, and was not coming up with anything I felt really good about. Then earlier this week, I was logging into my BMI account to register a new work, and I noticed that BMI was also promoting youlicense, and I could get a free starter account as a BMI member, so I went ahead and did it.

What youlicense can do for you is beyond the scope of this article, but Heather Fenoughty speaks of it extensively in her “music business” category of posts.

Interconnecting social networks is often hit or miss, as I’ve experienced having my youtube or soundcloud bomb Twitter or Facebook with way too many spammy sounding updates  automatically (as recently as this week) which I have since toned down or turned off. The below is a good example of the kind of cross connected, secure ordering, digital music sales and licensing synergy that can be done with this combo. Youlicense was able to pull all my SoundCloud tracks in via an application connector, so then I just had to select my licensing options, sales options and add the genre and descriptions metadata to the works as to not duplicate effort by having to upload my musical content yet again, to yet another site. The below player is shared as an embed widget in this blog entry on my website, allows you to listen to all the material in the player streamed from SoundCloud, and the “buy” links on the player redirect you to a PayPal secure ordering checkout cart on my youlicense storefront, at which point if you were just a music listener you could purchase the mp3 and if you’re a record label, tv/film/advertising licensing agent, you could license the track for your project in a kind of interconnected social media synergy of sorts.

unreleased tracks by redvoid

This next embedded player goes straight to youlicense for licensing or purchasing:

Well, I am no expert on youlicense and have only recently started integrating it into my personal social web, so I’d like to hear from you. What cool combos of social media have you found to be the most useful for musicians?

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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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Well its January 2010 so you know what that means? Its NAMM time again, so the flood of new product offerings and announcements is underway. Looks like Doepfer has several new products, some of which look quite promising. Remember of course, that none of these are shipping, and the designs of some of these modules are still in flux, and could end up being very different, if and when they do get released.

Voltage Controlled DIY Effects A-187-1

Doepfer A-187-1 Voltage Controlled DSP Module

Some analog only purists may take issue with a digital effects module, but if you wanted something beyond a spring reverb in your rig, this may be the ticket. This module almost seems like Doepfer’s answer to the TipTop Z-DSP module. I figure most people with a modular are going to end up recording it somewhere eventually, and most likely will end up adding DAW or hardware based external effects to the sounds anyway, so the advantage this gives you is the ability to route your control voltages to it to control one of the selected effect’s parameters. It will have 16 selectable effects with 4 parameters each that can be controlled via knob or control voltages from a modulation source. Imagine a sample & hold modulation source sending random voltages to the reverb time parameter clocked to an analog sequencer with a repeating theme, creating a result that would be much more difficult to automate via a software DAW than by using a tool like this. The fact that 4 parameters could be controlled simultaneously from 4 different modulation sources probably has some of you creating patches in your head already. Other effects include, but are not limited to: reverb, delay, flange, distortion & pitch shift. A complete list of effects and control parameters per effect can be found here.

Quad VCLFO/VCO A-143-4

Doepfer A-143-4 Quad VCLFO/VCO

Doepfer seems to like these economical quad “whatever” modules, and there are definitely advantages to this approach. You can get more functionality in a smaller footprint, and add more routing permutations quickly to your rig. It has 4 sections that can be either VCOs or LFOs. On the page on Doepfer’s site there are two potential versions: either with the low/high toggle switches and LEDs or without. Hopefully they’ll go with the former design since the switch would make it easier and more clear when you go between LFO and VCO functionality. There are two CV inputs for each voice and each voice can be either a triangle or square wave pulse. This unfortunately is a little limiting, since most VCOs are going to offer saw and sine waves in addition to these, but if you find yourself using primarily these two waveforms, it may still work out for you. Each voice has its own dedicated output, but you also have a Sum section to give you an option to use this module as a mixer if you lack an external 4-channel mixer module or want to control all 4 voices the same way. By controlling them each separately, you could build some interesting morphing drone sounds.

Quad VCA A-132-4

Doepfer A-132-4 Quad Exponential VCA

The Quad VCA is a similar concept to the A-143-4. The Doepfer page also says this module will have jumpers on the back for changing which VCAs are sent to the bottom sum output section. It also seems like this was designed to go with the quad VCLFO/VCO module to create a complete 4-voice setup for potential polyphonic uses or big stacked sounds.

16×8 Miniature Trigger Sequencer A-157-1

Doepfer A-157 Trigger Sequencer Prototype

New sequencer modules are always welcome, and this one is a trigger-only sequencer, so the obvious application would be drum pattern sequencing… so pairing with some analog percussion modules like those made by Analogue Solutions could give you TR-808 or TR-909 step programming capability. Obviously you could do more than just that. The prototype pictured is an 8×8, meaning 8 parts of 8 steps each. However, the final version is supposed to be an 8×16, for 8 parts, with 16 steps each, giving you a full 4/4 bar of music if you are working in 16th notes. Lots of moving flashing LEDs may also impress your friends who have no idea what you are doing with your cryptic looking patchable beast. The clock section has: clock, start, stop and reset inputs for triggering from external modules for more aleatory experimentation. Date of delivery is tentatively set for Summer 2010 with price TBA.

New Version of the Touch Sensor Keyboard A-100TKB

Doepfer A-100TKB Touch Sensor Keyboard

Not having any experience with touch plate control surfaces personally, there is not much I can say about this. Though called a “keyboard”, it has a “non-keyboard layout” and this unit is one of many already scrapped prototypes, not a finalized design and has no documentation as to what control voltages it will output besides pitch. So we’ll have to wait and see what details emerge as it develops.

Dark Time Sequencer

Doepfer Dark Time Sequencer

The Dark Time sequencer is a fully featured 16 step analog sequencer with MIDI & USB designed as a companion unit to the already well received Doepfer Dark Energy synth and its Eurorack format module equivalent, the A-111-5 which is now shipping, though not considered an official NAMM release since it was announced much earlier. Hopefully Doepfer will follow suit with this unit and offer a Eurorack equivalent at a later date since the current standard sequencer from them, the A-155 is only an 8-step unit. “Different modes are available: 16 steps, 2 x 8 steps and different repetition modes”, “It is equipped with an internal clock oscillator but can be synced to Midi clock as well” and “Features like transpose, direction (forward/backward/random), quantize on/off and  ranges switches are planned.” Obviously you can use it with gear other than a Dark Energy or Eurorack modular as long as the Volt/Octave of the analog gear being used is compatible.

and now for something completely different…

The Doepfer DIY Synth Board

Doepfer DIY Synthesizer Kit

Maybe I should have used the Steve Jobs tagline “one more thing…” implying the “surprise” bombshell announcement instead of the Monty Python quote… but either way, this indeed did take a lot of synthesists by surprise and it is a pleasant one. To be fair, Doepfer has had many individual DIY parts available for a long time, but never as far as I know, a complete DIY synthesizer. The picture they are releasing is a little misleading on the surface, in that it may imply to some that “DIY Synthesizer Kit” is an all inclusive one, and your synth will end up looking exactly like the picture, but this is not the case. What it actually is, is a PC Board that hosts the electronics for a VCO, VCF, VCA, LFO, Slew Limiter and Inverter, so you get all the synthesizer components needed for a fully functional unit. What it does NOT include are controls, switches, sockets and case. They are presuming that experienced electronics DIYers will know what they want to do, and have the skills and electronic parts sources to finish it themselves, in the way they see fit. The advantage here is that you are free to choose your favorite knobs, (Moog knobs from Mouser anyone?) or your favorite patch panel plug type, be it 3.5mm, 1/4″ or banana plugs.  You can also package it up in any kind of enclosure you envision, depending on your goals of how you wish to use it. In any instance, this should eventually produce some interesting variants from the user community, so there should be lots to look forward to here.

So if you have or plan to buy any Doepfer or Eurorack gear, do any of these new announcements play into your future purchase plans and why?

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Of late, I have been bitten by the modular synthesis bug. For those of you who don’t know what that exactly means, let me quickly explain. Most synthesizers whether analog, digital, or virtual are comprised of sound generation components called Oscillators (aka a VCO), Filters (VCF), & Amplifiers (VCA), and modulation sources like Envelope Generators (EG), & Low Frequency Oscillators (LFO). In addition to this there are Noise Generators, Sample & Hold Circuits (S&H), wave shapers and many other possible accessories too numerous to mention. The “VC” in many of those designations stands for “voltage controlled” which actually only applies to analog synthesis, so in a digital, it might be called a DCO, and in virtual synthesis since it is really just software modeling going on, they may choose VCO or DCO as the metaphor for what the oscillator is doing since it is literally neither. What gives any given synth its distinctively characteristic sound, is how many of these items, of what type, in what configuration you have.

Doepfer A-100 Modular System

the modules and routing diagram of the minimoog

the module and routing diagram of the SH-101

With modern DAWs, full of virtual instrument and effects plugins, you would think there should be no need for external gear at all, but one thing I have found from my many years of doing electronic music, is that the one thing that computers cannot seem to completely mimic is analog synthesizers, even popular virtual analogs that are supposed to be an Arp Oddysee or whatever, end up sounding to my ears more like a Nord Lead, Korg Prophecy, or Access Virus aka virtual modeling synths, not truly analog sounding, because that is precisely what those software plugins are, and having worked with many of these synths over the years, no picture on my computer screen with the right make and model name stamped on it, can fool my ears into thinking I am really on a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5. I have already ditched all my hardware effects except for one compressor, and one tube preamp used for my Condenser Microphone, which needs hot levels prior to the A/D conversion, and I am in the process of ditching many keyboards, (drum machines, romplers and samplers especially) other than my analog synths, (a Syntechno TeeBee, a Roland Alpha Juno-1 w/ PG-300 controller) and yes my Nord Lead since multi effects, sampling & virtual synthesis are indeed so good in software now, and I kept my Nord because it is better than most plugin virtuals. In my pursuit of analog bliss, I was finding that my future gear purchases were torn between many different models, many of which are costly units in and of themselves, so to round out my synth collection, I was looking at buying a new Moog Voyager, a vintage Korg MS-20, a Roland TB-303, and an Oberheim SEM (which was recently reissued), which would end up costing me $10,000 or more to complete the set, and that’s if I was able to track them all down in decent condition. To top it off, many of these vintage pieces are pricey to repair and maintain in addition to the already inflated vintage prices from their limited supply and high demand.

If only, there was one synth that had all the different kinds of filters I liked, a choice of the type / number of sound generators and modulators, and I was free to modify the routing architecture any way I could conceive of myself on the fly, that would be perfect. In the back of my head, I knew about modular synthesizers and had programmed on a few of them, but never owned one myself, since for many years it seemed that they were only ever produced in the distant past, and would have the same high cost, low availability, and frequent repairs issues of other vintage pieces, but that has since changed, as companies like Serge, Doepfer, and many others are making brand new modular components that are well built, available and reliable. So there it was; the final answer confirmed in many ways was now staring me in the face and it was called a modular synthesizer. This is not a completely new idea to me in a Newtonian “Eureka” moment as much as it is a return to my origins as a synth programmer, since I learned analog synthesis originally on an Emu Modular in the SYCOM electronic music labs of USF in my college days, but even with that bit of personal history, it was easy to overlook the benefits, since most music gear catalogs do not sell modulars, and most mainstream music equipment manufacturers do not make modulars anymore, so what is usually consuming the mind with thoughts are music equipment catalogs stuffed with one glossy page after another of shallow shiny new plastic keyboards brimming with youthful optimism promising to be the solution to all your problems, while the great substantive wise elder is easily forgotten. I credit my experience with modulars as the reason I have a solid understanding of programming any analog synth, since when it is you that has to connect every component into a functional design in order to even make any sound at all, it forces you to truly understand the underlying concepts, or else not be able to get anywhere interesting. The fact that modulars by definition, by being a collection of disconnected parts, with no patch memory, have to not only be connected, all the knobs must be adjusted to make it sound good, so the laziness afforded you of a brand new synth loaded up with thousands of patches where all you have to do is turn it on, and hit up and down arrows to call up tons of sounds someone else wrote who did understand the architecture, you no longer have to understand how it works, or how to program sounds from scratch, and you can simply scroll through the work of engineers and sound designers in complete ignorance. So now that you’ve opted for that synth that everyone else owns, and are using factory patch #230, you have abrogated the control over the timbral landscape to someone else, eliminating a vast swath of the potential creativity available to you as an electronic musician. What I have done over the years to compensate for this, is to backup the patches on my disparate units via midi sysex and then initialize the unit so I could force myself to at least program all of my own sounds rather than, rely on someone else, but I was still stuck with the hardwired routings the given gear manufacturer had provided, and I have also heard my keyboards used on other people’s records enough that I can pick out the Juno, or the Nord or whatever quite easily, as I’m sure many of you can too. Modular synthesis is a great break from all of those limitations, and imitations, since even if someone else bought a modular from the same company as you, what are the odds of them buying all of the exact same modules, and furthermore what are the odds of them hooking those modules up the exact same way, and furthermore adjusting every knob and slider to the exact same positions? Well, obviously the chances are nearly nil.

Now that the destination is set, I am on to the next thing, which is figure out what kind of modular synth to buy for myself, and try to figure out what it will cost to get me started. So far, I have been thinking that Serge is too expensive, at $1500 or $2500 per module, I could only get 4 modules before blowing the budget on my older analog dream team list. There are tons of small DIY oriented modular makers, but I am more interested in programming the synth than I am building it in the electronic components and cabinets sense, so that sort of led me naturally to either Doepfer A-100 system, or Eurorack which would include Doepfer modules and modules from lots of different manufacturers. I then went to the Eurorack MegaModular configuration site, and the Doepfer custom config page, and made this initial config, which still has plenty of opportunity to change. I am still asking myself lots of questions on the topic and would love to hear from anyone with a modular synth, as to what they went with, and why.

I’ve already had some of my burning questions answered by some qualified people. I first ran into Escape Philosophy on a Synthgear posting, and when I saw a post for his Error Correction EP release on his blog I made a comment. In the meantime I posted a tweet about the music and he replied saying that my question merited a blog post about analog sequencing to answer the question in my comment. Pretty Cool!

Imagine for a minute that you had a portable DJ setup, a complete PA sound system with banging subwoofers, and a complete night club style lighting rig, but rather than having to tote a truck load of flight cases, racks, trusses, stands, gig bags and crates full of cables to be hooked up, it was all self contained in a tiny popup cube that was on a small trailer, could be driven and dropped off anywhere, the top popped up, and full lighting, sound and dj booth were prewired and immediately ready to go.  Well that is the vision that created the Rhino Cube.

redvoid throwing down in the Rhino Cube

The Rhino Cubes founders share my vision of music, technology and idealism when it comes to running their own socially conscious business. Unlike many other products made for DJs which are poorly designed and overpriced, Rhino Cubes has built their product from the ground up the way it should be done, the way you would want it done if you had done it yourself, rather than create just another hunk of overpriced plastic designed to make you part with your dollars without giving you the satisfaction of a thoughtfully designed and engineered system with its user’s needs in mind. It is a marvel of high quality actuating motors to raise the top of the cube, industrial strength power sourcing options, and thoughtfully ergonomic layout. The result is a nightclub you can take anywhere with nothing more than a trailer hitch, and the whole world becomes your potential dancefloor. If you want a small taste of what’s in store, see it in action for yourself and remember that this time around, the lights, sound and music will be more intense than that initial Gasparilla launch video.

Saturday March 14, 2009 Rhino Cubes will be participating in the St Patrick’s Day night parade in Ybor City to show off what the Rhino Cube is capable of. The lights have been programmed for maximum impact, the sound system dialed in, and the DJs, DJ Q and myself have energetic underground music planned to highlight the renegade “party anywhere” aspect of the cube.

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The term minimalism is commonly misunderstood, and often maligned. In its truest sense, minimalism was an art movement, a form of architecture, and then finally a form of music, specifically Classical or art music. Recently this label has also been applied to electronica as well, and many questions seem to arise from the use of this term, which probably needs some clarification.

The best way to think of minimalism in the broadest sense, is as a series of concepts or ideas. Ideas drive many things, and in creative endeavors, ideas become design principles, guides or even sometimes arbitrary rule sets used to steer the process. The Mies Van Der Rohe quote “less is more” gets thrown around, and did stem from the Bauhaus architecture and design movement so it is legitimately part of the true definition of minimalism, but it is possibly not clear enough to those who do not intuitively understand it at face value. Another way to say this is “doing the more with less”, as in create the most function from the least amount of form. I like to use the term “Occam’s Razor” which fundamentally means “economy of means” or what we could all just call plain simple.

My personal interest in minimalism started in college, but probably really started long before I had a name for it. Even as a small child, I was always attracted to the straightest lines, the least adorned furniture, and the boxiest houses, so when I majored in music in college, I did a recital with some friends who put together a small chamber orchestra, and we performed Terry Riley’s minimalist classic “In C” at an in school recital that we did for own artistic gratification as it was not connected to any of our curriculum. I particularly liked how it seemed to unite artist and audience in the same trance like state. It was really Philip Glass who drew me in first, when I heard Einstein on the Beach, and that was the thread that led me back to Riley. I quickly realized once I had a name for my attraction, I found it everywhere in Bauhaus architecture, Rothko paintings, the poetry of  William Carlos Williams, in Apple products, and minimal computing initiatives that emphasize the most functionality with the least amount of code bloat, and Ableton Live is a great emboditment of this ideal, when most music DAW software requires gigs of storage to install the binaries, the full Ableton Live 7 installer (not the suite) was barely over 100MB, and runs very efficiently on most hardware.

In electronic music, long before the advent of the genres minimal or minimal techno, acid was the music that sounded minimal to me. In acid, the instrument selection was a very limited pallette of the now infamous xoxboxes (the vintage Roland gear with a zero in the middle hence the “x0x” ala the SH-101, MC-202, TB-303, TR-606, TR-808 & TR-909 as the most coveted x0xboxes) and the beats were spare, and musical arrangement very repetitious, and it seemed that most of the time the only change was the cutoff and resonance parameters on the Roland TB303. Repetition on this level, either drives people nuts, or immerses them. The reason for the latter response is related to a phenomenon known as photic and auditory driving. Repetition is the core principle behind meditation or hypnosis, and it is at the heart of many religious practices East and West, as indigenous tribal drumming, gregorian chant, plainsong or mantra meld into a singularity that in the end is simply part of our human nature, connecting back to the cycles of the cosmos. The movement of techtonic plates in the ground, the rotation fo the earth, the movement of the moon around the earth, the earth around the sun, our solar system in our galaxy revolving around a supermassive blackhole, our galaxy cluster around an even larger blackhole ad infinitum are forms of cosmic repetition that change very little over time. Precession of the equinoxes is a way to refer to the slight wobble of the earth’s axis over time that takes approximately 26,000 years to complete one revolution, while the earth rotates on that same axis every 24 hours all the while. In this sense repetition is changing because what appears to be completely static is actually always modified in a nearly imperceptible way. Minimalism is in fact very close to nature for this reason. Minimalism is not a car driving from point A to point B, but more like a fountain with a color cycling light that stays the same while the light subtly morphs over time. DJ Spooky wrote a book called Rhythm Science which I was lucky enough to have him autograph my copy at a lecture appearance at USF, which at its core refers to music in the broadest John Cage sense of being any sound, and sound is just vibration, and all vibration has a frequency, and with modern science just about any frequency of any thing can be measured, and if it can be measured than it can be used artistically, as a direct or indirect point of reference for a musical work.  When we allow ourselves to become immersed in minimalism, as in all the previous examples, we first learn the repetitious loop, then we listen for the subtle changes, be it automated reverb, or filter sweeps or whatever, and the repetition becomes like the hypnotists proverbial swinging pocket watch, and we tune into the slowly changing dimension, and we can disconnect from our surroundings and drift off into ourselves, allowing us to feel the upwelling of our unconscious as if we were meditating, so that the minimalist music becomes an active form of meditation. In design and architecture, the simplicity of the environment, allows us to focus on ourselves amidst the uncluttered serentiy, in poetry we become reflective of our true self, and so in the end, minimalism encourages us to be truly human.