Modular!
The beginnings of a new sonic journey.
This week I went down to Birmingham, not just to record trains but also to visit my very good friend Tony. We’ve been friends for a loooooong time—since we were kids playing in our band together and going to lots of gigs! A love of all things music has always played a big part in our friendship.
Over the last few years Tony has ventured deep into the Eurorack modular world and now records and performs live as the excellent D1G ← check out his work!
I’m both intrigued and scared by modular. At heart I am an experimental musician, I’ve always liked to stress test and repurpose instruments, see what’s at the edges where the ghosts in the machine live! So the idea of patching together infinite arrangements of small musical devices really appeals to me, but the huge diversity and cumulative cost of modules means it is not a direction I’ve ever dared to consider. Instead I’ve only dabbled at the edges with the Koma Elektronik Field Kits, my trusty MicroFreak, and a SOMA Pulsar 23 which I only had for a couple of weeks!
That is until Tony kindly offered to build me a small case to experiment with, made up of some of the modules he is not currently using. We worked on a design over the last couple of months and this week I went down to try it out, we swapped out a couple more things and here is the finished synth!
6U 84hp 23 modules. There is more than enough here to last anyone a very long time, and after just one evening of experimentation I can safely say this is a very capable machine and a lot of fun!
I have ideas, lots of ideas, and I’m very excited to start learning and exploring the possibilities of this new sonic world. I will of course document all my experiments here on Substack.
The modular experts amongst will probably recognise most of the things. I’ve built it on modular grid for anyone who is interested in the details.
Patching begins soon… after I’ve finished re-grouting the bathroom that is!
All the content on Whirrings is currently free but if you like what you hear or read then please consider upgrading to a paid subscription, buying something from my Bandcamp page or purchasing a tasty cup of Ko-fi as it will enable me to keep working in this way. Thank you for listening, Mark. 🙏
This was quite similar to how I found my way into the world of modular. Having also approached it from an experimental perspective, I was initially a bit intimidated by the scale (and cost) of it all. When the time came to buy modules, I purposefully acquired modules which might suit a particular project or area of sound manipulation I was interested in - a simple oscillator, wavefolder or ADSR for example. Four years later, my modular set up is more or less settled. It might resemble a bit of hodgepodge to others, but it compliments my practice in a way that feels unique to the medium, joining the array of other instruments and equipment in my studio. Good luck with the journey!