One Month of Modular

Learning to use a Eurorack system has been the latest step in my continuing three year music hardware journey. How's it going after one month?

It’s been a month since I first started on my modular journey.

After the initial excitement died down it did become tricky for a while! I struggled with sound design and building more complex synth voices and also with integrating my other gear.

I fully expected that to be the case. While I know the basics of subtractive synthesis and I’ve used all sorts of synths and even VCV Rack, the details of each module, patching voices and making a playable system is subtle and complex.

I watched a lot of excellent YouTube videos, got good advice from friends and kept going! It’s easy to take for granted the amazing resources that are available online for learning these days. 🙏

Electronic music gear can often be hard and frustrating to use, there are some steep learning curves and some pretty complex pieces of equipment with confusing interfaces out there that you need to spend time with to learn. Luckily, I like learning new things!

When I started this music hardware journey three years ago I had become completely out of touch with what was available, completely!

I did use music hardware many years ago—rackmount gear. I used to make music in the late 90s with a Yamaha TG55, an A3000 sampler and Cubase! They were also very tricky to use!

But for many years I’d stripped back to just using my laptop and Ableton Live which was convenient to keep my music making going but not an ideal creative environment for me. I naturally prefer to make music more hands-on with less menus and scrolling. I want to make and play instruments, plug things together, re-wire, strum-hit-pluck, interact! That was my goal with getting back into hardware.

I still use Ableton Live every day, it’s a very important part of my workflow, but now I use it mainly for multitracking audio, effects and production work with only occasional sequencing and sounds.

I had to do a lot of research to get up to speed with what had happened to music hardware in the intervening twenty years—it had become very different!

The first thing I bought was an Arturia MiniBrute 2S. I felt it would make a great beginning because it was semi-modular with easy expansion options, a proper analog synth. But it was a bit of a jump for me at the time as my only device. I sold it and tried something else.

I’ve tried quite a few things since then, you can see most of them on my Instagram if you go back far enough! Some have stayed with me like the MicroFreak and Boss RC-600 looper, a lot I have sold. I haven’t got a massive budget so I tend to sell things if they are not working out so that I can invest the money in something else. The whole learning process has been great and relatively painless.

Modular was perhaps the next step in this journey, you can read all about how that eventually happened here.

What you see in the above photo is everything I’m currently using to make music along with my looper, two guitars and field recording gear!

I’m very happy with my first month of modular. I’ve learnt a lot and progressed with most of the basics. I hope it’s been interesting if you’ve been following along. I’ve got a lot of good stuff planned for June, exploring the more experimental edges and integrating some external audio sources like guitar!

I’m taking a few days off the Substack for half term, to focus my energy on being a supportive parent for the enforced madness that is GCSEs!

This jam from yesterday perhaps sums up what I’ve managed to learn so far in #ModularMay

But enough of my yakkin’ and see you in June :)

I haven’t come up with a catchy hashtag for June yet unfortunately, if anyone has any ideas? 🎧🎶