Modular People

[Luca_Capozzi]

Are you a modular user? Reply here writing down your equipment. No matter if analogue, digital, hardware or software :) It would be nice to make a small modular group exchanging opinions, techniques and know how.

About me, I enjoy to use:

- Doepfer A 100
- Nord Modular G2X

- Native Instruments Reaktor
- AAS Tassman

- Sonikbirth
- Synthedit
- Synthmaker

- Propellerhead Reason 3 (semi modular)

Your turn :)

Luca

[rlainhart]

Buchla 200e

And as long as we're including software:

Moog Modular V
Reaktor
MaxMSP
Kyma

[Luca_Capozzi]

Kyma really fascinating me but, unfortunately, is very costly. What are pro and cons of this system, richard?

Luca

[rlainhart]

Kyma really fascinating me but, unfortunately, is very costly. What are pro and cons of this system, richard? Luca

Pros: it's a unique composition and performance instrument, with sound creation and manipulation possibilities that no other system that I'm aware of has. It has particular strengths in sound transformation, which is why it's used a lot in sound design. It's also expandable, so you can start out at a fairly low level and increase your realtime hardware capabilities by adding extra processing cards.

Cons: it has a steep learning curve, and it's fairly expensive, both at first and to expand.

[Luca_Capozzi]

i've seen some nice videos on symbolic sound's page. a basic system is not so expensive as remember and i found a couple of them on ebay. i'll start saving for xmas eheheheh

what are you doing lately? i'm experimenting with delays and studying how to work into frequency domain. one trick I love with delays is to use a sawtooth oscillator to control the delay time to achive a nice shifting of incoming signal.

Luca

[rlainhart]

I have a couple of different projects going right now. I'm just finishing the production of a year-long timelapse film (which actually will have its final shot today) for which I'm doing the music track with Continuum and Kyma. I'm hoping to get the final recording of the soundtrack this weekend, in fact.

I've also been learning and working on music with the Buchla (the one shown in this (http://www.jordanrudess.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8867&highlight=200e) thread); I already have an outline for a new performance piece for Continuum and Buchla that I think will work out well.

Beyond that, I've in the beginning phases of a collaboration with Tobias Fischer, the publisher of Tokafi (http://www.tokafi.com), who's an interesting composer too. With him, I've been working on extended instrumental tracks (for piano, vibes, and lap steel) and sending them to him for processing and remixing. We'll see how it goes.

[Deceit]

Richard, do you find yourself comfortable with Arturia's Moog Modular V?
I've been using it for a year now and found out an incredible number of bugs.
If I were a developer I'd never ever consider selling such a buggy software to customers.

The product itself does sound wonderful, I programmed very interesting theremin tones, basses and leads.
It's just puzzling why, after so many years the product came out, they didn't consider updating it in its features.

The CPU management is terrible, I'm always turning off other instruments while dealing with projects and whenever I increase the polyphony, the CPU meter goes way beyond 80%.

Some modulations do not work at all, it seems this software is all about modular looks and cool graphics without any beta testing upon release.
You can freely assign filters and LFOs, but in the end you're given the possibilities of almost any other VA out there with a decent mod matrix.

I've thought of writing to the support, but I reconsidered after reading mr. Ken Elhardt sent the bug list on their forum and no one could answer him.
In the meantime, the v2.2 Universal Binary update came out but no real change was done to the plugin itself.

[AmoenA-Anders]

I use my G2 Modular Engine for most of my synth sounds. It got everything I need, and I don't see myself removing it from my rig in a very long time, unless I decide to replace it with one of the keyboard versions. The only con I can come up with is the fact that I can't create or edit patches without my computer. But since this is the most flexible synth I've ever worked with, thanks to its modular environment, the lack of buttons and editing possibillities on the physical unit doesen't bother me too much.

[Luca_Capozzi]

ehehe you must to try the keyboard version and all the flexibility of control panel. Once you tried, you'll never turn back. Anyway, the thing I most love on G2 is the huge routing possibility, expecially the internal midi routing allowing me to control anything in any way. A cool trick I love is to assign a level sequencer to a midi send module and, with this CC#, changing the filter type. another great thing is to develop your own "modules" using defaults. i've developed, as example, two new comb filters which resonates in a very cool way giving me awesome timbrical results.

Cheers,
Luca

[Analogkid]

You modular guys are so stuck-up! :biggrin:

[rlainhart]

Sorry I didn't get around to answering this until now.

There are certainly bugs in MMV, but in general, I've found it very usable for my purposes. I certainly don't use it anywhere near as intensely as Elhardt (although I do question his focus on synthesizing "real" instruments as opposed to creating new sounds), but I have done a fair amount of programming with it, and when I find a bug, I'm also usually able to find a workaround.

I learned my synthesis skills on Moog modular systems, and this is the only software available that I know of that comes close to that experience. I've found that it's able to easily reproduce the kinds of sounds I used to work with when I first studied synthesis, sounds that I find very expressive and highly performable, and now that it's Universal Binary and I have a MacBook Pro to run it on, I don't have the performance limitations that I used to when I ran it on a G4 PowerBook. I've used it in all my Space Jams with Jordan, for example, and it's always worked beautifully for me.

I have no doubt that you have experienced the problems you mention with the software, and as such, maybe it's not suitable for you and the work you're doing, but for me, it's a great instrument, and one I plan to continue using indefinitely.



Richard, do you find yourself comfortable with Arturia's Moog Modular V? I've been using it for a year now and found out an incredible number of bugs. If I were a developer I'd never ever consider selling such a buggy software to customers.

The product itself does sound wonderful, I programmed very interesting theremin tones, basses and leads. It's just puzzling why, after so many years the product came out, they didn't consider updating it in its features.

The CPU management is terrible, I'm always turning off other instruments while dealing with projects and whenever I increase the polyphony, the CPU meter goes way beyond 80%.

Some modulations do not work at all, it seems this software is all about modular looks and cool graphics without any beta testing upon release. You can freely assign filters and LFOs, but in the end you're given the possibilities of almost any other VA out there with a decent mod matrix.

I've thought of writing to the support, but I reconsidered after reading mr. Ken Elhardt sent the bug list on their forum and no one could answer him. In the meantime, the v2.2 Universal Binary update came out but no real change was done to the plugin itself.