A Modular Synthesis Tutorial

[Fulcrum]

(c)2005 Fulcrum. All rights reserved.


What do we mean when we talk about the concept of modular?

"Modular" implies the existence of at least one module-- a sub-system used for a specific purpose within the context of a larger system.

You played with building blocks when you were a toddler, used each block to build a structure larger than any individual block would be on its own. That's kind of the same conceit.

For the most part, each module does one thing, and you could argue that the degree to which they do that one thing well gives them their character.

Modules may be brick-and-mortar boxes with dials and jacks on them that you can touch and twist and plug wires into, or they may be cunning examples of object-oriented programming that exist only in your computer's mind.

In terms of synthesis, the modules we're talking about have set purposes. Some modules provide an input to control other modules. Some modules produce sound. Some modules modify the sound. Still others output the sound.

Specifically, but by no means exhaustively:

The input modules can be anything that produces a voltage (or a digital analogue to a voltage), either under human control or its own. The obvious example of an input module would be a keyboard, but there are also certain varieties of sequencers that generate voltages, and assorted other arcane controllers like ribbons, breath controllers, drum pads, and a few others besides.

The sound-producing modules are (by and large) called oscillators.

There are a few types of sound-modifying modules. Some are filters. Some are amplifiers. Some are other oscillators.

Your output modules could be crude mixers or amplifiers.

OK, that's quick and dirty enough, what's it look like in practice?

Here's a look at Keith Emerson and the modular he carted around in the early-to-mid-1970s, in the heyday of ELP.

http://www.markglinsky.com/elp3.jpg

That telephone-switchboard-looking thing behind him is, collectively, a Moog Modular system. The system itself, if you got close enough to look at it, is made up of three tiers of individual modules (it happens that the one on top was mostly for show). Emmo pretty much decided on how many of each different type of module he needed, and in that respect he configured the system himself (although he was likely working closely with the synth builder, the recently-departed Dr Robert Moog).

The fact that it is modular means that there is some flexibility in sound design from system to system, depending on who's doing the configuring and what they choose to cram into those racks. So Emmo's system is somewhat different from the Moog Modular Walter/Wendy Carlos used to create Switched-On Bach, in large part because Carlos had different needs and aesthetic sensibilities.

http://netninja.com/images/lj/wendy_carlos-moog.jpg

Here's a vintage shot (by kind courtesy of Bob Olhsson) of the 8-track Mix Room at Motown, circa 1968, with yet another Moog Modular in the background. He and Stevie Wonder did a fair amount of experimentation with this one.

http://members.cox.net/rick.fulcrum/MRCON2a.JPG

And all three of these Modulars differ from the gargantuan system devised by Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil, which they christened The Original New Timbral Orchestra, or T.O.N.T.O. for short. (Incidentally, T.O.N.T.O. is currently owned by Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo.)

http://www.serge-fans.com/IMAGES/TONTO6.JPG

By no stretch of the imagination did Moog have the field of modular synthesis to himself. Don Buchla's (http://www.buchla.com/200e/index.html) designs differed radically from Moog's, and both differed from those modules engineered under the trademark ARP (http://www.synthmuseum.com/arp/arp250001.html); and all of those from the system you can build yourself with kits from PAiA (http://www.paia.com/). Some designers, like Serge Tcherepnin (http://www.synthmuseum.com/serge/serge01.html), hewed a little more closely to the Moog paradigm while tweaking a few things under the hood-- slightly different circuit designs for example. Slipperman recalls the Polyfusion modular with some fondness-- you may have heard Steve Porcaro bombing certain Toto recordings with his wall-full. Even this is not a complete list.

I'll leave it as an exercise for anyone who cares to figure out exactly what Emmo, Wendy, and T.O.N.T.O. had in their racks, and concentrate on a typical modular configuration as it exists in software. That's for next time.

Till then, have a look here (http://images.google.com/url?q=http://www.omroep.nl/nps/radio/supplement/01/1111/welcome.html) to see a few examples of other modular systems. Ray Scott's wall of sound is a trip....


----------------
DISCOGRAPHY

Emerson Lake & Palmer (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&searchlink=EMERSON%7CLAKE%7CPALMER&uid=MIW020509250826&sql=11:z95s8q9tbtz4%7ET2), specifically their work from 1970 through 1974

Wendy Carlos (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=MIW040509250829&sql=11:1usyxdabjolf%7ET2), specifically her work from 1968-1969, and possibly also including her soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange

T.O.N.T.O.'s Expanding Head Band (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=CAW030509250833&sql=11:tj9gs31ba3rg%7ET2), including the two (seminal) recordings referenced on this page and their work with Stevie Wonder during this period. Margouleff and Cecil talk a little bit about that collaboration here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuaSzFf7yq0)

[malice]

Thanx to Fulcrum for this post

;)

malice

[Fulcrum]

(c) 2005 Fulcrum. All rights reserved. Used with the author's permission.

Right-click on this (http://members.cox.net/rick.fulcrum/Modular2a.jpg), select the option to open the image in a new window (your nomenclature will necessarily vary), and behold the wonder of the Arturia Moog Modular V.

Well, part of it, anyway. I offer this as an example of what you might expect to see if you were ever fortunate enough to be confronted with a real brick-and-mortar Moog Modular. Besides, many of these concepts will map to other modular systems. As we'll see.

Let's concentrate on the lower half (roughly) of the picture for a moment.

I'm not going to belabor the definition of what a keyboard is and does to you lot of all people, except to say that here I'm playing a little fast and loose with the definition of a module when I tell you that in this context, that is what the keyboard is. This does fit the ersatz definition I gave last time out: it does one thing and does it well enough. Modern-day controller keyboards pass along MIDI data to be deciphered by a rack synth or stored by an outboard sequencer. The brick-and-mortar version of this keyboard passes along information as well, in the form of voltages.

This looks like a good place to touch on the various types of signal that pass from module to module. Obviously, you can pass audio signals in a lot of instances, say, into processing modules (the ones that modify the sound). You can also pass constant voltages, which for our purposes we'll call control voltages, and also momentary (trigger) voltages. There may be others that escape me at the moment.... But a keyboard on a real Moog Modular would transmit triggers as well as control voltages.

Some of the knobs and faders directly above the keyboard are there not because they were necessarily present on the original keyboard, but as a convenience feature for modern soft synth users. You'll see why Arturia would think to include that after you get a load of the next post.

The top half of the picture depicts several different types of modules. The leftmost of these is an Analog Sequencer. This is an input controller: it sends triggers and steady voltages (24 in all-- note the 3x8 grid of knobs) off to someplace that can deal with triggers and steady voltages (we'll see where, shortly). The rate at which it does this is determined by the small area to the extreme left labeled "Oscillator": turning the frequency knob speeds the sequence up and down, and the length dial determines how long the note is in relation to the frequency speed, full length to some fraction thereof.

The Fixed Filter Bank to its right is a processing module. Think of it as a relatively inflexible graphic equalizer with low-pass and high-pass filters stapled on. Why would you want that, when the fancy NibNob into which you're cramming all this Moog signal has much more flexible parametrics on each channel? Well, acoustic instruments have certain characteristic formants that tend to be characteristic of those instruments in general-- some frequencies are more or less prominent than others because that's just the way it is. A fixed filter bank simulates that sort of formant response in the signal chain. The obvious application would be imitative synthesis, but it helps even more electronic patches to sound a little less predictable and a little more, um, acoustic.

I can't find any evidence that Moog ever actually manufactured a Dual Delay line or a Chorus unit, so I'm going to guess that you know what those do. (Apparently the Chorus can be swapped out for a phaser. In fact the Modular V is capable of quite a few of these substitutions.)

We'll get into the meat and potatoes of the Modular V in the top half next post. If you just can't wait, or need a fix of more information than I've given here, this site (http://www.moogarchives.com/mawelc.htm) has your hook-up. (It helped me figure out how the analog sequencer worked, for one thing.)

[Fulcrum]

(c) 2006 Fulcrum. All rights reserved. Used by express permission of the author.

Having spied the bottom half of the Moog Modular V last time out, it is only fitting that we now come to grips with the top half (http://members.cox.net/rick.fulcrum/Modular1a.jpg). For sake of convenience you may wish to open that in a new window.

Let's look at the lower half of the panel first, the one with all the oscillators. Nowadays we're all used to having samples burned into ROM and dealing with those as our source material. In days of yore, one didn't have quite as many options. One dealt with trying to make sound using some very basic single-cycle, or periodic, waveforms.

We'll ignore the Driver module for a sec and check out the right edge of the first oscillator module to the right. The squiggly lines represent a single cycle of a periodic waveform that would look remarkably similar to those depicted if you were to run the signal through an oscilloscope. The sonic difference between them lie in the number, and strength, of partials in each wave, which results in different enough timbres for each to be musically useful in their own right. From top to bottom:

a sine wave, which consists of just the fundamental (the first harmonic), by which we determine the pitch of the wave.

a triangle wave, which consists of the fundamental and every other harmonic partial (3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, etc.), the strengths of which are related to that of the partial by the formula (1/n^2). The 3rd partial then would be 1/9th as strong as the 1st; the 5th 1/25th as strong, etc.

a sawtooth wave, consisting of the fundamental and all partials, the strengths of which are related reciprocally to that of the partial: the 2nd partial is 1/2 as strong, the 3rd partial 1/3 as strong, and so on. This is your go-to waveform when you want a timbre rich in harmonic activity.

(It's not depicted here, but there is also such a thing as a ramp wave, which differs from the sawtooth in that the voltage on your scope will be rising to a peak instead of falling from one. As far as harmonic content, they're functionally the same, but it is possible to play some phase cancellation games between the two waves if you have both available.)

a pulse wave, so called because--

Well, this wave is kind of a special case because it has certain characteristics that the others don't. As depicted on the front of the oscillator module, you're looking at what is commonly called a square wave. If the wave at the top of its cycle as it being "on", and "off" when it's at the bottom... with a square wave, the wave would be "on" half the time and "off" the other half. The "on" time is called pulse width. (We can also express this as duty cycle, or the percentage of "off" time. Values significantly larger or smaller than 50%, the duty cycle of a square wave, would result in inverted versions of waves with smaller duty cycles.)

The content of the partials of a square wave is similar to that of a sawtooth if you got rid of all the even-numbered partials: you would only hear the fundamental, the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and so on up to a range more comfortable for your shih tzu.

What makes a pulse wave different is that it is possible to modulate, or sweep, pulse width to add a bit of apparent motion, turning it from a square shape into something more resembling a rectangle on your scope. That's pulse width modulation, PWM for short. Let's just say for the time being that PWM messes with the harmonic content of the waveform. I wish I could quote you a formula-- perhaps I could with a whole lot more calculus under my belt-- but failing that, it's hard to hit a moving target.

This is where the pulse width dial on the driver module (at the extreme left) comes in. Each driver controls three oscillators through an internal connection that has nothing to do with patch cables. Just give the dial a twist and hear your pulse wave change its timbre! It's bloody magic!

Think of the other large dial on the driver module as being your master frequency control for the three slave modules paired with it. You don't lose access to the individual frequency dials on the oscillator modules, either.

Note also (try not to salivate too much on your keyboard) that in this particular configuration there are three such oscillator groups of one driver and three oscillators each. Fat sound for days.

The range switch on each oscillator moves the frequency up or down in octave increments. You Hammond drivers will be familiar with the conceit, but for the rest of you:

On a pipe organ, if you played middle A on your swell manual (or great manual, didn't matter which) with an 8 foot pipe stop drawn, you heard a tone with a fundamental at 440 Hz-- in other words, what you played was what you heard. That would be the significance of the number 8 position (surprise).

Two of the oscillators in the patch under consideration here are set to the 16 position, which would seem to indicate that playing middle A would result in you hearing the note an octave below middle A (220 Hz), and that is in fact what happens. The other oscillator is set to the 32 position, which results in the octave below that (110 Hz, again, if you're playing middle A). The 4 and 2 settings behave much as you would expect them to behave (880 and 1760 Hz, respectively).

Note also the Lo setting, which puts the oscillator into a very-low-frequency mode. You wouldn't necessarily use these waves to be heard, unless you were bombing some serious bass (bear in mind the wave might not even be audible in this mode), but you might consider using the wave to modulate the one coming from the driver module... or another oscillator... FM anyone?

I should point out here that on the Modular V, if you look closely at the virtual 1/4" jacks, you will see that some look slightly different than others do. This is Arturia's way of differentiating between jacks meant to pass audio and jacks meant to pass simulated voltages. The slightly more brilliant jacks pass voltages, while the duller finished ones are for your audio stream.

Incidentally, in my experience the system doesn't let you run an audio signal to a jack expecting a control voltage, or vice versa. If you were to click on one of the jacks with the intent of running a virtual patch cord elsewhere, the jacks to which you could "legally" run that cord would display with a little yellow box around them.

We'll come back to the significance of that last tidbit next time.

[otek]

Reading this again (it was originally posted elsewhere) I am rediscovering how great it is to stay on top of the fundamentals.

Looking at that sinister black panel with its multitude of knobs will never seem quite as mind-boggling again.


Thanks Fulcrum!

otek

[eagan]

A quick thumbs up to Fulcrum for setting out on this little tutorial.


I was kind of lucky on a couple points when I started getting interested in synthesis back in yon olden days of ore as a younger man than I am now.

One, that I had an electronics background, which makes understanding all the fundamental building block ideas pretty simple and easy. You need this, especially since even then, once you start tying all these gizmos together and making sounds with them, it can get complex pretty darned quick.

The other is that, at that point in history, it was all still monophonic voltage controlled stuff, where it was easy to look at what you were working with and keep the overall scheme of what you were working with fairly straightforward. A friend of mine used to teach an electronic music course in the music department of the local university, revolving around an Arp 2600 and an Otari 8 track machine and some basic board. Maybe about the best synthesizer you could pick for learning purposes.

In my case, a month or two of woodshedding with a borrowed Arp Odyssey (owned by the same guy, in fact) was the ticket.

For anybody who didn't start digging into this stuff until sometime in the last 15 or 20 years, it's a little tougher trying to sort it all out with some digital mystery black box synth (even when they're based on a general block diagram kind of sheme that's based on the older methods). Sitting down with a Korg M1 and most stuff since then is no way to get anywhere on this.


JLE

[Fulcrum]

I hope Trazan doesn't mind me regifting this...

Happy Boxing Day y'all!


http://cache.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/switchedonsanta.jpg

[malice]

I have more TONTO evidences :

I think I creaed my shorts


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuaSzFf7yq0&eurl=


enjoy


malice

[otek]

I have more TONTO evidences


:icon_eek: :icon_eek: :icon_eek:


That's an awesome clip.

Thanks Malice!

[malice]

:icon_eek: :icon_eek: :icon_eek:


That's an awesome clip.

Thanks Malice!

Third time I'm watching this

I feel like the 8 year old kid I was when I discovered Stevie.


it's a good feeling


malice

[Fulcrum]

It is awesome. That's why I included it in the Discography appending the original post. :lol:

Here's The Moog Cookbook (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fUhrkaXcG4) having some fun with a Soundgarden song.

And for a laff, here's my first (and so far only) Moog (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er8Gnxywo5o).

More actual tutorial stuff to come within the week.

EDIT 30.1.2007: Boy, did that turn out to be a lie. See below.

[Fulcrum]

You had to get me started.

The master himself (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z0cbMkOvY0) demonstrates his most famous/ubiquitous creation.

Here's a modular in Malice's neck of the woods (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWcbOSFG_H4).

And finally the 1970s TV commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3QBcrliFNk) that made me want a modular. You (other) old farts should recognize the tune and maybe you even know the words!

[otek]

It is awesome. That's why I included it in the Discography appending the original post. :lol:


*groans* :Redface: :Redface: :Redface:


Hawk-eyed otek, that's me.

Sorry Fulcrum.

[Goes211]

Sorry for veering slightly OT :

Stevie Wonder = global musician
+ WHAT.A.SINGER.
:Coolio:

[Fulcrum]

Having too late come to the understanding that those attachments I've been including in the tutorial so far (depicting the front panel of the Moog Modular V) are pretty much useless, I'm going to provide a link to the two in case anyone would like to get a closer look.

This (http://members.cox.net/rick.fulcrum/Modular1a.jpg) is the section of the MMV with which we are currently concerned-- oscillators, filters, envelope generators.

This (http://members.cox.net/rick.fulcrum/Modular2a.jpg) is the other section with which we dispensed a bit earlier in the tutorial-- the sequencer being the most notable feature here.

More to follow-- I apparently have one more section to post regarding the MMV, and I am organizing my thoughts for the eventual continuation of the cook's tour, which will concern itself with Reaktor. Hit me here with your questions as they occur to you.

Thanks for your patience.

[Slipperman]

POLYFUSION MUTHAFUKKAZ!!!!

Now everybody drop and give me 20!!!!

Whooeeeeee!!!!

Just saw this Fulcrum.

Loved.

Loved.

This shit was HOW I got into AE.

XOXOX

Slippy

[nobby]

This is a fairly straightforward, educational approach. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaYuj38I3Xg)

It starts off slowly, but the analog sequencer/arpeggiator thing at the end is worth the wait.

[Fulcrum]

(c) 2006 Fulcrum. All rights reserved. Used by express permission of the author.

You may wish to open this (http://members.cox.net/rick.fulcrum/Modular1a.jpg) in a new window.

OK. To the immediate right of the three major oscillator groups, we have a voltage-controlled low frequency oscillator. (There's one in the center of the upper rack, too.) (Incidentally, you have long since concluded that when you're in the box like this, you're not actually sending voltages back and forth between modules, but just pretending you are?) (Anyway.)

The LFO works similarly to the "slave" oscillators I discussed last time when they're switched to Lo mode. The frequency sets the rate of low-frequency oscillation. The outputs are lined across the bottom of the module, and you can route them to oscillators to vary the pitch, or to filters to vary the cutoff frequency (more on that in a moment).

You'll notice that there's a fifth waveform to the right that looks a little cockeyed. This is your sample and hold algorithm. A waveform (I imagine it's triangular in shape, though it could be a sine) oscillating at some internally-determined frequency is measured (sampled) at a rate determined by the frequency of the LFO. The LFO sends that value out to wherever it's being routed until the internal oscillator gets sampled again. When you send the S/H output voltage out to a particularly resonant low-pass filter, you might hear something like the sustained, random-sounding timbre underneath the sturdy baritone of Greg Lake as he stands there declaiming something about a show that never ends.

We'll come back later to the two modules at the extreme right of the lower rack-- notice that there's a bunch of similar-looking ones in the upper rack, which is where I'm headed. Check out the three identical voltage-controlled filter modules on the left.

Filters... well... filter. Most everybody here has seen these on their handy garden-variety channel strip, but for the one or two who haven't...

We're looking at the three filters configured in low-pass mode. Anything below the cutoff frequency (determined by the dial strangely labeled "frequency") gets passed through to the output. Anything above that frequency gets attenuated, in this case at a rate of 24dB per octave from the cutoff frequency. So theoretically if the cutoff frequency is set to 440 Hz (middle A), any harmonics you might hear at 880 Hz would be attenuated 24dB. Theoretically.

In practice, filter design grants a little bump, or I guess they call it a knee, to the region right around the cutoff frequency. The width of the knee is regulated by the resonance dial, which adds a bit of emphasis around the cutoff frequency. As you add resonance, which is to say, narrow the width of the knee, you can hear the wave start to whistle a little bit, and in fact it will start oscillating a sine wave if you jack it up enough.

There are other types of filter not shown in the illo... the existence of a low-pass filter implies that there might also be such a thing as a high-pass filter, and there is. It works much as you'd expect, knowing what you now know of low-pass behavior.

A module called a filter coupler links two filters, a low-pass and a high-pass (both, again, 24 db per octave rolloff) together to produce two other filter types: band-pass, in which the high-pass filter is set to a low frequency and the low-pass to a high one (if you set the band narrow enough you can get close to simulating your basic wah-wah pedal); and band-reject or notch, which cuts a frequency range out of the middle of the wave some crazy how or other. Rather than provide knobs for two cutoffs and two resonances, one of each is provided: one for the center frequency and the other for the width of the band (they call it resonance; depending on the synth or work environment you may also see it referred to by the cryptic initial Q).

Arturia also give you a module called a multi-mode filter for those situations when a 24 dB per octave rolloff is just a little too much joy. (I could be wrong, but I'm not sure Moog ever manufactured anything similar.) You get one control for cutoff frequency (12 dB per octave) and one for resonance, and then a 7-way switch so that you can switch between low-pass, band-pass, notch, high-pass, low shelving, high shelving, and a bell curve similar to your friendly neighborhood parametric EQ.

Note also to the extreme right of the top rack that there is a quick and dirty filter module with a low-pass and a high-pass stacked together. These operate at a meager 6dB per octave of rolloff.

Of greater interest about that module are the noise outputs: white (unweighted) and pink (weighted). In case that makes a difference. You'd use noise for non-pitched sounds like (of course) the wind, or certain percussive bursts. Unfiltered, it just sounds like your old FM tuner did when you were between stations.

You can modulate filter cutoff and resonance by LFOs and also by envelopes, of which there are quite a few visible here (I count eight, two of which have a bit more going for them; more below). The envelope paradigm in question is pretty standard and usually abbreviated to the four-letter acronym ADSR. Note please that here they reverse the S and R dials....


Attack is the time it takes for the "voltage" to reach full level from zero when you plunk your finger down on the key.
Decay is the time it takes for the "voltage" to fall off from that peak to the defined Sustain level, where it will remain as long as you keep your finger on the key. If the sustain level is all the way open, you could set the decay to whatever you wanted and it wouldn't make a difference. (In fact there is an envelope type called AR that is functionally the same as this. I'm not clear that Moog implemented that design as a module in its own right, but I believe PAiA did at one point.)
Release is the time it takes for the "voltage" to die away to zero after you finally get bored and lift your finger off the key.
Now, the difference between those ADSR envelope modules and the two in the lower right are that the latter two are actually voltage-controlled amplifiers. These are output modules; they give you two, in case you were thinking about going stereo. Envelope changes here affect the amplitude of the overall signal. You can also modulate these with LFOs for tremolo effects.

Like the three filter cutoffs, they can be controlled from the virtual rack just above your keyboard-- remember I said that Arturia had duplicated a couple of the controllers there for the sake of convenience?

Having completed our necessarily brief cook's tour of the modules on offer, let's trace the signal flow of the patch we've been looking at. (Oo er you did realize that this is why we call them "patches", right?)

I'm guessing that the keyboard is virtually hard-wired to the first oscillator group; if it weren't, you could play the keyboard (either onscreen or via your MIDI keyboard) all day long and not really affect anything, least of all your ear drums.

We're actually taking the sawtooth waves out of each of the three slave oscillators and bringing them down to the ersatz amp/mixer module just beneath them. (Bet you thought I'd forgotten that one. Well, I had. Moog's didn't look like that anyway.) The three are linked together using the soft red on-off switches; the leftmost dial controls the overall signal which is being fed into the leftmost low-pass filter above it.

The filter is also accepting a control voltage input from one of the envelope modules to modulate the cutoff frequency (here set to provide a fast downward sweep); and notice that when it does, Arturia give you the means of adjusting how much the envelope is allowed to change the cutoff. It was a lot more of an ordeal on a real Moog Modular, trust me on that, but in this instance the jack itself turns into a potentiometer-- a dial if you're so inclined. This dial lets you vary the depth of modulation.

Lastly the filter's output is being routed to one of the amplifiers. Simple, yes?

Now would be a very good time to ask questions as I ponder how to organize my thoughts on Reaktor.

[Fulcrum]

Just now caught Nobby's link. Don't tell me this whole enterprise of sweating over every word and plastering useless graphics up here has been for nothing!

Just kidding. I'll have a boo at that a little later.. maybe if I'm not too much of an assclown I'll even have a comment or two.

[MacGregor]

Now would be a very good time to ask questions as I ponder how to organize my thoughts on Reaktor.

No questions, I think you're explanations are easy to understand.
Thanks a lot for that.

Reaktor will be much harder as there are virtually endless possibilities.


Mac

[Fulcrum]

While we're waiting on me to get my ass in gear and start talking about Reaktor-- I figure that's gotta be worth at least a column inch or two-- go here (http://thewombforums.com/showthread.php?t=8099) and give Ethan some eyetime as he explains many of these same concepts, only this time with audio examples.

[Babaluma]

hi all,

this is my first post. i'm an avid modular synthesist, and would be happy to add to the discussion or help answer any questions.

a recent pic of my modular:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3615/3303096173_7cec7d490a_b.jpg

[HOOK]

a recent pic of my modular:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3615/3303096173_7cec7d490a_b.jpg

Nice! :grin: mmmmm...porn!





HOOK

[MacGregor]

Nice! :grin: mmmmm...porn!
HOOK

Naa, this is just a nice boobs pic. Porn would be the wiring on the backside :D

Mac
.

[Fulcrum]

Thank you for sharing that Bab. A nice piece of work this.

I understand most of what I'm seeing (though the blue-faced Wiard dual joystick controller in the middle gave me a bit of pause for a moment). Would you care to describe the function of some of the more arcane modules in your rack?

What guided your selection of different modules from different manufacturers?

[Babaluma]

thanks fulcrum.

it's been a labour of love very slowly accumlated over the last 6 years. i'm at the stage now where i am basically done. i had a couple more racks 18 months ago, but the size of the system just became too physically and mentally unwieldy. it's perfect for me now. ;)

it's late here in japan, so i won't go into great detail on all the modules now, but i'll have a crack at an intro, and will try and post about one or two modules tomorrow and in the coming days.

the overall philosophy of the choice of modules was 1) to produce a synthesizer able to produce all the best known synthesiser timbres, 2) to be able to produce exciting new timbres, 3) to embody both "east cost" (moog style) as well as "west cost" (buchla, serge style) synthesiser methods, 4) to be a potent source of post processing, 5) have great real time control possibilities, and 6) be small in size (japanese apartments are small, which ruled out the large format modulars such as motm, synthesizers.com etc.)

it' basically like the bastard offspring between an arp 2600 and an ems synthi aks on steroids.

a little about interfacing: i have four outputs from the modular going into 4 inputs on my mixer. i also have two groups/subs from the mixer going into the modular. the time machine bbd delays are routed via the sends and returns on the mixer. of course being modular and patchable, this is all easy to change, but that's my main setup. i can easily route anything anywhere!

i'll start with the top row, as that's all pretty basic stuff, and work my way down tomorrow!

the first rack at the top has (from left to right) a dual ring modulator (passive, germanium diodes from a '60's analogue computer!), a three input +/- attenuating mixer x 2, a vco x 3, an lfo x 2, and a multiple. easy peezy!

[Bob Olhsson]

Lots-o-memories. This was Motown's Moog Modular around 1967. It was the first one Stevie Wonder used.

[otek]

Damn. :icon_eek:

How's that for a first post?

This should be interesting indeed, and a worthy continuation of Fulcrum's excellent tutorial. Welcome to the Womb!


otek

[Babaluma]

thanks otek!

the second row is a 1u panel graciously designed and built for me my michael from metalbox. it contains 6 passive attenuators and 3 multiples.

i'll post some sound files in future if anyone is interested!

[Babaluma]

ok the next row starts get a little more interesting. the two wiard filters are amazing.

from the left we have the boogie, a low pass filter with each filter pole brought out to a separate jack. by externally mixing the poles in different combinations, different filter responses result, esoteric stuff like a 2 pole all pass with a 1 pole low pass. the boogie is generally very clean sounding and uses vactrols (like a lot of buchla stuff).

next is the quad mixer (generally used for mixing the outs from the boogie, but i will also use it as a cv mixer sometimes, e.g. mixing sequencer pitch, accent, env and lfo for controlling filter cutoff).

next is the wiard/blacet miniwave, a digital wavetable module. it has two roms, each rom has 16 banks of 16 waves. all voltage controllable of course. by running a sawtooth in, you get a digital wave out. but it doesn't just end there. by feeding it a non standard wave, loads of non linear (the sound changes based on the level of the input) distortion effects can be achieved. there are also some banks which can be used as scale quantisers - feed a crazy random cv in, and get notes quantised to the scale of your choice at the output. great for feeding vcos. an extremely versatile module.

next is the motm ladder filter. this is a moog modular lpf clone. it has the classic moog sound, and overdrives very nicely.

next is the wiard borg2 filter. screaming resonance like the ms-20, great for acid. pannable lpf/bpf/hpf responses.

both the wiard filters can also be used as low pass gates for more organic buchla-esque plucky marimba type sounds (think morton subotnick).

lastly is the cat girl synth analogue shift register (based on functionality of the serge asr). an asr is basically a sample and hold with more than one stage. feed it a clock and a voltage, and it samples the voltage at the rate of the clock and spits it out the first output, then samples a new one on the next clock and shifts it down to the next output. this asr has three outputs. if you send it a sequencer pitch cv and clock it from the same sequencer, then send the three outputs to three different vcos, you get delayed arabesque style sequences. like multi timbral delay. ;)

that's it for now, more later. please ask me questions if you want!

[HOOK]

MMMMmmmm....:very happy:

A nice cup of java, nice reading and myriads of imaginary sound inside my head.




Carry on!:Coolio:




HOOK

[Babaluma]

i'll attempt an exposition of the wiard 311 controller tomorrow, but it's nearly time for bed, so i'll just leave you with some filter demos and a couple of finished tracks! ;)

1) moog filter (http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-MoogAcidJam.wav)

2) borg2 filter 1 (http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-BorgAcidJam.wav)

3) borg2 filter 2 (http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-BorgAcidJam2.wav)

4) parallel filters: boogie left and borg2 right joystick tweaked drone (http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-ParallelLPFJoyDrone.flac)

5) moog hpf sequence with a phaser in the feedback path of two bucket brigade delays (http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-ChineseLantern.mp3)

and finally two complete ambient drone tracks which heavily feature the modular:

Babaluma - Deep Drone (http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-DeepDrone.mp3)

Babaluma - Dead Heads (http://darkflame.hermetech.net/Musick/Babaluma-DeadHeads.mp3)

[otek]

Those drone tracks sort of remind me a bit of Coil..... :D


otek

[Babaluma]

cheers, i am a HUGE coil fan, my favourite band of all time and all that.

:Thumbsup:

[Babaluma]

ok the next row has the wiard 311B controller. this is comprised of two joysticks, two gate push buttons, and two joystick axis generators (or JAGs for short). the JAG is basically a fully discreet class a analogue computer, capable of processing signals from dc to video. ;)

it takes two inputs (each one is normalled to the joystick it sits next to), and outputs TEN simultaneous but different voltages.

an easy way to think of it is with a joystick as the input. if you look at the LED array in the middle, you can easily envisage that as the joystick is near 8, the 8 output voltage is high, whilst the opposite 4 voltage is low. so you could for example:

1) use it to control 8 vcas going to 8 different speakers for joystick controlled octaphonic panning (my system is capable of this, but unfortunately i only have 2 speakers!).

2) using vcas mix four different vcos for real time joystick controlled vector synthesis.

3) use it to control up to ten different parameters of a single patch AT ONCE, for example you could control two vcf cutoffs, individual adsr times, vco pitch, amp and vibrato amount, and delay time, again, AT ONCE. great when you have an acidic sequence running!

you could also use it with two lfos or two envelopes as the inputs, for 10 different "flavours" at the outputs.

the dome out goes high when the joystick is in the middle, and the edge is the inverse of this. i've often dreamed of a 5 speaker set up, 4 in the corners and one in the middle of the ceiling (i like to call it the pyramid setup), with the dome level controlling the ceiling speaker. then joystick panning, or even better, lfo panning the sound around inside the pyramid.

and yes, apparently it even has the bandwidth to process analogue video signals. who knows where that would lead?

you can also input two audio signals, and you seem to get slightly different flavours of fm/ring modulated distorted like timbres at the outputs.

and yes, there are two of these $uc&ers in the 311. ;)

i have seriously only barely scratched the surface of what this thing is capable of.

p.s. for anyone who would like to follow this with a higher res photo of my synth, you can see one here:

HECATE LARGE (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3615/3303096173_cd4e502826_o.jpg)

i eventually hope to have a web site up, with mini reviews and tips and tricks for all the modules in my system, but that's going to be a way off yet.

p.p.s. really digging the womb so far, am preferring the vibe here to that of gearslutz and even tape op. there seem to be more electronic music lovers here.

[HOOK]

p.p.s. really digging the womb so far, am preferring the vibe here to that of gearslutz and even tape op. there seem to be more electronic music lovers here.

I´d say there are more music lovers here, period. :Wink:

..or rather music loving sound & gear freaks with attitude! :Roll eyes:





HOOK

[Babaluma]

ok in the next row we have a couple of 1/4" to 1/8" to phono adaptors in the rack ears.

then the bananalogue/serge vcs. this is perhaps the most versatile synth module ever designed. it can be: a vco, a vcf, a low pass gate, an lfo, an envelope, a non-linear waveshaper, an envelope follower, a trigger/gate delay, a subharmonic generator, a glide/slew limiter, or many more things besides, depending on how you patch it. the rise and fall times can be linear, exponential or logarithmic in shape, and everything is of course voltage controllable.

yes, you could have an entire synthesizer just made up of vcs's!

i often like to use mine in combination with a vactrol based low pass gate (wiard borg2 or boogie filters in lpg mode) and an inverter to patch up an opto compressor. depending on how you patch it, it can be feedforward or feedback, and of course you can put anything you like in the sidechain. :) :) :)

next we have a dual linear vca, which can also act as a 2 input 1 output mixer, a crossfader, a multiple, or a panner.

then an lfo (feeding the outputs back into the rate cv gives you weird/exponential shapes).

in the middle is a wiard noise ring. this is similar to a part of the buchla source of uncertainty. you get analogue white noise, and different types of random stepped voltages from the outputs. it conducts bird singing very effectively. ;) it will work as a cv generator (great fed through the scale quantiser rom in the miniwave) or an audio source (very noisy!).

then another mixer and vca.

finally a blacet envelope generator. envelope times per stage can go from 600 micro seconds to one hour. ;)

[Babaluma]

ok, i guess i should finish up what i started!

the final row comprises a psycho lfo on the far left. it's a crazy random lfo with slew, good for adding subtle instability to vcos or delays (for the tape wobble sound!) for a fatter sound.

there are two more serge mixers in this rack. i like to use them in the feedback paths of the two time machines for more insane sounds.

there are two blacet time machines. these are now out of production. bucket brigade delay devices with everything under cv control, and a lovely warm sound.

two more dual vcas, and then a stonz phaser in the middle. i guess it's based on the small stone design, although it doesn't sound much like it to my ears. i am thinking of swapping this one out for something that sounds a little more beefy.

in the right rack ear we have a metalbox 8008 kick drum module, which is basically the 808 kick drum circuit, but it outputs 10v p/p modular levels. and kicks like a mule and destroys!

and that's it as far as a basic description of my own modular goes.

so, i would be happy to offer any advice on particular modules, or patching etc. you can do crazy stuff like create a hpf from a lpf, patch up a compressor, get vc resonance on filters that don't already have it, etc etc.

most of the modular dudes seem to hang out at muffwiggler's forum.

thanks for reading!

gregg

[otek]

I think Babaluma needs to be in the next CaPE. :D


otek

[Babaluma]

what's CaPE?

edit: just found out, womb collaboration yes? would def. be up for it!

[synthetic]

I'm also on the muffwiggler forum. Great group of modular synth guys.

I have a MOTM modular synth, and it sounds huge. It puts my other synths to shame. It's almost too big, I have to bury it in the mix sometimes.

[Calvin]

I think Babaluma needs to be in the next CaPE. :D


otek

Absolutely! Incredibly impressive stuff, Babaluma. I'm loving the drone tracks.

[Babaluma]

thanks for the kind words calvin!

i am always up for collaboration.

to keep this thread on topic, i've started another thread in the "sounding board" section for comments on my own musick. there's a new track there too, which you might enjoy if you liked those other two drone tracks!

check it here:

Babaluma - Dead Heads EP (http://thewombforums.com/showthread.php?t=10689)

[Babaluma]

I'm also on the muffwiggler forum. Great group of modular synth guys.

I have a MOTM modular synth, and it sounds huge. It puts my other synths to shame. It's almost too big, I have to bury it in the mix sometimes.

hey synthetic, thought i recognised the name!

have never had a chance to play an motm, i hear the vcos are amazing.