TubularCorporation

Got paid last Wednesday, designed and ordered a 1u output panel, PCBs and the parts I didn't have on hand to get the MBseq up to 4 each panel mounted DIN MIDI inputs and outputs. Will add panel mounted USB and line driver for external CV output modules later on. Next step is to start working on a more permanent case.

I'm a little bitter.

Get psyched for that K1M I used to share a practice space with a guy who got an EX-800 in perfect shape for $5 at an antique mall while his band was on tour, and said he'd probably sel it to me for $20 but needed some time to think about it. Then he never made up his mind, stacked a bunch of heavy gear on top ofit, and broke the display, volume knob and probably some buttons.

Not as much as I should because I don't have the space to keep it set up, so I basically pull it out and set up as few pads as possible if I need to record some live-sounding drums. Record the MIDI, put it away, fix the mistakes because I'm a pretty crap drummer. I was actually going to sell it to a friend before the Covid hit and he got laid off. What is that synth?

Nice, I had one of the others in that range for a while (also free) and it was a lot of fun, but I ended up trading it for some pads and slowly piecing together a small early 90s electonic drum kit.

Compressors BEFORE reverb can be pretty useful, and sending the dry signal to the sidechain of a compressor after a reverb to duck it can be really nice, too.

Yeah, compressors are a tone control tool.

For basic, introductory modular stuff the original Serge guidebook is still good. Scans are here: http://www.carbon111.com/serge_index.html

The ideal mastering session would be the mastering engineer using a combination of extensive experience, understanding of your artistic goals, and a very neutral listening environment (mastering is the one area where IMO it's not possible to do good work without very high quality equipment, even if it's just the monitoring - DAC, speakers, room design and treatment - for fully ITB work) that everything sounds good and doesn't have any technical issues, and not actually needing to do anything except maybe set the final level. If a mastering engineer has to FIX anything then the mix wasn't ready. In practice, almost every mix is going to have issues but not actually needing mastering is the goal.

I feel like local/underground shows used to be way more eclectic, I've seen/played so many shows where there would be, for example, a psych band, a sort of EDM/synthpop, a pure noise act, some kind of weird leftfield hip hop act and a mathrock band, and people would just show up to see what was happening, but since social media really blew up things are always ~~cUrAt3d~~ and most of the audience show up for one act they already know and then leaves or smokes outside for everyone else. So you might get 50-100 people at a show but the audience will be around 20 and they'll just circulate through. It's not always like that but that seems like the default now around here, where in the 2000s the default was "show up and see something new." Not to be all "kids these days" but it it really feels like the people who are really in to stuff are staying home and making their own music and the people who go to shows are there for Instagram. Which is cool in that there's more good music than ever these days (even though there's also more BAD music than ever), but when I go to shows lately it all feels kind of fake. Or maybe it's just because I had undiagnosed low level hypothyroidism for the last 5-6 years.

Apparently Curtis Roads is getting close to finishing a second edition of The Computer Music Tutorial. Pretty exciting, the first one came out in '94 or '95 and there's stuff in there that still seems pretty unexplored.

YES, I've always felt like "experimental" music feels a lot less experimental in isolation than it does when it's mixed with more conventional, accessible stuff, but I listened to Frank Zappa too much in high school.

Hope your 2626 isn't a problem after recommending it. I've been using one as an expander for over a year with good results.

I got every Fallout game up through New Vegas for $18 total on sale at GoG a couple weeks ago, but all I've actually been playing is the NES version of Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf.

I had a similar issue, I built that Soda Meiser pedal today and I had most of the stuff on hand but had to order 100k post and transistors that showed up late last night. Turns out instead of 100k linear and a 100k log I got all 100k reverse log, but I ended up being able to scavange what I needed from some old stuff that didn't work right when I first started building things. So now the volume is a little 9mm smooth shaft pot with PCB tabs that I sort of bent into hooks and soldered wires to, and the gain is a knurled shaft 16mm pot. Ended up with an extra hole in the front and both jacks up in a weird spot in the corner because space was so tight, but that's all kind of appropriate since the thing sounds broken anyway (by design). Really glad to have one of these in my life again, and since I already had most of the expensive parts (jacks, footswitches, enclosure) it only cost about $12, mainly because two of the transistors were about $4 each. Instead of putting the "chaos" and "noise" mods on a single switch, I gave them their own footswitches so you can use both at once, and it does this ridiculous almost inverted-dynamics thing where the attack of your note is squashed into nothing and then it kind of swells up. Downside is it also pushes any pickup hum up really loud when you aren't playing, but it's still useful. Also put in a toggle that switches if between the Soda Meiser and the Vintage Fuzz Master, which is almost the same circuit but sounds quite a bit different. Ended up using this layout instead of either of the layouts in the PDF I posted earlier.

If it weren't for the cost of having a front panel made you could put one of them together for like $200USD, give or take. The newer "plus" version looks nice but honestly I feel like the simpler interface works against a lot of what appeals to me about this thing (not control-per-function but still close - flat menu structure with dedicated, labelled buttons for every menu page) and it's a lot more expensive to build. It wasn't out yet when I got that panel made so it's a moot point anyway.

FINALLY got it to the point where it's working and usable. After the stuff I've done this year, it was actually pretty simple but when I first started it a few years ago it seemed really intimidating. It's still just bolted to a piece of wood but the motherboard, control board, displays and one MIDI i/o board are all set up, so it's usable. Still to do: - second MIDI i/o board for 4 input and 4 output ports total -digital and analog i/o boards for CV, gate and trigger output (probably more complicated than that though, the best way to do it is to use a couple B25 connectors for the analog outputs, and then make breakout modules in your modular rack, but that actually needs a bunch of active circuitry on both ends because the AOUT can't drive a very long cable run on its own, and as far as I know there aren't PCBs available for any of that. So for the medium term at least, it's going to be MIDI only. -Actual case EDIT: also need to get knobs, and maybe a couple colored switch caps for the transport controls and some others. Wish I'd gone with amber displays instead of white, though. Might be worth the $20 to replace them sometime.

I had a Devi Evern SM Fuzz for a few years before I sold a bunch of gear, and in the "chaos" mode it could cover more ground than what I've been getting using about 10 Eurrack modules for processing guitar (it wasn't as controllable, but more variety). I always wanted the full blown Soda Meiser but it looks like under the new ownership what they're seling as the Soda Meiser is actually what used to be sold as the SM Fuzz and what I always wanted (but was already out of production by the time I was wanting one in the late 2000s) is now basically forgotten by the Internet, the closest thing I can find is a "Soda Meiser Deluxe" that's also really hard to get - I think they made like 40 of them 5 or 6 years ago. So I'm going to build one with as many extra controls added as I can fit. Other than the pots, switches and enclosure it's about $8 in parts, and all of the different variations are mostly swapping out one capacitor or changing the polarity or type of one transistor. Once I get a few transistors I didn't already have in the mail I should be able to build it in an afternoon. Anyhow, when I was looking for information on the two button "soda can" version that I never ended up finding anything about except this review that I can't read, I dug up this and it's really useful: https://www.scribd.com/document/211309101/Devi-Ever-Diy-Info-Manual-aw-heck-yes Mine's going to be somewhere between this version and the three knob "super" version. I'm not sure yet what the Boost switch actually did but I'm going to move the Chaos switch to the second foot switch and use the toggle to switch between Soda Meiser and Vintage Fuzz Master (only difference is reversing one transistor), add a battery starve knob, and if I have space I MIGHT add another switch for "noise" mode or set it up so that the footswitch toggles normal and noise/chaos and a toggle switch chooses which mode the footswitch selects (they're both just lifting a single component, so it wouldn't be that hard so setup that way, but I have no idea what Nosie mode will sound like so I don't know if I want it or want to have the option of using both at the same time). Now I jsut need to find a bottle of this stuff so I can stick the label onto the pedal enclosure:

That looks like a cool thing for sure.

My neighbor who's relatively deep in Eurorack is thinking about getting a second Maths.

I'll come back to it later, it's pretty minimally documented and I don't really have the troubleshooting skills to go through the v1.0 schematic and try to work out what's wrong with the (completely undocumented) 1.6 PCB.

It was amazing for about 10 minutes when it was working right, and it was pretty good for about 6 hours before and after that when everything but the gate output worked right, and now I can't even power up the rack if it's installed. Something intermittent, it changes any time I move it but I can't track it down.

I was almost there but the Korg MS-20 input section clone I built has been really problematic and works perfectly every once in a while, partially most of the time, and not at all some of the time. Too bad, too, because when it WAS working it tracked amazingly well and really did feel like I was playing a synth with a guitar in a way nothing else I've ever tried did (certainly nothing digital).

It's essentially a Serge DUSG with some features from Buchla synths added in and I think a couple of their own twists. But mostly a DUSG. These videos about the DUSG do a good job of explaining how it works, so they might actually be a good starting point for understanding what things like Maths (or the Befaco Rampage) are for. This looks good, too: http://alijamieson.co.uk/2016/11/02/make-noise-maths-beginners/ I don't have a Maths or a DUSG though, so take that all with a grain of salt. Anyway, looking at the price of a Maths and realizing that for jsut slightly more I could get a Serge boat, power distribution board, parts for a power supply AND PCBs/panel/parts for an Elby/CGS DUSG, and not have to pay for it all in one big lump, was one of the last nails in the coffin for me and Eurorack.