TubularCorporation

I like to have a handful of core things I know really well, and then a pile of stuff I don't know well that I can swap in to stir things up, otherwise I start to overthink and micromanage too much. Not so easy to justify that approach now that the 90s digital stuff is actually in demand, 6 or 7 years ago when you could hardly give a lot of that stuff away it made sense to just grab random things that had unique sounds or ergonomics and just keep it in reserve for when you needed a change. Would not do things now the way I did in 2011-15 but I'm thankful I had the opportunity.

Trump is eliminating the Testing Czar position, so expect numbers in the USA to improve soon. Can't catch what you can't detect!

Also the idea that anarchism is somehow exclusive with "creating a civilized society" instead of, you know, literally entirely about creating a civilized society, could not possibly be more wrong.

I get that completely, it sort of defeats the purpose for me.

I'm taking a break but I've got something like 140hp full and only one 8HP oscillator in there, it's all modulation sources and filters and other stuff for processing signals from other places, even the oscillator I've only hooked up as a sound source once when I was calibrating it, I mostly use it for audio rate modulation. As far as sample based stuff, they're not cheap but the Bitbox modules look really cool.

Yeah, Roman posted in there the other day with a photo, boards are done and preorder is being sorted out.

I'm really telling myself not to blow my tax return on the new 2.0 voice card PCBs that are coming out for the Kijimi (the original SSM2040 was finally reissued so they've designed new voice cards that use it) and/or one of these: https://modularaddict.com/midibox-tia2600synth-partialkit THAT DEMO THO

Finally a strong case made in favor of private space travel for the super rich.

Also I'm getting way more in to a sample based workflow again and if I'm going t put any more money into anything in the next couple months it's a nice stand for the MPC and replacements for a few janky buttons, so I can focus on -sample in MPC -build a pattern from samples -sample a loop of that pattern into the Octatrack and crossfade to the loop -do more sampling into the MPC -repeat -when there are enough sampled things, record MIDI and then track everything out live for mixing (or do it all in real time as a performance) so I can use all of the good things about the MPC and Octatrack while having them covering each other's weaknesses. That's been my plan for a while but dipping a toe in Eurorack got in the way. EDIT: After tonight's Ninjam session I'm 100% confident this is the right move.

Both of the modules I was working on this week, that are pretty integral to what I'm even using the little Eurorack for, are problematic (the Mindreader is actually getting worse, something intermittent is happening but it didn't work and then it worked fine for about 10 minutes and then everything but the gate worked for 3 days and now the entire rack won't power up if it's installed, and basically the only thing that's changing is I'm moving it around, but even if I find whatever else is worn there's still the gate problem) and the Dubldeca works fine electroncially as far as I can tell but won't recognize incoming MIDI and I've meticulously gone through and tried everything that everyone else who has posted about having the same problem has done and none of it worked so who knows. Hopefully just a firmware issue but I'm at a brick wall, and I had to actually temporarily retire the entire Eurorack setup until I get them worked out because what I need it for right now relies on those specific modules, and frankly it's generally getting in the way of making music more than it's helping make music, so I am back to using a couple of semimodular boxes in its place and it's already way better, soundwise and in terms of ergonomics. It already felt like I was struggling against everything being too small and fiddly to begin with, so this is just the last straw for the time being. I'll revive it eventually but for now I just want to actually make music. Not going to stop me making some Serge stuff this winter, though.

You know, given that Doepfer invented the Eurorack format, it's kind of ironic that (at least on this old module) they didn't put any kind of polarity indication on the power header. On the bright side, part of the reason I had it out of the rack was making space for a better input module so functionally I haven't lost much functionality (none, i I can figure out why the gate output doesn't work right on the Mind Reader), and if it's just the opamp and that one capacitor it's an easy repair.

That's what I filled up. I didn't exactly build it from scratch (I'm not in any way set up to do woodworking beyond drilling holes and basic hand tool stuff - even making something like a record cube would be a big challenge) but I got an off brand wire cart a few years ago and made a solid top for it from a cheap countertop I got in the discount leftover parts area at the local Ikea (seriously best place for cheap tabletops and legs) and added slowly to that as I needed to, so now it had a laptop/drum machine stand, a patch cable rack, and a headphone holder (heavy steel bed leg I also got at the Ikea bin) so it's kind of a mobile tabletop gear rig, but it's only about 2/3 of a meter deep and a meter wide. It has just enough space for the little Eurorack case, the Octatrack, a small preamp, and on more piece of gear up on the laptop stand (right now it's the old Boss BE-5 multieffects pedal). Anything else I use that isn't rackmount has to go on keyboard stands with boards sitting on them, or cheap folding TV trays if I want to use it.

In terms of pure hours and drive space I'm really prolific right now, but it's all 90 minute remote jams (a bit over 20 of them in the last two months) so far. Sitting down and working on finished solo tracks not so much. It doesn't help that in the last 6 months I've built more stuff than I have table space to set up all at once.

Well, I took the money I made from selling the Mother32 that was going to go toward converting that old road case into a big Eurorack case and, for what it would have cost me to get jsut the rails and related hardware, instead picked up a Loudestwarning format 4u boat with power distribution PCB (but no PSU) and the boards, panel and mounting bracket to build the CGS version of the Serge Stepped and Smooth Generator. Other than the power supply, DIY Serge is more affordable than Eurorack and it's really what I want to be working with. Even after diving in as hard as I could afford on Eurorack a few months back I still absolutely hare the form factor and the flimsy little jacks. You can do a lot with it and there are a ton of great sounding, innovative modules out there but I still just don't enjoy working with it like I do with 1/4" and banana gear, and the whole Serge philosophy of low level modules that can perform a lot of functions (the SSG, depending on how you patch it, can be a slew processor, LFO, envelope follower, simple envelope generator, and a bunch of other stuff. So the little (I think it's 2x84hp but I haven't actually counted) case I got as payment for designing a simple footswitch-controlled gate generator last year is going to keep being my dedicated guitar (and other audio but mostly guitar so far) processing rig and I'll slowly build up the Serge panel I was planning last winter (kind of a hybrid between the standard Eidelweiss and Animal panels) a module at a time. Maybe design a 4u panel for the Klee sequencer next spring and stick one of those in a second boat if I have the money (the way things are going this could all be moot in a few months since I have no idea when my regular editing work that usually funds 1-2 big projects per year will come back). Meanwhile, I'm slowing down on DIY for a month or two, once I've got the last two modules I've bee woring on finished (waiting for a missing part for one, and the other is the Mind Reader that's mostly done but the gate output is still messed up) becasue it's been taking up so much of my free time I've hardly sat down to work on music (not counting collaborations, I've been doignthat a lot more lately) in a couple months. Time to really use the stuff I've built. That's the big danger of DIY for me, really - it's so satisfying to build stuff that it can get in the way of using the stuff I build.

My neighbor texted me earlier and said he'd straight up give me a Polivoks filter clone for free tomorrow, unprompted. Pretty sure it was DIY when he was first learning so might be sloppy, but he's been using it for at least two years so it must work fine.

Mindreader is almost working. I haven't calibrated it but everything except gate is OK, for some reason the gate voltage is +5v high, +7v low instead of +5v high 0v low. Weird.

I know this is an old post I'm responding to but 1) I want to top the thread and 2) it's really good to see so many modules running OK on that power supply. I'm going to be converting an old road case into a 9u x 108hp Eurorack case and that's the only power supply I have. If I buy a new one I won't have money for the parts to convert the case and vice versa.

Yeah, it's called "DIY Crew In the House" or something similar and it's pretty long. Meanwhile, the old Mother32 my neighbor sold to me for $300 a couple years ago was just sold back to him for $150 plus an Intellijel Planar 1 and some 12" patch cables, so somehow we've both managed to come out ahead by selling stuff for less than market value. EDIT: n.m. found it. For some reason when I search for variations of "crew in the house" on here I never find it, but if I do a domain limited Duckduckgo search for "DIY crew" it's all top 3 or 4 results every time.

Getting into the home stretch on an E.A.S. Mind Reader (MS-20 input/pitch-to-CV Eurorack clone). Making the mounting bracket was a pain. Can never find the DIY thread with search so I'm putting it here.

That's always been the beauty of the DX series keyboards for me, and why I wish I still had one - you really don't need to understand FM theory to get good results quickly. There's a little bit of learning curve at the beginning, but the DX interface is really intuitive once you get the basics, there's direct access to basically every parameter (not control-per-function but close - press a button with your right hand, play the keyboard with your right hand while tweaking the parameter with your left, repeat) and it's easy to work by ear. No other FM synth I've tried is like that, least of all the Yamaha rack modules (even though they tend to be more flexible than their keyboard counterparts).

I've never messed with one but a friend of mine has had one for a few years and does basically everything on that, a Kurzweil K2500RS and a Kawai K1. I'm not usually around when he works on stuff but what I've heard sounds great and definitely not like stereotpyical FM sounds. The TX802 was easily the best value in FM for a long time but it looks like they're getting more expensive lately. I don't even know how long I've had one (first real synth I ever got, back when nobody wanted FM) and I still find uses for it. I'd say if you find one under $250 it's still a good deal, but for $300+ it's a lot harder to justify. It really does sound fantastic, though. Doesn't have the grit of the 12 bit FM synths but it sounds really good. I'd definitely recommend one over a DX7-II unless you absolutely need the keyboard. The DX7-II is easier to program but the 802 does a bit more (multitimbral, 10 outs, microtuning that I'm not sure the DX could do) and is essentially the same synth.

There was a lot of academic electronic music like this in the 80s and 90s especially. Lots of stuff done in synthesis languages like M, CSound, proprietary stuff, things coming out of places like IRCAM and The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, etc. I don't really have many examples I could give off the top of my head since most of what I've heard doesn't do much for me and usually sounds more like tech demos IMO, but it's out there, and a lot of digital synthesis techniques that are common now came out of it. Paul Lansky's CMix stuff is pretty good.