the watmm GAS thread

[Polytrix]

The thing that strikes me about all of this is that I really admire how you guys can even use this stuff so quickly and easily. 

When I look at that eurorack stuff or even the digitakt I'm like, ''sorry what the hell do all those buttons do'' - I feel it would take a huge amount of effort for me to make music with something so complex.  Is it a really steep learning curve to use something like the digitakt when you're just used to Ableton with a few simple external devices? I admire you lot! 

I think I'm more sort of traditional in how I see music so like if I can pick up a guitar and start being super expressive and free in that way then that immediacy is what I love. A whole rack of modules just doesn't feel like that to me. I'd be like..no idea mate.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Polytrix

[thawkins]

11 minutes ago, Polytrix said:

The thing that strikes me about all of this is that I really admire how you guys can even use this stuff so quickly and easily. 

When I look at that eurorack stuff or even the digitakt I'm like, ''sorry what the hell do all those buttons do'' - I feel it would take a huge amount of effort for me to make music with something so complex.  Is it a really steep learning curve to use something like the digitakt when you're just used to Ableton with a few simple external devices? I admire you lot! 

I think I'm more sort of traditional in how I see music so like if I can pick up a guitar and start being super expressive and free in that way then that immediacy is what I love. A whole rack of modules just doesn't feel like that to me. I'd be like..no idea mate.

Don't be mistaken - Eurorack is just as incomprehensible to the guys who own $10k racks. The difference is that since they have sunk such a huge amount of cash in it, they have to release a new track every time they luck out and insert the patch cables so that the signal does not immediately sound like a cross between a helicopter and pink noise. And even if it does, the bespoke filter made by secret monks from Rasputin's hidden monastery out of old Sputnik parts is "actually supposed to sound like that".

Like you're never going to get the dude who spent a small fortune on his bleepbloops admit that yeah it sounds boring as shit.

[Polytrix]

HAHAHAHAH You're really funny. 

I just kind of feel like less is more is always the rule. Far too expensive. 

[TubularCorporation]

55 minutes ago, thawkins said:

Don't be mistaken - Eurorack is just as incomprehensible to the guys who own $10k racks. The difference is that since they have sunk such a huge amount of cash in it, they have to release a new track every time they luck out and insert the patch cables so that the signal does not immediately sound like a cross between a helicopter and pink noise. And even if it does, the bespoke filter made by secret monks from Rasputin's hidden monastery out of old Sputnik parts is "actually supposed to sound like that".

Like you're never going to get the dude who spent a small fortune on his bleepbloops admit that yeah it sounds boring as shit.

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.

[Polytrix]

Yeah and you've got a studio full of cool shit, so I mean...happy days! 

I'm ridiculosuly excited about JV1080 + Midiverb2. I'll probably stop buying gear now as that's all I was really after. 

I need to get better at controlling the 1080 FX though as I want delay lines too. I'm not sure if the midi verb can do verb + delay at the same time. 

[Nil]

Picking a guitar and being intuitively expressive with it requires at least equally as much learning, practice and understanding of both music and the instrument itself as using a synth in a satisfying way, don't you think ?

I for one am incapable of playing a guitar (or most "traditional" instruments) while I can dabble with a synth

[sweepstakes]

1 minute ago, Nil said:

Picking a guitar and being intuitively expressive with it requires at least equally as much learning, practice and understanding of both music and the instrument itself as using a synth in a satisfying way, don't you think ?

I for one am incapable of playing a guitar (or most "traditional" instruments) while I can dabble with a synth

Absolutely, I just picked guitar up after not playing for many years, and it's a completely different mindset. Deeply satisfying, though, and connecting me to music in ways I never expected.

[xox]

On 6/1/2020 at 6:18 PM, sheatheman said:

@xox

 

why! you always saying how much you love em?

i dont think i understand your comment tho.

 

 

Firstly, i said it after 32 hrs long shift; I’m chronically tired of the fact how much I work and how little time i have for music!

Now, the problem i have with Elektrons, and hw in general is that they are mostly not flexible enough, at least not for me and kind of music i like to make in my precious rare free time.
Yes, i can still make something interesting but I always have this sense of discomfort while Im constantly trying to overcome limitations and it’s becoming tiresome. And then out of nowhere i make something with Elektrons that makes me see things in totally different ways. I just don’t know what to think about OT!
I’ve bought MDUW and MNM in 2016 bc Elektron announced that they will discontinue them and I wanted to try them and see if they’re any good, for me. The industrial design is second to none imo btw! I just feel them, can’t explain it.
The sound of MDUW is beautiful but percussions are not that important in my music so I haven’t been using it much. But I’ve been using the Mnm a lot! The looks, feels and the sound of it is like made for me. Handling a bit less! The sequencer is a bit dated now... it’s starting to become kind of a hassle tbh bc after using sw in parallel it’s increasingly harder to go back to the limited world of hw. To be honest, if Mnm wasn’t sounding so good to me I wouldn’t  bother keeping it so long and fiddling around with it. Mnm is the last hw I’d sell!
So, to return to the OT... it doesn’t sound good at all (transport and pitch functions), it’s hard to get it musical, it’s hard to find purpose for it with all this sw around (and max)... how to justify 1200 euros?! Not easily imo! I can make it sing but work on it is just so fakn stiff and I always have to work the way it wants! It... wants! Yes, i can find ways around it but with too much effort... that’s just tiresome and mostly not worth it. The Mnm sounds like nothing else and i was tolerating this bc of how good it sounds! What hw is good for is for loosing my self in the moment, something that’s precious bc it’s healing! It’s hard to experience this with sw but it pays off with better musical results.
And then again i do something with OT that makes me think it’s the best thing ever! I’ve made an experiment with the OT... the goal was to make a track with the least amount of energy, time and resources used: just a few random samples (Mnm was used as a source too), only one pattern, no conditional trigs, no fills... as plain as possible, rec as stereo out, one take.

It’s a mediocre track at best... it gets better after few times you hear it but still a mediocre at best. But, relatively speaking, giving how little I invested it makes me think I should keep the OT and give it another chance... at least until i could speak maxmsp fluently.

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by xox

[chim]

2 hours ago, Polytrix said:

When I look at that eurorack stuff or even the digitakt I'm like, ''sorry what the hell do all those buttons do'' - I feel it would take a huge amount of effort for me to make music with something so complex.  Is it a really steep learning curve to use something like the digitakt when you're just used to Ableton with a few simple external devices? I admire you lot! 

I dunno man, I get that feeling encountering any new interface (and I kinda enjoy that bit) but it passes. If you can figure out Ableton you can figure out anything. I read these people who spent a month figuring the Digi out and I think that's completely exaggerated, but I've wrestled some weird music programs in the past. The gui basically reads like a tamagotchi display, the knobs do all the dirty work. The depth is that it's open ended. Most button combinations make sense, hold track + copy and it copies the selected track sound, page + copy and it copies a page (full bar). The rest is up on YouTube, there's a brilliant one hour walkthrough by Cuckoo. The fun part is when you ask yourself if it logically could do something else, and you find out that it can. I also hate the slow DAW process of loading midi tracks, setting up sounds, drawing in the right notes, all the basic setup. The Digi does it so much faster so you still have that creative energy going.

It's still a gradual process, I just figured out resampling as a solution for freeing up the LFO for more business for instance. I was getting chuffed about some of the limitations but it turns out there are lots of these types of workarounds. The workflow seems to suck you in and I just adore the track writing experience.

Keep in mind we're spoiled with people building big DIY kits and amassing cabinets of modular gear here, so this place is very humbling. There are people really struggling with the basics of ableton out there.

[Polytrix]

Yeah, fair enough I see that. 

I remeber when I first got Ableton I was so massively overwhelmed so it's all just a process isn't it. 

Eurorack on the other hand. To me that's beyond complex. 

21 minutes ago, xox said:

Firstly, i said it after 32 hrs long shift; I’m chronically tired of the fact how much I work and how little time i have for music!

Now, the problem i have with Elektrons, and hw in general is that they are mostly not flexible enough, at least not for me and kind of music i like to make in my precious rare free time.
Yes, i can still make something interesting but I always have this sense of discomfort while Im constantly trying to overcome limitations and it’s becoming tiresome. And then out of nowhere i make something with Elektrons that makes me see things in totally different ways. I just don’t know what to think about OT!
I’ve bought MDUW and MNM in 2016 bc Elektron announced that they will discontinue them and I wanted to try them and see if they’re any good, for me. The industrial design is second to none imo btw! I just feel them, can’t explain it.
The sound of MDUW is beautiful but percussions are not that important in my music so I haven’t been using it much. But I’ve been using the Mnm a lot! The looks, feels and the sound of it is like made for me. Handling a bit less! The sequencer is a bit dated now... it’s starting to become kind of a hassle tbh bc after using sw in parallel it’s increasingly harder to go back to the limited world of hw. To be honest, if Mnm wasn’t sounding so good to me I wouldn’t  bother keeping it so long and fiddling around with it. Mnm is the last hw I’d sell!
So, to return to the OT... it doesn’t sound good at all (transport and pitch functions), it’s hard to get it musical, it’s hard to find purpose for it with all this sw around (and max)... how to justify 1200 euros?! Not easily imo! I can make it sing but work on it is just so fakn stiff and I always have to work the way it wants! It... wants! Yes, i can find ways around it but with too much effort... that’s just tiresome and mostly not worth it. The Mnm sounds like nothing else and i was tolerating this bc of how good it sounds! What hw is good for is for loosing my self in the moment, something that’s precious bc it’s healing! It’s hard to experience this with sw but it pays off with better musical results.
And then again i do something with OT that makes me think it’s the best thing ever! I’ve made an experiment with the OT... the goal was to make a track with the least amount of energy, time and resources used: just a few random samples (Mnm was used as a source too), only one pattern, no conditional trigs, no fills... as plain as possible, rec as stereo out, one take.

It’s a mediocre track at best... it gets better after few times you hear it but still a mediocre at best. But, relatively speaking, giving how little I invested it makes me think I should keep the OT and give it another chance... at least until i could speak maxmsp fluently.

 

That track is insane

[sweepstakes]

Speaking of eurorack, I'm up to 8 modules now... heh. I think I've got enough in there to have fun and explore for now, so I'm going to wait to expand until I get a chance to play with these goodies.

https://cdn.modulargrid.net/img/racks/modulargrid_1232630.jpg?1591384015

 

[Limo]

17 minutes ago, sweepstakes said:

Speaking of eurorack, I'm up to 8 modules now... heh. I think I've got enough in there to have fun and explore for now, so I'm going to wait to expand until I get a chance to play with these goodies.

https://cdn.modulargrid.net/img/racks/modulargrid_1232630.jpg?1591384015

 

Interesting set of modules. What are you going to be using as a sound source?

[sweepstakes]

2 minutes ago, rhmilo said:

Interesting set of modules. What are you going to be using as a sound source?

Either the Sisters or the Sampling Modulator (which can be a square-wave-like VCO). I also have an 0-Coast coming but the COVID supply chain disruption has pushed out the shipment of that an indeterminate number of weeks.

[Limo]

1 minute ago, sweepstakes said:

Either the Sisters or the Sampling Modulator (which can be a square-wave-like VCO). I also have an 0-Coast coming but the COVID supply chain disruption has pushed out the shipment of that an indeterminate number of weeks.

Curiouser and curiouser  

[sweepstakes]

3 minutes ago, rhmilo said:

Curiouser and curiouser  

By the way, although I have been researching modules for like a year now, I barely know what I'm doing, so it's very possible this setup is completely nonsensical. I knew I wanted every module in there except the Sampling Modulator, which I discovered this week and it ticked a few boxes for me.

0-Ctrl is supposed to come today and I'm going to fart around with my near-useless Bitranger on that until the real fun things arrive :)

By the way, thanks for looking at it! Suggestions and more questions welcome :D

Edited June 5, 2020 by sweepstakes

[thawkins]

1 hour ago, Nil said:

Picking a guitar and being intuitively expressive with it requires at least equally as much learning, practice and understanding of both music and the instrument itself as using a synth in a satisfying way, don't you think ?

I for one am incapable of playing a guitar (or most "traditional" instruments) while I can dabble with a synth

I think a guitar (especially with effects pedals) is much much more "playable" than most synths in terms of your ability to do subtle tactile expressions and have the sound react in weird but predictable ways to that.

One of the most blatant reasons is that you can affect the guitar more closely in many more ways than you can a synth - most MIDI keyboards and controllers are still plastic and at 127 levels of velocity. MPE, aftertouch and all those newfangled things are changing this but the modern guitar has some 40-50 years of head start just in terms of how many players have evolved and progressed the art of playing it, and also incorporating all the physical imperfections like feedback, muting, pick noise, into the sound.

How do I do something like palm muting or bottle slides on a Moog? I can figure something out with filters and triggers, but the guitar player can just pick some construction junk and stick it between the strings and viola.

This is changing nowadays bit by bit thanks to - yeah - eurorack and other initiatives that expand the horizons and bring more ability to have ad hoc out of the box thinking going on.

Coming back to the tactile expression point though - I am definitely one of those who wants to control the sound with their fingers and directly play things instead of using the keyboard to simply select the good notes and let the programmed audio engines do the rest. I suck at guitar too, but if there was a way to hook up the expressiveness of that instrument to the synth sounds I find on my hardware, then that would rock.

I am not saying synths are basic and boring, you just inspired me to write this stuff.

[Polytrix]

I see that Maths is like a mainstay in eurorack stuff. What exactly does that do. Genuinely intrigued.

[Polytrix]

3 minutes ago, thawkins said:

I think a guitar (especially with effects pedals) is much much more "playable" than most synths in terms of your ability to do subtle tactile expressions and have the sound react in weird but predictable ways to that.

One of the most blatant reasons is that you can affect the guitar more closely in many more ways than you can a synth - most MIDI keyboards and controllers are still plastic and at 127 levels of velocity. MPE, aftertouch and all those newfangled things are changing this but the modern guitar has some 40-50 years of head start just in terms of how many players have evolved and progressed the art of playing it, and also incorporating all the physical imperfections like feedback, muting, pick noise, into the sound.

How do I do something like palm muting or bottle slides on a Moog? I can figure something out with filters and triggers, but the guitar player can just pick some construction junk and stick it between the strings and viola.

This is changing nowadays bit by bit thanks to - yeah - eurorack and other initiatives that expand the horizons and bring more ability to have ad hoc out of the box thinking going on.

Coming back to the tactile expression point though - I am definitely one of those who wants to control the sound with their fingers and directly play things instead of using the keyboard to simply select the good notes and let the programmed audio engines do the rest. I suck at guitar too, but if there was a way to hook up the expressiveness of that instrument to the synth sounds I find on my hardware, then that would rock.

I am not saying synths are basic and boring, you just inspired me to write this stuff.

EXACTLY how I feel. If I could connect a guitar to a synth and have the same experience I'd be totally sold. I look forward to that happening. 

[TubularCorporation]

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.

Edited June 5, 2020 by TubularCorporation

[TubularCorporation]

18 minutes ago, Polytrix said:

EXACTLY how I feel. If I could connect a guitar to a synth and have the same experience I'd be totally sold. I look forward to that happening. 

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).

[Polytrix]

Sound amazing to me.

[psn]

1 hour ago, sweepstakes said:

0-Ctrl is supposed to come today

Where did you order it?

32 minutes ago, Polytrix said:

I see that Maths is like a mainstay in eurorack stuff. What exactly does that do. Genuinely intrigued.

 

[TubularCorporation]

7 minutes ago, Polytrix said:

Sound amazing to me.

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.

[Polytrix]

weird. Hope you get it working dude.

[kakapo]

I have a Maths and a couple of DUSGs.  

Key to understanding it is that beyond the 2 function generators it is a 4 channel mixer for both audio and cv, with logic, and that all these things combined together gives you a lot of functionality.  It's the serge idea of patch programming.  But actually you don't need to understand it to start off with, this patch book is really helpful.

http://w2.mat.ucsb.edu/mat276n/resources/systems/CREATE_teachingSynth/manuals/8c_Maths2013-V1.11-printable.pdf