Modular tomfoolery

[Tony Scharf]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 12:13 AM, Andrew Tarpinian <evildead at nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>
> thx, I have to say it's a bit different than I thought it would be, I quickly became less interested in playing "classic" synthesizer sounds and became much more interested in the music it made on it's own. It's kind of indescribable - the more you patch the crazier it gets, and every time you turn something it can change things dramatically. Plus since it's analog, repeating patterns are nice to listen to as there are always subtle variations going on. Shit in my apartment was literally shaking before.
>

This happened to me as well.  Almost as quickly as I hooked up a MIDI
keyboard to my modular, I decided it felt silly.  There was absolutely
nothing special about playing arpeggiated bass sounds I could get just
as easily from my PEK or Prophecy.

Not to get to philosophical, but modular synthesis has changed my
perception of what is a musical 'event'.  When you play a keyboard,
the events, or notes, are very rigid determined bunches of parameters
changes which all occur together and 'note on'.  In a modular, that is
not at all the case.  Amplitude, Spectrum and Pitch can all be defined
and manipulated independent of one another so that a single sound can
contain an entire musical structure in itself.  The patch itself
becomes a fundamental part of the composition process.

One thing I cannot emphasize enough is to record EVERYTHING.  Drift is
a constant occurrence, and what you have right now will probably never
be exactly achieved again.  This is one of the beauties of modular to
be sure...but it can also leave you wishing you had remembered to
press record.

>
> It works wonderfully though, as does the Korgasmatron - amazing filter

I am just getting used to mine.  I have a patch I created that uses
one side as a normal filter, and the second as a sin wave osc
performing FM on the first.  Its an exceptionally well thought out
design.

Tony