Main Drag Music

Williamsburg Brooklyn went from zero to now three places that sell Eurorack modules. Control, Meme Antenna and Main Drag. Control should be your first stop for pure Eurorack but the other stores have some goodies too. At Meme they have Teenage Engineering, MFB synths and well fun kitch household items. Main Drag has the least Eurorack but as you can see by the photos some nice vintage used synths, pedals and oh yeah guitars. If you can’t see the slideshow above you can see a few more photos: here.

“Totally Cool Joint – great – knowledgable staff and the most thing is they do not act “above you!” – Dave A (Yelp)

For more info: maindragmusic.com

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on October 14, 2012 at 8:03 am, filed under hardware, modular, synthesizer. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



RichyHo’s Rack Planner

When building a modular synth system it’s good to plan ahead. There are numerous “rack planners’ out there. Up until the point of was using Andrew Parker’s web based modular planner (link). A few weeks ago I noticed there were a few modules that were not in his planner; specifically the Rebel Technology Stoicheia and Logoi. With some research on the Muffwiggler forum I discovered he is no longer working on his planner and suggested people use RichyHo’s Rack Planner. RichyHo’s Rack Planner looks amazing. It will cost a little money but it’s loaded with serious features. Everything you can imagine down to choosing if you want screws in the rack or not. There’s also cables and knob setting overlays so you can save “presets”. There’s an export to web function too that has me happy. Unfortunately it’s not available yet but it’s good to know it’s on the way.

“A description of some of the main features of my still-in-development modular synth planner and patch description system. It’ll eventually be available for Mac and PC.” – Richard Horsman

For more info: horsmanprojects.blogspot.com

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on October 13, 2012 at 5:37 am, filed under modular, synthesizer and tagged , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Waveform City

Waveform City is an interview podcast that was started in January of this year (2012). Some of the people interviewed so far include Tom Erbe, Make Noise, WMD, Richard Divine, 4MS, Mark Verbos and The Harvestman. If you have a Eurorack addiction you may as well subscribe!

“This podcast will hopefully illuminate the world of synthesizers and the people who use them along with the people who build them and repair them.” – Waveform City

For more info: waveformcity.blogspot.com

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on October 11, 2012 at 9:37 am, filed under interviews, modular, synthesizer and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Schneidersladen

One of the most friendly people you can meet in this world is Andreas Schneider. If you go to his synth store in Berlin he will enthusiastically show you all his toys and then set you free to play with everything. When I lived in Berlin I bought a few things when the store was at Alexanderplatz. Now they have moved to Kruezberg and lucky us Musotalk has uploaded a video showing us the new place.

“Our showroom in Berlin .. is called Schneidersladen now at the Kottbusser Tor above ‘Kaisers’ with quite limited opening hours: On Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri 2pm til 6pm you are very welcome, wednesdays the showroom is closed (!).”

For more info: schneidersbuero.de

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on October 9, 2012 at 1:06 pm, filed under modular, synthesizer and tagged , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Depeche Style Analog Filtering

Last night I was playing with my Eurorack system and recorded the above loop. I love the way the each step in the sequence changes pitch and filter and then as a whole the filter ramps up and down. The filter is a Toppobrillo Multifilter. I have no idea why it’s named so strange but is sure sounds liquidy!

“Wiard Oscillator, Pittsburgh Modular ASDR, Intellijel and uVCA, Toppobrillo Multifilter, Boss DM-100, Doepfer Dark Time, Kenton Pro-2000 to Sync with Ableton Live and TR-707 drums.”

For more info: toppobrillo.com/multifilter.html

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on October 8, 2012 at 11:01 am, filed under modular, synthesizer and tagged , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



All Dressed In White

I tend to go for the ultra modern style. I have as much white furniture in my house as possible. That table with Tiffany on it is where I sit and do much of my blogging to you. One thing that most definetly should not be bothering me is the color of my 3.5mm Eurorack cables. However it has been driving me crazy. Right now I have yellow, red, black and blue spaghetti blocking the view of my pretty modules. Luckily I came across a thread on the Muffwiggler forums titled All Dressed in White. There sat the pretty photo above from urbanscallywag and his kind words sharing where he got his white cables. They are available at Erthenvar in various sizes. There is some utility to using nearly all white too. My plan is to have a few red ones when I need to patch something vital in I need to keep an eye on.

“I needed more patch cords… so I decided to do something fun.” – urbanscallywag

For more info: erthenvar.com/store/35cables/35white

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on September 29, 2012 at 6:12 am, filed under modular, synthesizer and tagged , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Intellijel µFade

So I’ve been slowing building my Eurorack Modular and I’m realizing a few things. First the size of the modules are important to me. I want to get to a Monorocket 104HP Skiff for a first system. With that case I can take my system around to friends studio and convince them they to get into Eurorack too! To do so and get everything I want well I need to watch it. Width and depth matter. The other thing is there is some really unique and interesting modules that modulate stuff and those are fascinating to me. Take a look at the Intellijel µFade linear crossfade or “micro Fade”. I’m not going to try and explain what it does so watch the video above ok? The µFade goes for about $140 USD.

Linear crossfader in 4HP. DC coupled linear crossfader. External cv to control fade position. Special circuitry limits the range of incoming cv so that the xfade boundaries are not exceeded (when summing external plus offset position). Switch to change direction of xfade.” intellijel.com

For more info: intellijel.com/eurorack-modules/ufade/

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on September 24, 2012 at 2:39 pm, filed under modular, synthesizer and tagged , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Weekend Studio Fun

I decided to stay home this weekend. I stopped by Control in Williamsburg and picked up a new module for my Eurorack system. I bought a Toppobrillo Multifilter. You can hear it in the above videos filtering a Wiard Oscillator, Make Noise Echophon and a iPad Police Scanner. The clock and drums are from a Korg Rhythm 55. An Analog Solutions Telemark is providing some LFO modulated white noise snares and a Korg Monotribe is joining in with some resonant rides and a synth line. Both the Telemark and Monotribe are being pinged by an Intellijel uStep. There’s also an Intellijel uVCA and Pittsburgh Modular ASDR doing some utility work. There’s won’t end up as songs as sometimes it good to just play around.

“The so-called state-variable filter has a long history in electronic music- traditionally the most versatile voltage-controlled filter at any analog synthesist’s disposal. there were several classic design examples and variants produced throughout the heyday of analog synthesis, such as those implemented in the Oberheim SEM, the EDP Wasp, and the fabled,albeit lesser known filters such as the famous Serge filters and Arp 1047; the classic SVF configuration is simple and versatile- with several different filter responses available simultaneously ‘for free’ by nature of it’s design with no elaborate mixing schemes. traditionally there have been some considerations when designing a wide-range filter with variable Q using this topology, for instance, relative instability/ generally poor sound and behaviour at very high Q, many designs get around this by limiting the maximum Q available, among other things. those that are designed to allow for self-oscillation will often become unstable at the threshold and have inconsistencies initiating or mantaining oscillation across the entire audio range. The Toppobrillo Multifilter is a new/ traditional state-variable design based on a great modern quad VCA chip, the SSM2164. this, in part, helps make the Multiflter what it is, a clean, quiet, stable and very controllable filter at it’s core, without limiting its palette, well suited for processing anything you can run through it.” – toppobrillo.com

For more info: thehorrorist.com and toppobrillo.com

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on September 23, 2012 at 5:35 am, filed under iPad, modular, synthesizer and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Make Noise Knobs Switch

Make Noise is probably my favorite Eurorack module company. I’m in love with my Echophon and a DPO, Photogene and redesigned Maths surely are going to enter my studio. If you have an older Make Noise module and want to put their newer knobs on your module check out the video above. I love the soundtrack to this.

“Make sure the potentiomenter does not suffer horizontal force.” – makenoisemusic.com

For more info: makenoisemusic.com

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on September 22, 2012 at 6:32 am, filed under modular, synthesizer and tagged , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Tyme Sefari 2

I’ve fallen in love with my little Eurorack modular system. I’ve also become quickly obsessed with finding out what all the different available modules can do. One module high on my list is the Make Noise Photogene. It’s like a sampler, looper, slicers yet with CV control. Scott Jaeger the crazy man behind the Harvestman modules also has a similar type of module and he’s about to release a new version of it called the Tyme Sefari 2. I’m not sure the exact differences between the Photogene and Tyme Sefari 2 but one or the other is coming my way this year. If you a fan of the movie THX-1138′s constant futuristic gibberish you owe it to yourself to check these modules out.

“Scott Jaeger of Harvestman posted a revised version of the sampling/destruction Tyme Sefari on his social media outlets.” – trashaudio.com

For more info: theharvestman.org and makenoisemusic.com

via trashaudio.com

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on September 12, 2012 at 5:37 am, filed under modular, synthesizer and tagged , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



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