I am fortunate to have helped create musical instruments and recording devices, taught synthesis, and compose & perform electronic music. I enjoy sharing all of these activities, because I remember well what it was like to be a beginner and not understand the terminology and basic concepts, and I want to help everyone else interested in electronic music to get over those initial barriers.
I have two web sites that you could say represent the left and right halves of my brain: LearningModular.com where I share how to learn and master using modular synthesizers, and AliasZone.com where I share my performances using modulars plus other equipment. Pulling the two together are my Patreon page Patreon.com/LearningModular where I explain both in great detail.
Thank you for joining me on this journey; I hope I am able to help you in your own musical endeavors as well.
I have one of these and I really like using it to tweak sounds but I’ve never heard anyone do a demo where they gave a musical example how we can make a music more compelling
Thank you! Out this Friday the 5th...although I am going ahead and shipping pre-ordered physical CDs when the orders come in. aliaszone.bandcamp.com/album/finite-space
Thank you so much for your kind words - I do work on making the modular sound more musical, melodic, and "human." A studio version of this song - with wonderful processed flute overdubs by Richard Bugg - appears on my latest album, Finite Space: aliaszone.bandcamp.com/album/finite-space
I really appreciate that - thank you! A studio version of this song - with wonderful processed flute overdubs by Richard Bugg - appears on my latest album, Finite Space: aliaszone.bandcamp.com/album/finite-space . I also teach modular synthesis through courses.learningmodular.com, if you want to wipe the cobwebs off... ;-)
It's comments like that which help keep me going - thank you. A studio version of this song - with wonderful processed flute overdubs by Richard Bugg - appears on my latest album, Finite Space: aliaszone.bandcamp.com/album/finite-space
too pitty this thing has not reset function. its one of the most unique euro modules really. question : do the tube waves reset if an audio signal(say an external vco) is patched? so if the signal introduces silence, maybe there is a reset behavior on the tube waves? i think not but why not ask. in my book, the only way to create fast BPM basslines with this would be by using the WMD DVCA to at least have it go through a zero crossing detection before passing it into a filter. the best way will be to just record some waves and put them into a sampler with zero crossing scanning capabilities and go on from there. things get tricky on high bpm basslines, check out the only video on my channel to get an idea. the wave phase must be the same on every hit. big pitty for this module, and version 2 does not do justice for this matter. it uses its tube differently.
The tube part of this module is just a waveshaper - the octave divider - so whatever you send in _should_ be represented on the output. Unless the tubes are acting as a flip-flop, so there's a chance they may have an unexpected behavior when you reset the wave sending going into it (i.e if the output is currently high, resetting a sawtooth wave can result in flipping the output to low). I no longer have mine to test.
From the description at www.ericasynths.lv/shop/discontinued/fusion-vco/, I would now expect it to work more like a flip-flop, so I don't think you'll get repeatable expected behavior when resetting the waveform going into it.
I have one of the original versions, too. It's definitely one of my "keep for life" modules - the multi-peak square waves in particular sound so much more interesting and powerful than a typical analog square wave.
This is so cool. Thanks for putting together such a comprehensive and clear explanation. I was able to get started with the technique quite easily after watching this video.
Omg! I came across this as I begin my journey into modular synths, and see Chris Meyer and thought... That's interesting because that's the same name as the guy who was part of my "Chris and Trish" intro to After Effects so many years ago. What are the chances? 😂
In some cases, yes. Through Zero comes in when an oscillator is being asked to produce a frequency below zero Hz. A TZFM oscillator will just run backwards in that case; a non-TZFM oscillator will stall. If the main pitch control voltage is high, and the modulation depth is low, you may not ever hear this difference. But if the fundamental frequency is low, as the modulation depth goes up this difference will come into play.
Absolutely brilliant! Set my case up with this earlier and it sounds fantastic. Cheers to everyone involved with this, it’s incredible. I may have to buy another o_C though because I can’t see me using my current one for anything else!
@@LearningModular I’m a relative newbie to modular (2 years in) and was wondering if you could advise how I can monitor the voltage coming out of my Moog Matriarch, which is my main keyboard input to the case. You mention in the video about a lot of VCOs becoming unstable below 0v so I’d like to overcome that issue. Is there something in the o_C that will measure voltage?
@@chitlun the app References in the original o_C firmware can output voltages, but I do not think it can read voltage levels in - I'll ask on the o_C forum on Facebook to see if there one that does. I use a digital multimeter, or a Mordax DATA module.
I am watching this video for the second time. Such great, clear explanations. I do want to put scare quotes around the use of the word "problem" though. The "problems" with FM synthesis that you identify here really help with the clarity of your explanations so I get why you call them problems. But mostly they are only really "problems" when seen from the point of view of attempting to play specific notes and have your FM patches track well across the keyboard. Otherwise these "problems" are just characteristics of the sounds that you get when building FM patches in certain ways.
This is very cool, I've been struggling with discordant VCOs in my live system so will try this out. Thanks for generously taking the hit in commissioning it Chris!!
They're part of the Eurorack Expansion course on courses.learningmodular.com . I decided to make parts 1 and 2 public as they were general concepts I thought would benefit a lot people.
I ve been learning electronics and how to build my own modules. I'm amazed that the concept of the op amp integrator is everywhere in the Serge. In VCV, I've been trying to do everything using the equivalent of the Slope Generator, I feel it's a good exercise. Now I finally understand where the Serge sound comes from. And that video shows it well.
God send app, thank you! I installed Phazerville 1.66 (+main) on two of my O&Cs. The 3rd one I installed Phazerville 1.66 (+stock2) for good ol' Quantermain and Quadraturia.
Thank you so much for all your videos, the way you explain things and speak over the background music and emphasize key parts is really amazing, I wish more people took notes on presentation, learned so much and just got the book as well for early Christmas gift.
I have come to realize this is constant issue within eurorack and there no modules that address this, accept for this unit, why would this not be incorporated into envelope modules ? Some of us make some great patches and want to play notes fast and the constant clicking becomes annoying, some ADSRs do a good job like 70% of the time, I have tried so many of them, until I came to this video. Are there any other solutions ? Thank you!!
The Expert Sleepers Persephone is a newer design that can detect zero crossings. It is not perfect, but it is an improvement on the WMD. One workaround is to use copy the trigger signal and send it to the sync input on the VCO(s) to reset their waveforms for each new note. My personal workaround is to use vintage 70s-era VCAs (I have a custom cabinet made by Gentle Electric that has a bunch of 3080-based VCAs based on the Aries design).
20 years ago I had four Modcan oscillators and a kenton pro cv controller. The tracking was quite good but off on the upper octaves. Im truly surprised that this issue is still so common in this day and age. I thought AJH V Scales module took care of this, at least on their YT channel it works.
The V-Scale modules are very useful; I owned several and also made videos about how to use them. Their major shortcoming for me was just one input for all five outputs, where in my case I want to be able to freely patch any of my sequencer channels to any combination of sound source that are patched to it. Also, they don't over the pitch offset, transposition, quantization, and sample & hold options that Calibr8or does.
