5 Things You Didn't Know Your Mother 32 Could Do 

Thanks! Go through my tips n' tricks playlist, you might like some of my other tutorials too :)

@@AlastairWilsonMusic It's been 3 years but I'm back at this video rewatching and continuing to learn even with my little collection of 2M32s and a DFAM! Still a great video! :)

This is crazy to me - I don’t even post videos anymore! I’m very happy you’re still inspired by my little corner of RU-vid.

@@AlastairWilsonMusic Hehe I'm happy too! Thanks for making them and for keeping them up :D

I only have a few pieces of gear, so over time I've learnt to make the most out of them - eventually you stumble across techniques like these!

I'm sure I'll do more tutorials down the line since this one is being well-received!

Keep checking eBay and you'll find one for cheap! It took 4 months of waiting to get my first M32 but it was worth it.

@@AlastairWilsonMusic what do you consider a cheap price? I paid 400 for mine.

@@isaakwelch3451 400 what? I paid about £420 each for mine in mint condition, so 400 sounds like a good deal!

@@AlastairWilsonMusic 400 usd.

Good to hear they translate across to the Crave!

Too much time, my family would say!

Alastair Not enough is the truth

That's a criticism that I agree with for sure! I record these videos and then add subtitles after, so I never get the timing right. I'll improve with practice :)

And I am 32

Unfortunately not, the LFO is fully analogue. There might be a workaround where the LFO is the master clock and you use a MIDI connection module to generate MIDI clock following the LFO, but I don’t know if any modules off the top of my head.

It just goes out to my audio interface! It doesn't affect the patch at all.

Ok so: You have your Mother 32. When you turn Mix to the right, you hear white noise rather than the oscillator, right? But you also have the external audio input on your patchbay (Ext Audio in). When you patch (for example) another oscillator into Ext Audio in, it REPLACES the white noise. It's as if there used to be a patch cable from Noise out to Ext Audio in, and you've just unplugged it from the noise and plugged it into an oscillator instead. That's basically what 'normalised' is; when nothing is patched, there's a default setting that the M32 will use. In that case, white noise is the default thing to mix with your oscillator, but you can overwrite it by patching into Ext Audio in. With your VC Mix section, Mix 2 in is normalised to 5V. The same thing happens; it's as if there's a patch cable from a 5V output that is plugged into Mix 2 as a default. When you patch something else in, like the KB out, it REPLACES the 5V. In short, 'normalised' is the same as 'hardwired', but you can overwrite the connection by patching something else in. Does that make sense? For the VC Mix section, if nothing is patched into Mix 1, then it is normalised to 0V, or silence. In this case, the VC Mix knob controls the % of whatever is plugged into Mix 2 (remember that if nothing is patched in to Mix 2, then it is normalised to 5V). This means that if you turn the knob fully to the right, VC Mix out will give you 5V, if you turn the knob fully left, you'll get 0V, and if you turn the knob to 12 o'clock, you'll get 50% of Mix 2 (2.5V). You can use this to attenuate stuff, like the LFO. If you patch the LFO to the filter resonance, the LFO will swing the resonance fully up and down because it has a range of -5V to 5V. If you patch the LFO into Mix 2, however, and VC Mix out to the filter resonance, you can now control the amount of attenuation using the VC Mix knob. If the knob is fully right, the LFO affects the resonance 100%, and if the knob is fully left, it doesn't affect it at all (0%). If you have the knob at 12 o'clock the LFO will be attenuated to 50%, so it now has a range of -2.5V to 2.5V, and so it will affect the resonance half the amount. Now let's think about what happens when Mix 1 isn't at 0V. Imagine that Mix 1 is 5V, and Mix 2 is 9V. The difference between them is 4V (if you move the VC Mix knob fully from left to right, you'll start at 5V and increase to 9V, so you've added on 4V). If you put the knob at 12 o'clock, you've increased the output by HALF of the difference (4V). Since the difference is 4V, you have to add on 2V, and because you started at 5V, you add the extra on to give you a total of 7V at the output. Does that make sense? This means that if you have 10V at Mix 1 and 10V at Mix 2, the output of VC Mix will ALWAYS be 10V, because the difference between Mix 1 and Mix 2 is 0V - when you move the VC Mix knob, you're adding nothing on to the starting voltage. It's a bit of maths, but it makes sense!

Woooow, that is exactly what I wanted to know! VERY NICE! Where have you acquired this knowledge? Most people with a mother seem to think that they understand what the VC Mix does but can not explain it in terms of volts. Is there a resource that would let me dig deeper? Especially very specific things like that having Mix 1 not at zero and the knob at 50 % half of the voltage being sent ... I guess noone until now really knew this ... :D

I literally just know this from having used it for over a year! You end up knowing what to expect when you use it all the time, if you look through the patch links on my videos you'll see that there are barely any times when I'm not using VC Mix for something. As far as I'm concerned, all the VC Mix knob does is morph between Mix 1 and Mix 2, and what I've just said above is that but with examples and maths to prove it. What morphing between them actually DOES depends on the situation: whether you're attenuating an LFO, switching between 2 oscillators, etc. It's doing the same thing really :)

32*

From the manual: ENTER SETUP MODE Press (SHIFT)+RESET+SET END+STEP 8 buttons. The Tempo LED will flash yellow, Octave/Location LED 1 will alternate yellow and green (unless the MIDI channel has been changed from default). CHANGE PAGES Use the LEFT/RIGHT arrows to select page 1-3. Yellow Octave/Location LEDs indicate the current Setup mode page. PAGE 1: Assignable output mode ASSIGNABLE OUTPUT MODES 1: Accent (Default) 2: Sequencer Clock 3: Sequencer Clock / 2 4: Sequencer Clock / 4 So enter setup mode, go to the first page, and press the keyboard button labelled '2'. If you're running the new firmware, double check the manual to see if it's changed.

@@AlastairWilsonMusic thank you!!! I haven't reached that part of the manual yet.

I'd pick a M32 (I have 2, and my DFAM is up for sale). I'd say the M32 would be easier to learn if you already know how synths work, but it isn't as hands-on for live jamming as the DFAM. Which one should you get? That depends on whether you want a synth or whether you want drums, get whichever you need.

Get both

I bet I could get some cool stuff out of a Crave too if I spent some time with one... temping, temping....

@@AlastairWilsonMusic That would be awesome! Hope it comes before christmas. Got too much space on my desk left!

Haha I don't have a Crave on the way unfortunately! I've still got to fill up my Moog rack with modules first :)

Nope - I use the VCA output for the main output of the M32, which I then mix with the outputs of my other synth(s) still in Eurorack. I rarely use the line output at the back.

thanks for the response! So where is the cable coming out of the VCA output going? also why do you prefer the VCA output over the line output?

I use Veils (a quad VCA module which also can mix signals) as my output mixer; I patch all my outputs into Veils mix them to mono, and send the output to my pedals. I like doing this rather than using the line out because I get more flexibility with self-gen patches. For example, I can have a plucked arpeggio from the M32, and then use an LFO to fade it in and out at Veils. I kinda just leave the VCA out cable alone because I never need to change it! Honestly I wish I had a mixer so that I could pan voices rather than just have them straight mono or fully stereo, but hey, it works...

Good ol' Synthtopia not putting the 32 in the Mother 32. I wonder if Moog will make a Baby 4 paraphonic synth to complete the family after the subharmonicon...

'5 Ways You Didn't Know Your Mother 32 Could Sound Like A Bag Of Air With Hollow Sticks Poking Out'

look his (the creator of this vid) other videos. especially the "generative patch" playlist. -perfectly musically.