Out to lunch(box): Neither to touch the Earth nor see the Sun - a mini-modular autogenerative patch

Svetlovska

“Between Heaven and Earth”,

wrote Sir J. G. Fraser, referencing his magisterial 12 volume study of magic and comparative mythology, The Golden Bough,

“…mediated the doomed God-Kings of ancient, savage ages, forbidden physical contact with Earth or Sky, yet promised to both, fated always to be struck down by their successors on the most propitious of days.”

I’ve always been a sucker for the idea of the mini lunchbox style of modular, (so much weirdness in so small a space!), so when a chance of a decent second hand deal on the now discontinued Pulp Logic Traveler lunchbox case (8 Euro headers, and 8 1U Tiles in just 32HP), complete with a full row of utility tiles, came up on Reverb, I had to go for it. I think I’ll call it The Enigma Machine

This is my first go with it, a completely hands-off generative patch using modules transplanted from my main rack:

Sequesizer, a chip tune Pocket Operator style combo of sequencer and synthesiser are lifted direct from their ‘credit card kit’ forbears. The Ornament & Crime is running Carpaggio from the Hemispheres firmware, and Atom (uElements) is making all the noise; all fx created live in the box by FX Aid XL; flexible mixing, clocking, monitoring and output all via the amazing Music Thing Modular StartUp - luckily I was able to buy a built one second hand, (wouldn’t have the skills to make up the kit myself) - a really fabulous Swiss Army Knife for a lunchbox, it even has a stereo in so you can run in audio from your phone, a Volca or whatever. I’d buy another in a heartbeat - it’s really well thought out.

Elements/Atom is, I think, also a fantastic module - so much more than ‘just an older, bigger Rings’. I fed it the output of the very chip-tuney Sequesizer, which immediately sounded a million times more interesting. (Well, I thought so, anyway ) Going forward though, I might swap the Atom out for a uBraids and use the recovered hp to plonk in a filter of some description. The WMD C4rbn looks pretty mean in just 4HP. So: a work in progress…

P.S: now that I’ve shot a video of the gadget on a wooden surface with a quirky objet in shot, am I officially a hipster?

bygjohn

Now this I really like. Both the music and the case :-)

On the hipster question, I’m not qualified to say: I’m so unhip, it’s a wonder my legs stay attached! You could probably up your hipster points with a plant or six. For some reason, I’m thinking Venus fly-traps…

Svetlovska

Ha! Thank you, @bygjohn like the Venus fly trap idea, except the only thing more deadly in my living room is my complete and total inability to keep any kind of house plant alive. Wouldn’t be fair on the poor things. Maybe I should just admit my limitations, and get a plastic one… After all, the quest for hipness is all! (though at my age that tends to mean a trip to the hospital for an actual hip replacement… )

wag

ok... i know i'm going to hate myself for asking, but...

what would a basic small ( lunchbox or other small grouping of modules ) cost and how much music could you make with it?

what modules would you suggest for making ambient, generative and noise-ish scapes?

a lot to ask, maybe you could just point me in the right direction. been wanting to get into hardware modular synths for quite some time, but i know i'm a person struggling with an addictive personality, but maybe if i kept it small....😉

BTW... i like what you did with your mini-modular. good ambiance. like i said, i was just going to just comment on your scape but the more i listened to it the more that familiar itch started up again.

Svetlovska

Hi.@wag, I’m by no means an expert, but tbh I kind of blew myself away with the jam I did after this on the same rig! (Had a dodgy cable, so I need to either redo it or edit it - watch this space… ) How much music? More than I expected!

What kind of music you make will depend on what kind of rig you build, and what kind of music you want to make. Top Tip:

Play ‘my fantasy rack’ at https://www.modulargrid.net/e/modules/home. Rinse and repeat until you’ve got a solid plan. (Then change it five minutes later…)

Of course, you could just cheat. £645 gets you this:

https://reverb.com/uk/p/2hp-lunchbox-picnic-basket-modular-synthesizer-system?hfid=57495544&utm_campaign=INTL-GB-Shop_unpaid&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google

Alternatively, if you want to roll your own, and unless you are a mad keen live performance tweaker, (who needs big knobs, oo-er) go for the mini u- clones of pretty much anything made by Mutable Instruments and you won’t go wrong for ambient, soundscaping etc…Braids, Rings, Peaks, Marbles… so, Peaks has a clone called Pique, Marbles has Cara, and so on. Chuck the MI original name in the keyword box of the Modular Grid search engine, and all the clone variations should come up. A lot of these have internal VCAs and filters, and multiple functions, so they work as complete synth voices, no extra modules required.

Get a quantiser (turn white noise or LFOs into tunes!);

Get a sequencer (not just for notes, but to tweak envelopes, fades, etc)

Get an Ornament & Crime (loads of functions - including sequencers - but I find it much more tweakable and less menu divey than the Disting).

Get something for inputs and outputs, clocks, mixing. You absolutely can’t do better than the StartUp:
So much utility in such a small space.

https://www.musicthing.co.uk/Startup/

Get Doepfer stuff. It doesn’t look sexy but it’s cheap and great. They even do a complete sort-of SH101 in just 10U:

https://www.juno.co.uk/products/doepfer-a-111-6-miniature-synthesiser-voice/731937-01/?currency=GBP&flt=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkd2cmrbR-QIVJ41oCR12wgZyEAQYASABEgJQtPD_BwE

Get some kind of fx - the FX Aid is brilliantly flexible, you can download hundreds of effects, filters, drum voices, reverbs and what not in batches of 32 at a time.

Get some kind of filter which you can plug a slow lfo into.

Lunchbox is perhaps niche if it is your sole option, (I have a larger rig as well, so I can enjoy the restriction), but if you can stretch a point slightly, Cre8 Audio do a great small, cheap case with midi built in: https://www.cre8audio.com/niftycase, with enough space to get a small ambient/noise rig up and running, and it’ll pair great with an iPad. Think of all those lovely iPad sequencers running your ambient hardware patch…

It depends on what you want to do, obvs. Tim Shoebridge put together a minimal old-school Tangerine Dream style synth rig together using the Behringer system 100 modules for about £500 all in, case included,

but those BehrRoland modules, lovely though they are, are actually space hogs - you can get a lot more HP bang for buck from things like the 2HP range, as you can see. And I think his rig might get a bit boring after a while.

I think if you really want to go to town with something performance orientated on it’s own terms, you may be looking for something more like this:

I haven’t priced it up, but that’s probably somewhat north of a grand.

If you want something more EDM performance orientated, he suggests this:

Personally,I,think there’s a realistic sweet spot of around a grand new, maybe down to six or seven hundred if you are disciplined.

With my own Dark Ambient orientated lunchbox, I wanted something between messers Mylar and Shoebridge: real time tweakable, not performable, as my aim is to live record the , ah, ‘performance’ into the iPad, and edit it after the fact. Multifunctional, with modules that can double or triple up as something else, but not at the expense of actual knobs you can twiddle and still understand what you are doing (ish).

Every cloned Mutable Instruments thing I have tried so far has been marvellous - the clones are cheap, (well, cheap for modular, which isn’t really, of course), come in very small packages compared to the originals, and the physical knobs lends an immediacy their very few app equivalents can’t touch, pun intended. The Atom is a fraction of the size of it’s MI parent, Elements, fantastically versatile for physical modelled skins, metal, strings (I love physically modelled sounds) but still pretty big. I thing I’ll be swapping it out for a uBraids, a uPeaks, the WMD C4rbn filter, and a 2HP Loop as soon as I can rustle up the cash. It’ll look like this:

https://cdn.modulargrid.net/img/racks/modulargrid_2006433.jpg

ReneAsologuitar

@Svetlovska said:
“Between Heaven and Earth”,

---

Hi Svetlovska,
I like the music, the case, and the video.
Very nice collection.
Rene

wag

whoa… such a wealth of great information. many thanks.

since I’m pretty much homebound by choice, tweakable is the way I’ll be mostly exploring.

I checked out the nifty case. looks great for my needs and affordable. cre8 audio is getting ready to release the west pest synth, which I’ve been looking into. nice thing about that one is it can be rack mounted ( according to their site) providing 8 modules for a reasonable price with room left
to expand in the nifty case.

meanwhile I’ll be following the trail you provided down into the rabbit hole. a big part of the fun for me is in the research.

again many thanks for the abundance of help and I’ll be looking forward to that “ next” lunchbox special when you release it.

sevenape

This is very good! I can see it being played at a soirée held by madame Blavatsky! I would LOVE to get into a small eurorack weird ambient groovebox thing, but at the moment mortgage and children and well, eating and heating are taking priority… but one day I will get myself something odd to contact my HGA.

Brilliant work!

Svetlovska

@wag: yes! The West Pest in the Cre8 case is a great idea, with 44hp to grow into. (My whole Lunchbox is just 32 HP, so there’s a lot of possibilities right there, and with MIDI to CV, gate, clock, and mod all covered without wasting anything. ) Great idea. Oh, you’ve got me going now. Time to mess around with some more fantasy set ups on modular grid…

@sevenape : Thank you! A soirée with Madam Blavatsky discussing the Secret Chiefs? How simply divine! And of course there is precedent. Similar period (well, 30 years later) alt guru Gurdjieff used to hum choons to his acolyte De Hartmann who turned them into the most heavenly (!) meditative Satie like piano compositions:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1Y8x6fUC5iM8AhF11fCCsP?si=FW1W87GZQLGElfgqRJ0R6A

Good luck on contacting your Holy Guardian Angel through the power of modular, btw! Maybe consider the Abramelin Operation?

Svetlovska

Also, @wag: this guy:

GeoTony

Fascinating post… enjoyed the video, music and information… even threw in a Frankie Howerd style big knobs gag… excellent 😊