How I Play Live Techno on a Eurorack Modular Synth
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- Опубликовано: 11 июн 2024
- A run down of how I've been approaching playing live, improvised techno and progressive house recently.
After many different approaches this is where I have landed today, no doubt it will evolve. I am leaning into the modular in terms of making things improvised, on the fly, very few pre prepared sequences, a few prepared samples and loops just to spice things up.
Gear used:
Torso T1 sequencer
Mutable Instruments Stages
Mutable Instruments Tides clone (Jakplugg)
Mutable Instruments Clouds Clone (Jakplugg Monsoon)
Make Noise Mimeophon
Zlob Vlncursal VCA
Blue Lantern Stereo Sir Mix Alot
WMD MSCL
Befaco Output
Bitbox Micro Sampler
Doepfer A-111-6 Mini synth voice
Mutant Brain Midi CV Interface
Timo Rozendal FMP
Mutable Instruments Plaits
God's Box and Thonk Humpback Filter
Noise Engineering Manis Iteritas
Knobula Poly Cinematic
Happy Nerding FX Aid 
Видеоклипы
Big props to @mylarmelodies who inspired me to start exploring the live side of music.
Excellent walkthrough, thanks for sharing!
Thanks glad you found it useful.
Thank you for your inside!
My pleasure!
Lovely work on this Mentat !
Thank you kindly!
Love it 🙂
Thank you!
Great vid! informative and direct🔊😎💫
Appreciate it!
Dig it. Lots of good info here thank you. Now what’s this about a modded fmp firmware?
;) yeah i much preferred the ‘pickup’ mode because when playing live I didn’t like switching to one of the voices and it all changing to match the knob positions. The way I was using it I had to hold the button for pickup mode every time I used the switch.
So the firmware I have is in pickup mode all the time, and you can switch to the absolute mode by holding the button - the opposite behaviour to stock basically.
This is pretty cool. I'm still developing my hardware setup, but finding a lot of similar core elements - sequencing, sampling, modulation, voices and mixing. I'm getting more comfortable with putting things together, and starting to find that I often patch things more or less the same way. I figure this will ultimately end up being a pretty playable rig, which is exciting to me as that is something I've not really had in the past. I found watching this helpful. Question for you: how did you settle on the way you've got your system patched up? Was it a process, or something that came together more or less intuitively? I mean, I suppose some things are pretty obvious, CV and Gate will go to your various pitch and trigger inputs, and so on, but in the case of routing modulation sources to various destinations or patching effects, I could see where that could easily lead to option paralysis...
It's developed over a few years to be honest. This was the earliest version I could really play full pieces with:
ruclips.net/video/27NMN18L9qA/видео.html
And the modular grid: modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/1057248
And that's developed to version 8 I am using today: modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2457353
I've tried to not make it about just buying lots of gear, but actually playing and only getting something if I am really limited or can see things I could achieve much better with something else. Part of this is limiting myself to the Mantis case and an external sequencer only (although I was also using a Digitone at first).
A big change was going from the squid sampler to the bitbox. I really liked the squid, it was really immediate and felt like the best of an old akai sampler brought to modular. But the bitbox can do a lot more in terms of loops and textures as well as drums - it's much more powerful.
Back to your question on connecting things... I guess it's been a mixture between what seems obvious, what is possible with the limitations, and what I can come up with creatively. There's more detail I could go into about this in a video so might do one! The most limited part is the mixer with only 6 inputs, so I've done some hacks to get to 7, and I realised I could maybe make 8 plus the effects if I use one of the returns as an input and mix all the effects in the small 3 input mixers I have before they come back to another.
Another area is the VCA. It has 6 channels, and I've had to use them wisely split between doing side-chaining and more traditional amplifying driven by envelopes.
The modulation side I am still working on to be honest, and it's somewhat flexible and down to what I feel like. For example Stages is so flexible. At the moment I am using the 6 channels as:
1: A constant voltage on a slider to control the filter cutoff for ambient loops and such in the bitbox sampler
2: As above but for breaks loops
3 and 4: LFOs for the synth voices
5: A slew for the Pitch signal on the Bass synth (might change this, not using it much)
6: A slew for the pitch of the Plaits (this stays, it's working well on that voice)
I've been playing with having the LFOs on flying cables I can connect as I want during a set. I don't want to be doing much patching mid set, but LFOs are a nice thing to be flexible with.
Lots of things are 'permanently' patched in that they stay like that during a set, but I can and do change them in between sessions as I want to. It's all a balance between keeping things interesting and keeping them the same enough to manage them. The cognitive load of playing like this is high!
Brilliant run through of what's in the case and how you can flex each part (and you only touched the surface). On the chords side of things, do you tend to stick to one progression for a set? Then I assume your melody and bass sequences are in the same key, so is it a function of the Torso to be able to change the notes in a particular pattern/sequence and keep it in key?
Thank you!
The Torso has a knob for scale, with two functions- the scale type and the root key. It is set per track. You can adjust this for all tracks at the same time, but the way I use it that would mess up the drum tracks.
So I currently set all the instrument tracks to the same, then I can change sequences and them still work in key. To be honest I’m still developing my fluency enough to work with more complex chord progressions, but I do change the chord based parts as I go. There’s quite a few different ways to work with chord progressions using the range, cycles and voicing knobs.
Recently I’ve been sticking in the same key for a whole set, but I’d like to mix it up a bit- just another layer of complexity to bring in as I get more practiced.
@@mentat7984 thanks, I'm with you on mastering (or at least getting vaguely proficient) with one area of complexity - playing with filters, envelopes, effects and bringing things in and out to maintain interest - before adding another layer. This got me wondering whether my Korg nanoPad can do key/scale stuff. I've only ever used it to trigger samples. Time to get the manual out...