My mildly insane idea of blogging everything modular of interest continues. Featured in this installment are a group of new modules from Intellijel, Industrial Music Electronics, and AJH Synth, as well as desktop synths (?!?) from Malekko including collaboration with Industrial Music Electronics.
Modern MIDI controller keyboards come with a lot of input options. However, very few MIDI to control voltage + gate (CV/Gate) converters have enough outputs to take advantage of all these performance inputs, plus restrict how you use them to select operating modes. By contrast, the FH-1 comes with eight outputs (expandable to 64), with all of its operating modes available simultaneously. I’ll explain a couple of approaches to harnessing all that power.
A perennial question is “do I really need a buffered multiple to connect to my oscillators?” The correct answer is “it depends” because there’s so many variables with the way different modules were designed. I figured it was time to flesh out those details so it didn’t seem like so much voodoo.
Many semi-modular synths have just one VCO. They usually feature a square wave with pulse width animation, but if you want to use the sawtooth wave instead, the sound can be rather static. A common addition is a second oscillator; an interesting alternative is a “waveform animator.”
If you’re new to modular synthesizers, they can be a bit daunting initially: How the heck do you even get a sound out of them? And what’s the starting point to recreate what you’re used to from your other synths? If you’re a beginner, this under 10 minute video is your first step on the ladder to learning how to use your modular synth.