Percussion and rhythm section of the modular. I found that I was often gravitating towards designing percussion sounds and rhythmic patterns so I decided to move towards modules that specialized in those sounds rather than use up all the modules just to make one sound. So I build the Thomas Henry designed Bass+++ and got a Cynare from Metalbox. The HexZone and the CGS Pulse Divider take care of the rhythmic pulses and triggers. Everything else either shapes the particular tones and pitches, shapes the envelopes, or adds delay creating more rhythm.
This thing that hangs off the side of the percussion part of the modular is a Polymoog Resonator filter. It was cloned by Jurgen Haible in Germany and I bought the printed circuit board from him. It has it’s own power supply and a mixer added to the design by Dave Brown. the was probably my biggest project.
Ken Stone Cynare built by Metalbox. Kind of a complicated unit. I haven't wrung all the possibilities out this thing yet.
a Metalbox kit Envelope Generator (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release-ADSR)
Two rows of multiples(when you need to send one source to many places)
an attenuator, a small X3 amplifier, and a DC mixer(for mixing control voltage signals)
a Blacet kit, dual Voltage Controlled Amplifier
a Build Your Own Clone Ping Pong Delay. a guitar pedal kit that I made into a module. I built two other of these to go on the outputs of my Nord Modular and I like the way they work so I made one for the big modular but I had to adapt it for the modular's power supply.
a Blacet kit. Binary Zone
Paia kit Noise source. Metalbox-built Dual Wasp Filter, a nice and different sounding filter. The distortion comes in handy for percussive sounds.
Blacet Digital effects kit and a little Paia mixer kit that can mix signal and control votages.
HexZone. A Sequential switch(a kind of sequencer) built by Blacet(I didn’t want to build this one, it was way too complicated for me)
another little Paia mixer and a Passive Ring Modulator(a "real" one with transformer and diodes). The passive RM looses a lot of signal and is one of the reasons I built that little amplifier above to boost signals. The mixer also can do up to 5X boost so I often use it for that.
Ken Stone Pulse Divider and logic with a little row of multiples on the bottom.
Ken Stone Band Pass Filter(two of them)(built from scratch)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ATndvFLe2M
A Mattson Multimode filter (sort of a kit) coming right after the Bass+++.
This is the end of the percussion side of the Modular. Now for the other side, used for more note-oriented sounds.
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This is a Blacet Frequency Divider I got free by mailing in a postcard. wow! On the left side of it you can see the power supply I built using one of Ken Stone's boards. It's a very solid PS.
Waiting to go in beside the Frequency Divider is a Morphing Terrarium built by Blacet(designed by Synthesis Technology).
On the other side of the mostly empty rack is a Vintage Phaser by Behringer that I took out of it's guitar pedal form and put it in a module panel and adapted it's 9v power supply to fit with the Modular's PS.
Paia Midi/cv converter(kit). This is what allows you to play the modular with a keyboard which I don't often do. Output 1 gives a voltage corresponding to the note you play and that would normally feed the pitch input of a voltage controlled oscillator. Output 2 and 3 are a trigger and a gate which would be used to trigger an envelope which would provide a voltage corresponding to an Attack/Decay/sustain/and Release which would then be fed to a voltage controlled amplifier.
Paia Dual Voltage Controlled Oscillator(VCO) with Modulator.
a Mattson Dual Low Frequency Oscillator(LFO). The board is already made and you do the rest. It's a very nice LFO.
Beside that is a Fritz Waveshaper built from scratch.
a Ken Stone Psycho LFO built from scratch.
Ken Stone VCO. I obviously built this from scratch. I took me a long time and I know it looks ugly but boy, can it do a lot of interesting stuff.
a Blacet Event(Envelope) Generator I built from a kit. I love the cv inputs allowing you to vary the ADSR parameters.
a Blacet Voltage Controlled Amplifier(VCA) kit
Ken Stone Synthacon Voltage Controlled Filter(VCF) (from scratch). This filter is a little more intense than the average filter.
Paia kit Dual CV Source. I find this comes in handy for fine tuning a VCO or when you want to push a filter up into a higher range.
Paia passive mixer/splitter
a Ken Stone designed Active Ring Modulator(active becuase you lose so much signal with a passive). Built from scratch.
Paia Dual VCF with Modulator. This is a surprisingly robust filter and has a unique sound. Those little AR modulators are always very handy too.
a Blacet I/O module. This is for boosting line level signals from other synths, keyboards, or samplers so they can enter the modular world. It comes with two handy envelope followers that mimick the envelope of the incoming signal.
a Paia VCA and mixer. This is a very versatile module that also includes an ADSR envelope generator and balanced modulator(kind of like a ring modulator).
another Paia Dual VCO and Modulator a Blacet Micro LFO. This is a very nice little module.
a Blacet Improbability Drive built from kit. A noise source, sample and hold(with a quantized version which comes in handy). The cv controls make this pretty versatile. a “Music From Outer Space” Quantizer. Not as useful as I thought it was going to be. Can only quantize a control voltages to do major seconds or augmented fourths so everything sounds like whole tone music.