Share your AE Modular Story

lol your story was a lot of fun to read. „ gave it to a friend think he did something interesting with it“ hahaha i like this attitude!

and  I rly feel u on the other part in terms of having the space for something and how it can influence your creative process!
this is one of the things i love most about the AE too! its so easy and fast to setup,integrate,use and stuffing it away! hell, sometimes when i get absolutely fed up with my nonsense patching, I just (gently!) pull out as many cables at once, with one or two hands,and stuff them in their box and its done

Ah! cool thing. Is it passive? you can just patch straight into it?

Hi there!
I’m Drew. I took delivery of a Tangible Waves AE Modular Starter Rack 2 the other day, but I’m yet to real delve into it (parental duties and life getting in the way of playing). This is very much my first step into the world of modular synthesis, but I do have a Moog Sub 25 and a Korg Monologue, as well as a bunch of other sound making devices. I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into the nuts an bolts of synthesis and building sounds, to work in conjunction with existing synths, noise making, field recordings and guitars.
Over the past year I’ve recorded quite a lot of stuff that all falls somewhere between unlistenable and not completely unbearable. It’s a mix of a lot of sounds and recordings, but I’ve very much enjoyed making it. It’s been really therapeutic over the past weird year.
You can listen here: daemonologie.bandcamp.com/

Cheers!
I’m enjoying the creative outlet while having no real idea what I’m doing. There’s a lot of freedom to be found in experimenting and recording things you find interesting, without any sort of expectation as to what the end result might be.

Hello all, I decided to make the leap into AE Modular at the start of January, and have been active on the Discord and FB, but thought I should seal the deal by checking in with the forum!

I’m more from the noise / experimental community than the synth community, and my approach to sound is fairly abstract, about texture and layering and dynamics, rather than rhythm or melody. Through being involved in the DIY noise etc. world (and through generally not having much money), I’ve quite happily made music with minimal means. My experience of gear has mostly been misusing cheap things: second hand mixers and pedals feeding back on themselves, trying to bypass sequencers and envelopes on Volcas to make them drone etc. Generally trying to make equipment do things it isn’t designed for, partly from necessity, but also because you can get interesting and surprising results that way.

Modular appeals to me because things are so open to different approaches. I think I saw someone (sorry I don’t remember who!) write on here about ‘abuse potential’, and that resonates with me. The more patching and tweaking options there are, the more I can fuck it up! (in a good way of course)

Eurorack is just far, far too expensive for me to engage with, and to be honest, from a distance it looks like there is a lot of hype and consumerism in that world. By contrast, AE modular is beautifully cheap, efficiently-sized, very focussed on the important stuff and seems to have a very positive friendly community attached to it! And I really like the simple, utilitarian design of the modules visually as well.

I remember seeing AE modular a few years ago, probably within a year of the kickstarter, and thought it looked good but a bit straightforward in terms of the modules available. Then last year I became aware of Wonkystuff’s matrix mixer (as a lover of feedback and feedback networks, matrix mixers are golden to me), which drew me in to checking out what else was new in the AE format: a lot, it turns out, including some weirder stuff.

I now have a rack, with the intention of buying modules gradually every month or so. I didn’t go with a starter rack because this way is more manageable for me financially, plus I like the idea of a slowly expanding and esoteric system. Happy to be here!



Here is my Bandcamp, for context on the kinds of sounds my brain enjoys: hardworkingfamilies.bandcamp.com/music

Hi everyone.

I've  been lurking here, and reading past-posts for a few weeks, but haven't posted anything myself yet, but the recent posts from laenan and others, with similar backgrounds, and little prior synth. experience, has spurred me to make an introduction!

I'm a 54 year old Broadcast Transmitter/Telecoms engineer, with no previous synthesizer experience and little to no knowledge of the various modern genres of music that rely on synths (modular or otherwise). I've listened to Mike Oldfield, Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Yes, Camel etc. since the late 70s and 80s, and recently dug out my vinyl LPs from those days and really enjoyed them again.

I've tried, for most of my adult life, to play various instruments - guitar, mandolin, button-accordian, bodhran, tin whistle.... but never really felt I got to a comfortable place where I could just enjoy playing. Too many mistakes, not enough skill to be creative, just time spent "learning tunes" and playing them badly.

In covid lockdown last spring/summer I bought myself a cheap Yamaha classical guitar and while trapped at home for 4 months I did daily practice, starting from scratch with a new and alien technique. I enjoyed the discipline and learning new motor skills (however frustrating) but again, there seemed little scope for "just jamming" and I've stopped practicing, but still pick it up from time to time and try a few chord progressions or simple melodies, for fun.

Then the geeky engineer in me, while trawling the interwebs, discovered Modular Synthesizers and a spark was lit - could I just "do stuff" rather than "learn an instrument"?

Make noises, musical or otherwise, that would engage me, and give me a creative outlet, while keeping the technical side of my brain occupied, with no need to have a good technique, and no "I'm doing it wrong" feelings?

Then I saw the price of Eurorack....

Shortly afterwards I discovered AE Modular, and I just couldn't resist.

I bought a Starter Rack 1, plus a SEQ8 at the beginning of February. Over the next 2 weeks I've added more stuff, (thanks to the the excellent service from Juno Records )  to the point that I'm here:



with 3 rows, 2 sets of "2OSC/2ENV/2VCA", 3 filters, drums, kick, SEQ8 and SEQ16, TRIQ164, VCO and the rest of the "Starter Rack 1" modules, etc.

I don't really know where I want to go on this journey, but I'm amazed at how much time can be spent just exploring and learning and getting lost in sound with what I've got already! 

Without any prior knowledge of the various musical genres, and no "gut-instinct" for creating musically interesting patches I'm devouring everything I can find on You Tube from admin and the other fantastically creative people here. And Spotify is showing me lots of new stuff I'd never have dreamed of listening to. An amazing new world!

Reading a recent comment from funbun :

"You're in good company. Half the people here are engineers and scientists of various sorts.....
And don't think you have to make music. Soundscapes are just as important to modular synthesis as music. It's really about learning sound" really resonated with me.

I don't plan generally on making videos or sound recordings, but I did this You Tube video this morning while messing around, inspired by admin and his 5-Oscillator Drone:



along with a recording of a couple of noodles on Soundcloud

soundcloud.com/user-28611568/4drone

soundcloud.com/user-28611568/aejam-1


As a Broadcast Transmitter engineer for over 30 years, and a radio-ham since school-days, I'm not afraid of a soldering iron, so perhaps I've also found a new outlet for my electronics tinkering too! 

Thanks for reading. Perhaps I can learn enough to start making "music", as well as "sound".... 

I don't know what modules to add to my wish-list - so any suggestions would be great!

Cheers,

John

Don't forget that AE modular stand for Abused Electronics

I think that is a key distinction. I think of something like a modular synth or a table full of mixers and pedals as a system more than an instrument, where you are guiding, tweaking etc., and that absolutely requires deep listening. What's fun is when your equipment surprises you, and then you respond to that, etc. etc.

I once saw a set by an artist using a radio and various electronics to make a layered abstract soundscape. She 'played' the gear for 15 mins or so, and then stepped back, and just stood listening by the side of the table. I think she made one more adjustment after 5-10 minutes, then left the stage with the sound still running. Absolutely fantastic stuff.

Hello all, I'm Robert. I just got my Starter System 2 and a handful of other modules. I've been playing synths for years, but never really got into Eurorack. A few months ago I started working with my Roland SYSTEM 100 semi-modular again, and realized I wanted to do more patching and more atmospheric, ambient style of work. I compose and jam a lot, flipping and flopping between synthwave and Mort Garson-like stuff, but I really wanted to get back to what originally inspired me like the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I just want to be more hands on and spend less time updating firmware and staring at LED displays.

I came across the Anyware Instruments Tinysizer and thought that looked really intriguing, and was window shopping gear like the Lyra-8 and the SYNTRX. Somehow that got me to the Noisebug site and I found what I'd somehow missed and didn't know I was looking for: AE Modular!

I've watched so many hours of videos, bought the Aether Waves releases, and read so much here and in the Facebook group (where I got great advice for my first Noisebug purchase). I really admire this community and Robert's vision for the format, and feel great about this purchase. Now that my rack is on my desk in front of me, I wanted to finally post and say hello.