HOW TO DESIGN A LIVE MODULAR SYNTH & PLAY FOREVER

Hello. In this video, I'm going to explain how to design a Eurorack modular performance system and how to play it. Literally, how to do smooth transitions, how to learn to play your system, and test it properly. I will also show you how this particular system is currently working.

This video is going to contain a great deal of thoughts, a lot of reactions, and general sort of, you know, theories and references to other videos, which I will link in the description. It's going to be peppered with lots of questions as well, from viewers, and I hope within it that you can find a great deal of ideas that you can apply to your own systems, no matter what the style you created. This stuff should be universal.

This is a big video, but note that down the bottom are scrubbable chapter markers so that you can just look up what interests you, go and check that out. Don't just watch the whole thing; go with what intrigues you, traveller. And thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Let us begin.

Chapter One: Thoughts on Designing Live Modular Systems

P.S. Our old modules—you took our bad. In the spirit of constant improvement, the management reserves the right to change the product without prior notice. Some folks have reacted like when I change something in these modular systems, I must no longer like the module that I swapped out. And because I've changed some things in this, I just want to say that right up front: it's not the case. Just because I've swapped something out does not make the thing that I removed bad, or that I won't eventually just put it back or use it in a different system.

Putting together a modular is like cooking. You pick the ingredients that suit the meal, and that isn't to say that the ingredients that you haven't chosen aren't something you're going to use another time. The important thing here is having a really clear design objective and not being afraid to change things or pair things back in order to reach that goal. Modular Grid only gets you so far, and the things that you theorize about aren't necessarily what actually work or come to fruition in practice. So you sometimes have to be cruel and just change things that you were really married to as ideas, because the other way sounds better.

I think a really healthy objective when you are thinking about designing these things is asking yourself not how much you can cram into your system, but how little you need to in order to actually play effectively. Just filling these gaps does not make my system better necessarily; if anything, it'll probably make it more ergonomically difficult to play, and there's every chance I just don't need all those functions to have a good time. Surgeon said I would see people on stage with these complex systems, and I could just see how little fun they were having; they looked stressed out. Blau Han said, in a very recent video and brilliantly, he said, "The simpler I made it, the more complex the music became." If you are more in control of less stuff, it'll probably sound better than just having more stuff that you're out of control of.

I have had just so much fun with just the Metropolis, Atlantis, and some 808 drums and effects—one voice and drums. You can obviously play with just a 303 and an 808 and maybe some delay—like, that's a party. So don't make your modular system ludicrously complex for its own sake. The only reason to cram more stuff in is if you have a legitimate need that you have discovered through playing the system. So simplicity is important. So while this may not look very simple, I will explain the patch later; I would like you to believe me, it really is quite simple. I've tried to make things more simple to have a better time.

Patron Mark Lacy asks, "What's your advice for people getting into modular?" I think like Surgeon and Blauman do, and as I'm not doing here, I seriously think you should consider starting out with a looping pedal of some kind. I'm starting to think that loopers are the secretly grown-up way of dipping into modular in a really minimal, grown-up fashion and get way more out of it. Because with the looper, you don't need to have five concurrent voices to have five sounds happening at once; you just need one voice, and you can layer it five times. You can return to older motifs later in a set, potentially, if you've got the ability to store loops. And you may already have enough modules and a looper that's hidden in your phone or your computer that you could use to try this out. A modular could be as simple as a sequencer, one flexible voice, and the looper itself.

I also think that there's a whole modular approach that I've not seen anyone do, and I'll give you the idea for free, which is: make an all-sequencing, no-voice modular rig that you use to sequence your tabletops of existing CV gate and MIDI gear that you already have. There are amazing devices that can convert gates into MIDI and are super affordable. And if you bear with me, I do plan to explore this in a future video.

I think, no matter what sort of music you intend to make, the main thing is just having a really clear musical results objective. What is the music that is supposed to come out of this thing supposed to sound like? Is it a machine for dance music? And if so, what is the style? How many voices will you need to hear at once to achieve that style? What range of tone should it be capable of? All these things sound really dead obvious, but if you do take the trouble to write them down, I think that you will find it amazingly helpful for focusing in on what you really need. I also think that if you then go on a forum and post that design goal based around a musical objective, then you will probably get some really focused answers. And if you're not even sure what type of music or how to arrive at that kind of brief, it's just: listen for some music that you like. What music do you like? And you can post on a forum and say, "Hey, what modular would I need to create that?"

This is an improvisatory system, so it can't store any sequences beyond what are in these grids—uh, drum sequences. This latent configuration is therefore really important, by which I mean like the patches that up to be, because that kind of determines what sort of sounds it's good at making.

There's an important lesson I'm learning here, which was expressed really well by this question that viewer Joel Kalisha asked: "We're getting a new system like this; do you think it is good to try and go against its intended design and find new ways to use something you normally wouldn't have, or do you like diving into what you know you want out of it and try to find the best way of doing that?" Well, the lesson I'm learning to sort of internalize is this: don't try and kill yourself to make a live system that's capable of all styles of music at all times. It's okay to specialize and for it to be good at a range of things, but not all of them. There is plenty of music to be explored within certain styles, and you'll be better at exploring them if the range of the modular is more limited. I mean, obviously you could try and design a modular to be completely open, but you would have to embrace a very Serge-style of patch-programmable modules.

Consider how Stevio's music is all very Stevio-sounding—you know it instantly when you hear it, but I love to hear it. I actually spoke to someone on a dance floor who said the exact same thing back to me: "Stevio's music always sounds similar, but it's some of my favorite music to dance to." And in effect, you are embracing a kind of Serge-style of patch programmability by making a modular, but you're leaving it as it is for months on end, and you're doing so in order to learn it thoroughly. You cannot build muscle memory if you change the patch layout constantly. This is why I think you have to build it to spec and leave it as it is for at least a while. You are making an instrument, and any instrument has to be learned to be played.

Now, with that said, I am constantly trying to kind of tweak it to make it as foolproof as possible, by which I mean try to make it so that it just sounds good most of the time, no matter how much I may try to screw it up. But it's always possible to screw up what's good about what your system is doing at any one particular time. And Joel, I do think it is important to explore the outer reaches of a system, but that's what lots of practice sessions are for. Even if you've designed something for doing one specific style of music, it will be flexible enough to do more.

Definitely, for me, like a live system is just one of the best expressions of Eurorack—this whole idea of like a complete music system, and the music easel that can basically make whole tracks. In terms of what I've paired this to voice-wise, I have two flexible voices—that is a baseline and a kind of top line, you know, lead generator. I have some drums—that is a layered kick, two different snares, but which are flexible enough to become kind of other sounds, 808 hats—that is closed and open—and I've got a kind of like weird samples and options in the radio music. And then I have one effect, which is the Sound Hack Mimi Phone, which does kind of reverb-e delay. And of course, I've got lots of sequencing and modulation and mixing for them.

I wasn't totally happy with the rhythm stuff that my case was doing previously. I'd gone out of my way to have an enormous amount of different drum sounds available. It's so tempting to throw more sounds at the problem, and you think it will give you more things to fall back on during a set. Now he's using the A1822 to switch them, and that works really, really well, but managing a library of sounds is just like another thing to have to think about beyond also trying to come up with good patterns for them. Just wasn't like grooving enough, and there was a lot to manage. So I took inspiration from Surgeon, who only uses a small amount of drum modules in his old cases, and I thought I could get away with having a lot less sounds, but having more control over them. By the way, the PROC drones from Funk are amazing for this—so I've used in the past; I'm not currently using in this, but yeah, Surgeon does so much with so little. Drumrise—he's using like just kick, hat, and clap. So I paired it back too. I've taken a lot of the drums away, and I've doubled the Grids or instant rhythms with Funk. I don't have a lot of modulation for the drums, but I do have accents plumbed in to help with the groove. Accents are important.

I really love this set that I did that had the 880 and the Atlantis, and I really wanted to get either the Atlantis or something similar into my system. And so I have the Soundforce DCO and VCF, VCO6, and dual ADSR voice. Currently, I'm using Atlantis for something else. I also wanted to try and make like the melodies more kind of rich and varied, so I'm trying a return to the more Stevio way of doing melodies with Accurate Snakes—okay, precision adders—above all, I wanted to make a cheeky rig for making electro, so that's what we're gonna do; we're gonna have a party.

Chapter Two: How to Learn to Play a Modular/How to Practice

Still testing that. You hear from hardened, weary old performers is how people come up to them and ask about the gear, but never how much they've practiced. And happily, I can concern they're actually wrong—it is all about the gear. No, I'm only joking; it's actually about practice. Okay, but obviously you can't play an acoustic set in Burkheim, so with things like this, it's unavoidably that the gear contributes a great deal. And the question you might ask yourself is: is the modular done? Should I tweak something a bit, or should I practice more? Is the deficiency in what I'm hearing the modular or me? You will get the answer with more practice. Practice teaches you what to do, but most importantly, what not to do. Eventually, it will prove whether you can play well with this machine or not. Because we are creating this patch program, this configuration that we like, that gives us enough room to explore, we must test it, and we need to mess up on it so that we're confident we have subconsciously learned how to succeed on it in front of an audience.

I stole this advice on how to practice from Studio: the way to practice is to replicate gig conditions—play for an hour non-stop, as if you're in front of a crowd. Don't have the option of stopping; don't start over; plow through. You force yourself to work through with what you have, and you find out if you can make it work. I'm jamming with the system to learn how to use it and how not to use it, and I'm asking: am I getting into a flow state? Is there enough to keep me interested? You will make mistakes, and it will teach you what's bad to do on your system as much as it will teach you what's good.

But here's one weird trick I've been doing recently, and I find it really helpful to learn those lessons quicker. My beautiful, amazing, and extremely patient wife, Rachel, recently got me Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies for my birthday. In it, it explains strategies for overcoming roadblocks in music production. I've been using them, and they're extremely helpful. They're really vague, so they make you think creatively. Let's try one now, shall we? "Give the game away." Oh, that's good.

There's a phrase that I've mentioned before, and I tried to bear in mind when I play, and that phrase could easily be an oblique strategy: it is contrasts. Whatever you've been doing, get ready to make it do the opposite to keep it fresh. Everything's been really bright, make it all muffled and dark. Everything's super busy, then you strip it back. That kind of thing seems bleed and obvious, but when you're in the heat of playing, there is a lot you forget, so a phrase like that can help you keep things fresh.

So I got to thinking: how all that we're doing when we practice is we are learning a library of tricks—things you can do on your modular. Contrast, in effect, is kind of one trick; it's a sort of meta-trick, in effect, like an oblique strategy, but there's lots of concrete tricks that you can discover, and I have so at the end of your practice, or perhaps during, maintain a list of notes. Notes could have two columns: what to do and what not to do. For example, for this system here, here are real notes that I wrote down during practice:

I can play the Precision Adder offset.

I can change the Grids pattern.

I can put sparse notes into Dub Delay.

I could make a Chemist Psycho and the similar Stereotask Ultra play tune complementary notes.

Add PWM.

Change the Platz mode.

Skew them in Earphone Squidge the base.

Adjust the QCD.

Each one of these is something I can try to mix up and refresh what's currently playing. I've actually also got more generally sort of oblique ones too, like: go away tonal or chug, or open it up, or everything short and tight, or the opposite—everything wrong and contrasts, and of course, cut, or change what has played the longest and gone stale. Probably the most important of all: an absolute classic, and more on that in a sec.

The point of these ideas, these things to bear in mind, is based on the sheer amount of potential in a modular system. I actually worked this out: my modular, this thing which is a measly 94 HP, 12U, has a lot of controls. There are roughly 98 controls I can interact with in the top half and 130 in the bottom here—that is 228 controls overall that I could tweak at any particular moment. So unsurprisingly, having a list that reminds yourself of good tricks, road-proven that you can do it anytime and which are liable to forget in the heat of the moment, but if you have written down you can remind yourself that they exist, it can help you remember what to fiddle with and what to avoid.

It's just like learning to drive a car. At first, you have to learn the theory; you take a test. And as you learn to drive, you're doing everything consciously; you're literally saying to yourself out loud in your head what to do. And so what happens eventually is you become what's known as the conscious competence, where you're able to drive a car by thinking consciously about each step. But with practice, you become unconsciously competent; you've internalized the steps—aka the tricks—and you can drive forever, and you can drive well without even having to think about it, and in fact, whilst also being able to listen to the music playing on the radio.

I mentioned also writing down what not to do. Rules are, of course, made to be broken, but I do think it is helpful to learn what to be careful with, as the worst thing you can potentially do is spoil what is good about happening. I spoke to one of my patrons, To Fix Music, and we were talking about the fact that there's like—either way I visualize it—is there's like almost a kind of heat map on your modular—like controls that are hot and controls that are not. So, for example, like the controls on the Z8000 are super hot, and they should be touched or adjusted really carefully, as they have a strong likelihood that they're going to change and break what is good about what you are hearing. So I would be more keen to like change the clocks that I was sending to the Z8000 rather than adjust the pitch styles, because it will make a less drastic effect, and I can always change it back. Another one of these is the rate knob on my Phone; it can totally mash up the delay time and do so in a way that is really jarring, because the delay is deeply integrated with what you're hearing. That's something I discovered by doing it and messing it up. You can actually hear me do it in the recording—sort of live performance video that I posted. Another one is just muting things—turning things off immediately can be risky, because what you want to be careful is turning off what the crowds really enjoy by accident.

A word on that: if you watch me or other people play, you will probably see slow, deliberate movement. You'll see us making little adjustments to the wheel—like course corrections—not making drastic, frantic changes. We have slowed down, and part of that is because there's like a time dilation effect on stage—that is that time moves more slowly for you, the performer, than it does the audience. So it's tempting to change things much more quickly than you actually need to do, but I've also learned that I just can't really do sick, mad drops very easily. Like having multiple things change on a sixpence in a way that is deeply musically satisfying is a very challenging thing to do. So I'm not really trying to—what I've embraced is a more kind of DJ way of doing it that has this slow, sort of methodical changing. And more on how we do it in a sec.

And when you practice, you should record your practices; you should listen back to them, but I would recommend waiting a day or two first, if you can, because time will allow you to be more objective about the results. It's really hard to be objective in here at the moment, but you do have to be as much as you can, and listening very carefully—more on that in a sec. I think that when you have no problem for playing an hour or more, and you enjoy it, and you enjoy what you listen back to, and you rarely get frustrated, and you regularly get into a flow state, I think then you can kind of argue it's maybe done, or done enough. I think the only risk is potentially leaning too hard on tricks and becoming stale. So obviously you can't be afraid to experiment and push things too far now and then—find new tricks. Surgeon once told me that he absolutely loves and encourages moments during live sets where everything just goes out of control and falls apart, then he strips it all back and starts building up again from scratch. Failure and collapse can be equally valid parts with performance because they also serve the purpose of showing the audience that what they're seeing is alive, risky, and really happening right now.

So to practice: replicate good conditions, play for at least an hour, record the practice at the end or during, make a list of good tricks you discover and mistakes to avoid doing, give it a few days and listen back to the recording, asking yourself what you like and don't like, practice again and repeat. And of course, at the end of all of this, there may well be a realization that the case or the patch itself does need work. Things would be clearly easier if you added something, or if you took something away, or if you repatched something in a certain way, or what have you—fair enough, but do your time practicing first; give yourself time to learn to drive the car.

Chapter Three: How to Make Smooth Transitions and Play Forever

This is a question that many have asked about: how do you create smooth transitions from one idea to the next? So when I'm playing a set, what I'm doing is this: I will pre-prepare like a cool state to begin with—something good, some good pictures on the sequencer, and perhaps one rough idea of where I could take it. Perhaps I've been listening to the other acts playing, and I respect the general sound and tempos of the night, you know, ideally if I'm playing at night. And then as I start to play, I just really, really listen hard to what I'm playing—really focus on it. This is very important; this is also why good monitoring is essential, so do bring headphones as a backup. The goal is to really focus on the music with a mind to imagining it from an audience's perspective, or at least trying to. Doing this will remind you of what has been playing for too long, what is absolutely central—i.e., what are the most critical elements to what is playing—and it's what Surgeon mentioned in the podcast with him, which is: DJing for 30 years helps you get a feel for the overarching narrative of a set. So above all, concentrate on the music, and all I can say is that when I do that, I do tend to have an idea of where I'd like to try and take it, which is also informed by also knowing my bag of tricks, so I know what I have at my disposal.

I'm a quick word on the idea of narrative: you may like to have an idea of a narrative, which is probably guided by what you know about the night that you're playing at. So, for example, you might think to yourself, "I'll start with a weird ambience and noises for a bit, then I'll introduce a bass line of drums, I'll go techno and a total for a while, then bring in chords midway through, I'll end on a more like ravey house tip, and I'll dissolve into ambience again at the end." That kind of plan might change on the fly, and you may well ignore it in my panic, but at least there is a kind of plan, a sort of arching narrative that you can fall back on.

And so with this idea of how you play that and continue the narrative, the way I think of it is a bit like a relay race—one element hands over to another element. So what I mean is that you may start a set with your bass line and your lead sound playing together, so you might fade out the lead sound after a while, after you noticed it got stale, and you might alter the bass line or squidgy, or alter the percussion, so you're keeping what is currently playing alive and fresh. And then when you feel it's time for something else to happen, you alter, and you alter it def where you can't actually hear it, and then you fade in that lead element back in again, but transformed. And then you can like live alter or fade out the bass line and change it and fade it back in changed. It's this idea that there's potentially one continuous element throughout each transition process which doesn't change very much and helps stitch the transitions together, but you change the other part that's currently playing, and then you change the first part that you didn't change initially, and so on and so on. So you're changing this kind of like relay—it literally is: one part changes, the other one stays the same, then that part changes, then the other one changes. And so by this way, you are constantly evolving what is happening whilst you are also doing little tricks to just generally keep things alive and moving throughout.

And ideally, if you're relaxed, then you're better able to kind of be calm and groovy and actually anticipate when it's time to change things, so that you're preempting it as well—having a think ahead about, "Oh, I feel that we're gonna come up to a, you know, a four or an eight-bar end, and there's gonna be something I wanna do," you know, I'll think about what that is beforehand so that I've got my hand on the correct dial to add loads of hats or whatever it may be. But since I don't have a looper, I found it really helpful to have like three voices to give me like even more elements to like bounce between, where you kind of always have a third in reserve. But in this system, I don't have that; I've only got two. So you can obviously see why a looper is like a powerful tool. I think even if you only have like one element—like a baseline, a 303 type thing available—where you just have to alter it while it's playing out loud, and then that is just the case of having practiced enough so that you can do so without being too damaging, you know, you'll still fluff things up, but never a more applicable quote is: "Once is a mistake, twice is jazz." Twice is also techno. So if you make a mistake, just go with it; you can shape it further; you could just do it again.

And so yeah, I tried to make small incremental changes bit by bit, embracing this DJ smooth way of playing and using that kind of idea of like the batons of the relay race—of one part changing while the other ones in the background continue, so that there's a part that is carrying on in the background that masks the change. And this way, I can slowly evolve what's happening. And then so it's like zooming back out; you then think about structure. And so structurally overall, I'm just basically thinking of like build-ups and breakdowns—aka contrasts. So zoomed way out, you might imagine a set could look like a series of sine waves, you know, or saw waves, perhaps—like building up from simple beginnings, building, building, building, building, getting fuller and bigger and bigger, and then breaking down and building and once back up, and then build up that new idea, and then break it down. So with this like crescendo structure, you can just keep building up and breaking down for as long as you can concentrate. And then really in the short term, all dance music structure is is just things coming in and out over and over again, you know, like hats in, hats out, snares in, snares out, doing little like nudges and tweaks to sort of invigorate elements as they play. You're letting things groove; you're going to your bag of tricks to change something every four bars or eight bars or so forth, and you're really listening hard for what has been going on too long. Change one element, then change the next one, rinse and repeat.

Obviously, to like do this kind of, you know, on-the-fly melody making, you do need things like pitch quantizers; I think they are essential, because it's still really hard to change melodies on the fly. Good riffs have to be discovered by trial and error, and it's something that's really hard to do when you're naked in front of an audience. There's a weird period where if you've changed a melody, it will take a while for you to get your head around whether it's good or not. And I think it's helpful to be subtle if you are changing pitches, you know, perhaps change only one dial of a sequencer uh module, or perhaps don't change the pitches at all, but change the patterns that gate them, or the, you know, the forward and back nature of the sequencer if you have that. I can definitely say that in my previous system where I had just one pitch sequencer, the Metropolis, and I was using it to control both lead and baseline, but with the baseline being sample and holded, that worked really well for this kind of naked pitch sequence of changing, you know, if I was just to adjust the Metropolis, both of the parts changed immediately in a way that was completely just perfect; it just always sounded good. And this is a lot harder than I have it, which I'll explain in a sec, but it does lead to richer differences; it's something I'm exploring; I may well go back to how I did it before.

So to recap: playing endlessly is this holy combination of really concentrating on the music so that you have a feel for what's been going on too long and the overarching narrative of the set; knowing your bag of tricks so that you've got options you can bounce between—practice will let you discover your bag of tricks; write them down, help you learn them; remembering contrasts that helps me a lot when I'm thinking about what to bounce to; and of course, any other meta-strategies that you have, such as a rough concept for the set. Then you're bouncing between tricks or sounds; you're playing this relay race of changing one stale part live or fading out and changing it and fading it back in, and you're moving slowly and methodically; you're not afraid to give yourself time to think and reflect; trust that your audience enjoy what's happening; and just have faith that the time dilation effect is in play—you have time to reflect and think about what to do next, and you have time to enjoy yourself. And if you're still struggling, just practice more. Okay, that marks the end of the brain dump of theory; now to the modular itself.

Chapter Four: How I'm Actually Sequencing My Drums

So probably the most obvious change is double Grids—Grid Squared, white Grids, I suppose, as a case in point—an XOX-style sequencer, which was the other type of sequence I kind of wanted to have—one where you actually like push all the buttons to get exactly what you want. Think about the fact that if you want all 16 notes to be filled up, you have to push 16 buttons; there are 16 interactions required to fill up an XOX-style sequencer, whereas with the Grids, all it takes is one turn. So in one movement, I have done what would take 16 steps via any other method, and that is why Grids is amazing. In case you're not aware, Grid is basically like a preset drum module; it's a whole like topographic map, an X and a Y coordinate map of drum rhythms which you can turn by just turning these two dials, and it's just like a tap—you turn the tap, you get more; you turn it the other way, you get less—so quick, unbelievably quick. So it's just one less thing that you have to think about. Okay. And so this A151 is doing a slightly clever thing—what it is is a junction box where I've got the third output of Grids going into it, and then the four outputs go to the closed hat, the open hat, and then separately, after a gap, to the hand clap in the Soundforce samples. So you get this nice occasional thing with claps at the end, and you can just perform that—a couple of turns, and you're doing stuff—change the rhythm, increase the chaos. And if I pull out this uh trig, I can return this back to just open hats. Notice that I have accents plumbed in to the module here, because there is an accent out. Accents are really important. If you have accents on your drum modules, you should be using them, because that's it with accents. Let me just pull accent—that's without accents—to how static that is, and that's with accents—totally and utterly different. So accents are just amazing. The more expression that you can bake in with either swing or with volume variations to your system, the better that is—how you make your system funkier and able to play for longer. You can have the same pattern playing for longer and have it not be stale.

Another idea, and something that I've not got currently, but there is a clever little trick in here, is the idea of like um fixed patterns coming out of Pamela's Workout, for example. If you just wanted like 16 shaker sounds, you know, as in you just have your shaker constantly doing that, well, you can either use a Grid, or you can just have like sixteenths come out of Pamela's Workout and put a mute in the path so that you can just turn it on or off. You could make an honest and frank judgment that you don't really need to adjust that pattern, and actually just having 16 with some baked-in like velocity changes would be totally fine to have in reserve if you've got other sounds. So I've got the maracas in the samples here—actually, it is the second Grid's channel which controls that, but I possibly might change it back because often I won't use a partial amount of Gridziness; I will just have it doing that. Do you hear that? There is like a volume adjustment, and that is because I'm running the output of the samples through a VCA, and the VCA is being controlled by this bottom row of the Z8000 sequencer, and I can adjust that, and I can change this to change the feel. But what I've done is I've baked in accents using a up-down, up-down sequencer step here, which is controlling the VCA that this is all running through—really important. And then there is another little trick—this little random output here is output three on the Pamela's Workout, and if I plug it into the fill control, which controls the turning of the knob—that—do you see it? It fills every now and again on. And that's so you can have this like periodic incidental little thing happening. So it happens at the end of every bar; I used offsets on Pamela's Workout to shift that right to the end of the like eight-bar period. So at the end of an eight-bar period, it will always have a little fill here if I have this cable plugged in. I'm really interested in that idea of having like little incidental things that happen in order to create the illusion of longer loops—that that sound less stale. Yeah.

Now, viewer John Tibordo asks, "Great jam, thanks. I find myself missing the glow of Euclidean Circles though. What made you decide to drop it from the case?" So I just feel like um with Euclidean modules, there are kind of—there are more things to manage than there are with Grids, which is true. I actually use a Euclidean module to gate the Plats, but I often only mess with the steps control. What's amazing with Grids is by turning these two dials, I change the entire pattern, or by turning one dial, you get a vastly different pattern; it's like a single point of interaction in most cases; it's it's less for me to do, whereas with a lot of you clearly in modules, you have to page through aspects, so you have to manage three knobs for one particular control. So it's just trying to simplify things. By the way, I ain't getting rid of my Euclidean Circles; I'm going to use it in other systems. And then also as a quick word about like pre-fixed kind of rhythms from Pamela, there is one that I'm actually—I've got going on, which is this—using the Depth A1822 on one of the switches, I have a 4/4 coming from Pamela's Workout, because the Grid is amazing, but often it's quite hard to make it do just a straight 4/4, because it's about like breaky and stuff. Oh, almost had one. So if I use this switch, what I can do is in the middle I've got a mute, and if I

Same locations on the precision adder, and so the way that this works, for example, is if I was to bring up the baseline [Music].

So that's it—all these switches are in the center, so there is no information going to the baseline. But if I flick the switch to the right [Music], it is now getting this top row sequence [Music]. So that's just platts droning; there is no pitch information going to the plates, but there is some modulation, which is causing that timbral [Music] change [Music].

So now that we get both getting the same information, but [Music] now platts is getting the second row and the baseline is getting the top one—that was shifting the octave of platts down. Now, actually, with the precision adder, you can shift the octave here because this top, like, switch adds this voltage or subtracts [Music]. So I can go up an octave or down an octave, and in fact, I can subtract the voltage that I was adding while adding the top row. So you have this quite like complex interplay where these sequences are like interacting with each other, and I can adjust the QCD, which is a sort of um, clock module with four clocks, to shift these sequences around, change their direction, the resets that are acting on them, and then add rhythm [Music]. You start to get the idea that you're building up tracks.

Now, I didn't mention that the outputs of the precision adders are being quantized before they go to the voice modules, and they are. I'm using this Yuhi Civilization Serialization module, which is kind of hard to see under here—just an amazing kind of multi-function module which uses this mad, clandestine, colored sort of knob configuration in order to set things up. And so I'm quantizing the outputs to a common musical scale so that they'll always be hopefully in tune. You still have to tune the oscillators together to make them harmonious. I've had to just adjust this because I think I've got it off slightly.

And so Patreon MS Patterson asks this important question: It seems like this mode of melody construction can pose distinct challenges. There's an extra step of remove from intention, as well as having to rely entirely on your ears for feedback. You can't sort of see the patterns very easily with all of this as they happen. Getting comfortable with this double stack of unpredictability and instability seems like it would take a fair bit of time.

You are right, my friend; it is. It's way more complex. Changing these things on the fly is much more fraught than just using one sequencer and multiple two destinations. So I'm experimenting with different ways to clock the Z8000 to make it more reliable and kind of make it more satisfying. One of the things that I've done is—remember, I'm using channel one on grids to gate the base, and I'm using a Euclidean module to gate the platts—what I've done is I've melted it so that those signals advance the top two sequences respectively. So if I was to just make this top row control platts only and this one row down control the baseline only, then whenever these sequences advance, they advance the Z8000, and it lends some more coherence to what is happening, but it isn't perfect.

Something I'm interested in is that whole thing that Metropolis does where, because of the way that I'm doing this, every time it releases a gate, it moves the sequencer pitch, so you don't have the Metropolis thing of having like repeats of notes as well, which is a really lovely thing. Well, this Doppler A150, which I've just got, is a dual voltage control switch where a CV will allow you to interrupt or shift a gate pattern, for example. So what I'm interested to do is have it so that a periodic CV will stop advancing the Z8000 ranges, and so allowing them to stay on the step for longer while I gate it with something else. And in this way, I can stop the Z8000 advancing, and I can have multiple triggers of the same step. So you can kind of wire together functionality if you're thinking carefully and naturally about what it is you want to try and do.

But anyway, MS Patterson, you're absolutely right; I'm struggling with the transitions. I'm finding it hard to make them really satisfying. It was a lot easier before I was just using Metropolis, but you've got to just try these things and experiment and see for yourself whether it can work or not. I've also got to do due diligence and try this for enough time to make sure that I'm using it well. There are other things that I could try to kind of streamline and improve the results. You can't just give up immediately; you've got to work it through. That's what I mean about the importance of practice. Practice makes me realize whether I've got this right or not.

Chapter six: My voices choices.

So I said I've got like two concurrent voices, which is basically the case. There is a sort of lead line, top line, which is made by the other wonderful platts from Mutable Instruments going into the Microjove. This is Plum Audio's sort of compacted DIY version of the Jove filter, which I've used extensively. And then I'm using this Metabolic Devices Moonwalker—I'll talk about a sec—to like control the Jove and the Abstract Data VCA to VCA it, and it's just a wonderful voice. It's so flexible; it's capable of all manner of madness, as well as the ever-wonderful chord mode—always a good time. And then my baseline is this kind of Juno-E-tastic Soundforce Array, which is the Soundforce DCO and the VCF VCA6, and the dual ADSR DCO is lovely. You've just got all of these shapes you can blend together [Music]. And what's nice is the VCF VCA6 has got a couple of FM inputs; I'm modulating them with different things—one is the ADSR and the other is some marbles—and you can drive it. And going into this, because it's got two inputs, on the other one I've got the Erica Synths Pico VCO [Music], which is good for like other stuff. You can get kind of different, like a bit more of a, you know, digital aspect into this really nice. And people have asked like, why not Atlantis? Well, I'm using Atlantis for another system at the moment, um, and also what I like about this like Soundforce um array is it's quite sort of soft; it's a bit less kind of acid and cutting, and it really suits like the softer use, you know, for this really lovely low, subby sort of vibe, which just sits really well beneath platts doing kind of everything else. Yeah, happy days. The two voices just work really well together.

But yeah, Jared Preston, viewer, asks: I can't get my head around patching a melodic high part that's morphable to enough different sounds for longer performances, bass and drum changes, I can figure out. How do you approach it?

Well, I use platts, like platts. There's no other module I can I can think of that does as many things as this thing does, that gives you in as many different places you can go [Music]. You know, to atonal stuff, and then if we move over to the other side [Applause], you know, for like your scary techno bits—just wicked, you know, amazing. Just one module, but it goes to so many different places. Only platts does this.

Viewer Boba Fett, by the way, love your work in Star Wars, asks: Is there a reason that you don't use smaller DIY versions of modules to save space?

Well, I do. Uh, I've got the Microjove here, but maybe you're referring to like sort of micro Mutable Instruments versions and things like that, and the answer is I don't really own any other than I've got like one of the one you uh, the one you peaks, but I prefer larger ergonomics. Um, it sounds—it's so tempting to make everything small. Let's save space; let's cram more in wherever there's a gap; let's fill it. That just isn't necessarily the road to success; it's just not. And ergonomics really matter. It's essential that Grids is this size, that I can get my hands around these controls and perform them. Micro Grid simply is not like this, and if I had Microgrids, I'd sincerely don't think I would enjoy playing in the same way as I enjoy playing the full-size module. There's a reason that Emilie made it the HP that it is. And actually, as a word on sort of ergonomics and stuff, I mean, it is true, things like platts, like you can bump the frequency dial if you're not careful. I know my friend Jeremy from Red Means Recording has had some issues with that. In my pro tip: Pull those dials off; just take off the frequency dial and put it in your pocket so that it's harder to nudge it. You can use it as a trimmer and just leave it off, and it'll stop you from potentially screwing up in the middle of a set.

Chapter 7: My percussion.

So for drums, I've got a couple of hand modules, you know, as I said before, I've got loads of stuff; I wanted to try and pair it down. The kick drum is made up of two things: One is this this absolutely wonderful module, which is called the Kickle from Befaco, who also make the mixer, and it's just nice because it can take you from kind of 909 drums to like 808 drums. You can have that really static sound; you can put like a little piano into it [Music], as well as a length on a nice fader. Malleable takes you from like 909 to 808 land basically, but very importantly, there is also a little tune dial. I think it's really important the kick be tuned. That's something that as I approach my 40s, I'm just starting to work out now—tune your kick, ladies and gents. I'm sure you've been doing it for years, but I haven't.

Then the other thing is I've got the Tip Top One, and I've got it molted so that the Tip Top One is just being triggered with the Kickle, and the idea of that is that you—well, I don't actually have a way of muting the Kickle, but I would add that currently I'm just enjoying layering. I've got this ever-favorite sound in the One [Music], so I can layer this toppy aspect with the subby aspect of this, and you just get a fatter, more interesting kick that always kind of cuts through, even though there's, you know, there could be other bassy stuff going on.

Snares, by the way—you remember I've got the snares on Grids. One is similar to Territori's Altar, which is everyone's favorite nutty module, capable of doing lots of stuff, but also it's just good to have as just like a reliable way of getting like a more snarey sound going on, but with this kind of like digital edge to it, which it's great at. My pro tip for the BIA is filter it, so I've got the little um Erica Synths VCF-1 here, because if you don't filter it, it's quite like harsh—does things like that a lot [Music]—and it can be hard to marry with like warm, subby, soft like analog bits. But if you filter it—I mean, this isn't a great example, but [Music]—it's a better mix because you've rolled off all the highs. So I recommend low-passing it or band-passing it. Indeed, a bit thin on that, but I've got a little trimmer here just to adjust this sort of level going in because I am submixing using various like uh unity mixers. And then the other one is a Chemise Taiko [Music], which is just wonderful. It's like a sort of the similars from like a softer dimension; it's like a little FM drum module. It uses the chip uh, the—forget which one—but basically the Yamaha one into Yamaha's YMF [Music]. Just listen to that, and then give it a bit of like stereo delay, which is great. I am feeding it some pitch information from some of the sequences; I forget which ones, but yeah. What's great about the Akemi's is it's giving you like freaky noises—all these weird like swanky noises—which I am modulating. If you keep it short, it just makes this really like plucky sounds that it just nips really well with the BIA. So you've got [Music], you know, just these elements—they just go well together. And that came through just trying them and just being like, I think they'll go well together, and it's like, oh, great, these actually do. And then obviously having two Grids because I can have one on then the other, you know [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause].

Yeah, by the way, there is also the Soundforce Samples, which I mentioned earlier, which currently I've got during the maracas, and I've got the rim shot hooked up, the accent I'm pretty sure. So this is like um, just sample bass like preset sounds: the clave, rimshot, maracas, hand clap, cowbell, closed hi-hat from the 808, and there's a corresponding 909 version, which is just amazing. Just having these sounds in a small form factor—no control of any kind over them, no control over volume—but it's modular, so what I did, as I said before, is I've got them running through a VCA, and I'm controlling the VCA with the Z8000 to get that like volume change, which adds that funk, you know, perfect—well, not perfect, but better without it. It's just static and lifeless, so inject accents in if they're not built into the modules as they are with these.

Chapter eight: Effects.

So Patreon Clayton Gray asks me: A Mimeophone is your only effect? I don't know if that's what you sound like. Um, I'm surprised you didn't stack a backup.

Well, I don't really have a lot of space, um, although I would like a reverb. I've currently only got the Mimeophone, and the reason for that is that if there was one effect, it's kind of that because it's both delay and reverb. It's an amazing padding tool, and I absolutely love using delay with a kind of call and response aspect to it, so you can hear it really well articulated there. If I turn this down, that's the totally dry signal, and that's with the Mimeophone. And if I turn up Halo, it'll become reverby, and if I turn up Color, it'll become bright, but the sound is dark, like that, where it's like muffled because of the Microjove. Call and response, so it's just like—like that's a trick—that's like I've written that down: Do call and response, like little squidges on the Microjove that play into the long rate time that you have on the Mimeophone [Applause]. So that's what I mean about building a trick library, and such a great trick, but you screw it up. Yeah, that's all right; it can be difficult to like get the rate back in the pocket. That's quite good. I've done a whole video on the Mimeophone if you're interested in more, um, and I've done jams where the Mimeophone is the only effect, and that's also because of those jams—that's why I was confident I could put this in because I've tried it, you know—and that's how to do it is you've got to just try it, but it's really good as this padder. So you can kind of just have loads of Color down, Halo up, so there's just this one sound, and I've kind of got like what—almost it's not a track—but that's enough to be grooving with, and that's literally just a kick, maybe a Mimeophone, and a platts voice. And so while that's happening, I'm like, right, well, I've got to set the base up to do something—get it nice and low and subby—and then, you know, infrequent amounts of gating. I'm looking at the Grids, and I can see what's [Music] I want this to become muffled again [Music], a little incidental thing off [Music], you know. So that's just me—Mimeophone, great. You're only gonna have one effect, probably that one, but I would like some reverb. I would also like some modulation, like, I mean, chorusing and stuff, you know, like stuff on the hats—lovely to have. I've got the um 2HP Comb is really good for like zingy sort of like short delay, and I've used that before on hats, actually. I could just put it in here, so probably no excuse; I will probably put that in, so you've just got like a little modulation, a little bit of cheeky modulation on the hats—just sounds great. So a few subtle effects like that—stuff to keep things alive, just like the, you know, adjusting the accents or the volume of something on a per-step basis keeps it sounding alive—those are good things to do.

And by the way, I didn't mention the Radio Music, which is just an old stalwart favorite, which I've got going through the Mannequins Three Sisters—a filter that I really truly don't understand—but um, taking a cue from Mr. Surgeon, as ever, he's just like, you know, it just sounds nice; he likes it. What I'm quite enjoying is using Three Sisters because it's got a very band-passy quality; it's doing a great job of just making this fade into the background in a way that's just keeping it subtle and interesting—something for my ears to hear but isn't overpowering, you know, it's not like um [Music], it's not cutting; it's just—it's just allowing just enough of it to shine through. And then I'm applying lots and lots of Mimeophone just to pad it out, you know. And in the Radio Music, I've got uh, these are like number stations things, I think. Yep, they're being gated by the Marbles—we'll talk about that in one moment. I've got other things—conversations, stuff like that—not loads of stuff, and I like to change it per set, but but regular repeats—just textual information is in the Radio Music. So I've got kind of textures and just almost unidentifiable things that can just percolate in the background and be band-passed so that they don't interfere too much with the mix. Actually, in most respects, hardly even notice they're there.

Chapter nine: Modulation.

Adrian of Wishbone Brewery and Keithley asks: How are you using Marbles in this?

So I'm using Marbles kind of in place of like the Turing Machine because it's kind of a super Turing Machine, and I'm using it to just try and move controls around a little bit in a way that is musically satisfying. Surgeon are big proponents of manually adjusting stuff yourself rather than pre-setting loads of modulation up, and I think that they're really onto something. I I agree from personal experience: If you just have random squiggly LFOs modulating everything all the time, it sounds bad; it's not a good kind of modulation. And it's that sort of the periodic modulation of Microjove that I was doing is kind of what I mean, where it's—if you can be the LFO and in an instance of like blah blah—and Surgeon, they're using a looper, so they're they're doing some, you know, modulation themselves, and they're baking that into the loop that they record. But you know, you can just periodically tweak things to keep things alive, you know, open something up a little bit more and then close it back down again, you know. You can do things like have this periodic control from Pamela's that that you know turns up your Grids every now and again, but there's a reason I don't just leave that cable in all the time because I don't want that to happen all the time.

One thing that I've explored is the idea of having modulation that is—I'm on switches basically—so that I can apply the modulation every now and then, and when it's applied, it's on full, and I can turn it off. It's not always on all the time; it's not always on everything; it's some modulation that I have carefully selected, but I periodically apply that. I think is the most healthy way of doing things. And Marbles is amazing because it's both a set of gates—like three gate outputs—and it's four CV outputs, and there's a kind of like um rhythmic cadence to those CV outputs. They've got a kind of like ID because they are repeating. I've I'm like way out of practice with Marbles, so I can't really actually remember all of the details, and I will remind myself, but even just in, you know, dumb configuration, like me just go—I've got it clocked, and I've got some modulation going out to various bits—it's doing some interesting stuff, and it's keeping things alive.

So, for example, I have got um T3 going to Grids one one controlling the gates, and there is a bias control so that you can bias it all the way to the left, and it should only periodically trigger, but if I turn it to the right, it should trigger it more; it does. But just to be clear, it's not actually triggering the voice directly; it's turning up the Grid style for me with a gate, um, and then the other output—why an X1—go to a Chemise, which is probably the one of the most interesting things it's doing. So if you hear like a Chemise Tycho doing—and we'll need to turn this up—so these controls the release and the waves here. It went long; they went short; is it going to go along again? But yeah, Marbles is offering periodic control over those and just keeping the Taiko kind of alive and interesting and doing different wacky things. It really helps just keep it this like zingy, odd, interesting FM interest that can come in periodically. When you add some Mimeophone, even more so because it's just echoing into the distance.

Now, X1 from the Marbles also controls the release of the ADSR, so I'm using this Soundforce ADSR, and I'm only using half of it currently [Music]. Here—short, long, short, long—so it's modulating the release control, and that's just one of those really, really satisfying controls, I must say, like having it not just be short all the time, like that. That's something that you know that modulation is good, and because there's a periodic cyclic nature to it from coming from Marbles, then it really, really works. Like I've also got modulation going to FM2 on here, and that's Marbles X3, so this second FM input—there you go—and then the first FM input is the ADSR. So one is just a random Marbles contr—like voltage—and FM1 is the dual ADSR, which is controlled—its release is controlled by Marbles—so there's kind of this indirect control of Marbles, but it's having an effect, and it's just changing up the base in a satisfying way [Music]. And I just put Marbles into the case, and I thought to myself, what would be the most interesting things for it to modulate? I didn't think—I'm not clever enough to think that far in advance—but you just think, well, I've got these voltages available, what's the most satisfying thing for them to, you know, for them to adjust? And like these are Kemi's controls of that—the release, you know, having it available—and also that whole idea of periodic modulation. What's nice is on the VCF VCA6, you can turn this off, so I can turn off the influence of that modulation if I wish, and I can influence, you know, control how much of it with the nice slider. Oh yeah, and Three Sisters is being controlled by one; I think we mentioned that, but yeah, Marbles is just a great source of modulation for a like a dance system because there's a periodic nature; you can actually like lock and repeat the modulations even more so if you wish and get really into into it, but I find this enough for me to be doing at this point, um, and I also mentioned this idea of periodic modulation, and I'm doing this with the A1822 from Doepfer, which is just amazing, and I've got a whole like rat's nest of things happening here. And I told you about the fact that the uh channel one here—if I switch this down—it's the kick drum, the 4/4, and if I switch it up, it routes Grids into the drums. But the number two uh, which is this one—what does two do? It controls the amount of steps in the Euclidean pattern, and basically I've got one destination; I'm routing two sources—one is Marbles X3 output and the other one is this Z8000 sixteen-step wiggly path uh itself clocked by Grids one one—but that was really, really concrete and understandable, um, sorry about that; it isn't. But all you need to know is that I'm—if I if I turn the steps down to zero here on the actual knob, then the influence of the voltage is—the voltage is controlling, so I think if I had it down is that the Marbles—it is. So now Marbles is controlling the step dial on my 2HP Euclid, which in turn is triggering the platts voice.

And by the way, here's the Metabolic Moonwalker, which is in a nutshell like a funky, flexible rhythmic envelope, an LFO with some very clever, unique things—like it can swap its attack and release times—and you've got like all these phase controls, re-triggering capabilities. In a nutshell, funky, very malleable, good for like rhythmic stuff, which perfectly suits using it for this kind of Jovi to like rhythmic acid that I can kind of create. And you can use it as an oscillator as well, but anyway, early days with this one, but it's cool [Music]. And obviously much more malleable than a 2HP module—called bless them—but no, I am using these tall trimmer toppers from Thonk. I've got them on here, and I've got one on the steps. These are like these little push-on things that you've maybe seen me use; they're really good. You just buy a big bag of them—like drops of 25 quid—and you just can push them onto dials. Get the black ones. I've got one on the FM dial of platts, you know, wherever you want to make it slightly grippier and bigger, slightly easier for controlling—to tune on the Pico, which is hard, by the way, to control. Anyway, I forget what the other one is controlling, um, but the point is with periodic controls—what's nice with the A1822 is you can have these switches in the center, and there's no control, so there's no kick there, but then when you go in a direction, you get the control, so it's it's this idea of instead of just having always-on modulation, is there periodic modulation you can switch on and off. Yeah, I mean, another one that's cool which I've done in the past is have the model control of platts be hooked up to one of these so that when you flick it, platts just goes completely bonkers and just changes the model—just, you know, on the fly—just jumps around the model, and you flick it, it comes back to what you had it set to, like that's just a great trick. And then finally, obviously Pamela does like the clocks and modulation and resets as well. I should just mention that it's an amazingly fantastically useful module; it is—is knitting together all the timings. And I should also say that I'm swinging the clocks that I'm sending to things differently, so the Grids get differently swung clocks. In fact, actually, there's one kind of modulation lane on the Z8000 I didn't mention because I have talked about the fact that the bottom lane I'm using for doing the accent pattern, and the top two are going potentially to the platts and the um, you know, the base depending on how I switch it, but this third row I've got a—the eighth output of Pamela controlling it—and you maybe can't see this very easily because it's such a mess with these little LEDs—what it does is it's a four-bar um sequence that I can then send into the my voices. It's been a long day, folks, so permit me to demonstrate if I can [Music]. Platts is droning, but if I turn on—is this one [Music]—you hear what's happening; it's like a four-bar progression because I'm just sending, you know, every bar it's just sending a single trigger into this—right into this uh like row—so I've just got like this four-bar progression, which is nice because otherwise these other top two are going much too fast; you're creating really squiggly rhythms, and you just want that nice steady, you know, progressive four-bar thing, which is what I would wire up if I was, you know, wire up—that's what I would like write if I was like in Ableton—and then you can mix the two things [Music] together [Music], makes sense. So it's just nice to have like a four-bar progression is just that little bit more kind of um musical; it's more like a song element. Yeah, I'm not really explaining that very well, but it works brilliantly. And so having it as a way of just creating these lovely like long four-bar things versus everything just squiggling along as a big squiggly jazzy little kind of thing—that's partly what I'm learning about the triggering of the Z8000 is like trigger it slowly; don't just go haywire sending loads of clocks in because no one likes like riffs that are just all over the shop completely all the time.

Chapter 10: Mixing.

So a quick word on mixing. Obviously, I'm using the Befaco Hex Mix, which is just brilliant. It has three sends, although I'm only using one, and it's got EQ, and I am using the EQ. So I will be ruthlessly high-passing, taking out all of the low end out of the platts, for example, just to make room for all the other elements. Because Patreon Rob Reeves says: Overall mixing and sonics are difficult; I struggle to get a good EQ and balance. How do you manage it? I haven't noticed you doing much, and that's kind of because I've got things in the pocket, and I thought beforehand—I kind of think about where—I haven't really consciously done this, but I've I've assigned sort of frequency zones for certain elements. Like it's really simple; I've got just two elements that make pitch, and one is bass, and I do tend to have it very low and subby, and then platts, which is somewhere up in the middle, which I have ruthlessly high-passed on the Hex Mix; it just sits above it neatly, and they don't really interfere with each other terribly. And then I've got a Chemise Tycho and the sort of drums, and they sit nicely on top, and I've got a really low sub-subby kick below with the top that the um, you know, the Tip Top can contribute. And so between them, you've got everything kind of neatly on the spectrum, you know, and you could just lay out your sound—just piss—you draw out the frequency spectrum and look at what frequency domains your sounds occupy. It's a classic and important thing in mixing is just to not have too much interference, you know, too much overlap, because then you get elements fighting each other. That's just true no matter whether you're using a modular or you're, you know, using Ableton Live.

And one other element of that is tuning the kick. I think the tune kick is really important. I am using the echo on the Hex Mix, and there's a quick thing about mixing. I know I am using like this Tip Top Mix 7, which is a really good little unity mixer, and I've got the uh intelligent unity mixer to like unity to like submix some stuff together, and I just thought about how best to divide my drums. I've got like kick drum on channel one; I've got my most of my other percussive elements on channel two; of course, I have the ability to mute them individually by turning them on and off on the Grids. And then on this third channel, I've got a Chemise Taiko by itself; um, I maybe could have summed it in, but it's just working really well to have quite a lot of delay on the Taiko, which I don't apply to the other percussion. And then I've got bass on one here; I've got the platts, and then I've got Radio Music. I'm not using the PFL at all on here, and that's just a sort of creative choice and laziness; I just go for it and just blend everything together and make sure it's tuned, you know. There's been bits in this video where it's not been perfectly tuned, and there's more work to be done. Obviously, there's also lots of work to be done with like setting the Z8000 up for success, but um, now all I can say about the mixing is just remember also these are synth voices, you know, and so you can shape them hugely, so you know, filter things out and band pass, you know, and like I also say with the Persimilis, I'm I'm low-pass filtering it, and that is very valuable. I wouldn't want to have to use the Hex Mix to do that; that needs to be done on that individual element because it's getting summed together with everything else. So let everything occupy its perfect space and just careful—be careful—keep things in their position and try not to have them overlap too much, and just if you're struggling, perhaps you just got way too many sounds. Possibly, by the way, is a very, very final thing on this is like if you're using samples, you can bake in mix to them, like so, for example, the Radio Music—when I have gone on YouTube and downloaded like, you know, interviews to stick in the Radio Music—what I have also done is I've pre-high-passed them; I've pre-normalized them; I've compressed them to bring them up to the level and get rid of all those frequencies so that you know all the low end is gone; it's just not even there. And so I don't have to high-pass it or anything like that, even though I kind of am a little bit here. In fact, I'm actually cranking these up because the output is a bit low on this, um, but my point is if you're using samples, you should just pre-bake in the EQ so they sound good most of the time.

One final important thought: I think one of the best questions that anyone's asked—and you've all asked fantastic questions—so that's a bit mean—but what really struck me was Audioreal's question: The only question I have is how fun. That's like—that's the most important question of all—like how enjoyable is it? Are you enjoying it? Are you actually having fun? That might sound like a trivial thing, but it's really not. Like if you're not enjoying the process of playing around and exploring things, then I don't know what to say. Get a looper. I genuinely want to try that next like uh, not as a replacement to this—this is its own thing; this is an instrument; it's a thing that does its thing—thing—but there