How To Plan Your First Eurorack Modular Synthesizer

In this video, synthesist Sarah Belle Reid shares her take on how to plan your first Eurorack modular synthesizer system.

Reid discusses the benefits of starting with a small system, picking sound sources, modulators for those sound sources, and sequencers and controllers to interact with the modular.

Topics:

00:00 – Intro
00:07 – Performance
01:13 – Sarah’s Introduction
02:23 – Starting Small
03:12 – Choosing a Case
03:58 – Picking Sound Sources
09:05 – Balance of Generators and Controllers
11:09 – Hands on Controllers
12:47 – Recap

9 thoughts on “How To Plan Your First Eurorack Modular Synthesizer”

  1. 1. Start small
    2. Plan everything out in a little case
    3. Redo it in a case that’s twice as large
    4. Repeat until you run out of space or money

  2. 1. Spend hours watching videos on YouTube about ‘how to start with modular’.
    2. Spend tons of money, make loads of mistakes and get it all wrong.
    3. Make a YouTube video advising people on ‘how to start with modular’.

  3. Advise to my past self; buy second hand, start with a 104hp skiff, marbles, stages, plaits, rings, veils. Learn this set up inside out and go wild from there one module at a time.

  4. You can get these three:

    -4ms 20 hp powered case $99
    -Pamela’s New Workout $275
    -Plaits $259

    Make great eurorack-powered music and have eurorack-powered fun for about $700

    1. That is true, but those 2 modules don’t actually help teach you about modular synthesis. They’re tool that you happen to need to use patch cables to connect to work, but you don’t really learn how to use basic components to generate complex movements of sound. You don’t have access to simple square waves and triangle waves in your oscillator to send into a slew or a filter or a ringmod or a wavefolder; you press a button and you have a beautiful complex sound. To me, you might as well save $400 and buy a Microfreak.

      My 2 cents.

      1. Also my reservation about much of the eurorack boom. These are both digital modules, I think, so it is not going to be much different from plugging them together in vcv rack or playing about in a microfreak. (Assuming PNW is available on VCV.) But each to their own.

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