https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/614237I've had the TONESTAR 2600 for some time now, experimenting with it, to see how many tones you can get out of it, and what it's weaknesses are. I find this little synth-voice module very well sounding and rather capable tonewise for a lot of sounds... it's weakest spots is that it does not have two oscillators, and that the one it has, has no input for waveform sync... on the other hand it can audio rate modulate any input, be it the VCO frequency, Filter Frequency or the VCA... even the LFO Depth and Rate can be modulated, also the ADSR can be modulated... every mod input has it's own attenuator, so you don't really need any VCA externally to control the amount of modulation going into the modulation inputs... the TONESTAR 2600 is basically very much self contained in all aspects... I would dare to call this module perfect actually, despite it's few shortcomings.
So to circumvent those shortcomings, I've decided to get another TONESTAR2600 into the equation of my small KB37 setup... this alone gives me several nice options when combining the two in different routings. The two can be mixed together and work as two standalone "layers", or they can be connected to and from each other in a lot of different ways... they can also be put in parallel so that each drive a side in the stereo perspective (L/R) for really wide sounds or strange panning permutations when modulated for it.
I decided, that having three of these for layering was not really the way to go, mainly because the KB37 is capable of sending only one gate and two CVs (for duophonic playing), so having two voices seemed most logical, and in most layer patching you would normally just use one voice for the transient build, and the other for the sustained tone... so two "voices" is actually enough.
So I thought hard about what to include in the rest of the HP space I had left which was more than one third actually. I tried to think about what I really wanted to achieve in my music, and what features those genres would benefit from... I'm going to make mainly Ambient, Berlin School and electronic music in general, so I found that being able to make slow and evolving/morphing textures would be alfa omega. To do this I'd need some way to introduce slow moving CV signals to different modulation inputs, and for this there is no better way than using the KB37s four control CV outputs (Control X, Y and Z + Sensor)... I can control these outputs very precisely from my DAW which is my main sequencer, creating all sorts of CV signals that rise and fall etc... so no need to invest in a lot of modulation modules just for this... the DAW handles it a lot better, and is visually and timing wise a lot better.
So what to buy!? ... I quickly saw a use for a separate analog filter for more than one reason. The first is that the TONESTAR 2600 only has a lowpass filter to work with, and I will most certainly need both hipass and bandpass too, plus 12db versions... so a multimode filter is essential... this is why I included the Pittsburgh Binary Filter which is a State Variable Filter with all modes and 12db slope... This filter is meant as a shaper of the mixed signal of the two TONESTAR modules... this is a huge advantage when I need to do very slow fade-ins and outs of whatever the two voices are playing... it can be seen as a kind of "master filter", and I decided to pair it up with it's own separate ADSR as well. This means that I can make patches where I control the cutoff manually for performance, but also trigger the envelope.
But why the need to trigger a third filter, when the two voices have their own ADSR and ASR envelopes? ... this is where another ideer I got comes in:
The basic waveforms of an analog voice can sound rather static, even when modulated thru a VCF and VCA... with ambient stuff I need evolving soundscapes that shift around, so I thought that since the TONESTAR allows you to set the VCA into drone mode, I could see the TONESTAR as sort of like a very advanced oscillator too... by modulating it's filter frequency with it's oscillator at audio frequencies (high resonance to create a sine to modulate), plus the weird "outs to outs modulation" that the TONESTAR also performs, you are actually able to create extremely complex waveforms, especially when you take all the other sound sculpting features it has into the modulation (EGs and LFO plus drive and feedback)... this will result in some moving and complex timbres that just drone... from both TONESTAR modules, and they could even be intertwined between each other for even stranger outputs. With these two "oscillators" mixed, and going into the multimode filter for the final shaping you could create lots of moving sounds that even change drastically on each trigger depending on the modulations going on in the TONESTARs... this can be cool for constant changing percussion or weird FX sounds modulated manually by the multimode filter.
But to get the two voices mixed, I needed some sort of mixer... I ended up including a LIFEFORMS Mod Tools module for this... it has a simple but effective two channel unity mixer, which is exactly what I needed for this, and this mixer even allow for a rectified output as well between the two voices... The Mod Tolls module gives a lot of other useful stuff like a very much needed Sample & Hold generator with noise output to top it, and an LFO to generate the hold time... I need this feature to create randomness on the modulation inputs of the two TONESTAR modules... Also there is a modulation section more that will give me both an EG, LFO, Oscillator, Slew generator and Envelope follower... all nice additions to induce more havoc into the modulations. A very nice module to add... but I soon saw the need to have two of these, so that I could assign one for each TONESTAR module separately... thus there are two of them in the setup now. With the top section of these modules capable of functioning also as oscillators they will serve well as audio rate modulators of the TONESTAR modules.
Finally... I decided to include a LIFEFORMS sequencer module as the final module... the reason is that it can be clocked via the KB37's clock/reset outputs and thus play in sync with my DAW. The DAW will handle the sequencing of melodies in both mono and duo modes, so this is not where the sequencer module is meant to do it's duties... but sometimes it's nice to let the DAW only play one of the TONESTARs, and then have the other one do another melodyline... this is not possible via duophonic playing since it only has one gate signal... this can be fixed with the addition of the sequencer module.
But the sequencer can and will be used for many other things as well... like controlling modulation inputs of other parameters than just pitch... the multimode filter is a likely candidate, but a lot of other options are possible.
This whole setup I just explained is of course just the more "hardwired" approach... Semi-Modular approach of course... I could completely use all modules in other strange ways... like route the outs of a TONESTARs oscillator section into the multimode filter, and then route that back into the same TONESTAR modules VCA input, simply to replace the internal filter with a multimode one if I wanted that... loads of possibilities I think, in this small eurorack system... I feel that it's "complete" now... the next TONESTAR will be bought real soon... and in time I'll get two of the other TONESTAR version with the Roland filter to mix and match from project to project... other synth voice modules that are 32HP wide could also be likely candidates, but it's not on my list specifically... I like the TONESTAR line a lot, and hope more will come in the same format... 303 filter, SE80 filter, Moog filter etc... just keep 'em coming!!!
Well... that was todays update rant... if you made it here, congratulations, you've won the right to hear my experimentations as they develop in the future
Feel free to comment on the setup
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