Midweek Modular: Granular Sampling, Entanglements and Roland Sounds
3,9 / 5,0 | 
This week we’ve had a granular breakfast with Error Instruments, got entangled with Destiny and played with some Roland-inspired modules.
Neutral Labs released the Elmyra 2 this week with greatly enhanced features, modulation and effects built in. The incomparable hybrid wavetable sound engine is perfect for messy drones and soundscapes but is also very playable. More information here.
Teenage Engineering has all the Pocket Operator Modular synths on special. You could pick yourself up the challenging POM-400 or the neat POM-170 at a nice discount. Read more about that here.
Midweek Modular
If modules were Barbie girls living in a Barbie world, then evidently these would be the most fantastic and not-so-plastic finds of the week. Come on Barbie, let’s go visit our local EMOM and ponder the nature of the universe through electronic sounds.
Error Instruments and TiNRS Brinta Granular Sampler
Another collaboration between the rattling minds of Error Instruments and This is Not Rocket Science. Brinta is a granular sampler inspired by a golden grain circle and a commonly eaten Netherlandic breakfast.
The fabulous circle of visualisation displays the sampling as you follow the dots around into the three-and-a-half seconds of recording time. Once you have your recording, it acts like a tape loop. You can then move the tape head around the circle and around your sample to scrub the recording. Together with the grains, the frequency content has been visualised using some other colours in the circle. Various controls let you change the size of the grains and spawn little golden play heads.
You can turn the play heads into clouds, stack up pitch shifts into chords, generate harmonics into shimmers and save everything into one of five slots.
Brinta obviously looks like a lot of fun and will be available in September.
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Destiny Plus Entanglement Space
Following on from the bizarre Czochralski Cells we have the extraordinary Entanglement Space – Destiny Plus are not messing around! Entanglement Space is a four-channel experimental effects processor. You can run 16 algorithms on each core. You can entangle them with others to produce very complex palettes of texture in stereo or quadraphonic space.
To complicate things you can patch any of the 12 inbuilt modulators into any of the six parameters that each core makes available. You’ll also find some gate inputs and a pan-directional mixer for pulling together a blend of sound. There’s plenty of scope for feedback and self-patching of outputs back into the centre of entanglement.
Effects algorithms include spectral reverbs, amplitude modulation, ring modulation, delays, network phasers and through zero reverb flangers. All exciting stuff!
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System 80 810 Mk2
This rather handsome module is an updated version of System 80’s Roland-inspired analogue synth voice. It contains three fully modular sections; a VCO, VCF and VCA.
The VCO can track over 8 octaves, has sync and FM, an octave switch, sub-oscillator and a selection of the usual waveforms with pulse width modulation on the square. The VCF is a cascaded OTA design with a 12 or 24db response. As you’d expect, the cutoff has two modulation inputs, and the resonance has CV control. The VCA features three audio inputs and exponential or linear CV control. The 810 MK2 is normalised for a regular signal path of VCO to VCF to VCA, but you can break it all out to individual patching.
The updated version has much-improved octave switching, will remember your waveform selections through a power cycle and has a steel back cover. I think it looks fantastic and System 80 does a great job of capturing the Roland sound with their modules. I would love to see it pushed into a standalone synth with some effects.
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GStorm Electro 101 VCO r2
And finally, another update to a Roland-inspired module is a new 12HP version of the SH-101 oscillator section. Along with the triangle, sawtooth and pulse outputs we get FM modulation, pulse width modulation, a sub-oscillator and a noise generator. Accordingly, you can mix all the waveforms together with three possible sub options and send them out of a single output.
The tuning has been improved with the new version. Additionally, you get individual waveform outputs which are undoubtedly very useful.
GStorm builds the 101 VCO r2 by hand, and it’s available in blue, red or black. It’s a very neat and great-sounding oscillator.
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- GStorm Electro website.
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