Eurorack Diary - I Just Wanted A Square Wave
Today I finally set down at my Eurorack system to make some music (well, fart noises). I hadn't powered up for a few months and I've decided this year to make some more effort to play regularly. I learn something new every time I play and often will get lost in a zen patch for a while. It's quite meditative, sitting listening to this machine loop until you turn a dial and destroy the entire spider's web of voltage.
Eurorack for me has been about 30% problem solving and 70% making fart noise. Today was one of those 30% sessions. I assume calibrations have slipped since I last powered up, possibly not helped by my migration to a new case (Mantis). I couldn't get clock to my Metropolis sequencer (tale for another day) so I thought I'll just use the Turing Machine to provide a quick sequence. Cue half an hour of troubleshooting.
I was finding that the pattern wouldn't lock. It's been so long since I performed my initial calibration that I had forgot how to do so, so I went to find the manual online and it wasn't simple. There are various versions of the build process but in my haste I couldn't find a simple text guide that told me 'turn the calibration pot clockwise until the pattern stops changing'. I did find a Vimeo video on the calibration process so I had to take off my headphones and listen to the example.
'Clock the Turing Machine with a square wave from any oscillator'. Easy.. wait. One of the last upgrades I performed was changing from two basic analog VCOs to an ALM MCO and ALA Dixie (a Plaits clone). How do get a square wave!?
I couldn't remember the functions of the controls on the ALM panel, but the pulse out was surely quite self-explanatory. I ran it into a scope and the square I was getting wasn't the clean and sharp square shape that I was hoping for. Good for a characterful sound, but possibly not so good for calibration purposes!
Ok, so I'll use the Dixie, I thought. Thankfully this clone has text labels for each synthesis model but nothing that says 'Square'. A Google showed me that it was under 'classic', which provides a selection of regular waveforms. Now which knob adjusts the waveform to a square? Routing through the scope again I found whichever one it was through trial and error.
All of this nonsense lead me to realise that I just want to be able to get a triangle, saw or square wave on demand without having to check a manual or tweak knobs at random and hunt down the desired waveform by 'feel' or scope observation. The MCO and Dixie allow me to find 'happy accidents', morph and modulate things but they're not fun when I want to get something very specific very fast.
I've thrown an AI Synthesis VCO back in my case for the time being but I think at some point I'll want a simple analog VCO that takes up less HP, like the Befaco Pony or Thonk's new offering.
I don't have hundreds of hours of eurorack experience but already I can see the merit benefit of having modules where each output is for one specific function and the adjustment pots are all very directly labelled with what they do. They allow for so much more immediacy in playing. Controls with vague descriptions are infuriating, but ultimately necessary in the compromise between functionality, cost and space, and probably something I'll need to deal with until I'm a millionaire with an entire wall spare to dedicate to a monster rack!