Contemplating selling Eurocrack for more immediacy dilemma

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

So I’ve reached a crossroad where I’ve acquired quite a bit of new gear, particularly as I’ve delved into Eurocrack territory… I’ve recently realised my time is more limited as my baby girl is getting older and starting to feel the need for something more immediate.

Elektron offers an immediacy that I am familiar with (after so many years of use)… but, I orginally decided to move on to some eurocrack as I felt the need to remove myself from the restrained and quite limited 4 bar linear workflow of the wonderful Elektron boxes…

I recently sold my OT as I should be receiving my Cirklon next month and never sample anyway. I like to jam, get away from the computer and then record the outputs… modular has certainly opened up a whole new world and redefined my perspective of sound and music, but with our baby’s interactions growing by the day, it is becoming a hassle to have to plug in/out so many wires…

I am wondering whether any of you have been down a similar path/dilemma…

#2

I’m new to Elektron boxes but I don’t see any musical limitations. You don’t have to build pieces on 4/4 meter, or any meter. Polyrhythms are pretty simple to create.

Eurorack is seemingly open ended, but difficult for song creation and recall. Great for immediacy. I had a 7U system and sold it all in the Spring. I’m OK with that.

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#3

with a 12 year old and 2 year old I usually only get time to patch a synth very late at night, and most of those times I’d rather be spending time with my wife :smile_cat:

My kids will gladly sit and “patch with me” however that is just because kids will normally want to do anything with you as long as they get to be with you. When I get the chance to spend time with my kids (I work a lot, have a shitty 1.5 hour commute each way), then I really want to do something that allows me to give them my full attention. Also my “studio” is in a poorly ventilated dungeon so its better to take the zoom and the kids outside to gather stuff for the OT :smiley:

My remaining euro doesn’t get re-patched too often, it’s kind of a basic synth but it’s kept the sound sources and filters that I love listening to, and usually it’s patched so that I can sit down and start playing it immediately via the OT and CVOCD, with the added option of moving some cables to experiment or change things up. There are specific modules with tones that got me into eurorack and that continue to inspire me so that is what I kept. I’ve tried a couple times to get back into a larger system, but I don’t have the time to spend hours patching to eventually come up with something equivalent to what I probably could have punched out in 30 minutes on the OT.

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/487514

Immediacy is definitely something that helps when you have limited time.

Tough call as to whether or not you should sell it, I personally don’t like having anything around that I’m not using, which isn’t just limited to my music gear. Minimization usually creates space for me to be more creative. I know other people that keep stuff around forever and are perfectly happy to come back to something after extended periods of time. Maybe when you get your free time back maybe your modular will be a sought after vintage machine :wink:

all this is just my own experience, hope it helps.

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#4

Wow I get where you are coming from. I’m essentially in the same boat(well sort off). I’ve always been into making music. But only started using gear a year ago. My kids came somewhere in between my decision . Which is different to your situation. But that said, They do hamper the amount of time I have to actually get to make music.

It makes me think about to how fill that time I have as productively as possible. It’s hard but at the same time opens up your organizing skillz(which I am lacking in severly having ADHD). I have modular stuff. I don’t use it all the time. Why? Well first it’s one way of making music, but a very good, interesting and rewarding way. But planning a huge song involving a modular is indeed very long and hard work. Take different projects where you don’t need the modular for. That’s what I do. Fire it up if you need it. Approach it differentely, Try not to make big songs on it. Have something on the side to play with using your elektron boxes.

And on a sidenote:never ever sell an octatrack. I recently started sampling stuff I make and giving it another spin is really fun. It isn’t easy to learn but once you do it rewards you in so many ways.

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#5

I guess most people here have been in those shoes. Once you’re in a position to spend money on gear like the Elektrons there are most likely a lot of obligations other than making music in you life. Sadly, many people including me, cope with the lack of time by buying more stuff, which is not only paradox but actually counterproductive. It’s hard to recommend whether you should keep or sell your Eurorack stuff, because it depends on whether you need the money, what you consider good value and how much just having it is worth to you. I second what @Inward wrote: selling the OT maybe wasn’t such a great idea, because you could have used it as a self contained box pretty much anywhere anytime sampling your favorite Eurorack patches into it and so keeping the modular stuff alive and at the same time gaining the immediacy of the OT.

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#6

although using the multiples to gain longer bar lengths is fairly irritating on the Machinedrum when doing one shot sample sequencing, due to how it changes the swing feel,

this technique is cool for individual tracks on the OT, especially if they are simple looping files

so that is one way to escape the 4 bar humdrum … make realtime recordings of say 16 bars to the OT or a daw then export and import to the OT later

#7

i somehow in the same boat, i mean i bought some stuff (OSCs, filter) and i did a lot of DIY including drilling the front-plates, painting them and so on…
but since that time i didn’t even patch anything …

I’m in a very strange position:

  • one voice tells me - get rid of all that stuff, it has no further addition to your sound

  • a second voice tells me: keep only the important things to you (in this case only a DIY JP8-filter with the original Roland-chip)

  • a third voice tells me: sell all end restart a new system, but this time with a very clear target in soundcreation (mostly with MI stuff)

  • a fourth voice tells me: you can get all this wired sounds out of your Blofeld if you try hard enough, so why modular - just for the lights and cables?

  • a fifth voice tells me: get a solid system without sounddesign and strange FX, could be a small dotcom, or else if sounds good

  • a sixth voice tells me: get rid and invest instead in proper studio-hardware tools (I’m a hardware guy)

i could extend it to more than 10 reasons

anyway, modular has a force of attraction to me and i guess it is the pure appearance of the system, the lights, the cables, aesthetics, but less the sound

when i watch a video with modular, I’m more excited about the look, than the “music” itself (exception for me is Robert Rich, he never uses his modular as a showcase before his musical artwork) and most of the time i did not finish the videos because i got bored

well my 2cents

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#8

Interesting to hear similar experiences. @Hans_Olo while I think the OT is fantastic, I am not really into sampling and only used it to sequence external gear. Moreover, I realised I had filled my CF card with so many samples that it was actually counterproductive for me - too many options. I certainly agree that if one were to keep one box, as @Inward also pointed out, its the jack of all trades.

@previewlounge @carvingcode, with reference to the 4 bar limitation I was speaking more metaphorically (they are too linear for some longer pieces of music, moreover not all boxes are polyrythmic in capability).

@Noisebuddy am with you on the blinking lights… i love tinkering with the visual aspect too, makes me feel waaay more creative

@digitalohm i too tend to keep stuff patched to play with,

I suppose I should keep it all until the Cirklon arrives next month. Perhaps thenI will have a better idea of what works and what doesnt in such a setup and will give me a chance to play with CVs

#9

Honestly I think they way you talk about it, makes it seem like you would regret it big time. Also immediate doesn’t always mean quicker. I mean I (and you) have everything we could need in a DAW, but making a complete song in it goes ridiculously slow for me. They way work and if you like it is very important and can actually reduce the amount it takes to finish stuff. Because it will excite you more to actually finish it.

Also this:

How freaking awesome is that! That"s modular baby!

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#10

Hahaha, dammit- you are absolutely right…

#11

Don’t go selling any Euro. It’s not even up for discussion. This conversation never happened.

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#12

I can see how @123alastairj sounds right because you’re making music I like, but it’s also about the other stuff you mentioned (raising a baby girl is important too), finding some kind of balance with your time and what you want to do with it. For me, I’ve had to learn to sometimes get out of the way of my own creativity. Right now, that has meant taking 20 steps back and sorting through old files and trying to streamline my workspace and workflow so it’s centered around the right gear.

Sometimes I want to do one thing and sometimes another: writing, electric or acoustic guitar, hardware synths, laptop, and more. Sometimes I want to pretend that I’m not creative at all and just go for walks or read books. So I don’t know what you should do, because I don’t even know what I should do, but I loved that piece of yours (“Predator”) for being an experiment that was somewhat generative, interesting, nuanced, complex, evolving, and that was also inspiring sound design, and my best guess is that the Cirklon will shape a lot of these decisions for you. (But that might just be me: If I went the Cirklon route and it was coming in about a month, I’d be trying to rearrange my workspace and workflow, geographically and psychologically, to do the coolest things I could with that sequencer. Instead, I have an OT arriving around then, so I’m off into that wilderness.)

You might want to pare it down to stuff that works well with the Cirklon, or you might want to put some gear away for three months to see if you are happier without it, or you might decided to part with a lot of stuff and maybe go in a new direction for a while. I’ve noticed a lot of Elektronauts describing how they sold things to start over, even if it meant rebuying something once they realized how much they had stayed the same or changed. If you’re anything like me, you think about patching and effects even when you’re not near the gear.

So I just wish you the best, because I thought “Predator” represented everything that I love about modular, even though I haven’t powered mine on in a week or two…and it’s too late for me tonight, even though I meant to.

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#13

So, you think you don’t have enough free time? Wait until you get your second child and later you realize that why there aren’t too many family photos from the younger one? Hot tip: there aren’t any free persons to have such luxury of freedom.

But to be fair, years pass quickly and soon you’ll get your free time back. And you need to take the leisure time by yourself, both of you. I would regret now if I had sold my gear when the kids were babies. Now they are 5 and 7 and need much less maintenance. :slight_smile:

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#14

Yes that’s also something to consider. The first 3 years are quite hectic and exhausting. My oldest is almost four and he is playing more and more on his own. Every year it get’s a little less exhausting. But then you worry about other stuff ofcourse. But time does come back to you. And they go to bed early in the beginning so you still have your evenings ofcourse. Honestly I just get by sleeping less.

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#15

@123alastairj it never happened. :neutral_face:

@castcircle thanks for the kind words on “Predator”. Think am also getting excited about receiving the Cirklon that its making me feel a little guilty on the time front bec I know its quite deep.

@Inward @Lukree Time flies… already 8mths in and its as if it were yesterday. Good to know it becomes more plug n play as they get older (not that it really matters, i love the hecticness as am sure you both did/do too). Am going to be bringing her up into the studio to watch the blinking lights whenever I can :joy::sunglasses::+1:

#16

Glad I found this thread - lots of advice to consider. I’m also in a similar boat. My first child is about 6 months now and when you factor that plus other things that keep life full (crappy day job with long commute, online classes & project work to build skills for better job, and even exercise), there isn’t much time for sitting in front of a modular to extract (for me) the same, or similar sounds over and over. I think “immediacy” is a good way to describe the state of affairs with an infant. When I get a free minute, I wanted to be able to turn something on and have fun making sound. Enter the digitakt! When it came out, I was immediately intrigued. It seemed like just the piece of gear that I could pick up and play while sitting on the couch or elsewhere. I ended up selling a handful of eurorack, and a BS2 to get one. Now that I’m really enjoying the DT, I’ve reached a point where I’m trying to figure out whether to:

  1. Sell off remaining eurorack for a more immediate box to compliment the DT (or just bank the $$)

  2. Keep the remaining eurorack and use those to make sounds for the DT.

It’s tough, because as much fun as modular is / was, I’m also a fan of simplicity, and minimizing clutter. If it doesn’t get used, it’s taking up space. Now that the prices for the A4 are coming down, it certainly is within reach if I sell my modular stuff. Darn you, Elektron! There’s also a lot of other great synths out there that could suit my current situation better. For now, I’m in a holding pattern though, having fun with the DT, and getting used to it. The itch to make gear purchases is starting to build though.

#17

It’s like I’ve said before. You could make different kind of setups where you don’t need the modular. So you can have the immediate and the modular. Having an octatrack also helps(ofcourse the digitakt to) to records stuff from the modular to use later in the octa. The heavy part is in the first three years having children. I think selling something you really like working with will make you miss it. Especially when you realize that your time is coming back to you. Which is sooner rather then later. The attention required for your children becomes less and different in character.

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