Springing for Actual Hardware
November 2024
I FIDDLED WITH REASON for eight years. I spent a few years learning about modular synthesis with VCV Rack. Could it be that the time had come for real hardware? “Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!,” the inner voice screamed. (The inner voice was half-listened to … for a second … then ignored.)
In 2018, after much trepidation, I bought my first hardware synthesizer, the Behringer Neutron. The Neutron is a “semi-modular” synthesizer. That means it’s composed of a bunch of different modules, each with a different function like a fully modular synthesizer. It has a bunch of jacks for connecting the various modules together in different ways, but it also has a “prewired” signal path, so it can make sounds even if no cables are plugged into any of the jacks.
Next came a couple of guitar pedals from Digitech: the Obscura delay and the Polara reverb pedals. Those very much richened and enhanced the sounds the Neutron produced. A recording of a squealing pig passed through a lush reverb can sound like an angelic choir, or at least an angelic choir of squealing pigs.
Over time, other devices were added to the collection. Continuing on the path I started with VCV Rack, I looked for things geared more towards drones, noise and experimentation. I was painfully aware of the spending, and I tried to seek out relatively inexpensive devices and devices that gave you a lot of bang for the buck, but admittedly, “relatively inexpensive” is kind of an absurd term in the world of hardware synthesis. I also bought and then resold a few items, but what I retained included:
Our son Thomas also gave me a LostVolts theremin for Christmas one year.
In 2023, I put together a small Eurorack modular system, but I’ll talk about that in another article.
The current collection of noise-making boxes
