ModCaf - March 2025

The monthly meeting of electronic musical minds never disappoints, live performances, presentations and inspirations!

Mar 21, 2025

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Modulations is all about the love of electronic music, the consumption of, the making of and the people who make it all happen. Communities are important and one that I am proud to be a part of and making new friends with along the way; is ModCaf!

Last night was a really good one. In fact so far, there hasn’t been a bad one. How can nerding out on synth gear ever be bad!

Well it isn’t - so there!

The Crum Drum and the Crum Hum

Alan showed off his new toys last night and they sounded fantastic. If you are into generative music, which of course is a very different approach to both sound design and composition because the machines provide you with possibilities and its up to you how to take control of them, creating serendipitous melodies, drum patterns and chord progressions and some lovely musical moments.

They can surprise you and are often referred to as “happy accident machines”, which I think is partly true, as some of my favourite devices either hardware or software are those that you can get lost in; hours just zip away. You can still master them I think and learn how to coax those little moments out of them,

Ben made a great suggestion after the performance, and that was to record the output from generative devices, sample, slice and then intently rearrange to create a whole new series of sequenced tracks. I know a lot of people who perform mostly live with Roland SP404s and similar gear, take that particular path, in order to assemble audio material for performing with later.

I shall demonstrate this at some point with my 404 or the Polyend Tracker Plus when I buy that. Sorry Mrs Lewis, yes another gadget, we will be able to get the new garden furniture too.

I have to say, I am tempted by the Crum devices, they sounded great. Would love to share some recordings in these posts, in the future because that will be smashing if we can; and as such bring ModCaf to you.

Fire up your browser and take a look at: https://nystrominstruments.com/crumhum/

Thanks

Alan Genzel

for bringing these in and it was also interesting to see the Zoom L6.

Performances

Hoping that in the future I can embed audio recordings of the performances in here and will have a chat with

Galactic Bathtub

to see how we can do that.

There were a number of performances last night from various members, including a couple of duets. I have got these jumbled up a little bit here but that doesn’t matter that they’re not in chronological order.

Shown below are Basil and Tim performing their jam and I believe these are very ad-hoc, I don’t know whether they both got together in advance to rehearse or not! It certainly sounded great with the combination of Tim’s modular system and Basil’s Syntrx in conjunction with an Ableton Push. I have learnt a lot from these sessions, how people produce their music is so varied.

Close-up of the Syntrk and to give you an overview of it’s features, here we go:

Two perfectly stable main oscillators with CV controlled waveforms
Modulation oscillator with variable waveforms
Highpass and Lowpass filters in series
Free running or gate synced sample and hold circuit
Multi-colour noise generator
DC coupled instrument inputs with signal inversion and envelope follower
Ringmodulator of unique design
Looping trapezoid envelope generator and VCA
Two output VCAs
Signal meter with a dedicated audio/CV output
FX section with great sounding Delay and Reverb
Recordable Joystick
Analogue patch matrix with 3 attenuation levels in each patch point
254 patch memory
Piano roll sequencer
Two CV inputs
Gate input
DIN5 MIDI Input (CV and Gate) and MIDI Thru
Two assignable outputs
Headphone output

I find these instruments interesting because as someone who has tried to get into Eurorack and so far hasn’t managed to build anything with more than two modules, I am drawn more to semi-modular gear to be honest. This year has been a case of slamming on the buying brakes and to instead stick with the stuff I’ve got, my DAW (Mac and iPad) and just enjoying what other people are doing. I suspect that will be the theme for Modulations this year.

That said - I could turn my current 2 module system into something of a similar size to Tim’s, using a Rackbrute case and several modules. Might be doable, I don’t know, I am in a bit of a lull at the moment and lacking the motivation.

I was really pleased with this photo, hence this is going to be the cover shot for the post. From left to right, we have Gareth (Gaz), Jeremy and Ben. I know this was recorded, so hope to edit this post later, so that you can hear it too.

This photo really does capture what ModCaf is all about, what makes it special, how people come together at our meetups. I can best describe this performance as cinematic ambient, a little bit Floydian perhaps. It sounded beautiful and they just chose their key and rolled with it - Ben on the right organises the jams at each session and we now have a booking system, so that we can plan ahead, who is going to play at each meeting, what they are bringing along. Ben is happy to set up gear for people who haven’t performed before in such a way. That’s brilliant.

Check out Jeremy in the middle, engrossed and fascinated by the patching of the two synths!

The ASM Hydrasynth Explorer is a lovely piece of gear, I had a go and dabbbled with a few chords and the arpeggiator. Now do I have £550 spare? Might be making a Juno or Andertons order soon!

Alan showcasing his Crums and for fucks sake, I want to buy these too. Will people stop making desirable equipment, for christs sake!

The drum sounds that the Crum Drum produces are fantastic and the Hum is FM based, so as you can imagine, sounds great too. See my photos at the top of the post, as you can see that it is driven by touch sensitive pads, you can select any number of scales and perform using those. A great machine for exploring melodic possibilities.

Simon (Minorjoy) gave us a thumping Techno performance using the Digitakt 2 which he has definitely mastered. The new Elektron box has recently recived a firmware update that now links it up to Overbridge, which I love using with my own Syntakt to pair it up with Ableton.

Note that Simon and Alan behind him are sporting the Testchamber t-shirts, which I believe are available from the Modcaf merchandise store. Take a look. No do better than that, buy something ;-)

You will have noticed that I’ve mentioned various Substack users in this post, it’s great to see that various ModCaf people are on Substack itself. I would like to mention some other people whilst I am at it.

Ian Oakley

- we must get him on Modulations for an interview, see below where I touch upon this as an idea and how I am thinking of inviting guest writers to takeover Modulations on occasion! Ian is the Director of ModCaf and one of the founders.

WHI Recordings

Antony Bailey

- there may be other ModCaffers on Substack and I am building up a little list of those people, so that I can give as many of you a mention in these newsletters/blogs as possible.

Synth and Pedal Show

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/free-london-synth-expo-2025-march-22-23-tickets-1145663794249

Thanks for reading Modulations! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I am very late in mentioning this. I need to start sketching out these posts in advance. However, if you are at a loose end tomorrow or Sunday, people from ModCaf are there, go and say hello. Sadly I can’t make it in person.

Testchamber Screening

I’ve shared a note this week to outvote this exciting event coming up at the end of March. I will be attending this one and will be interesting to see who comes along asides our own crowd!

Ideas for the future

Modulations live chats on Substack

Substack live videos have gained massive popularity of late and I’d love to know how you can run one with two people, as I can only figure out how to just go live on my own. Maybe I am missing something or need more subscribers? Does anyone know?

However what I thought could work is to broadcast the May Modcaf from my phone, as a Subatack live event or even just a small part of it. Not quite sure how the sound might work, so might just focus on the intermediate chats we have in between, checking out gear, sharing anecdotes etc.

Conversations with ModCaffers

Earlier in this post I mentioned how I’d like to run a series of interviews with ModCaf members and people associated with the community, maybe some well known people, you never know, we have some connections. I firmly believe this will benefit Modulations and ModCaf alike.

How will these be conducted? I’d imagine in written form, magazine style in most cases but we could set up something in-person, visit peoples studios and talk about their gear, careers and inspirations.

Heck this might become a serious publication at this rate!

Sound installations

ModCaf are planning a number of things following on from the success of TestChamber, a classic what next? The tricky second album kind of thing. When asked whether they’d do Testchamber again, it was met with an affirmative NO!

However some smaller projects are on the cards and one suggestion was to stage one or more sound installations, in interesting places, not wind tunnels this time but perhaps churches, halls or anywhere where people gather in some shape or form, to entertain them with sounds they can interact with.

There has been an interesting chat on the group Discord around this and has led to discussion of hosting workshops, a good segue into the next initiative.

Providing music education to young people

Gaz has long considered helping disadvantaged people—from prisoners and the homeless to students—access studio equipment and education. Equipment can be expensive and most of us know that. However some people could never even afford a PC and if we can create a place, where people can visit with hands on experience and synths - fun can be had, young people can be helped stay on the right side of the law or even just improve their lives all the same. Plus the skills learnt along the way are all transferable.

Who to follow on Substack

Every day I get more and more excited when I discover musical artists on Substack that I’ve not come across before. I decided to pick a few and share their recent posts, to help us all grow.