Melodic Modular Magic || Live Jam with Labyrinth, Rings, and Surface

I'm in the process of building a live rig using a travel case I picked up a couple years ago, guided by principles of melodic sequences, improvisation, playability, and versatility. The rack's not quite finished yet, but I'm like 80% certain I'll keep the Labyrinth in it as a foundational basis. The other key module for now is the ‪@NoiseEngineering‬ Gamut Repetitor. It's a super-fun and super easy-to-use performance quantizer. By performance, I mean you can change your notes on the fly with just 3 knobs, and move around scales with a few switches. I'm feeding Repetitor two simple clocks from Pam's (one of them is div/2). CV is going from Repetitor to Rings (ie: PHYSC, CH1) and Surface (CH2, at div/2). The Labyrinth, Rings, and Surface are tuned to the same pitch, and both the Labyrinth sequencer and Gamut Repetitor are set to the same scale (Major Pentatonic, iirc). With everything being in time and in key, it makes it really easy and fun to knob fiddle in melodic relativity. Main thing is you need to be down with taking what the sequencers throw at you. In a live performance situation, it's important to get usable melodic sequences quickly, which I think both sequencers here do pretty well. And they can also change it up quickly too if sequences are getting stale. Labyrinth here doesn't change a ton over the jam, which I really like for the bass part. Gives it almost a kind of mild Berlin-school vibe. For effects, Labyrinth is going through a Microcosm in Mosaic mode. Rings + Surface are being mixed through DXG before going into Data Bender and Mimeophon. I think between all the knobs on the voice modules + DB & Mimiophon, and the playable sequencers, there's plenty to keep things interesting for meaty jams. Honestly, I didn't realize this was a 20-minute recording until after I stopped. I thought I was going for like 5-6 minutes. That's nice. Or maybe I'm aging. Either way, I'm good with it.

I feel like this rig has a ton of potential, and I think once I nail down the configuration I'll do a proper walkthrough and start thinking about how to get to playing outside the studio with it. I'm also thinking about trying it with a drum machine, but I'm not sure yet... I don't want to veer too hard into techno territory, nor do I feel like I need more gear to attend to—this rig is filling my attention bandwidth pretty well as it is. But I'll give it a college try and see how it feels, at least.

🎧 Listen & Links:
→ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/northeastpas...
→ Bandcamp: https://northeastpassage.bandcamp.com
→ Website: https://northeastpassage.ca

#eurorack #synthesizer #ambientmusic #ambient #electronicmusic #modularsynth #modularsynthesizer