Midweek Modular: Master Controllers and Gravitational Oscillators
4,9 / 5,0 | 
KAIROS puts multiple functions behind a stunning screen, oscillations are produced by MASS, and we all get harmonising in the Game of Life.
The week’s big news is the buyout of Moog Music by multi-brand company InMusic. You can read the whole story here. The feeling is that Moog could not weather the storm of chip shortages and supply chain issues. But it also makes you wonder what it could have done differently. I was always surprised that it didn’t tap more into the Eurorack market. The Mother-32, DFAM and Subharmonicon seemed, to me, to hit the right spot in terms of price and quality. But perhaps they could have been accompanied by a range of thoughtful Eurorack modules. At the very least, those Mooger Fooger pedals could have gotten into some Eurorack action.
From here, anything is possible, and it will be interesting to see how the move to InMusic will affect the products and the perception of this, the most classic of synthesizer brands.
Midweek Modular
Here are the bits and bobs of modular that have caught my eye this week.
Magerit KAIROS Master Controller
Circular OLED screens are becoming a bit of a thing, and Kairos instantly reminds me of the Kaona Skippy that we saw at Superbooth. But they are different animals. KAIROS is a multi-function module that can bring a very colourful and configurable range of tasks to your Eurorack.
The name is shared with the Greek god of the opportune moment which is a fabulously modular concept. KAIROS is a multi-channel source of waveforms, functions, clock signals and MIDI-to-CV converters. It can generate modulation; it can generate sequences, it sounds like a lot of fun.
For sequencing, it leans into our old friend Euclidean but also sneaks in steps between the steps. For modulation, it starts with basic shapes and then adds a bunch of transforms to get into complex modifiers.
All the time you have this startlingly colourful display that can be fully navigated with two encoders and a button. The eight outputs are assignable to whatever you want the thing to do, and there appear to be multiple channels of stuff available to you.
If you like your functions layered up in a single device, then KAIROS looks awesome. Also, great promo!
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- Magerit website.
Olivella Modular GRAVEDAD Gravitational Oscillator
In perhaps a twisted nod to Father’s Day this Sunday, we have GRAVEDAD, a feature-packed, semi-complex analogue oscillator. It has some handsome Buchlas stylings and an array of intriguing patch points and controls. At the heart, we have a super-precise triangle core oscillator with sawtooth and square outputs that’s good over 10 octaves. Along with the fine and coarse tuning, there’s also a 5-octave slider that can be voltage controlled separately from the v/oct input – not something I’ve seen before.
Something else I’ve not seen is a MASS knob. This is a sub-oscillator and subharmonic generator. It can track the VCO or it can self-oscillate, giving it a whole world of its own. This is where the “semi-complex” aspect comes into play because the MASS output is normalised to the FM Index on the main oscillator for internal modulations. The MASS knob turns the waveform through different shapes, helped by the Force CV input.
There are all sorts of things going on in here, making it a nicely unusual oscillator.
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- Olivella Modular website.
Nervous Squirrel Conway’s Game
Conway’s Game is a Eurorack take on the Cellular Automata concept found in John Conway’s Game of Life. This is not the tedious board game of trying to fit pegs into a tiny car while spinning wheels of fortune; this is a concept derived from how cells react to their surroundings.
Nervous Squirrel Conway’s Game · Source: Nervous Squirrel
There’s probably some complicated maths involved but really, it boils down to some simple rules. You start with a bunch of live cells on a grid, and for each cycle, those cells either live, die or reproduce. If a cell is next to only one or zero other cells, then it dies. If it has two or three neighbours, it survives to the next cycle, or if any dead cell has three neighbours, it comes back to life.
These algorithms produce fascinating patterns on a grid. Nervous Squirrel has harnessed the grid and turned it into a fabulous-looking Eurorack module. I’m not really sure how to use it, but I am loving the idea of it.
- Nervous Squirrel website.
Western Precision Audio H1 Analog Harmonizer
This is a very cool idea. The H1 Analog Harmonizer takes in the pitch from another oscillator and generates two more notes relative to that input. That means instant harmonies, instant chords, and simple polyphony in your Eurorack without having to work too hard.
Essentially it’s a two-channel digitally controlled oscillator with pitch-tracking and quantization. And you can use all those aspects independently. So, if you want, you can use it as two analogue oscillators with your regular waveform outputs. You could use it as a 2-channel quantizer, or a tuner, a frequency doubler or drone oscillator.
For me, it’s a really creative way of introducing polyphony to your modular without just doubling and tripling up on everything.
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- Western Precision Audio website.
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