Midweek Modular: Modular for beginners, Toads and Quantizing
3,5 / 5,0 | 
This week in Midweek Modular, we discovered My First Modular, The Toad 12-Stage Phaser and the coolest and most compact quantizer I’ve ever seen.
Midweek Modular
I had a good dig around the planet for interesting modular bits and found the following modules.
My First Modular
The idea of having a beginner-level modular system seems to come around pretty regularly. There are always high hopes of doing it cheaper and more accessible than anyone else, but these are difficult things to achieve. Just a handful of individually made modules in a powered case still end up costing quite a chunk of cash.
However, Oficina de Sonido from Mexico is giving it a go and has already passed its modest goal on Kickstarter. Maybe this could be a winner.
My First Modular is designed to be affordable, easy to use, sound great and be open source. All good qualities and as a bonus, it’s very colourful. The system ships with eight modules including a VCO, VCA, LFO, Filter, AD/AR Envelope, Mixer, Delay and Sequencer. Particular highlights are that the VCO is also a chord generator with 8 waveforms, and the filter is based on the Korg MS-20. It totals 46 HP and comes in a 66 HP case, giving you a bit of room for expansion.
My First Modular · Source: Kickstarter
The whole lot looks excellent; vibrant and chaotic in a good, modular way. It’s well thought out, has all the right modules to keep things interesting and could indeed be a very cool first modular system. You can buy the parts individually, but the My First Modular system will cost you about £527 plus shipping. You can get quite a bit of synthesizer for that sort of money, but it’s really well-priced for modular. It’s already funded and should ship in February 2024. And there’s an option for blank panels too.
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- My First Modular Kickstarter.
Pittsburgh Modular The Toad
Pittsburgh is still exploring the outer reaches of anthropomorphic modular with a 12-stage analogue phase shifter, known as The Toad. It’s designed to shift your audio through some rich, gooey-sounding movement, swirls and Doppler effects.
There are two outputs taken from stage 7 and stage 12 which can be used together for a very wide and interesting stereo effect. It can also be mixed with the original signal for more nuance. You can modulate it externally or internally via a built-in LFO.
The Toad is a very gorgeous thing and is only available in a limited edition run of 200 modules.
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Centrevillage SQT
Overcomplicated quantizers drive me mad. They should be simple enough to bend your voltages into a tune without diving into menus or taking up a load of space. The SQT could be the perfect solution to my modular musical frustrations.
SQT is only 2HP wide and it can run 12 scales that output notes all day long. You can use the trigger input to move it onto the next note which is a nice additional feature. This creates all sorts of interesting ways to inject some rhythm into your melodies. It also fires out a trigger when the note changes which could be useful for passing through to an envelope. It really ticks all the boxes for what I want a quantizer to do.
SQT · Source: Centrevillage
The scales are editable so you can have it play whatever notes you prefer. I’m not sure how easy it is to edit, but it’s so compact that you could have four of these in your system keeping everything together. It’s also possible to drive it via an optional MIDI expander.
You have to order it direct from Japan and it costs around £100 with shipping.
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