How to Make Music with Eurorack Featuring Jasmine & Olive Trees Traffic

Starting out in modular, you see wild patches where you have no idea what’s going on. You wonder how someone could understand anything underneath the spaghetti of cables and how this could possibly be a compelling way to make music. Spending way too much money to have too many knobs and blinking lights like you’re operating some important machinery that’s above your pay-grade or going to space seems a little extra. And that’s where the person making the music makes the decision. Pick the tools that resonate with you, I say! I feel like after wading into the world of modular, I can give my take on the patching process and what’s going through my mind in the overall experience. I’m no producer or professional musician, just got hooked on modular trying to get back into making music of any sort and am really enjoying sharing along the way.

In this video, I started out with the idea of doing a really constrained patch from scratch video but after some technical difficulties (recording time-outs and dead batteries) I decided to talk more about the mindset I have going into patching. It’s less about the technical, how to’s and more about some of the positive vibes I’ve found from allowing the process to be really low stress. There’s small things to think about like controlling your patch but it’s all a path leading to discovering and sculpting the music that comes out. Of course, not everyone is just doing modular for a hobby so that is a privilege for sure and die hard producers and musicians will definitely have to figure out what works for them. The other side of that is that you need to have modules to make the music but I’d say, build slowly, learn and tinker and then when you have more modules to work with it likely won’t be as overwhelming as if you start with a full case and a stack of cables.

I also spend a considerable amount of time patching with the Jasmine & Olive Trees Traffic which I just got. It’s basically a preset module and it’s super fun to mess with and like any great utility has opened up the opportunity for my other modules to work in wild new ways. So I guess that’s the part 2 of the video, how getting a new module (or in this case modules with the Acid Rain Technology Constellation) changes the way you patch. It’s like that discovery becomes localized to what’s new so you can uncover those gems that are just right at the panel and dig a little more to see what you can find.

I feel like I’m talking about this all like an adventure and in some ways it feels that way to me. If you’re on your own modular adventure, hope you’re having some wonderful and playable patches.

Thanks to the continual education and inspiration from Andrew Huang, Mylar Melodies, Red Means Recording, Div Kid, Molten Modular, Look Mum No Computer and Jamie Lidell for filling my head with so many sounds, ideas, and possibilities. I feel like they’ve equipped me for my quest or something.

Time Stamps
0:00 How I patch? Fancy Intro
0:54 What is patching and how I approach it?
1:34 How do I get started?
2:34 Exploring something new each time
3:18 Playing the patch to discover more
4:07 Desk jam with half finished patch
6:04 Why meander and patch every time I make music?
6:57 Sometimes I want things to last forever
7:45 A new module in the case can change the path of exploration
8:37 Jasmine & Olive Trees Traffic
9:51 What does Traffic do?
10:41 Anyone with a BIA would love this
11:02 The second module hiding under Traffics panel
11:39 What do I want with Traffic?
12:45 Presets are powerful in modular
13:12 Patch 1 Jam
15:08 Patch 2 Walkthrough
16:35 Patch 2 Jam
19:51 Patch 3 Walkthrough
21:06 Patch 3 Jam
24:04 Patch 3 Jam lazy echos
24:34 Patch 4 Jam
26:43 Patch 4 Jam with glitchy warbly transition
26:52 Patch 5 Walkthrough
30:46 Patch 5 Jam
35:36 Patch 5 Jam continues with lots of chimey goodness
36:40 Traffic is expanding the possibilities of my case
37:50 Last bit of music to the end