December 2021 - Merry Christmas!

This year was again a challenging year on many fronts for everyone. At tangible waves we’ve had to deal with the usual demands of a growing backlog of orders, the breakdown of global supply chains and distribution channels, the “Chipocalypse” and changes to our team. Not all change is bad though, and there were amazing highlights during the year: The visit to Superbooth 21 was just incredible. To see (almost) everyone from the wider synth community back in person felt so good and gave me a big boost to keep going and keep making modular synthesizers which are affordable for everyone.

We’ve also had a change to our team which is now, myself excluded, 100% female powered! All production and distribution of our products is now firmly in the hands of Antonia, Tamara and Albena. Together they managed to work through the backlog and bring down the wait times from 3 months to just under 3 weeks and many smaller orders are now dispatched almost immediately!

​The module palette has increased enormously this year and many of these modules have been produced by third party manufacturers. This proves that the AE format is becoming a “real” independent standard and it is something that I couldn’t even have dreamed of when I started this journey 5 years ago. To all those brave creators, I owe you my thanks for putting your energy and money into this format and to bring new ideas (and a splash of colour) to the AE Modular system.

What will the next year bring? Who knows? But one thing is certain: I have so many ideas and prototypes for new modules and I bet the other creators out there will add more new modules as well. Also I’m looking forward to more music from artists on our forum. Whatever happens, I’m just so happy to be working on this system and to be part of this fantastic community! 

Many thanks to you all, and I wish you a beautiful festive season and a happy new year!

XMAS Discount

To express our gratitude to you all who are either new to the AE Modular community or have been with us for a long time we’ve decided to offer a 10% discount from 18th December through to 31st December with code XMAES-2021.

New Products

These products are now ready for sale, however the chip shortage may strike again any time, so better get in early!

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TBD

The TBD module is a multifunctional DSP (digital signal processing) module that includes more than 30 different synthesis and audio processing plugins. It is a collaboration project between CTAG Kiel (an academic working group of Kiel University of Applied Sciences), instrumentsofthings.com (who produce this module for Eurorack) and tangible waves.
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You can find more information and purchase this module in the shop.

ENVFOLLOWER/EXT.IN
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This module allows you to bring in external audio via balanced and unbalanced mono inputs. It then converts the volume of this signal into CV which you can use in the AE system to control anything you want, filter cut off, oscillator pitch, amplitude, etc. It also provides a gate signal every time the input passes a certain threshold, which can be controlled by a knob.
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You can find more information and purchase this module in the shop.

CVSHIFTER

The CVSHIFTER module is the AE version of the well-known analogue shift register modules that have been around in the modular world for a long time. It works like this: The CV input is sampled with each trigger input signal and this CV is sent to the CV 1 output; at the same time, all CV outputs 1-4 are shifted by one.
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You can find more information and purchase this module in the shop.

Black Face Plates
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We are now also offering all the modules, which are used in the Starter System 1 and 2 with a black faceplate made from fibreglass, the same material used for circuit boards. This matte black with white lettering looks extremely stylish. The starter systems and also the individual modules are now available with the black option. Soon we will extend this option to all the modules in the store.

​We are also offering the face plates individually, in case you would like to upgrade your existing modules. For now, only those modules from the starter racks are available, but soon we will offer upgrades for all modules.

You can find more information and purchase these products in the shop.

What about the CIRRUS?

As discussed on the forum, the CIRRUS can no longer be produced due to the global shortage of certain chips, especially those produced by STM. However while we won’t be able to produce more of the CIRRUS with the Microcell firmware, we did find another, similar chip, which could be used to run the original MI Clouds firmware. This chip is available in relative abundance and at a decent price so the plan is to release a CIRRUS Classic sometime in the first half of 2022.

Music made by the Community

VA- 400th-Murmur
This is a huge collaborative album with contributions from 63 artists and among them are a few artists from our forum who have used the AE Modular for their submission. A great sounding album with an astonishing variety of sounds, please check it out!
https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1816/va-400th-murmur

A generative Yuletide Patch
​@funbun presented us with this great festive generative patch:
https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1835/generative-patch-yuletide 

Album BELLS
This is another Christmas inspired album by @funbun in which he explores modal and generative music. Please check it out and buy it at: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1842/bells-christmas-ep 

Chapel FM live concert with AE Modular
John from Wonkystuff plays a live set every year for Christmas and this year it was a 100% AE Modular performance which is a very nice meditative ambient set:
https://namcom.bandcamp.com/album/live-for-chapel-fm-2021-12-12

And if you missed last year’s performance, you can catch up with this link:
https://namcom.bandcamp.com/album/live-for-chapel-fm-20201213 

These tracks explore some dark places
User @pt3r is again inviting us to follow him to dark and beautiful soundscapes:
https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1710/sc-apes-ladders
and
https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1834/regurgitate

First patch for Euclid Grid, Core, Moco and Five step
@luckylutte shows us how to use those cool new 3rd party modules for fun and dance: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1838/first-patch-euclid-grid-core
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DIY Projects

User @duddex found this little digital reverb module and was successful to simply stick on the BRAEDBOARD to make fantastic sounds: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1843/accutronics-digi-log-reverb

And user @yoreb has added these nifty switches to his sequencers to be able to quickly change the sequence length without having to repatch the cables: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1829/switches-added-seq-triq

Programming

More and more modules are now programmable and it was the right time to start a sub forum for this. In it you can discuss anything to do with installing or developing firmwares for either the GRAINS, TBD or Wonkystuff’s core1.ae. Check it out here:

https://forum.aemodular.com/board/23/programming

The first project to report this month is an implementation of the Bernoulli Gate which works similar to the Branches module by Mutable Instruments. It has been developed by @duddex and is now also available on the official AE Modular Github: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1807/bernoulli-gate-grains
https://github.com/aemodular/GRAINS/tree/master/Grains-BernoulliGate 

Then we got a Sine Wave LFO made for GRAINS by @keurslagerkurt: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1801/vc-sine-lfo-grains

Also for GRAINS is a CV to MIDI converter by @duddex: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1822/cv-midi-grains

Then this new cool Eurorack module was presented which might become an AE Module next year? It would be another programmable module which you could program in Python and it's based on the Raspberry Pi PICO: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/1837/raspi-pico-documentation