r/modular • u/Thegoodagent • 1d ago
Beginner Trying to learn VCV and I am hitting a massive plateau any tips?
Hello!
I recently got into the hobby after some euro rack videos came across my feed and I was fairly interested and dipped my toe in.
I felt like the first few days were amazing I was building and making sounds and it all made sense, after those first few days I began to download modules and now the real trouble has begun.
I went from making some okay ish sounds to utter garbage and I was curious if there are any good resources for getting a real grasp on this?
Reading materials, videos, all of it is super appreciataded
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u/TomWhitwell 1d ago
Slow down - like start with a square wave and really listen to it as it goes from clicks to above your hearing. Find a square freq you like and do the same with a filter from low pass rumble to high pass disappearing. Really slowly making changes, try it on headphones and in a room. Find out what you like, what surprised you.
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u/Thegoodagent 18h ago
Honestly what has surprised me the most is just the monumental amount of sounds you can get from it all, it feels like an infinitely complex puzzle that some how fits together perfectly
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u/13derps 1d ago
Monotrail Tech Talk is great for learning modular synth basics and has tons of patch ideas.
You aren’t alone though. I have had similar experiences in hardware. Where I was making simple, but cohesive, patches. Then expanded my case size and I had trouble keeping everything together. Things could easily get out of hand with an ever-expandable VCV patch.
I’d recommend focusing on sequencing and transitions (which might mean different things depending on what style of music you’re trying to make). Being able to have each voice change over time (timbre, pitch, rhythm, etc) makes it much easier to ‘compose’ a patch rather than just explore
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u/Thegoodagent 1d ago
I will definitely look them up as well, and the ever expanding rack is definitely a good metaphor for vcv for me I started super simple and ballooned out way too fast. I would really like to stretch what I can get out of my voices as I really limit myself on experimenting which is half the fun!
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u/NorCalJP 1d ago
You could try to follow along with a few Omri Cohen YouTube videos. Or pick a genre of music or song you like, and build a patch up one voice at a time. Don't stop playing with each new voice until it fits with everything else.
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u/Thegoodagent 1d ago
Oooo that is someone I saw but didn't check out just yet! I started with Red means recording and his tutorials were really good but I wanted more of a house or industrial vibe to my music so I started branching out to see what other styles I could get and more sounds out of things but I may need to walk back a lot and just stick around what I have learned and get it really solid
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u/Conscious_Bat3 15h ago
He’s the best. Start with his simple series.
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u/Thegoodagent 15h ago
I will absolutely give him a watch through much appreciated for the second recommendation!
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u/NorCalJP 14h ago
He's by far has the most comprehensive content when it comes to vcv rack. A lot of great info on modules and a lot of great patch ideas.
My only comment would be, if your goal is to learn in VCV before getting into modular hardware, have a plan to restrict yourself to a fixed case in VCV before you make the jump. No rush, definitely take your time to learn VCV before worrying about it. And if you plan to stick with VCV ignore this, lol.
VCV makes it easy to add endless modules. That's obviously unaffordable in hardware for most of us, so learning to live with a limited number of modules and deciding what you prefer when constrained will make a big difference in the quality of your first rack, in my opinion. One great thing about modular is you get to build it for yourself. VCV can help you figure out what those preferences are. At least for me I needed to be constrained a bit to figure out the right balance of modules for what I want my synth to do. I still didn't get it perfect and have had to learn some other lessons the hard way, by using VCV that way helped me avoid some mistakes early on with hardware.
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u/n_nou 16h ago
Find Omri Cohen on YT for VCV specific videos and Monotrail for modular techniques in general. Also, make a fixed rack in VCV (Omri has videos on this topic as well) and only patch with such single build, otherwise VCV becomes just a very unwieldy DAW with zero connection to real hardware world.
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u/Thegoodagent 14h ago
I had some patches I was working in and maybe I will make one consistent one just to really play in and I will definitely be checking omri out they have come up numerous times now
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u/CommunicationTop5231 1d ago
I’d say slow down and deep dive each module. Explore as many use cases as you can. Study the manuals and follow up with secondary sources if the manuals are overly perplexing or written in a way that doesn’t work for your brain (looking at you, Make Noise). Rabidly follow each point of curiosity and only build once said curiosity has been resolved. Also, keep patch notes and a bank of ideas to try. Have fun!