Arturia Modular-V Walkthrough Ep.05 - Key Follow. (This one melted my brain...!)

The Moog Modular was an absolute monster of a synthesizer, and Arturia's emulation of it is a joy to behold. It's a great introduction to Modular synthesis - the idea of building a synth from blocks of components - since it's so easy to make amazing sounds!
In this episode I tackle the mental swamp that is Key Follow. It's powerful, but takes a while to get your head around and I'd say it's one of the more advanced modules that this synth has to offer. Definitely worth the effort though!
About me:
My name is Anthony Chisnall. I'm a musician and a songwriter. I've created this channel - One Man and His Songs - in order to share with you everything I learn as I strive to improve my songwriting skills. Watch my songs evolve each week - the rhythms, the melodies, the lyrics, the production... everything I need to learn in order to produce professional-sounding music of which I can be proud!
I play the electric and acoustic guitar, and the bass guitar, and record all of my own synth-based sounds myself too, but I can't sing very well (huge understatement!), and so my wife, Pauline, who has a lovely singing voice, has come to my rescue. You'll hear her on all of my songs.
All of my music is written in Steinberg's Cubase.
I want to build a community of music-lovers with whom I can share my experiences, and from whom I can gain valuable feedback as I pursue my dream of learning to write great songs. I really hope you'll join me on my journey!
For more information about me, and to download a free copy of my own self-written music assistant software called Guitar Tutor, please head over to my website - www.onemanandhissongs.com.
You can also follow me on Twitter - / 1manandhissongs .
Thanks to:
ThumbnailTemplates.com for their KZbin template files.
Outro Template made by Grabster - / grabstertv

[@JasonNaas]

Oh man, this one went way over my head. I'm going to have to watch it a few more times...

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

Tell me about it... I still bear the scars ;)

[@soundboy605]

Love you Man many thanks

[@gumimoon]

lost from last episode (4) hahaha. it's ok i'll come back later after i master 1-3 playing w the instrument. THANK YOU so much for these videos

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

You're very welcome. Yes, things do get a bit tricky, don't they!

[@gumimoon]

@@OneManAndHisSongs i just learned that u can record automation of every knob that u like on touch mode and im having so much fun just w little (out of many) that i understood from u 🥺 have a nice day💓

[@iljaa1897]

I suppose the confusion about LOW HI triggers was first planted into ours heads after reading the user manual lol. I also thought, at first, after reading the Key Follow section that these two notes are essentially acting as the Pivot, but in reality it's done by the Key Shift note! Thank you very much for providing an illustrative example - everything makes sense now. :)

[@KuijperRob]

this reminds me of my sound engineering workshop using a MS20..its raw fundamental but so important to understand what you doin..compliments on this great work!

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

Great to hear, thanks for the feedback :)

[@presetreveal]

Thank you for this detailed walkthrough of Arturia's Modular-V! Your explanation of the different modules and their functions was clear and concise, and your demonstration of how they can be patched together to create unique sounds was really helpful. your tips on how to use the Modular-V in a musical context were very valuable. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise!

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

Excellent stuff! Thanks so much for the feedback :)

[@MHWmix]

Your videos are great, really clear explanations and nice breakdowns of the different concepts.

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

That's great to hear, many thanks :)

[@SERGEMANES]

A big thank you for your videos. I learned a lot from you.

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

Thank you, I appreciate it :)

[@yigitcankahraman9106]

oh man this was the most confusing one in between the first five tutorials about Modular v3 haha Great tutorial series. Much Appreciated!!

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

Yup, no argument here! It took a while to see straight again after recording that one ;)

[@edwardnixon1782]

I can certainly see the utility of your example for K2 regarding the filter mod. What about changing the tuning or temperament of the overall output? I was curious about creating a scale similar to Stochausen's Studie II from back in the day: a 25 equal step scale to repeat each 5 octave ratio, i.e., 5:1 (rather than 2:1, the equal tempered usual.) They've done the math and the 'semi-tone' would expand width to something like 1.066. I interpret that to be a Ratio of 1.066 here? Stockhausen started the sequence at 100 Hz and went up something like 80 + steps. This was long before MIDI and he was using lab instruments as generators. And tape. I just looked at the manual and it's not very helpful because it uses the same word to define a term, e.g., Threshold means threshold, etc. I guess the Slope would be 1.066, the Threshold, Pivot and Low would be G2-ish and the High would be, say, G9, the top. Kind of off the deep end but micro-tonal stuff could be possible too. In theory. Have you ever run into that sort of application for Key Follow?

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

I haven't - I must confess I'm a complete philistine when it comes to micro tonality: my boring ears like their nice, simple ratios :) The only difficulty I can imagine is in the lack of fine granularity in the Modular - it doesn't really like being told to be exact! Sounds intriguing, though, I'll definitely have a play with the idea.

[@edwardcontreras3260]

watching around 20:00 when you do that build up from c2 to c5 it sounds like the build up to blinded by the light, im a bit confused on this one even after messing with it myself, but i suppose it comes with time!

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

Key Follow is one of the more esoteric concepts, for sure. I think it's implemented in a particularly unintuitive way on the Mod-V too!

[@timppaUT]

Is that key follow curve really linear, or just for illustration purposes? As isn’t at least keyboard control voltage stepped one, as - as far as I know - every single key should have preset control voltage set for that one key only. So not linear?

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

I'm no electronics expert but I'm pretty sure it's linear. I can't imagine how you could implement a non-linear scaling key-follow algorithm, but I'm afraid that's beyond my understanding to prove

[@gilormsplay]

Depressingly complicated.

[@OneManAndHisSongs]

No argument here