Eurorack A to Z Tutorial Lesson 3: VCA part one

I wanted to give back to the community that has given me so much musical knowledge by creating a lesson series to help beginners just getting started with Eurorack modular synthesis. Eurorack is an incredibly flexible format that lets you create your own specialized instrument that is unique to you and your musical style. This is a tutorials series for anyone who wants to learn how to put together and use their own Euroack synth. I've tried to break things down into small videos that are easy to mentally digest and apply to your own electronic music. We will be exploring both east coast tonal and west coast avant-garde uses of the synthesizer.
This third video shows some of the basic uses of a eurorack VCA. Please leave a comment with any questions or requests and a like if this was helpful.
If you enjoyed this, please consider supporting my Patreon: / ethanjamesmusic
My shorts channel: / @ethanjamesmusicshorts...
My long form channel: / @ethanjamesmusic1

[@asmr6773]

👍👍🏻👍🏼👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿

[@SuperAcademie]

This is what I was searching for! These video’s are fantastic en super helpfull…Thank you so much! Do you have a Patreon channel?!

[@mastaboog749]

this has been helpful, building my first rack now. I have a midi controller hooked up, and can play notes which im super excited about. got dual oscillators going now so i can fit 2 notes at a time which is also exciting. I just want the note to stop playing, or have the ability to stop it (without hitting my pitch wheel and then making low rumbles when no noise comes out). So trying to learn about VCA and attenuators. These videos have already been helpful because i found a couple brands of modules I didn't know about which led to me to a couple great modular sale sites.

[@EthanJamesMusic1]

Great! I'm happy to hear these are helpful. For VCAs, even the cheap Doepfers are good, because you can get a lot of channels crammed into a small space

[@Piotr_Szarkiewicz]

Awesome job. Keep it up!

[@finerband123]

Great one!!

[@jjbing3]

Great series 💪🏾

[@EthanJamesMusic1]

thank you!

[@FluxFreeman]

What’s the benefit of having multiple VCA’s over let’s say a mixer? Sorry I’m new to modular

[@EthanJamesMusic1]

happy to answer! A mixer would just take in audio signals and work like you would expect a mixer to do. A VCA is more open ended; it asks, "how much?" So it doesn't have to be audio signals, it can mix and attenuate audio, voltage, or both. For example, I can take a random voltage and combine with an LFO or an envelope, and the VCA let's me choose how much of each voltage is passed on to the next part of the signal chain. Does that make sense?

[@FluxFreeman]

@@EthanJamesMusic1 yes that makes a lot of sense thanks for the insight!

[@Ralf-CGN]

Hi, I'm wondering when to use an VCA and and attenuater?

[@EthanJamesMusic1]

Hi! I cover that question in the video coming up on Monday, but the short answer is: 1) It depends on the VCA a bit. My VCAs exceed what the attenuators can do, so I use the VCA when I need to do something more extreme-sounding 2) Sometimes it's more convenient to use the VCA, and have all the knobs closer together in order to make changes quickly, as opposed to having knobs spread across an entire case. 3) VCAs can function as voltage mixers too, so if you want to have one or a few knobs controlling a LOT of changes at once, it can be more powerful than a single attenuator. I will cover this use further down the line.