Folktek Mescaline

[lumena]

You sold the little box of crazy?

Ya it’s complicated but like a stray kitten with a broken tail it just needs love.

[Jwar]

So, hows everyone getting along here? I haven't been messing with it much. I love it but am having a bit of a hard time figuring out how to actually utilize it in a musical context for me. I'm glad I'm seeing this now though instead of going full on modular or anything. I dig it, but I may sell again. lol

[MrNovember]

I think I've decided to sell it. I keep forcing myself to use it, but I'm still not fully enjoying it. It's a really cool concept and I can get crazy sounds out of it, but it just doesn't inspire me the way I thought it would.

If anyone wants to trade me a Digitakt, hit me up.

[UglyCasanova]

I sampled the sounds to my OP-1 and flipped it. Same sounds, easier workflow.

[MrNovember]

I sampled the sounds to my OP-1 and flipped it. Same sounds, easier workflow.

yeah maybe I should aim to get a Digitakt first. An OP-1 would also work...

...fixed:

If anyone wants to trade me a Digitakt or an OP-1, hit me up.

[oscillateur]

I sampled the sounds to my OP-1 and flipped it. Same sounds, easier workflow.

More like a subset of the same sounds, though .

I'm still not sure about mine, I like how it sounds, the Mental module is great and the fx on Channel are good too but I'm not a fan of the DuPont connectors. I'd love that thing more if it had minijacks everywhere but then it would be bigger and more expensive.

I need to spend more time with it, and doing that usually gives me interesting results but overall I'm more attracted to my 7U euro that sits next to it, because it's an instrument I'm more familiar with maybe.

That's the thing, I think : this is an instrument that demands a decent time investment, even for people familiar with modulars. Because it speaks its own language (only Channel is quite straightforward, but even Motion is a quite unique sequencer).

[lumena]

Temporary setup.

Channel is moving to a small skiff and Rossum Control Forge and Disting mk4 will be added when they arrive. I think when the envelope follower x4 and the Mic x2 from folktek ship in Jan that will about do it except for a quad VCA. I really have gotten to like the Dupont cables but I am careful and if they bend out they go. Wish I had grabbed a conduit to go with it. If one becomes available that will fit in ... I hope. Biggest problem with modular is case size and it still being portable.

In spite of all the issues and learning curve the sound of the Mescaline is pretty unique and if I wanted a perfect oscillator then I would just use the Moog or Omnisphere. Sampling is definitely a thing with Mescaline hence the Disting and the Morphagene. (Disting as sample player, midi file to cv, general I need an extra module...)


I like how quirky the sequencer is loving things like cv2 trigger 3 etc. and a solid sequencer is always just a midi file away with the disting. I think the more control voltages you send Motion the more interesting it becomes.

A lot of musicians fled Buchla for Moog during the first synth wave and made a lot of great music, it totally made sense then. This new wave of sound boxes is also pretty polarizing. Quirky sound boxes don't just play nice with things but as far as sampling for sound fx or for using as a basis for making sound libraries I think the Mescaline has real strengths.
Really hope to hear more track from you guys who stick it out as I am always inspired by what you do.

[Jwar]

Some interesting thoughts here. I do love how my Mescaline sounds, and that's what brought me back to it after selling it the first time. What I dislike is mainly my lack of knowledge. So, like Osc says, maybe I need to just spend more time with it. That makes sense. I guess I cannot go expecting the world out of something until I give it the right amount of time and understand what it excels at and what its short comings are. When I first got it, I was using it daily. Now I haven't touched it in like two weeks. That's my fault though and I know that.

Really I think what would help me is #1 having sturdier Dupont cables because these ones fucking suck, #2 moving it to somewhere with a better work flow. I have it in my office currently and it's counter productive to produce music there.

I'd like to rack it for the power alone. I've heard countless people say it works better with isolated power to each panel. Is that something you've found true lumena? I've been looking at smaller cases with supplies just because of this thing.

[lumena]

When I moved it to the case I noticed that all my tuning of Channel shifted a bit. That was pretty easy.
Second thing was that suddenly I had more signal everywhere so all the outputs needed to be reduced a bit. As far as Mental is concerned I then had to totally redo all the tuning on the top section so that it was a bit more stable. Best part of this is than it's constant now unlike before where I had to adjust a lot. A good power supply is a much better solution to almost everything.

I figure you have seen the other posts with images of tuning the Mental section but who knows what sticks, the spaghetti could be cooked but only the wall is a valid test.
The mental section seems to be really all about setting up the trimmers on the back so that small triggers cause the unstable oscillators to play. When I tuned it most recently I set up a few patches that I knew worked...

basic pitchable bass note.pdf

(1.68 MiB) Downloaded 148 times

something like this...

then I adjusted the block of trimmers to just below oscillation using nothing connected, then I went back to the patch above and checked again. It's really trial and error to adjust but it does seem to be very stable now and my main complaint is that I can't really get it to track smoothly using cv. I am closing in on it but it might not be possible. If that turns out to be the case then it's going into the Disting (quantizer) and that way each note triggered can be forced into tune.

folktek mental - 1.jpg (109 KiB) Viewed 2364 times

One other thing I think that gets overlooked.
The mod section.
1. CV in can increase mod strength by adding the trigger voltage to the sweep, sounds weird but does work.
2. CV out acts like simple LFO... mostly
3. Mod LED. also like a simple LFO but seems to load funny in some patches, more likely to give you unstable pulses...
4. CV1
5. CV2 These last 2 are really a bit strange but like an oscillating switch, like pressing a key so best to think of them as a way to interrupt a connection like disconnecting a patch cable.


I try to be helpful but really I am lost often, just learning to enjoy not being anywhere until I get there. All hints or discoveries welcome and if I get it wrong public shaming is fine... just tell me the right answer.

[baremountain]

Sry for the bump but I just dropped this EP recorded entirely on my Mescaline, mainly in Nov-Dec last year, track 5 came from a couple weeks ago though. https://baremountain.bandcamp.com/album/mescaline-ep

[PeteeBee]

Sry for the bump but I just dropped this EP recorded entirely on my Mescaline, mainly in Nov-Dec last year, track 5 came from a couple weeks ago though. https://baremountain.bandcamp.com/album/mescaline-ep

This is great! I'm only in Tides so far, but really digging it.

There is something that I really dig about making it obvious exactly what gear is used, especially when it's a really limited set like this. I'm thinking of the Nathan Moody stuff that is a different set up for each cassette. Really great stuff, Baremountain!

[lumena]

Will listen this weekend
Great idea!
Me I am still working with the mescaline but like a fungus it grew a bit.Plaits fit right in with it - nice selection of noise generators there -and now the lyra8 has tendrils connecting back and forth. The folktek stuff has a really soft and harmonic distortion that is my favorite type of fuzz. (Somehow a plague bearer snuck in as the fungus grew) The unstable oscillators in the Lyra compliment it nicely.

The modular case the mescaline lives in is frozen in one 6u rack although i swapa (swampa) few thing in and out. I late ordered a resonant garden instead of expanding the eurorack - of course its already a month late arriving - if I didn’t like waiting so much I could have bought lots of other stuff. The Lyra8 was 6 months so I guess if I want small unique builds its part of the deal.
The road less travelled - all those who wander are not lost etc.
A lot of the sounds have been moving as samples into Omnipshere, probably my next really serious output will be a sound set for Omnisphere and a simpler rack for Ableton. If anyone is using either let me know maybe you want to test some things out.