I guess since I'm calling this the Circle of Synth, I should start probably at the beginning.
My euro journey really started shortly after getting into pedals when I bought an EHX Superego. I loved the drones and the ways that I could turn a single note into so much more. After that, I was focused on figuring out ways to manipulate my drones (eg. Arpanoid for "sequencing", Pitch Bay for "chords", etc). Honestly, I was never much of a guitar player and this all seemed much more natural to me. Playing pedals was infinitely more satisfying to me than playing guitar. Eventually, I realised that I didn't even need the Superego to make drones and bought a Drone Commander (which at this point, why the hell did I ever sell that?!). And the more I messed around with the Drone Commander, the more I realised my pedalboard was becoming modular, so I joined Muffs and started researching (as a second aside, I hated my first few months on Muffs. It just didn't seem very accepting of new people there and synths are ridiculously confusing for noobs).
Anyway, after a few months of researching I ended up finding this for sale locally and I snatched it up:
I messed around with that setup for about a month and quickly learned what I liked and what I didn't like. In the coming year, I ended up flipping every single one of my first modules except the uZeus and Happy Ending Kit (also for those of you keeping score, Maths was the module I kept the longest out of my first purchases, but still ended up deciding that my combination of Mini Slew, Sinclastic Empulatrix, and Samara were far superior). In the end, this is what I ended up with this:
And yet, that still wasn't enough for me and I was continuously looking for the next module. I would patch something up that I really enjoyed, but there would be some small part that I wasn't happy with, which would lead me to look into something to fix that part, leading me to another module, and another, and another....It honestly just didn't end. Near the end, I was very happy with the sounds I could produce and the ways I could effect them, but I still wasn't happy with my sequencing or rhythms. And yet, there were literally at least 4 or 5 times were I said: "I finally have a rack I am happy with", but that never actually seemed to be true in the end. I actually kind of got to a point where all I really wanted to do was collect more and more modules. I wasn't even really making music any more, I was just dreaming of more ways to make music. Honestly, that may be more of a problem with my addictive personality than with eurorack, but euro definitely doesn't really help that addiction.
Anyway, in addition, I came across a ton of modules that just didn't work for my setup. The best example is the Ieaskul F. Mobenthy modules, of which I owned and absolutely loved all of them, but I found that, while they worked great on their own, I could never really integrate them with the rest of my system. It just never really worked.
Surprisingly, my breaking point was actually backing the Koma Field Kit. That's when I started planning a skiff to complement the Field Kit and to use with external gear. When I took all of the modules out of my rack that I wanted to complement the Field Kit, I realised that the modules with which I was left were basically just a simple monosynth and none of them were really that important to me. Basically, I would be able to replace an entire 9U 84hp rack with something simple like the Mother 32 and be just as happy (yes I just called the Mother 32 simple). The more I thought it over, the more I realised that I really just didn't need all of my euro and that I just wasn't happy with it anyway. That's also when I started looking at alternatives. The Mother 32 was obvious to replace my monosynth needs. 0-Coast was obvious to replace my less conventional synth needs. And on top of that, I'd be able to afford a lot of the pedals, controllers, and other synths that I hadn't been paying attention too because I was trying to do it all in euroland.
So in conclusion, I loved euro because it offered me endless possibilities to make music. But in the end, there were too many instances where my collecting became more important than the music or where the standards just didn't seem to match up. Again, I don't really want this to be bash euro hour; I did actually keep a pretty decent system:
And for someone that is actually able to spend exorbitant amounts of money or is able to ignore the constant stream of new and "unique" modules, euro may still be for you.
TL;DR: I loved what I could do with my euro gear and the sounds I could get from it were amazing. I could honestly patch anything and get as experimental or subtractive as I wanted. But what I had was never enough and it never did everything I wanted. In the end, I was getting more pleasure planning the future than actually making noise.
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