connecting two mothers

[franklinstower]

I just bought three mothers and want to use two of them for drones using the first mother's keyboard to run both. I cannot figure out how to do that. Anybody willing to help a new guy out?

[Brian G]

Have fun

Take the gate out from the first to gate in on the second, take KB out from the first to vco 1v/oct on the second.
To go from KB out on the first to the second you may want to use a 12 inch patch cord, a six will reach but it is tight.

The outs have the color background the ins are just printed on the surface, the 32 has a guide at the top of the patch section. Using the mults you can do some other creative routing of the KB out.

[franklinstower]

Thank you. First entrance into modular and while it is pretty exciting and interesting it is also a bit daunting.

[franklinstower]

Ok so I have done this connection and it is working except for one thing. The master mother 32 is playing one octave higher than the other one even though they are set to the same octave. Any ideas what is going on?

[Vondragonnoggin]

Ok so I have done this connection and it is working except for one thing. The master mother 32 is playing one octave higher than the other one even though they are set to the same octave. Any ideas what is going on?

You haven't accidentally transposed a sequence higher on one, have you? They can have the same pitch knob setting but one playing higher if you have pressed a key with one in higher octave register.

[franklinstower]

No that's not it. I am not even doing sequences just using the one keyboard to run both oscillators for drones.

[Vondragonnoggin]

Seems odd that it is exactly one octave up. If it was calibration, you would expect it to be slightly off, not an exact octave.

[franklinstower]

I have an hour to fiddle around with them today and am going to start all over and switch the master one and see if that helps. There is every chance I have done something to tweak it wrongly and haven't noticed. This is only the second synth I have ever owned and have no idea what I am doing yet with it.

[franklinstower]

To anyone browsing this thread. I hooked the two mothers together as stated. Do I need to have a cable hooked to audio outs of both the mothers going to the PA speaker to get sound from both Mothers? Right now I only have audio cable coming from the second and obviously not getting sound out of the first. I have read the manual and connecting two Mother 32's is not really spelled out. I a sure there is a way to do this with patch cables but really don't know how all of this works yet.

[captainkidd]

To anyone browsing this thread. I hooked the two mothers together as stated. Do I need to have a cable hooked to audio outs of both the mothers going to the PA speaker to get sound from both Mothers? Right now I only have audio cable coming from the second and obviously not getting sound out of the first. I have read the manual and connecting two Mother 32's is not really spelled out. I a sure there is a way to do this with patch cables but really don't know how all of this works yet.

Sorry I am fairly new to the Mother but I would think It probably depends what exactly you are after, do you just want the results from the second 32 that is being driven by the first? If so then the one cable out of the second is what you need. And of course you would need another cable coming from the first Mother to get that audio. I don't think that you would be getting any actual audio from the first to the second one with just attaching the audio from the first to the second through the audio in. The audio in would only be used to drive the second one, not produce audible signals.

I do have kind of a parallel question that I am curious about for anyone else. This might be obvious and I am completely missing it but what is the audio out solution if one was to mount a Mother 32 in a Eurorack case? I mean in the stock case you have the power and audio out on the back, and of course when you mount it in a Eurorack you would just power it from the Eurorack power but what about audio?

[franklinstower]

Ok that helps. So if i have three mother 32's what you are saying is that I will need one cable coming out of each mother 32 going into the PA speaker. Is that right.

On your question-- the owners manuel says all you do is pull off the panel of the mother 32 and there is a 10 pin power header on the back of the PCB that accepts a 10- pin eurorack power cable.

Oops that's not what you asked -- no idea man.

[franklinstower]

Ok so I have done this connection and it is working except for one thing. The master mother 32 is playing one octave higher than the other one even though they are set to the same octave. Any ideas what is going on?

You haven't accidentally transposed a sequence higher on one, have you? They can have the same pitch knob setting but one playing higher if you have pressed a key with one in higher octave register.

Lets say I have accidentally transposed one-- How would I fix it? At point I had this set up working perfectly note for note and then in another sitting I have had two problems. 1 is I change notes on the master and the other mother doesn't change notes at all and the other is I play a note on the master and the other mother plays one or two octaves lower....


Right now I have the first mother set at octave 2 and in order to get the second mother to play the same octave it has to be set at octave 5.

[Vondragonnoggin]

Set the octave indicators the same - lights will be lit up in the same place on octave scale - and press one of the little keys (probably lowest key)

Incidentally thats how you transpose while sequence playing - choose octave and press whichever key in that octave scale you want

How are you patching the second to slave to the first? Are you tempo syncing too?

[franklinstower]

Set the octave indicators the same - lights will be lit up in the same place on octave scale - and press one of the little keys (probably lowest key)

Incidentally thats how you transpose while sequence playing - choose octave and press whichever key in that octave scale you want

How are you patching the second to slave to the first? Are you tempo syncing too?

At present I am not using the sequencer at all -- I play bass in a jam band with my synths. Just using the first ones keyboard to pick notes to play drones in.

But why does one have to be set octaves higher than the other to play at the same octave?

[Vondragonnoggin]

Set the octave indicators the same - lights will be lit up in the same place on octave scale - and press one of the little keys (probably lowest key)

Incidentally thats how you transpose while sequence playing - choose octave and press whichever key in that octave scale you want

How are you patching the second to slave to the first? Are you tempo syncing too?

At present I am not using the sequencer at all -- I play bass in a jam band with my synths. Just using the first ones keyboard to pick notes to play drones in.

But why does one have to be set octaves higher than the other to play at the same octave?

I said set octaves the same, not higher.

If you are playing using external keyboard and you set the sequencer keys octave setting higher than the other and press a key inadvertently on the M32, it will transpose the notes up an octave

Why don't you try this - start both sequencers at the same octave setting (using the octave up/down buttons) and press the first little key on the m32's (lowest note) with tuning set at dead center - forget your external keyboard for a minute. Just try this and tell me if they start playing in the same octave again