It's good this is a playlist.The first 'Beads' entry in the list was a two minute impression because I figured Beads was discontinued and I needed to focus on modules you can still get. But there are a lot of used Beads modules available and I managed to get a brand new one from the dealer's shelve a few days ago. I decided to delete the old impression and shoot additional material with the trashed piano reference track. The ADDAC 112 arrived yesterday so I am still grinding keys and about to finish this compare.
Beads is a collector's item that's not very popular. I remember running to the store to get one when it was released, and being underwhelmed at first patch. Why is that? I guess expectations were high because old Clouds is one of the most successful modules in Eurorack ever. I truly believe Mutable should not have dropped the iconic name. But it doesn't matter. Mutable is retired and all modules in the collection became iconic landmarks in Eurorack history.
I also remember me writing stupid things like 'old Clouds is better'. Later I switched to a more diplomatic (but useless) 'it's different'. But today, two years later, I can say that Beads is actually a wonderful texture synth on its own. It's a grainmaker because it's using granular technology to synthesize these textures. It still sounds like Clouds, but with a much bigger vocabulary. The buffers are bigger, there are more bits, the UI is improved a lot and it provides predictable results once you figured it out. I think that's the real 'problem'. It's easier to revert to Clouds and let it be. I hope this video will shine a different light on it.
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @cinematiclaboratory