I've been trying to explore what Artimo briefly touched on in the tweakbook about emulating modular synth patches using matrix control on the phantom. I find it really hard to get anything decent sounding (shooting for stuff like Edgar Winter Group's Frankenstien and intros to Steve Miller's Jet Airliner and Fly Like an Eagle).

I fiddle around with stuff, but all I get is the typical bleep, blop, bleep of random pitches, or boring filter swoops. Anyone got some ideas of making some modular synth emulations that are pretty expressive and usable? I guess the concepts are more important than the actual settings (what signals you route where). I don't own a modular synth, so I'm pretty inexperienced, but understand the concepts.

I did come up with one decent one (although it's probably pretty weak on the modular synth category). I call it Fester. It's a bubbly, phase shifting sound, caused by dual parallel waveforms with LFO2 (random wave) controlling the rate of LFO1 (steady oscillating) which alters the TVF and TVA of the waveform in opposite phase. I transpose it a couple octaves and use it as a spooky drone.

Use 2 identical waveforms (I used 562 Oberhiem Squares)
I set up slow (but slightly different) ramp TVA attacks with infinite sustain and some LPF around 70.
Set LFO1's w/fade times around 70 (so that the effect comes on gradual).
Set LFO1's TVF depths to something near +25 (but not exactly the same) and set the TVA depths to around -25. The polarity is key because the effect is an exchange between low volume and low filter, which makes it less harsh sounding, but still moving.
Set LFO2 to random waves with different rates (i.e. 90 and 50). It's also cool if you modify pan depth with LFO2.
Next set Ctrl1 source to LFO2 and destination to LFO1 rate (+63). It's also neat if you use LFO2 to vary LFO1 pan depth.