I don’t know, but I feel Moog Music is trying to “re-invent the wheel” in a way… They should maybe try to actually invent a new instrument (much like Bob did back in the sixties) instead of trying to mess with centuries old classics ? It feels to me like some other companies do, when they will take some existing product and add a clock to it, or something… (this was a “borrowed” statement from Homer Simpson in reply to his half-brother when he was trying to demonstrate his totally new invention to the Simpson family).
To be perfectly honest, that was 22 seconds of what sounded like a guitar synth from the eighties…
Anyway, what’s the purpose of completely masking the warm, beautiful sound of a classic guitar with synthetic sounding overtones ?
Better buy a Sitar, and you’ll get better sounding real harmonics…
Stop trying to re-invent the wheel, Moog Music, and concentrate on creating a polyphonic Voyager that everyone has been asking for since 2002 !
Sorry to be so negative but I’m tired of this toying with classic instruments. So far, I’ve never seen anyone use the Moog overpriced electric guitar in any popular groups. They even had to lower the price in order to try to get rid of overstock of these things. That should have told them something ?
THANK YOU! I feel there aren’t many folks around here who see through this load of overhyped cow manure. Just because a new product says “Moog” on it doesn’t mean it’s going to redefine music for christ’s sake. If anything causes Moog to fall behind the competition, it will be their unwillingness to let go of the ideal that they can come out with a product that revolutionizes music in the 21st century the way Bob did with the Mini in the 20th. No one ever changed the world by taking blind stabs in the dark at trying to change the world. It happens when a person has what is called “vision”. If Moog sincerely wants to continue Bob’s legacy, they will focus on designing quality analog synthesizers based on the original circuits that Bob gave us. That’s what they excel at.
This is definitely real cool technology, but I don’t think it will redefine the music industry or anything, but I really hope moog has a new SYNTHESIZER in the works that will whether its polyphonic or monophonic or whatever. I think its time they had a new flagship synth
Listen, I’m not an employee of Moog.
However, I am a person who has personally experienced this technology. I’m an experienced synthesist. I’m also a person whose job it is to promote Bob Moog’s legacy.
If I say it’s going to change everything, I’m not just trying to generate hype.
If you don’t get why this thing is amazing, it’s because you don’t know everything about it, yet. Before you start to decry it, or decide that it’s all hype, perhaps you should wait until you have all the info.
What legacy are we talking about? The will to invent something really innovative for musicians? Or making really good synthesizers?
Keeping on doing what you excel at is certainly not revolutionning anything. I think there is a confusion between what most of people want from Moog Music and what efforts Moog Music is making in order to do a step aside in the instruments designers queue.
I have a huge, huge respect for people trying to be innovative. The technology the LEV-96 seems to use does speak to me as a former advanced physics student (…they had no work for me ) Another example is the Hartmann Neuron: well, it was not exactly a commercial success and most people missed the point as the Neuron was not about sounding astounding but it was about how astounding is the way it produces sound. Now, I’m ok to say that maybe the designers missed some point about it as most of the synth users have more interest in the sound than in the way it’s produced. Anyway.
A new synth with cool features speaks to me, yes. The fantasy of a polyphonic Moog speaks to m… huh to many people, yes. But this is common process: give people what they want -sorry for the short wording.
Dave Smith is more of those, with all due respect. Every new DSI synth is using the same technology, voice architecure etc. It’s a new package, a new market target etc. Which certainly is smart and fair: some cannot afford a prophet 08 and they are excited by the MophoX4, it’s a trade off that allow them to access the DSI sound/instrument design.
BTW the Little Phatty -as yourself said in another topic- is an success in making Moog more accessible too.
I’m ok with that.
Still I cannot help separating that from stuffs like the Neuron, the future LEV-96, the EHX Superego,… sometimes the stuff is not BIG, sometimes it’s smart or well thought. Often, it’s enough for me to consider it, even if I don’t have any use of it.
Isn’t it ironic ? Guitar players will have had 2 polyphonic Moog devices (the Moog Guitar and the LEV96) in only the last four years, while the rest of us are still awaiting a modern, proper, polyphonic Moog keyboard for 31 years now, since the Memorymoog…
Hmmm… I understand you are waiting for a polyphonic keyboard synth, not for any device from Moog that would allow to play polyphonically. Don’t worry: guitarsists haven’t had that neither
My point is that this technology might be related to that, albeit in a still early experimental step.
The impetus to play chords on a synthesizer is an unnatural one. It comes from having experience with pianos. No one picks up a saxophone and says “wait, you mean I can’t play more than one note at a time?” When Herb Deutsch and others told Bob he should have the synthesizer controlled by a keyboard, and he himself decided that modulation was more interesting in monophony, he created a monophonic synthesizer whose frequency was controlled by a keyboard. The notion that it should play chords is erroneous. But certainly, that notion was so powerful that in inspired him to create a “polyphonic” divide-down device for Wendy Carlos, and then inspired the company he created to work very diligently to give the musicians what they wanted: a polyphonic synthesizer.
But as we all know (or should know), it requires either a lot of money, or a lot of sacrifices to make a polyphonic synthesizer. To make a true polyphonic modular synthesizer, you would need a keyboard which could distribute notes to various oscillators… but which note to which oscillator with which setting? The sacrifices made to make this affordable and controllable lead us to a situation where we didn’t have individual oscillator control, and notes were sent to an overall oscillator setting. This was not modular, and was not a synthesizer. It was a combination between a synthesizer and an organ.
A true polyphonic synthesizer would allow individual control over the timbre of each voice, would allow multiple voices per note, and would allow you to control which note went to which oscillator. Because of the insane challenges regarding these requirements, a LOT of sacrifices were made.
The moment you say “I want a polyphonic Moog,” you are actually saying “I want a Moog that plays chords… like a piano or organ.” To do that, you will have to change the nature of the synthesizer. Completely. You can’t say “I like the monophonic Moog, and want it to play chords…” because the moment you make an affordable polyphonic synthesizer is the moment where you change the device into something else.
A Memorymoog isn’t a synthesizer. An Oberheim 8 voice isn’t a synthesizer.
What is a synthesizer, come to think of it ? It is an apparatus designed to produce sound using variable electrical currents. Be it monophonic or polyphonic.
I will agree that a polysynth is not well suited to do sonic exploration experimentation. But that’s not what they’re supposed to do. Their purpose is to make music and harmonies, and chords. Like beautiful pads or strings. Which you can do with a mono synth, using a lot of patience and dedication, and a lot of tracks on a recording device, one note at a time. Like Wendy did, brilliantly, back in 1967.
I’m simply asking why, in 2012, should we settle to linking mutiple Slim Phatties together, or revert to using decades old recording tricks, in order to get chords out of an analog Moog synth, when we could easily have a modern day version of a 8 voice Memorymoog. And a reliable one, on top of that!
Marc, haven’t you ever heard the fantastic pads that can come out of a 3 oscillators per note, ladder filtered Memorymoog ? Or the panned, voluptuous, creamy sounds of an Oberheim 8 voice ?
EricK, if you’re refering to the start of the Moog Documentary, by Hans Fjellestad, where we hear an audio tape message from Bob to Herb, followed by a musical performance on what Bob later called the “Abominatron”, you might not know that the original performance on the prototype Moog played by Bob was replaced by a recording of a “song” composed by Hans himself, and played by 33 specifically for the film…
We all know that every single Moog made before the special custom-made chords module for Wendy Carlos, and later the Memorymoog and Opus 3 and MG-1, were all monophonic. If I’m not mistaken.
The “Polyphonic Fanfare” sound byte follows this quote and is the one that (as far as I knew until your statement) was used in the film. I don’t know why they wouldn’t want to use the original due to it’s historic nature. You may very well be right about 33 redoing it though. Or perhaps we are talking about two different pieces of music?
If, what Bob called the Abominatron was indeed polyphonic, and it was the very first prototype of analog music synthesizer modules presented to Herb, then it’s even more to the point to getting Moog Music back to polyphony again. Back to the roots of the polyphonic prototype that started it all !
This point is dealt with in the movie Alain has just mentionned. To me, it’s a truly interesting element to understand how the Minimoog was born. I now really (try to?) consider a monophonic synth as a saxophone, violin etc more than as a “keyboard instrument”, that is an, instrument whose interface allows playing more than one note at a time.
Plus I’m more an harmony guy than a melody or rythm guy… so I definitely have to work this and overcome my gap at this
Most of the time, people -at least on some forum I visit- state the Minimoog or Phatty or whatever monophonic is “awesome, too bad it can play only one note at once”. Unlike Marc, I wouldn’t say the impetus to play chords is not natural: can an impetus be unnatural? However, I think that from the moment when the Minimoog sound generating part was associated to the Minimoog interface aka a piano-like keyboard, this was to be expected. It would be more like having 44 mouths winding and 88 hands shaking but only one saxophone…
To me, the most unnatural part of it was to associate of a piano keyboard with a monophonic generator. I’m saying that with as much distance as I can take: obviously I feel really good playing monophonic keyed synths. Hey, I’m in my 30’ies
Now, a synthesizer can obviously be polyphonic, as Alain said. The method of sound generation is different on a Prophet, but it still is a synthesizer. To be consistent with the former paragraphs, I’d say it makes more sense for a keyed instrument to be polyphonic. Yes, maybe seeing it this angle would me more logical: first the interface as it is the part of the instrument the musician fell, and then the sound generation process.
Anyway. Thinking out loud on an issue I often come back to.
I don’t know. One does what one can with what one has.
There’s no natural or unnatural impetus.
Just instinct and capability.
On a sax, the player concentrates on phrasing that one note because he has to.
If he could, I’m sure he’d play chords… and that would be natural too.
In jazz, ragtime, classical and other genres, pianos can provide a rhythm section behind a melody.
It’s done because it can be and someone tried.
Whether that’s natural or not is up the player. It’s all subjective.
You didn’t find Scott Joplin playing Rachmaninoff, nor Vladimir Horowitz playing syncopated jazz.
They did what they could and what was natural to them.
Same for synths.
There’s no use in making synth definitions or excuses for a certain technology.
Divide-down technology in synths was done because there wasn’t anything else available then.
Moog did what they could with what they had.
As technology got better they went to voice assignment (memorymoog) like most others.
But it doesn’t make one a true synth or organ and the other not.
They are what they are.
If Moog and Arp could have done it differently, I’m sure they would have.
Divide-down synths still required a LOT of components and labor.
Even an Arp Omni was over $2000 back then.
The Polymoog more than twice that.
I see no reason why Moog couldn’t do a polyphonic today using any number of available technologies.
Same for a modular. Even a totally programmable one.
The reasons they’re not may be due to what Moog perceives as their market.
Today it seems that performance and instant gratification is more in vogue than writing music.
Back in the 60s and 70s, many Moog buyers were composers and songwriters behind the scenes.
They had no show.
The problem (as I see it) is that Moog is constantly targeting a youth oriented performance market and youths eventually grow up.
As adults they would like the gear to evolve with them.
We instead get apps, theremins, guitars and lit back panels, not polyphonic synths or physics based modulars.
(this was a “borrowed” statement from Homer Simpson in reply to his half-brother when he was trying to demonstrate his totally new invention to the Simpson family).
) Another example is the Hartmann Neuron: well, it was not exactly a commercial success and most people missed the point as the Neuron was not about sounding astounding but it was about how astounding is the way it produces sound. Now, I’m ok to say that maybe the designers missed some point about it as most of the synth users have more interest in the sound than in the way it’s produced. Anyway.