Mooging, to Moog: Conducting affairs in ways that incorporate a Moog.
How do you Moog?
I’ve been Mooging since the mid '80s, I guess. If a Juno 60 counts. Soon enough, I joined a band started and playing a Model D and The Rouge. Made some cool music using The Rouge and a Portastudio 4-track. Recorded some epic prog solos with the Model D, but tuning issues kept it off stage, and ultimately off my rig. Never could get that tone back…
FWIW: This was the nicest Model D I have ever seen, and it belongs to a famous Prog musician now, safe in his studio. #onethatgotaway
Now I’m back in the game with a Sub 37 and it is everything I’ve ever wanted from a Moog as a live performance instrument. Stable tuning, presets, EXP control and absolutely killer sounds!
Mostly playing classic sounding analog patches of my own creation, but the Sub has a distinct modern quality that should not be ignored. Mushrooms in a Cornfield is an amazing patch!
My first “real” synth was a Moog MG-1 (The Rogue’s little cousin) back in the early eighties. I’ve been dreaming of a Modular Moog PIII ever since I saw pictures of it on many LPs covers from the seventies.
My second Moog was back in 2008 with Voyager Old School. Eventually sold it to get my current Moog, a Minimoog D circa 1975.
Every chance I get, I will incorporate some Moog sounds into my original music work, as well as covers. Unparalleled for punching bass lines and searing leads (using the internal feedback trick).
I started out with the Polymoog back in 1985. This pic is ten years old. The Liberation has been sold - I liked the expression controls but it was the weakest sounding Moog I owned and the Voyager replaced it.
I have since then added the T3, MiniTaur, MF108M, MF105M, and MF101. The two MF104s in the pic are the original ones, great sounding delays.
Crown jewel is the old RA Moog Minimoog, serial #105x. Got one of those just before vintage prices started rising. Poor thing refused to stay in tune when I got it, so I hot-rodded it to improve the tuning without changing the sonority (I’m an EE). Bought all of the vintage stuff during the “great analog dump” of the early 1980s when DX7s and D50s reigned. Wish I had known about Moog Modulars then, oh well.
I can gig with any of this stuff. I maintain my own gear to keep them in top shape and I have Anvil cases for carting them. Most have modern MIDI retrofits. I am often asked why I have so many Moogs. Nothing really redundant here. I like to create my own sounds and they all have their strengths that I exploit.
Just starting to dig old Oberheims. Moogs and Oberheims co-exist very well. Nothing that compelled me to sell any moogs though, that would be sacrilege
It’s got the balls and girth of the Minimoog for leads and bass. Not much modulation options for FX. Many people dismissed it for years because it didn’t have a panel full of knobs, and the last couple of years it has been getting its due.
Source has 37 keys and a simpler LFO (triangle or square waveshape routable to VCOs and/or VCF) but full ADSR with single or multiple trigger and variable pulse width for VCOs. Keyboard tracking is off/half/full but I don’t lament the difference. The key trigger system is more reliable on the Source, no double triggers or glitches. Encore Electronics makes a MIDI retrofit that expands it to 256 patches, sysex dump/load, four octave keyboard range over MIDI, but no control over mod wheel. You lose the sequencer feature though. Had the retrofit for years and have been happy with it. I used it as a bass synth over MIDI and didn’t need MIDI mod wheel.
Dead simple arpeggiator, can be synced to MIDI clock with the retrofit. Hard sync SCREAMS. When in hard sync mode, the pitch wheel modulates only OSC2 so you can sweep the harmonics, great tool.
I played with the Studio Electronics SE-1 hoping it would replace the Source, it didn’t have near the balls of the Source.
Heya MC - i’m curious to hear your thoughts on the MiniTaur as someone who already has a T1 and T3, especially as last time I saw a post from you on the subject you said you had no intention of buying one.
I’d been considering acquiring one for the Osc Note Sync/Reset (I think some people call it soft sync) feature that the Taurus lacks but i’m a little torn.. seemed kinda silly to me to get a Minitaur for that when I own the Taurus and I can get Osc Note Sync type sounds from the Sub 37..
Back on topic… the Taurus 3 and the Sub 37 are the only Moogs I Moog with.
Mushrooms in a Cornfield really is a freaking amazing patch.
Right now I sequence everything via MIDI, but lately i’ve been taking some keyboard lessons so I can actually “play” my Moogs as their designers intended.
I didn’t think I would want a MT until I was looking into a compact system to gig with. I wanted to do a small format group (2-3 people) that relied heavily on MIDI. Sequenced bass, drums, backing parts. Emphasis on small packages for the small venues. That meant as much rackmount as possible.
There was a sale earlier this year so I grabbed a MT with rack ears. Wouldn’t mind a Voyager RME next.
How does the MT compare to the T1 and T3? It delivers that Taurus oomph. Really. I think it sounds a tad nastier in a good way. No regrets.
If you have T3 and Sub37 then I think the MT would be redundant. Probably the only benefit is its compact package. Soundwise they compare, some differences featurewise.
^I am really intrigued by the whole touch surface paradigm (their words, not mine LOL), but have absolutely no idea how they function, or what I should expect as a performer. I see these box/grid devices in stores/online and just kinda blink my eyes and wonder what it all means. I just might be getting old! LOL
No excuses though, I can go downtown and try out the modern stuff, ask some questions, maybe learn a thing a or two. Moog is local for me.
With Moog Apps, the touch surface paradigm is not really that important. What’s nice is that it makes some kind of a Moog sound affordable, portable and maybe the digital aspects gives you a lot of sonic possibilities but still with a lot of character. I mean it’s an app, but a Moog app.
I started Mooging around late 2002 when I told a friend he should get his Moog Rogue working. He said I could have it if I got it working (and I got it running pretty fast with that kind of incentive!). The sounds were so thick and analog and the controls felt right to me as opposed to software and virtual analogs.
I often found myself in guitar shops checking for synthesizers when I saw a Moog Phaser pedal and had to find out what all of those jacks did! I was not disappointed when I heard what it could do. This started a serious Mooger Fooger addiction, where I bought all of them and used them together as a modular synthesizer.
As with others who have done the modular Fooger thing, I kept running into a lack of separate envelopes and started branching out. I decided to start buying modules for a Moog format synthesizer. It was great, but to help fund it I had to sell off all of my Foogers. When my system was nearly complete, I realized that some of my favorite (wild and beasty) modular patches were made with my Foogers. That made me sad thinking about how I had this great system and ditched it only to miss it later. This led me to start buying the Foogers back, and now they had more MIDI and a new Fooger as well! I am just now back to being able to use the Foogers as a modular again and it is fantastic. The things I learned while building my Moog format modular helped me appreciate more of what the Foogers did and now I use them in different ways.
A friend of mine had an original MiniMoog, but it looked awful. It was all beat up and some of the keys were burnt in spots. I told him he should refinish it and he offered that job to me. I took it all apart, sanded the ugly paint off and stained it a beautiful darker stain. It was a job, but it looked so amazing after that! It was also fun to get to play on it a bit before and after I took it apart. What a great synth!
About a year ago, I was lucky enough to get a MemoryMoog too! I always wanted a flagship Poly synth and it is the most fantastic sounding synth I have ever played except the CS80 (more the polyphonic aftertouch than the keyboard). The brass sounds on it are just amazing! It has the Kenton MIDI kit installed and all 6 voices tune up nice. I have a FATAR 88-key controller with aftertouch to control that and other synths with.
Some great stories here! And wow Bryan, that is a major setup!!
I’m a guitar / bass player. It started during my Tone quest, switching from digital solid state amps and Multi FX to analog gear (tubes & lots of cables). I loved what Line6 had done - provided me a way to develop an ear for sound creation, and I love the possibility of playng synth sounds using strings. I came accross an MF-101 on sale at my local music shop in 2005. They had it for a while and couldn’t sell it!? I loved the possibility of the all the jacks on the back as well, and the freedom it provided to play the effect. It just sounded right.
I was hooked, and needed more, so I bought the CP & ring mod. The girl I was dating at the time brought home a MuRF, I bought a phaser next, then the delay then freq box. No hesitation when the ClusterFlux came out. I did swap the MuRF to a midi version, but nothing else since then as my “disposable” income is on hiatus temporarily and I’m doing more playing less gassing!
I use them all, the 101, 104, 108 and CP will always be permanent on my pedalboard, and the others get used often in the recording environment. I’m on the fence about getting a Sub 37 because I really love playing the strings and barely have the time to do that, so adding another instrument seems like too much to take on. My jam buds and I have had many a night where the jam fell short and we just made noise with all of these things plugged into each other tweaking, and playing musical chairs with them.
My favourite setup is using Animoog to play the ClusterFlux, with a freqbox sync’d, an octave pedal some place and a delay not far behind. Totally cheating using animoogs scaled keyboard, but that is helping me learn keys faster.
The electronics aspect of a system like this has also been a rewarding learning experience with respect to how pedals work, how music equipment works and why analog has mojo that most digital doesn’t. Everything I know about pedals, amps, recording gear, and synths has been due to Line6 & Moog.
I too had an early ‘fling’ with Line 6. I credit them with encouraging my distrust of digital FX processors and moving towards (mostly) analog FX. Really a great way to get started. Now when I chain a boatload of Foogers together, I don’t lose tone, rather I gain more and more as I add more pedals. Quite the opposite of my experience with Line 6.
One time (at bandcamp), I had just left work on a Wednesday evening. I picked up a copy of the local weekly and started to look through the club listings. Then I saw it, and immediately walked outside to flag down a cab.
The Moog Cookbook - Wednesday 7PM - $1:00
Still can’t believe I saw Manning and Kehew in their spacesuits for a buck. There was maybe fifty of us there. Roger’s Mom brought out a cake since it was his birthday. Just wow.
