"Octave Split" Feature Request

Hi Gang,

Although I do not currently own a Taurus, it is a condition of my sickness
that I find myself dreaming up feature requests for it anyway :wink:

When I looked at a picture of the 13 pedals my first thought was,
“What if I wanted to alternate between an E and an A a perfect fifth below it?”

I suppose it’s possible via fancy tap dancing on the Transpose parameter…

Or, you could possibly transpose to a new key and make the pedal corrections in your head…

But what if you had a setting (per patch) called “Octave Split” that allowed
you to make the pedals drop one octave when you played above a designated pedal?

For example, say you set the “Octave Split” to “A”. Then, as you walked up the pedal board,
you would suddenly drop down one octave for A, A#, B, and C. (Yes, I realize that both Cs
would then play at the same octave.)

Since it would be something you could enable or not per patch, it would only be used for songs
that need the higher pedals to be in a lower octave than the lower pedals. You’d also get to
save the split point for each preset that had Octave Split enabled.

Some of you may wonder, “Why would I want this?” But imagine a song that needs a D, then
a B below it, then a G below that, and finally an A. Let’s say that, for voice leading reasons, it’s
important that the B, G and A are not higher in pitch than the D.

By setting the “Octave Split” parameter to E (or, F, or F#, or G) this would be as easy as
just playing the correct pedals.

You could even make it so that incoming CV or MIDI notes would behave normally, even if “Octave Split”
was turned on. In other word, the “Octave Split” could only apply to the actual output of the pedals.

{My apologies if this idea has already been thought of and posted…}

i had a similar idea while back when i was drunk. i think you explained it better than i did though.

http://www.moogmusic.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8385

Holy Cow, you certainly did! Don’t know how I missed that one.

The 13-pedal issue has bugged me since the late '60s - early '70s when I started taking lessons on my home organ.

Of course, back then, I had no idea there was even such a thing as “feature requests”.

You don’t get photos like that anymore. Clasic. Hopefully Amos will get back to us on this. As it’s software it could be done which is at least a hope.

Not a bad idea… I believe the performance of “La Villa Strangiato” (among others) could benefit from such a feature.

i have no idea what that is, but if it helps the cause i’m for it.

Can you be more specific? The original was played live by Rush on Taurus Is without this feature.

Oh Rush. Not a fan of their stuff really. My guess is a band that big could have two, each set to a different octave. Also maybe it can be done on one pedal but with lots of switching, this might make it easier? Can’t harm to add it.

when played live they used two Taurus I’s, one for Geddy and one for Alex. Could be that Alex’ was set an octave higher.

Usually the other way around - on the dual Taurus songs, Ged normally plays the higher Taurus parts, & Alex plays the low ones.

Actually, the late Gary Strater from Starcastle did use two sets of Taurus I’s, side by each.
Starcastle, circa 1977 (Hmmm… a jetglo Ric 4001 and Taurus pedals. Wonder who else used those in the mid 1970’s…) :sunglasses:

In hindsight, I was going to say that the “La Villa” part I’m thinking of was played on a set of Taurus 2’s, which Alex did use, but the 2’s didn’t arrive on the scene until “Moving Pictures”… yet there’s still clearly two “A’s” played, one octave apart (not in unison). The sequence of A-D-E-D-A… I believe it’s in the “Monsters” and “Monsters (Reprise)” sections?

That A-D-E-D-A part is in the “Strangiato Theme” section, and it’s A DOWN to D-E-D and back UP to A on the Taurus, so no need for octave switching. The fact that the guitar goes UP from A to D-E-D might be misleading.

The “Monsters” section contains the riff from the Bugs Bunny cartoons :slight_smile:.

Also, I have never seen pictures of Taurus 2s on stage with Rush and don’t recall ever seeing them mentioned in articles on the band.

Interesting conversation (for me at least) anyway!

Rush never used Taurus 2s, they stuck with their T1s until the late 90s. Geddy’s T1s were modified so he could trigger his Oberhiem for layers. This was before MIDI mind you.

They don’t have any of the old stuff, they sold it. They’re not hoarders and there isn’t an “aladdin’s cave” warehouse of Rush gear somewhere on the planet. Before they sold the T1s and Oberheims they sampled all the sounds they use and today they are triggered from MIDI pedals.

If Geddy hoards anything, it is baseball relics. He is a huge baseball fan.

When they did their last CD, their producer was a big fan of classic Rush and insisted that Geddy use his T1s for the new album. Well, Geddy had to go back and borrow them from the party he sold them to!

Would be a trip to see T3s on tour with Rush.

You mean to say that the Star-man drums that Neil used on Hemispheres and Moving pictures aren’t setup in a warehouse somewhere? That’s a bummer, glockenspiel, gong, the works… say it isn’t so!!!

re: Baseball stuff, Geddy recently donated his entire Negro league baseball collection: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080606&content_id=2853667&vkey=draft2008&fext=.jsp What a guy!

-Mike W. from NJ

Man, that article was interesting because not only is Lee, NOT a punk rocker, but the article is sort of steeped in stereotypes.

This is not only way off topic but not really appropriate for this forum though.


Eric

Fair enough… I stand corrected on the section name, and how you describe it is precisely how I play it on my PK-5’s… but, if you listen to the following four times: 2:20-2:23, 2:45-2:48, 8:24-8:28 and 8:56-9:00, I distinctly hear the lower “A”. The other four passes do go back up to the original “A”, however.

The Merely Players book states that Geddy, in fact, used a set of Moog Taurus II pedals on the Grace Under Pressure and Spring Training tours. On the Hold Your Fire and Presto tours, one set of Taurus pedals were replaced by a set of Korg Midi pedals. On the Roll The Bones tour, the Korgs were offstage and he used 2 Yamaha KX76 controllers onstage. It doesn’t specify when the Taurus’ were retired completely, but it does state that one set was brought out of retirement (with the Mini-Moog) for the Test For Echo tour.

As far as Geddy buying a set of Taurus 3’s, I’m torn on that… he may have, but I’ve studied videos from the past several tours and it seems to me he’s not playing what should be the proper notes - ie, he’s mostly just triggering samples with the Korgs.

Wolf2112: I’ll check out those song sections when I get home tonight. Are you talking studio version or the version on Exit Stage Left? For the Hemispheres version I bet they played them with their hands and were able to quickly hit the octave button. I guess I made the assumption that we were talking about how they played it live.

And you’re right on about how he’s triggering sounds with the Korgs instead of actually playing notes these days. Cygnus X-1 on one of the recent videos (R30 I think?) is a prime example. Very lazy in my opinion!

I’m referring to the Hemispheres version. Oddly, I’m not familiar enough with the ESL version… will listen later.

I’ve noticed that some time ago they stopped playing the bass pedals in the bridge of “The Spirit of Radio” entirely and haven’t for about 20 years now. Geddy even uses a teleprompter, so I don’t know if it’s laziness or merely old age setting in. :laughing:
Still, I love them either way…

Just listened to the Hemispheres version and indeed it goes DOWN to A. I think you’ll find that it goes up to A on the live version, much easier to play on the T1 obviously.

Regarding TSoR, you’re right, and to me and it hasn’t really sounded good live in about 20 years. Coincidence, I think not :slight_smile: ! This has got me thinking of a Rush radio broadcast bootleg I have from St. Louis 1980. It’s called “Taurus Pedals from Hell” :slight_smile:. I’ll have to give that a spin again soon. The Taurus is extremely high in the mix, hence the name.

I have that boot as well… I’ll dig through my boot collection and listen to it again.

And regarding the Taurus 2’s… I’m watching the GUP video again and I believe there is a set under the left set of keyboards… at least they appear to be larger that the other two sets of Taurus 1’s he has onstage.

So, I’ll recant my previous statement about this “octave split” being useful on “La Villa”… it is, however, not a bad idea in theory. In practice is another story…