Is it possible to get horn sounds from the minitaur? I used to own a Roland Sh09, which did a fair job of creating synthesized horns. I ended up selling it because I didn’t feel it was as intuitive to maneuver once I got my first Moog (once you go Moog, you never go back).
I just got a minitaur, and while it’s great, I don’t think it can be capable of horn sounds. I know the Sh09 has more than a sawtooth and square waveform, but are there any tricks you guys have to getting a horn sound from the minitaur?
SOS has a good article in their Synth Secrets series on using a Moog to do horns. It’s a simple patch using a single sawtooth oscillator so I think you could do this easily on a Minitaur. I’ve done it on my Sub Phatty and it sounds great!
In the back of the Voyager manual there is a description of a patch that uses the cp251 for noise on the attack of a note that simulates the breathy “chiff” that usually precedes the onset of a horn’s attack. It sounded interesting, but it depends on the horn you want. I think this could possibly be adapted to other synths, minitaur included.
Envelope to Noise level for noise component at the attack of a note.
Some sounds have a burst of noise at the beginnings of a note or “chiff ” – for instance a flute or a pipe organ. This configuration digs a little deeper into the Voyager to achieve this effect.
Initialize the Voyager’s parameters. - Set the OSC1 WAVE control to Triangle wave - Set the FILTER ENVELOPE controls to the following settings:
ATTACK: 1 msec DECAY: 100 msec SUSTAIN: 0 RELEASE: 0
Using a patch cable, connect the VX-351 Filter Envelope output (ENVS FILTERS) to the CP-251 MIXER 1 input.
Set the CP-251 MIXER 1 Input and the MASTER level controls to 10. Set the OFFSET control to –2 (about 10 o’ clock on the dial).
Using a patch cable, connect the CP-251 Mixer Output (OUT +) to the Voyager’s MOD2 Input. - Set the Voyager’s PEDAL/ON MOD BUSS controls to the following settings:
SOURCE: ON/MOD2 DESTINATION: LFO/PGM SHAPING: ON/PGM AMOUNT: 10.
In the Edit menu select menu 2.4, ‘PGM PEDAL DEST’ and press ENTER. Scroll through the programmable destinations and select ‘NOISE LEVEL’
In the Voyager’s Mixer section, set the NOISE switch to ‘ON’, and adjust the NOISE level control to 5.
Set the Voyager’s AMOUNT TO FILTER control to +2. - In the Edit Menu select menu 3.4, ‘TRIGGER MODES’. Set the trigger mode to ‘Multi-triggering’.
Now when you play a note, you should hear a noise component at the beginning of the note. Playing with a combination of filter envelope times, filter cutoff, noise level, and Pedal/On Mod Buss amount will make this effect more or less perceptible. Selecting ‘OSCILLATOR LEVELS’ as the Programmable Mod Destination can yield some interesting effects as well.