Doesn't look like anyone's seen this yet...

[thealien666]

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...

[stiiiiiiive]

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.

[museslave]

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.

[thealien666]

Oh, I see.

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 ?

Alain.

[EricK]

Marc,
Wasn't the synthesizer that Bob built for Herb that was dubbed "The Abominatron" polyphonic?

[thealien666]

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.

[EricK]

http://moogfoundation.org/2010/seva-exp ... pe-part-2/

In this proto-incarnation of the modular synthesizer — the Abominatron, as Bob called it — there were two VC devices: oscillators and amplifiers. (There’s a clip where he Gives It The Name, at least on tape). The astonishing part of all this to me remains the fact that this first modular synthesizer, this Abominatron, was POLYPHONIC. I’ve attached some audio clips from this tape, including the Intro Fanfare, where Bob plays a polyphonic greeting before he speaks, followed by a clip where Bob names the prototype.

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?

[thealien666]

Like I said; "if I'm not mistaken..."

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 !

[stiiiiiiive]

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.

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.

[Kevin Lightner]

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?"

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.

[Vsyevolod]

I'm with MuseSlave on this point.

To try and make a polyphonic synthesizer, is to radically change the very nature of how it sounds and how it produces music.

If you want underlying harmonies and pads and have it sound like a synthesizer, get a Nord Lead, a Virus, a Kronos, a Kurzweil or what-have-you. You won't be able to tell that it's a digital emulation underneath your Voyager sound. We already have polyphonic synths. Asking Moog Music to come out with yet another one doesn't make any sense (or cents) in my book.

Just another humble opinion...

Stephen




.

[Kevin Lightner]

To try and make a polyphonic synthesizer, is to radically change the very nature of how it sounds and how it produces music.

How is a JP8 played in solo mode or one note at a time all that different from, say, an Arp Odyssey?
How they produce sound is basically the same.
How they produce music is up to the player.

[thealien666]

To try and make a polyphonic synthesizer, is to radically change the very nature of how it sounds and how it produces music.

You're entitled to your humble opinion, which I respect, Stephen. However, I strongly disagree with it.

How is 4 tracks of separately recorded monophonic Moog synthesizer notes, all at different pitch in order to produce a 4 notes chord, different from an analog Moog polyphonic (such as the Memorymoog) synth that can do exactly the same thing instantly by directly playing those chord notes on its keyboard using multiple VCOs, instead of time lapse one-note-at-a-time multi-track recording ?

Undeniable answer: it is not.

[Kenneth]

I side with Alain and Kevin here. There's as little point in defining "synthesizer" as there is in "guitar". We know that a synthesizer is a set of modules designed to control and shape an electric current in a musical way. What else would you add to that to bar polyphonic instruments from that definition? What is the motive behind that? Playing a chord on a polyphonic synth, as Alain said, is exactly the same as multitracking three performances on a monosynth to give the impression of a three-note chord, save for one difference: the polyphonic method is faster, easier, and more musically expressive. You can't argue that.

[EricK]

It is possible to play two notes on the sax at the same time.