Little Phatty vs. Taurus Arpeggiator?

[EMwhite]

[What you might be missing?]

Yes there was a decent printed manual that came with it.

Mine, being on the original shipped included a 1.04 Addendum/Errata to the User's Manual (they may have fixed up the manual and put new code in on high serial numbers).

Then, of course, the yellow 'certificate' dated February 22nd 2010 signed by Mike Adams on Moog letter head. Each letter had your unit's serial number printed in bold text, and a gold pressed corporate seal for Moog Music Inc. NC, 1978.

If you pm me with your email addres, I'll scan these (except the manual) and email them to you. Certainly worth having the certificate letter even if it's not for yours and not an original physical piece of paper because it's a nicely written note.

If your interested, I transcribed all of the Taurus Factory presets into an excel spreadsheet that I'd be happy to mail you as well. May not be very useful but you can filter/sort by any particular column to see settings in common and different as you scroll through presets to compare. I'm sort of a geek when it comes to this stuff so...

(I should add that you might be able to buy an original manual; give them a call and see)

[misterpete]

Thanks! Manual isn't listed for sale, but I wrote Moog and will call to followup when the offices reopen

Yes ~Thank you psynthetic I discovered these tricks even before confirming exactly how they worked in the .pdf of the manual- it's a very player friendly interface though so different again!
I was a little surprised that you can't send the arpeggiator MIDI notes like we can on the Phatty though ~ unless I am missing something

About your question. The Taurus Arp, since it's bound by the pedalboard which is only 1 Octave + 1 note doesn't allow for as complex Arp sequences. I haven't tried to see if you can do this through a Midi keyboard. It's also quite awkward holding in several pedals. But the fact it's difficult to do anything BUT a single note, means that 'transposing' is quite simple and very musical.

You can get around trying to hold down several keys with your feet quite easily (without using another controller) if you just turn on the note latch function in the main menu, this will let you add notes to the "stack" one at a time and build up an arpregiated loop of upto 128 notes (i think?).. I know i've put 4 bars of a downward progression and then 2 bars of an upwards progression into the note stack before.. so its big in anycase..

Arpreggiator Latch On> All notes will be added to the stack as you play them. Arpreggiator Latch Off > Repeating a note will remove it from the arp loop/stack.

Im pretty sure once you've got a loop happening you can transpose the entire thing as a whole aswell, eg, move everything up 3 tones or whatever, WITHOUT having to stop your loop... so this is a super powerful tool for live, being able to build up and dismantle loops on the fly, with tap tempo and/or MIDI sync to boot, life is good.

[psynthetic]

I'm not sure i follow... You mean you tried to control the arpeggiator with MIDI and nothing happened?

I have sent MIDI to the Taurus from Ableton before via MIDI over USB, that seems to work fine. I havent tried sending it from a MIDI Keyboard over a DIN directly into the T3 yet though, as i cant find my MIDI cable right now..

[misterpete]

No, ~ that works perfectly well.

I was talking about a specific feature of the Phatty, which allows you to dial in an advanced arpeggiator option to send out MIDI notes of the arpeggios - so whatever midi note pattern is playing on the phatty is also sent out over MIDI ~ and doubled to an external instrument. Without that feature enabled the source synth plays the arp pattern while the external MIDI instrument just plays the actual trigger note - not the pattern.
So, for example on the T3 if you hit a single note to trigger the transpose function - that's what gets sent over MIDI not the note patterns actually playing the whole pattern on the T3.
To explain that further ~ using the Slim Phatty ~ with MIDI in and OUT to Voyager ~ a chord you hold down on a Voyager would trigger an arpeggio and play out on the phatty but without "SEND MIDI NOTES" enabled just one note of that same chord would play on the Voyager - with it enabled it would come back over midi and play the same notes on the Voyager simultaneously

I'm not sure i follow... You mean you tried to control the arpeggiator with MIDI and nothing happened?

[psynthetic]

Ah i see..

I've noticed that the T3 has a MIDI "Out" instead of a MIDI "Thru"... so i guess they assume its gonna be at the "end of the line" in that respect.

I remember reading someone, somewhere, saying that the fact that its a MIDI Out actually makes it, in some respects, more powerful than it would be with a MIDI Thru... but im new to the world of MIDI CC and the like.. so im not sure i grasped the significance of what he tried to say..

I took a listen to the T3 demos you did, very avant garde
Surely its not all T3 though? Noticed you have a Voyager XL.. Would quite like one of those to compliment the T3 one day.

Working on a bit of a demo of my own at the moment.. heavily embelished with drums from Kontakt and a few other goodies.. but all the synth work im gonna try and do with the T3... what i cant do with the T3 i'll try to supplement with my the Arturia Minimoog vst i suppose, keep it all in theme.

[Voltor07]

Never understood MIDI well enough to comprehend MIDI through as a feature. With IN and OUT, you can chain synths together. Out goes to in, in goes to out, etc. etc. In this way, if you have, say, six T3's and a MIDI controller, you could have six voice polyphony via MIDI. Of course, six T3's sounding off together could destroy a Romulan spaceship, but that's kind of the point of having a T3, isn't it?

[psynthetic]

With Thru you can do that aswell though, because MIDI cables have multiple channels (16?) so you can filter out a different channel on each device all along the same cable..

But i dont think MIDI Thru can send data, so i guess thats the fundamental difference... you can use it as a primary source.

Dunno, im just speculating, really need one of those mad scientist types to chime in here.

[misterpete]

Thanks for listening ~ I've posted many kinds of different things on SoundCloud~ i usually list the instruments i used in the notes on SoundCloud page for each track. Those posted were just the first two LIVE 'off the floor" type tracks I recorded as soon as I got my T3 -- the first one "The New WIld Bull" I played Electric Blue Voyager, White Voyager XL, Slim Phatty, a Minitaur and the T3

On the second one I used just used the XL and the Electric Blue with the Taurus.
[The New Bull Ride*] • Recorded live. Dec. 30th 2012
Electric Blue Voyager, White XL and Taurus pedals

[stiiiiiiive]

With IN and OUT, you can chain synths together. Out goes to in, in goes to out, etc. etc. In this way, if you have, say, six T3's and a MIDI controller, you could have six voice polyphony via MIDI.

I'm not sure how what's received in a MIDI in port is transmitted into the out port. While I'm sure the MIDI thru port is only meant to do this precisely. I think the out-to-in-whose-out-to-in schema won't work as you expect, Voltor. Anyone correct me.

Using MIDI Thru, indeed, you can have only one MIDI source -say a sequencer- sending data over n channels and have the data of the channel one played by the first slave while it transmits the data over the remaining channels to the following slave, and so on.

[psynthetic]

That was my understanding aswell..

MisterPete - Just out of curiousity, what exactly do you need the arpegiated notes FOR? For instance... if the T3 can send the trigger notes, why not let it send them to something else with an arp and feed it the original trigger data? I guess i can still see uses for it, but there are maybe a few ways around it, especially if you use DAW software.. though if you're trying to keep it for live and hardware only, maybe it might be tougher to circumvent..

With IN and OUT, you can chain synths together. Out goes to in, in goes to out, etc. etc. In this way, if you have, say, six T3's and a MIDI controller, you could have six voice polyphony via MIDI.

I'm not sure how what's received in a MIDI in port is transmitted into the out port. While I'm sure the MIDI thru port is only meant to do this precisely. I think the out-to-in-whose-out-to-in schema won't work as you expect, Voltor. Anyone correct me.

Using MIDI Thru, indeed, you can have only one MIDI source -say a sequencer- sending data over n channels and have the data of the channel one played by the first slave while it transmits the data over the remaining channels to the following slave, and so on.

[misterpete]

Me too - I don't use THRU much and get confused but it is could be necessary for this polyphonic stack thing you guys are describing. Info on using it on page 38 of the T3 manual ~ which I can't seem to copy the text from.
The pdf is online though...

This fascination with polyphony thing totally escapes me - Just about every other keyboard instrument out there ALREADY has polyphony ~ the pianos, organ,dx-7, microkorg, M-1, Accordion even ~ not forgetting our very friendly Animoog ~ all of which can be fed into a MOOG ...on the flipside NOTHING sounds quite like or as satisfying to me as the rich sounds I get from that so-called "MONOPHONIC" sound... made up of a whole load of oscillators interacting together. however ~ since i now have four 'poly ready' moogs - SP, T3 and 2 Voyagers. I guess will actually do a bit of exploring this MIDI stacking polyphony thing now and post something.

Wonder if we will see the Minitaur ever get this poly stack functionality?

Never understood MIDI well enough to comprehend MIDI through as a feature. With IN and OUT, you can chain synths together. Out goes to in, in goes to out, etc. etc.

[misterpete]

what exactly do you need the arpegiated notes FOR?

you were talking about using the arpeggiator of the taurus - without the SEND MIDI NOTES feature you can't use it except with the taurus... with the phatty arp sending MIDI you can drive any other synth even bypassing the phatty's own audio to play arp patterns on minitaur, taurus, voyager whatever

[psynthetic]

Oh right.. i see, because they dont come with arpegiators of their own...

I'll look into it at some point.. otherwise just send the MIDI from Ableton i guess.

The idea of a polyphonic synth isnt essential to me either.. plenty of great sounding polysynths out there already software, DSP and otherwise... especially when you can just tune your second osc a 3rd or 5th above the original and get a "chord" that way.. if i want anything more elaborate than that, i'll load Absynth/Massive

[misterpete]

Thanks kindly, EM! I'm definitely interested Patches spreadsheet sounds very useful indeed!
...I'm a total nerd like that too. Sending you a PM right away.
I will definitely call MOOG in the morning about getting a hardcopy manual, and to try and sort out registration issues. The taurusbass.com site looks like a great resource.
After getting the low-down from you kind forum members I got a little freaked out ~ and finally had some success contacting the seller to notify him I want a refund if he can't make good on providing the missing pieces and proper transfer of ownership. Wish me luck

[What you might be missing?]

Yes there was a decent printed manual that came with it.

Mine, being on the original shipped included a 1.04 Addendum/Errata to the User's Manual (they may have fixed up the manual and put new code in on high serial numbers).

Then, of course, the yellow 'certificate' dated February 22nd 2010 signed by Mike Adams on Moog letter head. Each letter had your unit's serial number printed in bold text, and a gold pressed corporate seal for Moog Music Inc. NC, 1978.

If you pm me with your email addres, I'll scan these (except the manual) and email them to you. Certainly worth having the certificate letter even if it's not for yours and not an original physical piece of paper because it's a nicely written note.

If your interested, I transcribed all of the Taurus Factory presets into an excel spreadsheet that I'd be happy to mail you as well. May not be very useful but you can filter/sort by any particular column to see settings in common and different as you scroll through presets to compare. I'm sort of a geek when it comes to this stuff so...

(I should add that you might be able to buy an original manual; give them a call and see)

[psynthetic]

Goodluck.

At the end of the day though, he doesnt have anything you NEED, as everything else is availible in .pdf (provided ofcourse you can get your registration code from Moog...). Although it would be nice to have the certificate..

Mind if i ask how much you paid?