Connecting Bass Guitar to Minitaur

[Crazyfist]

Hi all,

I saw this video on YouTube of a guy connecting his guitar to a Slim Phatty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_XrrwqhWmQ

At around 3:00 mark, he connects a 1/4" jack to the KB Gate (keyboard gate), along with his guitar going to the Audio In and then coming out from the Audio Out...

I saw on the Minitaur specs that it ALSO has a KB Gate
https://www.moogmusic.com/products/taur ... #specs-tab

I tried to do this same thing... but no sound at all! What gives?

Thanks

[Crazyfist]

Okay, figured out that the Minitaur needs a CONSTANT MIDI signal at all times in order to work... But there is sound which is good!

Is there any device or some sort of product out the that just sends 1 MIDI note at a constant rate and that's it? Just wondering, since I don't want to have to perch the Minitaur on my keyboard just to get it to work! There must be some way to send it a MIDI signal!

[Chimponaut]

Did you turn the external input up? VCA EG sustain up? VCA EG Attack down (zero)? Is the signal plugged into the gate jack correct? (+5V) That's all I can think of at the moment besides trying a midi note instead of the gate jack input. Works great here.

[umbrella]

You can use Minitaur as "pedal" when you connect audio output of your guitar (probably needs to be preamplified) to Minitaur's Audio IN. Than in order to hear the processed sound you will need to latch the envelope by pressing and holding glide and at the same time turning AMP Sustain knob to maximum position (no need for midi note on).

Like this you can shape the sound with MTR's filter (and it's modulation), you will probably want to set your OSC level to zero and bring external input level up (press and hold glide + turning VCO1 level).

When you start to plug guitar output to other jacks on the back of Minitaur you are begging for trouble, depending on the voltage coming from you guitar you can get some things going on but keep in mind that you should not be applying negative voltage, or voltage higher that 5V to CV inputs on Minitaur.

[Crazyfist]

You can use Minitaur as "pedal" when you connect audio output of your guitar (probably needs to be preamplified) to Minitaur's Audio IN. Than in order to hear the processed sound you will need to latch the envelope by pressing and holding glide and at the same time turning AMP Sustain knob to maximum position (no need for midi note on).

Like this you can shape the sound with MTR's filter (and it's modulation), you will probably want to set your OSC level to zero and bring external input level up (press and hold glide + turning VCO1 level).

When you start to plug guitar output to other jacks on the back of Minitaur you are begging for trouble, depending on the voltage coming from you guitar you can get some things going on but keep in mind that you should not be applying negative voltage, or voltage higher that 5V to CV inputs on Minitaur.

Awesome! Thanks a lot umbrella, got it to work without having to plug anything into the Gate thanks to your instructions!

Just a few of my findings thus far:

- The Mod and the Filter Cutoff are only noticeable when the EG Amount is below half-way and the Envelope Filter Sustain (EFS) is at max
- The EFS is... strange, it seems to be blending between the dry bass signal and the "fully effected" Minitaur signal.
- The Attack and Decay/Release controls don't seem to do much at all... If anything, for either Filter or Amp!
- The Sustain for the VCA cuts off sound completely when turned all the way down and does not let it pass through unless turned back up (pretty sure this is how it acts with MIDI notes too but I can't remember)

Sounds like a dumb question, but what exactly is the EGA doing? It says in the manual it's a "dynamics modifier," but it's not very descriptive of what it does exactly, just says to turn clockwise/anti-clockwise to hear the "effect".

I'm definitely not going to attempt to plug into the other CV's on the back, I would get an expression pedal for that purpose. This is not exactly how I was expecting it to work, but it works! And without MIDI conversion pickups which is nice! Just not a super usable bass-synth tone like it has with the built-in oscillators.

Can't really think of that much use for it unless I can get foot controllers/expression pedals to control certain parameters. Will the Pitch CV still control the pitch of the bass guitar, or is that just for the VCO's? Is there any way to change the LFO so it can be controlled by a CV input?

Thanks for your help!

[umbrella]

Basically what you are getting is a resonant 24db low pass filter for your guitar/bass audio output.

You can control from MTR's front panel (or by expression pedal if you set it up):
- filter cutoff frequency
- filter resonance
- lfo speed
- lfo shape (hold Glide button and turn the LFO rate knob to change the waveforms)
- amount of lfo->filter cutoff modulation
- output level

As you are using it in "drone" mode, the envelope settings as attack, decay, release won't have any effect (as the note or gate is always on so there is no start neither end to it). VCA sustain level is affecting the volume. If your EG amount is not on zero position (center) than also Filter Env Sustain will have effect on cut off frequency of the filter but it's more logical to control it from Filter cut off frequency knob.

I think you can get some interesting results when you apply some LFO modulation to Filter, maybe different shapes (square shaped or sample and hold) - might give a good rhythmic background. Or you can bring one of the VCO's level up and make also its pitch affected by LFO (VCO LFO AMT). To begin with ...

Btw, the pitch CV input will have no effect on the pitch played by you guitar, it will only influence the MTRs pitch. But if you have a pedal you can use it to control the output (volume pedal), filter cut off or also other parameters (like LFO speed, VCF LFO AMT etc) but that needs to be configured with the software editor.

[Quatschmacher]

The Sonuus G2M v3 will do this. You can either use it to trigger the VCOs and envelopes via MIDI (it is a pitch-to-MIDI) converter. If you plug bass from the G2M’s audio through socket to the minitaur’s externsl audio input and turn off the VCOs, you can have the envelope generator sweep the filter using your bass’s attack as a trigger. Turn the VCOs back up and you can blend the signals. A note of caution though, the latency is quite high due to the long wavelengths of bass notes (24ms for low E).

A better alternative would be connect the Minitaur to something like the Industrial Radio MIDI bass or the Frettrax or ROR Guitars MIDI bass which have wired-up frets to send pitch information so the latency is around 6.5ms which is much more playable. These are more expensive options though.

[Animalbeats]

You can use Minitaur as "pedal" when you connect audio output of your guitar (probably needs to be preamplified) to Minitaur's Audio IN. Than in order to hear the processed sound you will need to latch the envelope by pressing and holding glide and at the same time turning AMP Sustain knob to maximum position (no need for midi note on).

Like this you can shape the sound with MTR's filter (and it's modulation), you will probably want to set your OSC level to zero and bring external input level up (press and hold glide + turning VCO1 level).

When you start to plug guitar output to other jacks on the back of Minitaur you are begging for trouble, depending on the voltage coming from you guitar you can get some things going on but keep in mind that you should not be applying negative voltage, or voltage higher that 5V to CV inputs on Minitaur.

You don't need to pre-amplify your instrument, and amplifying it prob is asking for trouble.

[crazymaca69]

You can use Minitaur as "pedal" when you connect audio output of your guitar (probably needs to be preamplified) to Minitaur's Audio IN. Than in order to hear the processed sound you will need to latch the envelope by pressing and holding glide and at the same time turning AMP Sustain knob to maximum position (no need for midi note on).

Like this you can shape the sound with MTR's filter (and it's modulation), you will probably want to set your OSC level to zero and bring external input level up (press and hold glide + turning VCO1 level).

When you start to plug guitar output to other jacks on the back of Minitaur you are begging for trouble, depending on the voltage coming from you guitar you can get some things going on but keep in mind that you should not be applying negative voltage, or voltage higher that 5V to CV inputs on Minitaur.

Awesome! Thanks a lot umbrella, got it to work without having to plug anything into the Gate thanks to your instructions!

Just a few of my findings thus far:

- The Mod and the Filter Cutoff are only noticeable when the EG Amount is below half-way and the Envelope Filter Sustain (EFS) is at max
- The EFS is... strange, it seems to be blending between the dry bass signal and the "fully effected" Minitaur signal.
- The Attack and Decay/Release controls don't seem to do much at all... If anything, for either Filter or Amp!
- The Sustain for the VCA cuts off sound completely when turned all the way down and does not let it pass through unless turned back up (pretty sure this is how it acts with MIDI notes too but I can't remember)

Sounds like a dumb question, but what exactly is the EGA doing? It says in the manual it's a "dynamics modifier," but it's not very descriptive of what it does exactly, just says to turn clockwise/anti-clockwise to hear the "effect".

I'm definitely not going to attempt to plug into the other CV's on the back, I would get an expression pedal for that purpose. This is not exactly how I was expecting it to work, but it works! And without MIDI conversion pickups which is nice! Just not a super usable bass-synth tone like it has with the built-in oscillators.

Can't really think of that much use for it unless I can get foot controllers/expression pedals to control certain parameters. Will the Pitch CV still control the pitch of the bass guitar, or is that just for the VCO's? Is there any way to change the LFO so it can be controlled by a CV input?

Thanks for your help!

I'm trying to do the exact same thing and for some reason, the whole 'hold the glide button and move the Amp sustain up to 100%' thing is not working for me.

Anybody got anything i can try?