Want to make sure is the Minitaur playable without keyboard?

[panorama1003]

I wanted to buy a Minitaur but I wanted to make sure it is playable by itself just turning it on and not having to hook it up to a midi keyboard. For example I have a Tom Oberheim SEM Patch Panel and you are able to play the SEM just by turning it on, switching on the oscillators and tweaking away to make absolutely amazing sounds and it sounds absolutely beautiful. That's more of my style personally. I have a Little Phatty Stage II CV that I can use if I feel like playing with a keyboard, but I also love to just tweak knobs and make sounds that way, too. Will the Minitaur in fact be playable by itself just turning it on without having to hook it up to a midi keyboard?

Thanks everyone.

[SSquirrel]

Not that I have heard of. Then again, we have extremely limited demos available so far. I don't recall Marc tweaking it and getting noises w/o playing, but I guess it's possible that could be the case and having a keyboard plugged in disables that. The first ones shipped last Friday, shouldn't be long before a ton of demos start making the rounds.

[David Smyth]

Hey there,

It is possible using the CV inputs on the rear panel.

<<<<<EDIT>>>>> It turns out the Gate input is passive and will not open with a dummy cable as stated below. This means you need some other device to open the Minitaur's Gate if you do not wish to use a midi keyboard.

Everything is tweakable on the front panel except pitch & gate.

What I would do is get a Moog EP-2 Expression Pedal (or any other compatible expression pedal) to control pitch with your foot (this may or may not suit what you want to do - if so, you could replace the pedal with an attenuator or something).

With the gate, you can use a dummy cable (plug one end of any cable into the gate input, the other end nowhere / or simply an adapter into the gate input with nothing coming out of it), this will make the unit constantly sound, but you can use the front panel master volume and the seperate oscillator volumes to mute/mix the volumes.
Then you can use an expression pedal to change pitch (I know you can detune osc. 2 from osc. 1 +/- an octave, but you would want to be able to change both of the oscillators' pitch - otherwise oscillator 1 would just be droning the same one note constantly).

Alternatively, you could use other gear (such as your SEM - but check the voltages are not too high for the Minitaur's +/-5volts to avoid damage to the Minitaur) to control the Minitaur's CV & gate inputs instead of the expression pedal and/or dummy cable.

A pretty big downside I can think of is that having the gate sustain constantly would force you to set the envelopes a certain way (low attack & decay, high sustain), which would limit the usability of the envelopes and not allow some of the classic sounds..

I hope this info helps!

Regards,
David Smyth
NZ

[muksys]

could do the dummy jack plugged into the gate CV in. But, judging from the specs and looking at the front panel, their is no dedicated switch to open up the gate.

[Portamental]

You can put a dummy plug in the gate jack and something like this in the pitch jack and play it with a flashlight if you'd like and maybe call it the Minitauremin

[panorama1003]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

I'm beginning to think that the Minitaur might not be exactly what I was expecting.

I know its a bass synthesizer. But what I was really excited about was an affordable no-preset tweak-able stand-alone Moog synthesizer. I've always wanted a Voyager Old School for its raw 100% analog and no-preset aspect, but can't afford one.

The fact that one of the oscillators is fixed is a factor. That means that you can only tweak one oscillator then.

I was expecting it to be more like the Tom Oberheim SEM, a stand-alone module playable on its own AND with MIDI.

An instrument you can use with external equipment but also use on its own beautifully.

I know most don't just plug the SEM in and tweak away but you'd be surprised how good it sounds and what beautiful sounds you can get for more experimental type of sounds, textures and drones.

[EMwhite]

The voltages will be compatible so nothing stopping you from patching your SEM into the Minitaur (assuming you have the Patch version).

And if using a keyboard gets in the way of creative flow, get your hands on one of the inexpensive ribbon controllers or build a super small DIY panel.

Another really really really good option for you is to get your hands on a CP-251. With it you can simply push straight voltage out of one of sections through an attenuator and then into the Pitch CV of the Minitaur. Now you've got control over pitch for the first OSC. The 2nd will be relative to the first

I just got into Modular Synths after having 5 Foogers and what I've found is that MANY MANY of the folks that build these monster systems are not musicians (keyboard players) in the traditional sense but rather 'electronic' musicians if I can use those words to suggest that they dial in sequences, tweak knobs, especially with the complex trigger sequences that I've seen. It's amazing and something that Bob Moog himself alludes to when he talks about how when he first built the modulars, he did not envision that a piano style keyboard would be the ultimate interface. (have a watch of the Moog Movie if you haven't already done so; eye opening).

.

[David Smyth]

Another really really really good option for you is to get your hands on a CP-251.

A Minitaur and a CP-251 would be the coolest little combo for tweaking!

[Portamental]

But what I was really excited about was an affordable no-preset tweak-able Moog synthesizer. Cause I've always wanted a Voyager Old School for its raw 100% analog and no-preset aspect

Yes, and it exactly what you are getting. A powerful wall shaker one at that.

But as you noticed, there is no patch panel on the Minitaur, it is designed as a musical instrument. Don't let that stop you. You can tap in any of the CV jacks in there for a source of voltage, and there are a zillion ways to feed it back to the pitch CV at the expense of a couple of resistors and an alligator clip, or with stuff you already have around the house.

[panorama1003]

@portamental, yeah I get that. But like I said, I wanted a Moog module with all the knobs that I could plug in by itself and maybe hook up to a delay and tweak away to my hearts content.

@emwhite, thanks for you comment.

Kind of odd that the Minitaur wouldn't be playable without an external source though. Like the Slim Phatty for example I believe is playable on its own without an external midi keyboard.

Btw, I do have some modular experience and I have seen the Moog documentary. I own it I actually went and bought my first Little Phatty Stage II the very next day after watching that documentary This is absolutely true. I only had Dave Smith synths before my first Phatty. So inspiring!

[EMwhite]

I think the most important design decision that Moog made with Minitaur was to fit ALL of the Taurus power and then some within the VX / CP sized footprint and as a result, some compromises had to be made. It would have been easy enough to land Minitaur into a 'Slim' sized footprint but they went the other way and came up with something really special.

Tom Oberheim may have invented the 'small' module concept back in the 70's but then again, there was no such thing as a preset or an alphanumeric display in those days. Now Doepfer's got one, MacBeth working on one, and here comes Minitaur. From where I'm sitting, it's an amazing machine. Get one and get yourself a CP-251 or you can just patch the MOD Bus from your CV and tweak the Phatty mod wheel as part of it.