Moog Music Forum

Another "trick" you can do with the overload light is use it to silently tune your oscillators together. By patching in the headphone output to the external input. You can switch off the main output, and by carefully adjusting the overload light via the ext. volume, you can see any two oscillators beat rate against each other.
Fellow list member Kenny Fine demonstrated that trick for me at Vibronic Music back in the summer of 1974. Always found that handy in certain live situations.

Feedback loops are what makes many modular patches interesting. Within a modular you can put this loop anywhere, and even control the ammount through a VCA, via any CV source. Right now my favorite seems to be a feedback loop with the 904B highpass filter. Just taking a little bit of the 904B output looped back into a CP3 mixer gives an incredible ammount of possible tones.
Here is a demo of just how different the tone is when a feedback loop is used with the Moog 904B filter. For the first 8 seconds a normal Moog tone of three 901 oscillators and a bit of 903 white noise. At 9 seconds I patch the output of the 904B back into the CP3 mixer feeding the 904 filter combo. The noise source becomes much more noticable, along with a bit of that Moog transistor distortion. A beautiful thing, that Moog tone!
Small 27 second demo of Moog 904B feedback loop 1.1MEG MP3 download
Those feedback loops do something very different to the quality of the tone. Another color for your sound pallet.

CZ Rider wrote:Another "trick" you can do with the overload light is use it to silently tune your oscillators together. By patching in the headphone output to the external input. You can switch off the main output, and by carefully adjusting the overload light via the ext. volume, you can see any two oscillators beat rate against each other.
Fellow list member Kenny Fine demonstrated that trick for me at Vibronic Music back in the summer of 1974. Always found that handy in certain live situations.

That's true. It lights because the intermodulation of the two VCOs increase the amplitude when they cross.
Rivera Music Systems used to mod some Minis with an improved circuit and a separate LED.
Looked a bit ugly to me, but as you said, it could be very useful live.
Had they included a (divided-down?) A440 signal, they could even have had an absolute pitch reference.
The trick above (and RMS's) could both tune oscillators together, but they could both still be out of tune with true pitch.

CZ Rider wrote:Feedback loops are what makes many modular patches interesting.

Agreed. Resonance (emphasis) is really nothing more than feedback.
Usually it's inverted 180 degrees, but it's still feedback.
Feedback on a 904B is certainly not a subtle effect though.
Things can get really wild or screechy depending on the patch.
Still, I think it's a pity to own something as variable as a Moog modular, then set it up like a big Minimoog or other standard synth "voice."
It's a modular- there's rules to be broken!!

Kevin Lightner wrote:

CZ Rider wrote:Another "trick" you can do with the overload light is use it to silently tune your oscillators together. By patching in the headphone output to the external input. You can switch off the main output, and by carefully adjusting the overload light via the ext. volume, you can see any two oscillators beat rate against each other.
Fellow list member Kenny Fine demonstrated that trick for me at Vibronic Music back in the summer of 1974. Always found that handy in certain live situations.

That's true. It lights because the intermodulation of the two VCOs increase the amplitude when they cross.
Rivera Music Systems used to mod some Minis with an improved circuit and a separate LED.
Looked a bit ugly to me, but as you said, it could be very useful live.
Had they included a (divided-down?) A440 signal, they could even have had an absolute pitch reference.
The trick above (and RMS's) could both tune oscillators together, but they could both still be out of tune with true pitch.

The Polymoog had a BEAT LED under the tuning pot that was simply an XOR with square waves from both HFOs.

CZ Rider wrote:Feedback loops are what makes many modular patches interesting.

Agreed. Resonance (emphasis) is really nothing more than feedback.
Usually it's inverted 180 degrees, but it's still feedback.
Feedback on a 904B is certainly not a subtle effect though.
Things can get really wild or screechy depending on the patch.
Still, I think it's a pity to own something as variable as a Moog modular, then set it up like a big Minimoog or other standard synth "voice."
It's a modular- there's rules to be broken!!

Well, the Minimoog architecture was derived because that was the popular routing on the modular in the RA Moog studio.

Heck, Keith's modular is essentially the same routing of the minimoog, with extensive modulation capabilities

Habits are hard to break... and then there's Buchla

MC wrote:
Well, the Minimoog architecture was derived because that was the popular routing on the modular in the RA Moog studio.

Heck, Keith's modular is essentially the same routing of the minimoog, with extensive modulation capabilities

I give a pass to Keith. He's an exceptional player.
Given his talent, he could play a cheap Casio and probably provide more musical entertainment than most of us.
He also has a certain amount of constraints present when using a big modular live.

MC wrote: Habits are hard to break... and then there's Buchla

Yep and playing with a Buchla (and to some degree, a Serge) is just the tool to break such habits.
Their method of multing by stacking patchcords lends itself to trying things one might never do on a standard modular.
Their range of control also exceeds many standard modulars.
You can take the same module and patch it as an LFO or a crude env generator. With enough of them and a sample and hold, a sequencer,
They don't always define modules specifically as one function, so it changes a person's approach to patching.
I like that sort of environment.
As an opposite example, on a Korg MS-20, they have a pitch to voltage converter built in.
But insert one patchcord and it can turn into an LFO by feeding an output back to the input.

CZ, have you ever tried adding feedback to a 907 or 914?
That can make for some interesting effects.
Both positive and negative feedback can yield some crazier-than-normal sounds.

For somebody using a modular live in a non-Minimoog way, check out Robert Rich. Awesome ambient music, and he also helped Paul Schreiber design some of the MOTM modules. And he's a great guy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0qQYFA0dUg for example.

Kevin Lightner wrote: I give a pass to Keith. He's an exceptional player.
Given his talent, he could play a cheap Casio and probably provide more musical entertainment than most of us.
He also has a certain amount of constraints present when using a big modular live.

I have to say here that listening to Keith's 90's digital sound creates a desire in me to simultaneously throw my entire synth collection at the screen and hurl my cookies.

Jes sayin...

Stephen




.

What a waste.

I meant the cookies...