Moog and monophonic

[gd]

I seem to always reach for my Voyager first when I start to write, play chords using it as well - the joys of midi. I bought it for what it is - a great kybd with the sound that I luv. As you can see from my sig I have a few other Moogs, and yes all mono. Over the years I have had more poly synths than I care to remember but there has been a Moog in my stable for over 30 yrs.

[hieronymous]

I think I read in Analog Days that there was an electronic music composer who was perturbed by the fact that the Moog had a keyboard controller at all! He wanted to have non-traditional controllers in order to break free of the tyranny of Western music, or something like that. So be happy that you even have a keyboard at all!

[Jyoti]

I'd like a Moog Electronic Waterphone...

[nicholas d. kent]

I think I read in Analog Days that there was an electronic music composer who was perturbed by the fact that the Moog had a keyboard controller at all! He wanted to have non-traditional controllers in order to break free of the tyranny of Western music, or something like that. So be happy that you even have a keyboard at all!

True but of course that person could have bought a modular back then (or an RME now!) Neither actually come with a keyboard though you could buy one separately or get a configured modular system with one included. The observation as a concept I guess was best embodied in contrast with Don Buchla who was pretty adamant that his synths didn't have conventional keyboards and he initially didn't even offer one even if you wanted one. But he eventually did offer a conventional keyboard many years later (perhaps because investors wanted him to, I'm not sure of the back story)

Also one should point out that while the Moog/Realistic Concertmate MG-1 does have a square wave organ sound. It's not 10 voices as someone mentioned, you can hit all the keys at once, but it's not a polyphonic synth in the modern sense because there is only one shared filter. That means not only is the tone limited in color but the individual notes don't have separate envelopes or filters. Fortunaltely it contains a real monosynth also so you have that in there too. The popular, though still sort of esoteric term for this is "paraphonic" not polyphonic, the former term more or less means a monosynth with some additional electric organ technology inside.

As for new Moog polyphonic synths, I'm not sure it's in the works, but one would think that it would not be overly complex to create a racked "slave" Voyager (I don't like that word "slave" but it's been used by others to describe what I'm talking about). A good piece of the RME price goes to the cost of the knobs, fine casing and complete stand alone interface. Other manufacturers have made MIDI modules with no interface for voice expansion use. You would only be able to program it with another Voyager or software. Something like that would seriously cut down the size and price, though it would still be fairly costly. (so the enormous size someone suggests isn't accurate unless we are talking about a 12 voice instrument or something like that with lots of voices - but it sure will never be a super cheap instrument).

Or in theory moog could do a Little Poly Phatty Expander. Put say 4 voices in a rack with minimal user interface, that would be more viable because you'd save the price of 3 enclosures and power supplies, etc. and the Little Phatty voice surely costs less to build making the whole thing potentially priced better than doing the same thing with the Voyager voice.

[goldphinga]

i strongly disagree with a couple of points mentioned earlier in another post. The memorymoog is every bit as phat as the model d. The voyager is a different sound to the minimoog d but is just as warm and phat but just has a slightly different character. so there.