Moog Music Forum

I've been on the market for a Voyager but can't justify the cost given that I only use it for the sinewave in mono mode.

I've also been looking at the MF-101 for some time and it recently occurred to me....would it be possible to create a simple gated-sine wave synthesizer using just the MF-101 and a Midi-CV like the Doepfer MCV4?

Using a midi keyboard connected to the Midi-in of the Doepfer, could you turn the MF-101 into a key-tracked synth? Using the "Gate" out of the Doepfer into the Resonance CV of the MF-101, then the "CV-1" out of the Doepfer into the Cutoff CV of the MF-101(Keytracked Note Pitch)?

I don't know the answer to your question, but wouldn't maybe a werkstadt be a more simple solution for your synth? Since you only need one of the most basic waveforms.

Hi adriandegar,

I get what you're asking and it certainly sounds possible (at least in theory). Although I don't own an MF-101, I can tell you that Moogerfoogers can be tamed to work as musical oscillators. I wrote about this in my article on the MF-102 Ring Modulator many years ago, where I described how to tune the RM's oscillator to get a chromatic scale via a CV input, resulting in highly-playable tuned RM effect. It wasn't as simple as plugging in a 1V/oct control signal, however, as the RM's internal oscillator responds to ~0.7 V/Oct (at least mine did). This meant that the control signal had to be attenuated (I used the attenuator on the Voyager's VX-351 CV Expansion box). Also, the RM oscillator tracked only about 3-4 octaves or so.

But getting back to your question about using the MF-101, I suspect that you will have some success with oscillator tracking (assuming a 1V/Oct response from the device), but I have my doubts about the effectiveness of using a gate to turn the oscillator on and off using the Resonance CV inout. If you can get your hands on an MF-101 it would certainly be worth trying just to see what happens. Perhaps someone else here on the forums can give this a try and report back. Personally, I'd be curious to hear how it works (or doesn't work).

All that said, I have to agree with jsharpphoto about the Werkstatt being a better solution for you. There's a lot of capability there that you might really enjoy and make use of once you start exploring...

- Greg