Moog Music Forum

New to forum, nice to be here, etc. Got a sub phatty secondary to my love for all things deep and heavy, however I noticed tonight that I could not hit notes low enough to do what I'm hearing in my head. Do I need a synth with a broader range? The octave fxn is buried on the low end, but apart from dialing down pitch, I cant hit the lows I'm listening for. That being said, I'm a bassist looking to broaden the low end of my recordings, and just starting out in synthesis.

Hey, welcome to the forum

Even as a bassist, I’m sure you’ll have your new toy reaching the octave you’re aiming at. Pardon me if what follows is obvious to you.
For one, the transpose buttons are on the left, bottom part of the panel.
For two, each one of the two oscillators can be set on four octave (I’m not talking about the pitch range of the instrument that is 10 octave wide or so).

Here is a way to get low.
With the transposition buttons, start by setting the keyboard on the center octave.
Now, synthesis-wise:
In the mixer section, set all levels to zero except the oscillator 1 one; leave it half way.
In the oscillator 1 section, set the octave switch to the lowest pitch setting.
At this point, have a listen and use the transposition setting to have the keyboard playing in the pitch range you like.

If -despite the lowest of lowest settings- it’s not low enough, ask yourself if you’re expecting lower pitch or darker tone.
For lower pitch, try to add a bit of Sub oscillator in the mixer section.
For darker tones, check the MultiDrive is set to zero or low, play with the filter cut off setting and take care not to mix your sources (oscillators…) beyond half way or so as the mixer is designed to saturate a bit when overloaded.

Hope this helps!

Don't know what you're listening through. Many headphones or speakers have limited frequency range that can't produce sounds below a certain frequency.

As a fellow Bassist I thoroughly recommend playing it thru an Orange 4x10 topped with a 4Stroke head;)
Actually, Don’t. Not until you tame that subphatty!
Just to add to the advice already given:
By default the subphatty is set to a 24dB slope according to pg28 of the manual. But some presets might not. I suppose as a new user you’re trying the presets etc. Anyway just in case you didn’t know, those rich thumpy deep bass tones can be found when a 4pole 24dB slope is part of the mojo, along with filter cutoff at or below 320Hz. Check those two when you start tweaking, and also in the filter set the resonance dial to zero for starters since it starts to add a sweet timbre as it’s dialed up. Be excellent to each other and party on.