Jeffrey visits Apollo Studio Again

Yesterday I was visited by Jeffrey again (AKA Synthex). He bought a Doepfer Dark Energy that didn't track very well, so firstly we calibrated and tuned it. Then Jeffrey finally got to play on the Elke Synthex that worked prefectly yesterday. Unfortunately that is not always the case. After that he recorded some music for a new album on several synths like the Jupiter 8, Minimoog and EMS VCS3. We had a great time as usual and for me it was actually good to have a break from my work finally. When they left I did a little extra work on one track that is taking shape quite well already. Then I exported all the tracks to WAV to Jeffrey can work on it in his own studio. It was nice to be in the studio again and I really must make some music of my own again soon :) Jeffreys father also filmed a bit, so I'm sure there will be a video on youtube soon. I will post it on my blog as well if I see it.

Sold my Moog Voyager RME

Today I sold my Moog Voyager RME (Rack Mount Edition). I put it online for sale once before and took it back off because I got regrets. I used it a lot in the past. It is like a Moog Minimoog with presets, but couldn't find a good spot for it anymore since I'm in the new studio. This was the last place I tried it, but it was not very convenient after all. I guess I will miss it though, but when I ever buy a Voyager back it will be one with keys on it since it is easier to use that way, but that takes up even more space :) Ah well, I still have my other Moogs. Goodbye old friend!

Moog Memorymoog LAMM in the Studio!

Today I drove with my friend Hans to Dortmund Germany to pick up a new synthesizer for the studio. It is one that has been on my wish list for a very long time. The Moog Memorymoog and I found one in near mint state with even the LAMM upgrade installed in it. After we came back I put it in the spot where my Alesis Andromeda used to be and we started playing with it right away. And I can say it is a very very great machine. It is like having 6 Moog Minimoogs at once and then even better :) I can't describe how good it is actually.

And here is another pictures of it next to it's little brother the Moog Minimoog. The sound of the Memorymoog is definitely very Moog, but I think it sounds a bit harsher than the Minimoog, but having 6 voice polyphony is soooo great :) I'm sure you will hear this synthesizer on my upcoming Apollo album. No doubt about it. Next thing to do now is replace the battery of my Andromeda since it is loosing all it's settings every time I turn it on. And then probably the Andromeda is going in the spot of my Elka Synthex since it needs to go out for service. It seems like one of the voice boards lost its tuning completely. And then I'll have to find another spot for the Andromeda, but I have some time to think about that. For now I'm going to play a bit more on the Memorymoog :)

Apollo Studio Changes

I moved some stuff around again. To start with I sold my ARP Avatar. Since I bought the ARP 2600, I didn't see the added value of the Avatar anymore and I could make someone very happy with it. So it is gone. Then I moved the Moog Source into the newly installed smaller synth mount. There are three small synthesizers the now on top of each other. The Moog Source is actually a great machines. Sounds just a good as a Minimoog in my opinions it just has the advantage that you can store presets. It is not as hands on of course as a Minimoog with al its knobs, but they are getting more expensive by the minute. So get one if you can :) You won't regret it.

And then I also did some minor moving around in my digital corner. I removed the Yamaha VL-70m and Yamaha FB-01 from the rack below and put them on top of the desk. The rackspace that came free was filled by the Yamaha FSR-1. On top now is the Roland SH-32. These are all synthesizers I don't use a lot, but maybe that I have them more at hand I will give them a spin soon. I am still very happy with the spot I put the GAIA SH-01 in. It is a nice hands on machine that I'm using a lot at the moment. I still thing a lot of people underestimate it and don't see it's potential. I did however send my sound bank to some people and they don't seem able to load it. I don't really understand why. I guess Roland should make an editor for it to make it a bit easier to manage. I also couldn't find any way to export the patches as sysex. I think that is a shame too. And you can only store one set or backup on a USB stick. How did they think of that??

Moog Taurus 3 in the Studio

From the moment Moog announced they were going to do a reissue of the Moog Taurus I was very interested in it. The deep bass sounds of the original Taurus are really earth shaking. And now they made a version with midi, LFO and arpeggiator. So I decided to get one. I didn't to the down payment as they asked for, but I asked I4 Muzique to get one for me. And yesterday I picked it up. I couldn't resist hooking it up right away and play on it. Well this one is still earth shaking :) The bass coming from it is really amazing. And I do love that low end. I found a nice spot for it right under my main desk right below my master keyboard. So now I can use it as an sound engine, but also as a midi controller since it also sends out midi signals. Do go and check it out!

Moog Source Arrived

A while ago I bought a nice Moog Source from E-bay. This machine has always fascinated me by the way it looks, but for such a small machine it has a great sound. Especially the lead sounds coming from it are very nice. The Source is an analog synth with two Voltage Controlled Oscillators, but it has digital control. It even has presets :) It has no midi, but it uses CV and S-trig in stead of gate. I'm thinking about building an Encore Midi kit in it. It doesn't only add midi but also more storage for presets and lots of other stuff. If I'm going to do this I'll surely post about it. For now I'm going to have a nice jam on the Source, since my track is finished :) Time to relax a bit!

Mooger Frooger Fun

After soldering today I though it was time to have some fun. So I hooked up the Mooger Froogers that are on my modular desk for a long time already, but I just didn't have time to even test them. From left to right you see the MF-104Z Analog Delay, MF-105 Murf and MF-103 Phaser. I hooked them up to the PAIA 9700S to get some sound. The analog delay is nice but quite straight forward, as well as the 12 stage phaser. They are nice, but not spectacular, but with the Murf I had a lot of fun. It is a filter effect with different band pass filters that gets switched on and of in different patterns. It is something like a multiband gated filter. You can really make nice effects with it. But all in all the Mooger Froogers are lots of fun and I think they complement the modular setup very well :)

Minimoog Released by Dutch Customs

Quite some time ago I sold my Moog Little Phatty and some other stuff to make place for a classic Moog Minimoog. I found a very nice one on E-bay in the USA. It looked great in the pictures and according to the seller it worked perfectly. So I decided to go for this one. I got a tracking code from the shipping but for a long time I didn't hear anything. Then I got a letter from the Dutch postal services that it was intercepted at Dutch Customs and that the seller didn't fill in (all?) the necessary customs forms. Well I have no idea, but they wanted me to check it in. I had to send proof of the payment as well to determine the value. And then I didn't hear anything again for weeks. I called Dutch Postal Services a couple of times, but every time the same story. They couldn't help me.

And then yesterday suddenly they were at my door asking for cash payment of the import tax :( That was to be expected but still a setback, since it was not cheap. I didn't have the money at the time so I agreed to pick it up today from the post office. And I did that this afternoon, so it finally arrived today. I got it out of the box right away but decided to leave it acclimatize for a while before I would try it on. I found a nice spot for it in my analog corner and doesn't it fit nicely there? After dinner I tried it out and it works perfectly! And how nice it sounds :)

And I really love the look of the wood that is on it. I don't even know if it is original or not by the way. My friend Hanz did tell me that this one has the old type oscillators on it judging from the smooth (not ribbed) modulation and pitch bend wheel. These old oscillators tend to sound a bit warmer than the newer ones I understood from various websites. But since I never played a Minimoog before I can't compare that. What I DO know is that it is so much nicer than the Moog Little Phatty. It sounds very nice and analog indeed and much warmer than the Moog Voyager RME that I still have as well. The only disadvantage is of course that you can't save any presets on it. But that forces you to make unique sounds right :)

And that is exactly what I did the last two hours. Making sounds. I already recorded some nice sound effects. The auto modulation of the filter is really nice on this machine and even the white and pink noise sounds great. The filter is unbelievably smooth and I love that already. The only thing lacking on it for me is Midi, but I understood that it is possible to retro fit it on the Minimoog so I'll probably do that as soon as possible. Another very clever thing on it by the way is the 440 Hz button to tune it easily on hearing. I'm sure this is a synthesizer you will hear a lot on my future productions.

Moog Updates

Last week Moog Music introduced new software for the Moog Little Phatty Stage Edition. I was bit surprised about the last one. They just introduced the Little Phatty II with some new features like for example an midi syncable Arpeggiator and LFO midi sync capabilities and also and USB midi port. But now you can just upgrade your original Little Phatty for free with these new features as well. Very nice Moog! I like that. You can even buy the USB midi port as an addon, but I don't care for that. Midi on an analog synthesizer is already luxurious I think :)

Updating the Little Phatty was quite easy. Moog provides a couple of update tools for various Operating Systems. You just start it set the right Midi ports and it starts updating. In the picture on the left you see that it is running software version 2.0 now. I played around a bit with the new features and it works like a charm. You have to go a bit deeper in the menus to set it all up, but this is all quite intuitive. Especially the LFO sync is a welcome feature for me. You can look at the Moog Music website what else is all new in this software version.

Also a new software version for the Moog Voyager RME was available I saw on the website. Updating that one was a bit more complex. You get 4 sysex files (Bank A, B, C, D) that you have to send to it with some sysex tool. I used SendSX for that. A little tool that is quite useful for these kind of tasks. You have to set the Voyager first in update mode and then start sending bank A. It did ask me for Bank C and D but not for B? Strange. I did send that one as well and then it asked for bank D again. I don't get the logic in this, but well it seemed to work.

Here you can see that the RME is running software version 3.4 now. It was released in June so I missed that back then. The changes in this version were a bit less radical, but still nice. You can again see them on the Moog Music website. I did encounter a little problem after updating. I could hear the stepping suddenly when changing a parameter like filter cutoff. Very annoying. After looking in the manual that came with the update I found that I had to change the parameter that shows the value on the display when you turn a knob to off. Very strange that this has influence on that. But well I rather not hear the stepping than that I see the parameter on the display. Maybe Moog can fix this in a future version. Well all in all this took me about half an hour and both my Moogs are now completely up to date again :)

Moog Little Phatty

I used to have a Creamware Minimax and actually I was quite fond of it, until I seriously played for the first time on a real Moog. It was the Little Phatty and I was hooked instantly on the shear clarity and power of the sound and decided to buy one. It really had that genuine Moog sound at an affordable price. You can use it for very powerful bass sounds and very nice lead sounds that really cut through your mix. And be honest doesn't it look lovely? :) Off course it is not a MiniMoog and you should not compare with that. But it is a joy to play on. Add some delay and reverb to it and you are in business. It is monophonic, and I like that, because that makes it more forgiving when soloing ;) There are also some downsides on this synthesizer. The knobs are clearly digital and are not always precise enough. They can make bigger steps than you want. And the potmeters have several functions. You cannot turn a knob for resonance and cutoff on the filter in the same for example. But you can automate this from your sequencer because everything is midi implemented, which makes it fine for me. Try it out when you get the chance!