The Real MC

I've been gigging since 1981. $50 per musician was the going rate back then for a gig. Today almost 45 years later $50 is a pittance, the venue is the one that doesn't value his contribution.

No effects, dry recordings Memorymoog Choir Other Variations More Memorymoog Sounds

Boy are you two-faced. You give away your gigging chops for peanuts while whining about having to pay for a membership.

They do show up in small music stores. I saw a LP in a store and I could tell pretty quickly it was a counterfeit.

(couldn't resist - sorry dB!) #1: Well? #2: Well what? #1: Are we going to continue to argue? #2: I told you, I'm not allowed to argue unless you subscribed. #1: But I just subscribed! #2: No you didn't. #1: Yes I did! #2: No you haven't. #1: Ah-ha! If I haven't subscribed then why are you arguing? I got you! #2: No you haven't. #1: Well if you're arguing then I must had subscribed! #2: Not necessarily - I could be arguing in my spare time.

I've been on the internet since 1998 and have been in many discussion forums over the years. For various reasons, I've whittled down the forums to a handful. The cream of the crop is KC. The time spent here has been well worth it. The signal-to-noise ratio is very good and there's a treasure trove of information in the archives. Many discussion websites have come and gone, and I'm glad to see that MPN will continue in capable hands. Seeing the members' enthusiasm to subscribe is very encouraging. We'll keep this place alive.

I spent some quality time with a Moog Muse at GC Orlando FL tonight. Yes a GC. This particular store has consistently had the best selection of synths of GC stores. Even better than Nashville. Someone there does it right. As a Memorymoog owner since 1986, that was the measure I was aiming for. I cut my teeth on sound design on the Memorymoog and I know a lot of patch tricks. Frankly most of the presets are crap; I never make a total judgment on presets anyway. Not the fault of the synth, once you dive into the machine it is not hard to come up with great sounds. One of my "acid test" patches is choir patches. This tells me a lot about how colorful the resonance of the filter is. It also reveals the modulation range of LFO depth; a choir patch needs low mod depth with fine resolution, and too many polysynths are too coarse in the low range (this setting is not enough, I'll adjust it just a little ARGH TOO MUCH). My Memorymoog does awesome choir patches thanks to the 3rd VCO set in LFO mode tracking the keyboard, which is a feature shared in the Muse - it includes "modulation oscillator" that can double as an audio oscillator, albeit without the wave shaping feature of the two primary VCOs. When you set the Muse LFO/VCO3 to track the keyboard, you get an independent LFO PER VOICE. Route that to frequency of one VCO, then another global LFO to PWM of the other VCO, and you get an impressive choir voice. This technique isn't just for choir voices - it is very effective for pads and strings. Developing the choir voices forced me to dive in the menu system, which is pretty intuitive. In some places it was obvious that the firmware is a work in progress; I was curious if the VCF had a 12dB mode, and pressing the menu button in the filter section revealed an empty menu with no settings. I like that there are multiple LFOs and a matrix modulation system in the Muse. That opens up a lot of sound palettes. There's plenty of cross modulation routings to set up. The dual VCFs are a nice touch, similar to the Voyager voice with some additions. On the Voyager, the cutoff of both VCF are always linked; on the Muse, the HPF/LPF VCF can be set to static so that its cutoff doesn't change with the other. Unlike the Voyager, both VCFs can be completely independent with regards to EG depth, resonance, key tracking, etc. That was a good addition that led to better brass patches. My only disappointment is that the keyboard tracking is off-half-full, whereas the Memorymoog is off-1/3-2/3-full which is more useful. The two primary VCOs are very stable in tuning. Both feature TWO wave shapers, whose wave shapes can be mixed. One wave shaper varies between triangle and ramp, the other is variable pulse. Hard sync and cross mod are available, didn't get to play with those. There's a lot of functions to shoehorn on the front panel. Moog used a combination of rotary and 40mm slide pots, wisely reserving slide pots for mixer levels/EG controls and rotary controls for everything else, except for the encoders in the Programmer section. I didn't have time to explore all the functions so I focused on creating patches from the front panel. I played with a Moog One at the last Gearfest (c'mon Sweetwater, do those again!) and to my ears the One was a bit polite sounding. The Muse can sound more aggressive. I own a vintage RAMoog Minimoog and was surprised how the Muse could produce the beef and girth of an old Minimoog. Brasses? Check. Strings? Check. Percussion, pitched and unhitched? Check. Pads? Mono leads and basses? Sound FX? Alien timbres? Old school? New school? Check. This is a very capable and flexible machine. Others would place the Muse in the "bad gear" department... I would place the "bad gear" reviewer as the poor craftsman who blames the tool. Maybe Moog didn't have the greatest sound designers build the factory presets, but frankly if you can't tweak good sounds out of the Muse then you'll never tweak good sounds out of any analog.

That sums it up nicely.

Early non-modular American synths with high pass filters: Oberheim SEM Oberheim two/four/eight polySEMs ARP ProSoloist ARP Odyssey Moog Satellite/Minitmoog Moog Polymoog

WHAT?

My Hammond XK3 and XK3c has "extra voices". Two of them are a pair of Clav voices which sound very authentic (I used to own a D6). I played the Clav voice through my Leslie 760 at gigs. Clavinets also sound great through guitar pedals and tube guitar amps. My D6 loved Zoom pedals.

A Marshall Major turned up at a store I used to frequent. My guitar player brother said I should buy it. I said "You sold your 100w Marshall because it was too loud! What the hell am I going to do with a 200w guitar amp?!?" Also at the time, KT88 power tubes had long been out of production and NOS were very hard to find. And Marshalls eat output transformers - where are you gonna find a replacement OT for a Marshall Major? I already had my Moog Synamp by then for a keyboard amp, and that has a pair of 200w amplifiers. Heavy but very reliable. Yes the Marshall PA head was a 200w amp with four channels, later became the Marshall Major. Production stopped in 1974 due to KT88 power tubes being discontinued. The other 200w amp was the Marshall 200 aka "The Pig" with its narrow control panel. Only made for one year in 1967, and today most are dead or dying.

No confusion on my part. Well aware of Wurly through Marshall in Cradle.

Jon Lord of Deep Purple ran his Hammond into Marshall stacks, no Leslie. You can hear them on Machine Head. Pumping a Wurlitzer through a Marshall or an old Fender amp was a cool sound. Back in the 60s/70s, guitar amps were the only amps that keyboard players could use. Keyboard amps didn't come along until late 70s with the Moog Synamp ($$$$) and ARP keyboard amps. The Roland JC-120 was a keyboard amp introduced in 1976 but it is better known as a guitar amp. I've heard the myth that "Jump" was played through a Marshall stack - I call BS, I own a Marshall stack and the major thirds in "Jump" sound terrible. EVH was well known for spreading myths like that to keep copycats off his tail. If I have to compete with a guitar player using a 100w Marshall stack, my Synamp with a pair of Bose 802s can keep up with him.

Audio devices are either -10dBv or +4dBu. The former is lower audio levels. If you plug a keyboard with -10dBv outputs into a +4dBu powered speaker, then you're going to lose volume. A mixer with gain controls on the inputs and +4dBu outputs will be a better match for the same speaker, which will produce better volume. You don't need preamps, they are already in the mixer and the mixer is less $$$.