Moog Mother-32

While I was in Stockholm giving a talk before Easter, I bought my first analogue synthesiser: a Moog Mother-32.

Until recently I thought I would save up a bit (eh, a lot) more money and buy a fully modular synth, but then just before going to Stockholm I decided to bet on a semi-modular instead. Thus, I wanted to write down my initial conclusions about that decision after playing with thing for a few days.

What is it?

The Mother-32 is a semi-modular analogue syntesiser. “A what?”, you say. Well, in short (skip this if you know, or do not care, how a synthesiser works):

• Synthesiser – it synthesises sound. It generates electric signals which you can send to speakers (or head phones), so that they will make sound. The process of generating is by feeding signals through various components of the synthesiser. Each component has various parameters which can be controlled to generate different sounds. Here are some components of the Mother-32:
  • Oscillator: Generates signal (square or saw-tooth waves) with varying frequency. Since the oscillator is controlled by an electic signal, it is called a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO).
  • Filter: Dampens the signal’s content of frequencies above or below a certain cut-off frequency.
  • Envelope generator: Generates the volume shape of individual notes. A note does not have constant volume, but rather starts, low goes up to a high, then descends again. The steepness of the going-up and the going-down are called attack and decay.
  • Low-frequency oscillator (LFO): A second oscillator with a lower frequency range. Can be used to modulate the parameters of other components, or as a second sound source.
• Analogue synthesiser – the sound is transmitted as an analogue signal (not digital) through the components. In particular the oscillator is an analogue electronic component.
• Semi-modular synthesiser – While some of the components are hard-wired to each other, there are patch points (mono mini-jack connectors) where the user can connect inputs to outputs in new ways. The Mother has thirty-two patch points (visible on the left side of the picture above).

Does it sound good?

Yes! The sound is really above expectations. While it might look like a cute little machine it produces really powerful sounds. Especially is has some beautiful bass sounds easily available by just playing with the knobs. And you find easily recognisable transitions, such as slowly opening the filter, by fiddling the knobs.

Ofcourse it matters what kind of speakers or head-set you connect it to. The first time I connected it to my stereo I was awestruck by the awesomeness. Also, if your stereo has an equaliser or even just a low-pass filter (labeled “bass” in many cases), it can be used as an extension of the instrument.

A straight forward patch sounds can reasonable on all eight octaves, but I find that most complicated configurations have a range about three to five octaves where they sound pleasant. If you go outside that range some of the musicality is lost.

Is it fun?

My biggest fear before buying the Mother-32 was that it would be no fun. Before this I have been playing with software modular synth, and usually my patches begin with putting up three different VCOs with a quantiser each and start feeding them signals from an array of at least four LFOs. So I was afraid that I would just not be able to produce anything interesting on this single VCO single LFO thingie.

However, the Mother proved my fears unfounded, I have been having a blast playing it so far. The limitations are definitely there , but there are both less and more possibilities than I imagined. And the result is that I am having a lot of fun exploring the space of sounds on the Mother.

First of all, there are actually four sound sources: the VCO, the noise generator, the LFO and the self-resonating filter. But there is this interesting trade-off between using more sound sources and constraining the choices you have. For instance, to play the filter you regulate frequency through the cut-off – but this constrains your ability to modulate the filter for other purposes. Similarily, if you use the LFO as a sound source, you have limited ability to use it to modulate the VCO.

Secondly, I find that there is a lot of fun to be had on each patch. For each patch, there are many ways to play it. You can play on the keyboard, or fire up a simple sequence, or try to generate something. What I tend to do is to let the sequence contain only beat info, and improvise melodies on top of the beat. Then I find some cool transitions and put together piece from that.

Some fun things I have tried with the patching, thus far:

• Using the noise generator as a snare-drum, controlled by the accent on the sequencer. I think this came from the manual. I found that routing the accent through the mult to both cut-off and mix CV gave the best result.
• Using the random-on-step mode to control the LFO-frequency. Depending on what is modulated by the LFO this introduces some funky randomness to the playing.
• Using the LFO as a tempo clock for more variable tempo.
• Switch the VCF modulation polarity and turn up the modulation so that the filter becomes like an inverted VCA, with attack and decay switching roles.

How modular is it?

So, from my perspective of wanting to get into hardware modular synths, where is the Mother-32? Is it a true modular or is it just a synth? I will say it is 40–60. Fourty percent of modular and sixty percent of a synth. However, to expand it I am definitely getting it some modular friends.