At the beginning, all Moog synthesisers were large, made up of modules and near impossible to take them around on tours. They were used as professional equipment until the Minimoog Model D was introduced. It was one of the first synthesisers that shaped the electronic music of today and was characterised for being portable and having a keyboard. It got as well to have knobs and switches and made it more user friendly rather than using, as older Moog synth, patch cables. The prototype was released in 1969 but then later the actual one was released in 1971. It gained recognition as a large format modular all around the world and it had the benefit of pre-wired modules. Many artists like Dr. Dre, Keith Emerson, Gary Numan and many more have used this peace of hardware to create and sound design their sounds. They even created new music genres. The Minimoog sounds monophonic (Appendix 1-Sound Of MiniMoog Model D) but what made it really famous is having three oscillators and a filter that many people loved and still do. It is still known for its high cut filter that creates a really bassy sound. It’s a sound which producers/artists find easy to use in their different styles of music. Now Minimoog has been produced again after 40 years with hard wood and aluminium chassis, but it retains the same components. The sound of it was never changed but they added more controls like for example, velocity, analogue LFO (square and triangle), pitch, gate… and a mixer with overload modifications which makes the sound even more bassy and thick. German band Kraftwerk have used the Minimoog in one of their albums, it was a main synthesisers in all the tracks of this album, one of those tracks was Autobahn (Appendix 2-Kraftwerk – Autobahn). You can hear it as well in Michael Jackson’s famous track “Thriller”.
As I mentioned earlier, many new music genres were created because of the use of the Moog. To start with, Moog Jazz with environmental sounds was produced at that time and which would have a Moog synthesiser as a main sound. In addition, you can hear it as well in progressive rock which, for example, was used extensively in the album syrinx. Moreover, it was a part of ambient trance music… many artists used it at that time . To add, early space music had the sound of the Moog in their composition. Having all these genres and many more to be using Moog because of its unique sounding, and then the Minimoog having its own advantages made it clear that it would be used again extensively in all these types of music and we can even hear it in nowadays electronic music.
To go more into details now, as I said before, the Minimoog is known for its thick sounds, which is why we will be looking more into this. In most music genres/ tracks the Minimoog was used as a bassline since the sound was really enjoyable on really low frequencies. The mixture between the square and triangle wave shapes and having three oscillators to mix into each other made the sound even more complex while being able to low pass the sound and listening to it at lower notes would make it sound perfect for a bassline in most electronic tracks. Till now, the Minimoog is seen as an amazing piece of hardware to work on for sound designing and to use those sounds in music compositions.
Mostly you would hear the Minimoog in electronic music like underground music (techno for example) but since the increase of fast computers and DAWs were introduced to the market, most producers were becoming more screen oriented than Hardware oriented since it would be cheaper to buy the plug in rather than the real hardware. So, nowadays you can find plug ins where the Minimoog was emulated (example, Native Instruments Monark) which price would be a lot cheaper than the real Minimoog (of course since it’s an emulation). However, the sound and feeling of the real Minimoog would be a lot more satisfying than the “fake” emulated ones. The Minimoog was and is still being used extensively in these days in electronic music since it is capable of giving the artist the ability to have a really good analogue sound in his track which can fit accordingly to the feelings of his composition.
In fact, many models of the Minimoog were created in the beginning, Model A Prototype, Model B Prototype, Model C Prototype, Model D Prototype and the last one of them was the Model D which was the one sold to the public. Let us now talk a bit more about the details of the things that make this hardware sound amazing. To begin with, you find the oscillator bank that is made of 3 oscillators, each being able to have waveforms as triangle, sawtooth, reverse sawtooth, square wave and 2 different pulse waves. You can change for each one the range which means if the sound of the oscillator would be on higher/lower frequencies. However, you can only change the frequencies of oscillator 2 and oscillator 3. When you look on the left side of the oscillator bank, you can find a section called controllers, this section has three knobs, one is the tune knob which is used to tune your sound, one is glide which is for being able to glide between notes (you can hear the sound changing the note from one to the other gradually), and the last one is the modulation which is used for changing between the third oscillator and white/pink noise. The section on the right of the oscillator bank is the mixer, this is where you mix your three oscillators together and the noise with volume knobs. The section after this one is the modifiers, and this is where things get mostly interesting since this is where you’ll be able to add some effects to your sound. You will find six knobs for the filter here: cutoff frequency, filter emphasis, amount of contour, attack time, decay time and sustain level. All these are used to change the frequency and the sounding of the filter used on the oscillators. You will find as well the loudness contour in this section with three knobs controlling it, attack time, decay time and sustain level which is used to control the sound. On the last section you will find the output section where you can change your master volume for the whole sound you designed. Now, the Minimoog comes with a built in 44 notes keyboard which has a modulation wheel and a pitch bend wheel which lets you have more control on your sound. However, it is not because of all these features that the Minimoog is really famous since most synthesisers have the same ones but it is because of its sound being so clear and enjoying. You can hear (Appendix 1-Sound Of MiniMoog Model D) how easy it is to use any sound created from the Minimoog in any track that is produced, meaning that it does not limit you on using the sounds in a specific genre but it gives you the opportunity of using it in a really creative way. For my opinion, the low frequencies of this synthesiser are really satisfying since you can hear the harmonics that this hardware enhances the sound with and even on higher frequencies, it would not make you feel like your ears are going to pop out. While listening to the filter cutoff and modulation, you can hear that the synthesiser makes a really good job on making the sound to be even better. Being one of the first portable synthesisers to break into the music industry around 45 years ago and still being seen as one of the best is just incredible with all the technology we have, no one could make a synthesiser to sound as good as the Minimoog.
So since the Minimoog was a small synthesiser at the time it came out, and many artists were able to take it around, you were able to hear this piece of hardware in many concerts around the world. It gave the opportunity for whoever is using the instrument to create and make unique sounds with no limitations. It made the musicians to share their sounds with the world and made technicians to focus more on creating and developing new electronic instruments. We have said before that mostly in electronic music, the Minimoog was used as a bassline in electronic tracks, however, you can create many different sounds as of leads, pads, sound effects… (Appendix 1-Sound Of MiniMoog Model D), which means you are not limited to only doing a bass sound but as for my opinion it has the best sounding in lower frequencies while using its low pass filter. If you listen today to electronic music, mostly in underground music like techno… you can hear that the main melodic sound in the track would be the bass line. Many of those new artists use hardware rather than software based sounds and many of them would choose to go for the Minimoog since it can give the best quality and nicest sound for the low frequencies you need in these tracks. Again, it has one of the easiest sound to be mixed in the track which gives it the ability to work with any style/genre of music. In reality, the electronic music of today was affected and shaped by the Minimoog since many musical genres were created based on this instrument and then were developed to what they are now.
To conclude, the Minimoog is a synthesiser that have been used for decades now and still being used. It is being reintroduced to the market and it has one of the best sounds which makes it an iconic piece of hardware. Many artists have used it and many still do, many musical genres were created at the time the Minimoog was introduced and a lot of people see it as the best piece of hardware. It had made an impact on the music industry since it was one of the first synthesisers that you would be able to take around on tours and it has one of the best sounding. It is famous for its low pass filter and for how it sounds. So if you are someone trying to go into the music industry and mostly into underground music, I would suggest the Minimoog if you have the money for it since it is an expensive piece of hardware.
REFERENCE
- Spice, A., & Ediriwira, A. (2014, March 4). The 14 synthesizers that shaped modern music. Retrieved February 16, 2017, from Features, http://thevinylfactory.com/features/the-14-synthesizers-that-shaped-modern-music/
- Minimoog model D. Retrieved February 16, 2017, from https://www.moogmusic.com/products/minimoog/minimoog-model-d
- Thom Holmes noise and Notations. (2013, January 14). Retrieved February 16, 2017, from http://thomholmes.com/Noise_and_Notations/Noise_and_Notations_Blog/Entries/2013/1/14_The_Greatest_Moog_Albums_of_1970.html
- Explorer, V. S. (2010, December ). Vintage Synth explorer. Retrieved February 16, 2017, from http://www.vintagesynth.com/moog/moog.php
- A brief history of the Minimoog. (2016, August 10). Retrieved February 18, 2017, from https://mn2s.com/news/features/brief-history-minimoog/