From: metlay+@cs.cmu.edu (Mike Metlay) Subject: The Moog Liberation: a review, from a new owner Date: 10 Nov 91 22:22:34 GMT About a week ago, I was wandering through Johnny B. Goode's, my local used-gear store. John looked up at me as I came in, and smiled That Secret Smile. I KNEW that grin; it meant "Sorry, Metlay, I have something so WEIRD you CAN'T pass it up!" This was not good, especially considering the money I was about to spend on CDs, as John 3 has gleefully noted.... I wandered through the store, seeing what lay in wait. A Casio VZ-1 that he'd managed to sell for $500; a Yamaha DX-11 for about the same, a Roland S-10, a Yamaha DX-1 for $1000 (see how the mighty have fallen!).... ...and there it was. Nestled in a road case lined with blue fur, complete with multipin cable, power supply and manual-- a Moog Liberation. I ran a hand over it disbelievingly, then hauled it out and hooked it up to a guitar amp and played with it for a while. Bliss! Quickly I checked it over. "Hey," I complained to John, "the pitch ribbon's broken." "Yeah. So?" The Grin was still there-- he knew I'd buy it anyway. And I did. I'm crazy but I'm NOT stupid. So now it sits on a temporary stand in my studio and gets a lot of love and attention. I don't know if I'll keep it; I cut my teeth on EMS Synthis and ARPs and Oberheims, and Moogs don't have a lot of mystique for me. But it IS kind of fun to have around. You youngsters out there in digitoid MIDIland probably don't remember the Liberation. It was a comparatively late design in Moog's history, and quite an innovation at the time-- while a number of strap-on keyboards existed already (the Syntar, the Clavitar/Clavitron, and the Probe come to mind immediately, as well as the gizmo Rick Wakeman played, anyone recall the name of it?), the Liberation was the first foray into the field by a major maker for a major market. It was available in 1979 and sold until about 1981, when Moog died. No strap-on keyboards were marketed after that until the MIDI era. (PArenthetical note: I wonder how hard it would be to get one of every strap-on ever, not including custom designs like the Probe? I'll append a list to the end of this review.) The Liberation was designed to give the keyboardist a reasonable palette of sounds in a strap-on form. It was designed to be light, expressive, sonically powerful and flexible. Let's see what that meant in 1979, Okay? The Liberation has a main body containing the keyboard, controls and synth guts (well, most of them), a long multipin cable, and a rack box with audio output and a monophonic CV/S-Trigger output set for running other synths from the Lib. The Lib has straplocks so you don't drop it, a guitar-like "neck" with performance controls, and a full front panel. It has the following features: THE KEYBOARD is a 44-note F to C unweighted synth keyboard with full-sized keys. It feels kind of weird, because it's pressure sensitive! Yes, kids, one of the first monophonic pressure sensors ever is on the board-- it's called a "force" sensor, terms like "mono pressure" and "Aftertouch" still being science fiction. THE SYNTH is a standard Moog two-oscillator beastie, functionally identical to the Rogue, Prodigy, Taurus II and Taurus III-- and also similar to the Realistic synth Moog built for Radio Shack. It has two VCOs, each with triangle, sawtooth or pulse wave selectable, each with a three-octave range and up to a fifth of detuning sharp or flat. There is oscillator sync, but no pulse width modulation: one oscillator has a square wave, the other a 10% duty cycle pulse. The sound sources include the two oscillators, a pink (!) noise source, a ring modulator that outputs sum and difference frequencies of the two oscillators, and a "poly" section. The latter is a fully polyphonic divide-down square wave setup with limited filter mod and no envelope shaping; it's good for thickening leads and having some chordal backing for the synth voice (which is high-note priority). The filter is a standard Moog post-Mini 4-pole lowpass jobber with cutoff, "emphasis" (i.e. resonance) and envelope amount controls. MODULATION CONTROLS include one LFO and two envelopes, one for the filter and one for the VCA. The LFO has a range of 0.3 Hz to 30 Hz, and can output either a triangle, square, or random S&H voltages. It can be routed to either the oscillator pitches (both at once) or filter cutoff, and controlled by either the force bar or the mod wheel. It also has a retrigger mode switch, which triggers the envelope rhythmically in time with the LFO without any need to touch the keyboard. The envelopes are the typical braindead Moog "Contour Generators" as they're called, with individual sliders for attack time, sustain level, and a COMMON time shared by decay and release. The only way to defeat this is to flip a switch that sets both envelopes to cut off immediately at key-off. Oh, and there are LEDs that light up when the LFO is running and the envelopes are triggered. Way cool. The unit also has a Glide control (portamento time) and separate tuning controls for the synth and the poly section. LEFT-HAND CONTROLS are where this machine really shines; it puts the rest of the controllers out there to shame, even nowadays. Only the Roland Axis comes close to jamming as many controls onto the left hand as the Liberation managed. From the tip of the "neck," there is a rocker switch to determine whether the force bar would apply a direct control voltage or serve as a sidechain control for the LFO (where the modulation goes is controlled on the front panel), a wheel for setting the amount of force-bar voltage, a second rocker switch to enable or disable glide (rate is set on the front panel), Moog pitch ribbon (mine needs to be replaced, alas, and like a fool I deleted that address for Moog parts that's been posted here a good 23 skidillion times), and THREE MORE WHEELS-- a modulation amount wheel, a filter swell wheel, and a volume wheel. The filter wheel has a short throw and is spring loaded to return to zero, and the other two are free turning with a lot more travel than the wheels on any MIDI controller. They were obviously designed to be set and left as is for a while, so their resolution is very good. Nobody seems to thumb mod wheels and leave them thumbed much these days-- on Roland and Oberheim boards, it can't even be done, as the mod devices are springloaded. Sigh. So how does it sound? Great! I wish I'd had one in 1982. The synth voice is classic Moog-- rich and gritty and smooth at the same time. The poly and ring mod add a lot to the sound as well, and it overdrives nicely. I plan to try it through a flanger and fuzzbox at some point. How does it FEEL? Incredible. The controls are well-thought-out, many use color-coded sliders that run both vertically and horizontally, so it's easy to find where you are by feel, and the neck works like a dream. The only board that comes close ismy Yamaha KX-5, which has a smaller neck and fewer easy-to-reach controls. Do I have a gripe about it? Yes, the same one that forced me to get rid of my Prophet T8-- it's HEAVY! They claim that the Lib only (!) weighs about 14 pounds-- compare that to a Rickenbacker 4001 bass at 12 pounds, a Les Paul at under 8 pounds, or my Yamaha SH-101 which barely weighs THREE pounds. Ouch! I can't wear it for more than about 20 minutes before my back starts hurting. This may, above all, force me to either let it go or perform radical surgery on it to lighten it a bit. The force bar is very loose and springy with a LONG travel, and when it's depressed it changes the throw of the keys a bit. And its sound, while great, isn't quite up to par with my Xpander. But I'm enjoying having it now, and will for a while. Makes me feel young again. |-> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- metlay | Synthesizers exist, despite sampling fads, the leader of the gang, er, Team| to create sounds that don't exist on Earth. | After all, elephants can be photographed, metlay@organ.music.cs.cmu.edu | but a dragon can only be painted.... From: mccreary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (MCCREARY SEAN) Subject: Re: Moog multiple-touch-sensitivity keyboard Date: 5 Feb 92 04:32:28 GMT >From the University of Chicago "Chronicle": Eaton, Moog to unveil 'revolutionary' keyboard John Eaton, Professor in Music, and Robert Moog, designer of the Moog Synthesizer, will introduce a revolutionary microchip-enhanced keyboard during a Music Department colloquium at 3 p.m., Friday, Jan 31, in Goodspeed Recital Hall. Moog will present a lecture on the instrument, "The Evolution of the Multiple-Touch-Sensitive Keyboard." The lecture is open to the public. The result of a 20-year collaboration, the new Multiple-Touch-Sensitive Keyboard was developed by Moog, based in part on ideas suggested by Eaton... The [device] is "the world's most sensitive musical instrument next to the human voice," according to Eaton. "Playing it is a kind of combination of playing a a very sensitive stringed instrument and playing a keyboard instrument." Each key on the 49-note keyboard has a microchip in it that responds to five specific motions: the precise distance it is depressed; the finger's front and back position and motion on each key; the finger's side-to-side position and motion on each key; the total area a flattened finger covers on each key; and pressure on a key after it is depressed fully. These five, fully independent controls send signals in digital streams of numbers to the computer, which routes the signals to affect any possible aspect of musical continuity desired--loudness; vibrato; tremolo; reverb; tone color or instrumental change; the speed, pitch, and any other application that can be dealt with by a modern sound synthesizer or sound-generating computer program. The keyboard is one of three that Moog will build for the University's Computer Music Studio. "The keyboard can be connected to any sound-generating apparatus," said Eaton. "The possibilities are endless." To demonstrate the instrument's possibilities, Eaton plans to use three synthesizers that generate sound according to different principles. Eaton will present the first concert performance of the instrument on Friday, May 29... The article continues, giving a brief bio of Eaton and his awards, etc. I am afraid that I couldn't attend the the demo, so this is pretty much all I know. Maybe if someone at UC knows more, they could tell us? -- Sean McCreary University of Colorado at Boulder mccreary@ucsu.colorado.edu From: Tracy.Barber@f14.n267.z1.fidonet.org (Tracy Barber) Subject: Moog Source Date: 2 Mar 92 13:57:34 GMT The sound of a Source is quite close to that of a Mini-Moog. It can store 16 Min-Moogs in fact. hehe... The synth has tape capabilities. It can also be midied for about $225 from Encore Electronics. Sysex data is available. I'm thinking of doing that quite soon, before they go out of business like so many other companies! hehe... Sometimes they can be finicky though with their Incremental Controller, but they are pretty easy to use. Comes with 2 sequences avaialable, arpeggiator. The sequences can pull the sounds from ANY OF THE 16 on board. Sort of multi-timbral (?) in a linear fashion. I haven't seen any other monophonic synths like this do that trick yet. Well, what's the price they're quoting? tlb -- Uucp: ...{gatech,ames,rutgers}!ncar!asuvax!stjhmc!267!14!Tracy.Barber Internet: Tracy.Barber@f14.n267.z1.fidonet.org