Nevertheless, it's a novel approach, and it could work. With any conventional design, these functions would be accessed and programmed using a screen and a simple menu system. I hope others find it similarly convenient once they've gotten used to it.” I'm not sure that I fully accept this. My own experience has been that of genuine surprise at how quickly I memorised the more commonly used shift functions. If you're curious enough to delve deeper, you can consult the documentation when necessary, until you've internalised the whole layout. If you approach the instrument as though the panel functions are all it has, it remains a complete and very playable instrument. This was a conscious decision to keep the panel as clean and uncluttered as possible, so as to be minimally off-putting for newcomers to knob-per-function analogue panel design. It's not a particularly elegant system, but one of Moog's engineers explained it to me as follows: "People may wonder about the relative profusion of page 2 functions, versus the absence of panel labels for them. So, for example, if you want to change the filter slope, you have to press Bank 4 and Activate to enter Shift Mode, followed by Bank 2 and Patch 1 to access the appropriate parameter, and then the lowest C, C#, D or D# keys to choose one of the four options. You'll soon be able to control these using the forthcoming editor/librarian software, but if this isn't to hand, you can access them using a Shift Mode in which some buttons and switches offer what, in the past, would have been called functions, while other parameters can be accessed by pressing combinations of the Bank and Patch buttons, followed by keys on the keyboard itself. But, in addition to these, it offers no fewer than 51 hidden parameters, many of which are intimately bound up with the sound it produces. All the things that you need for monophonic synthesis - oscillators, noise, a filter, dual contour generators and an LFO - are visible and, if you compare it with a vintage synth of similar form and function (say, a Prodigy) you'll find that it has significantly more facilities on its front panel. It's Deeper Than It Looks!Īt first sight, the Sub Phatty is a traditional analogue synth boasting a knobby control panel, a 25-note keyboard, and standard pitch-bend and modulation wheels. So what of today's offering? Will the Sub Phatty add to the Moog legend, or will it join the list of "nearly but not quite” synths that bespeckle the company's history? Careful. Then there's the Slim Phatty it's fair to say that we'll never be bosom buddies. The Voyager XL is an object of such beauty that it's sometimes hard to play it rather than just gaze, adoringly. But for every classic Moog, there was another that didn't quite earn its right to the name. Nobody can question the importance of the Minimoog and Taurus pedals, and the likes of the Prodigy and Source deserve more than passing respect. When Moog Music announce a new synthesizer, the Internet buckles under the weight of lust, rumour, speculation and the wish-lists of those for whom the Moog name will never evoke anything other than unquestioning loyalty. A new Moog monosynth is exciting enough in itself, but the Sub Phatty has hidden depths that its vintage predecessors could only dream of.
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