Back to Bach

The air-con system at my incubator finally heard my complains. The compressor went dead and no more north pole air. It just blew warm air. I thought it would be good but it turns out bad. My body got dehydrated. After a day of that I finally got sick. It started last Friday. My most productive moments during weekend were lost. The air-con technicians don't work on weekends though the incubator operates 24/7.
So I just lazed around watched movies and played my keyboard. I remember when I was experimenting with synthesizer I learned the theory of pitch/frequency, harmonics and timbre. Then I discovered about velocity. I came to know that keyboard especially piano are not just on/off switches. It has expression which is the velocity. Just like the piano hammer. But keyboard controllers for synthesizers back then produce only two informations, on/off and variable voltage that determined the pitch/frequency.
So it was time for me to get into music school and learned classical piano. I ate and sleep piano and only listen to classical. During that time I heard about the album 'Switch On Bach' by Walter Carlos from references in electronic-classical music discussions. I bought the album and fell in love with Bach. Played it loud everyday. The mix of moog and Bach kind of toggling many switches in my brain. Many were positives.

The vinyl album is not with me. It is at my dad's. I just can't afford to carry a big bunch of vinyl around. Instead I watch a movie of similar theme, electronic, music, classical and computers. The best match was 'Electric Dream'. It was released in 1984 but I only had the chance to see it end of 2004. This is my favourite Bach piece, minuet in G major with improvisation by Giorgio Moroder and my favourite scene with the lovely Virginia Madsen:

By the year 1984 synthesizers had become more sophisticated with fully MIDI implementation. The music for the above scene done by Giorgio Moroder was done almost entirely with synthesizers. To bring back memories or for those who don't you can always add one, here is the music clip of Electric Dream sung by Philip Oakley:

So the story ended with the couple going off for the weekend break. The one that lost the love had to go away. I myself will be going away soon but to meet the ones I love. I will be going down south for the World Flower Festival in a couple of hours and meeting my dad, sister and niece. It's time to go away..........

I'm in the moog forever

Growing up during the Age of Aquarius had opened me up to million of ideas. Well not all were realized. There were limitation of time and budget. Most of it because of budget. That actually didn't stopped me. I learned to build things on my own. Not that easy to put aside pencil and brushes and handled soldering iron and a multimeter. Build my own printed circuit boards and assembled semiconductors and wired them up just to get a sound. To me it wasn't electronics, it was art. It was an experiment in additive sound synthesis. A fully assembled module was called a sound synthesizer. An instrument with no preset sound.

I couldn't afford to buy one. Even if I could it wasn't easily available. But I did manage to build many modules and patched them together and synthesized many weird sounds. My parents called it the submarine :-). Computer stole away my interest. Everything then became virtual.

The dream didn't die. This year I managed to get a number of synthesizer plugins or mostly known as VSTi. One of the great classic is the minimoog. It is the smaller brother of the modular moog. minimoog was meant for live performances because of its small size and easy operation. moog has a unique sound compared to other synthesizers. The key behind its uniqueness was its filter design. I was skeptical that the software version could reproduce the same unique sound. But it did. It sounded exactly like the original moog. Here is the minimoog V from Arturia:

Though it look exactly like the real thing, it is still a software. I can play using my M-Audio MIDI keyboard. The knobs can be turned and the switches can be toggled using my mouse. To play live would be difficult. I need to manipulate the knobs like a real hardware knobs quickly and in realtime. I have found a way to do that. I will show you how.

In your music sequencing software like Sonar Producer, insert the minimoog plugin. The Synth Property and Synth Rack page will appear. The Synth Property will show the whole synthesizer like above and the synth rack will show like below:

Activate 'Assign Controls' and 'Show/Hide Assigned Controls'. In the Synth Property page you manipulate the knobs/controls that you want to assign. It don't have to be every knobs but just the important ones. Then deactivate the 'Assign Controls' button. A pop-up window will appear and prompt "14 Parameters were touched during Learn. Are you sure you want to assign these controls?". Click on 'Yes' and the Synth Rack page will be updated like below:

The controllers on the Synth Rack can now control the knobs on the Synth Property page and vice versa. You can minimize the Synth Property page to clear up space. To have your MIDI controller keyboard control the software synth you need to do the following steps. With your mouse right click the controller on the Synth Rack page and choose 'Remote Control'. Turn the knob on your MIDI controller keyboard and click the 'Learn' button on the 'Remote Control' pop-up window. The controller number will appear. Click 'OK'. The window will close. The selected knob on your keyboard will control the selected controller on the Synth Rack page and in turn will control the synthesizer. A couple of Continous Controllers are already pre-assigned to work with minimoog. Controller #77 for Filter Emphasis and #7 for Main Volume. You don't have to assign these controls or it will get messed up. The Synth Rack will act as a bridge binding the MIDI controller keyboard and the software synthesizer. Here is how the knobs look like on my Axiom MIDI controller keyboard:

These knobs I assigned as Continous Controllers or MIDI CC to control sound shaping parameters. While the levels for each modules are controlled by the linear sliders assigned as Channel Volume or MIDI CC #7 with separate MIDI Channel for each. Here is the Linear Sliders on my keyboard:

As you can see each one of the controllers are just numbers without any predefined function. MIDI controller keyboards do not have a sound of its own. They are just interfaces like a mouse or a PC keyboard. It is interesting to see the knobs on the keyboard actually control the knobs of the minimoog plugin in realtime. The good thing about it is the MIDI keyboard is polyphonic while the original minimoog is monophonic. With the MIDI keyboard I can play chords and I can save the settings on my computer.

There were only 13,000 unit of minimoog produced. To own the original is like owning a part of history. I would choose a minimoog over a BMW anytime. Here is the story of the creator of minimoog, the late Dr. Robert A. Moog: https://www.moogmusic.com/history.php

Nowadays with just a laptop and a MIDI keyboard controller, you can jam anywhere. The keyboard can be a 25, 49 or 61 key. That's depend on your mode of transportation. The audio interface has to be a professional one. You can even play an acoustic or grand piano anywhere. My favourites are Steinway and Boesendorfer. The plugin is from Native Intruments called Akoustik Piano. The list of plugins are virtually endless. The Age of Aquarius is like forever.