Bristol Mini Moog

Published on novembre 15, 2011 by admin · No Comments

It is perhaps not possible to write up who used this synth, the list is endless. Popular as it was about the first non-modular synthesiser, built as a fixed configuration of the racked or modular predecessors.

Best known at the time on Pink Floyd ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and other albums. Rick Wakefield used it as did Jean Michel Jarre. Wakefield could actually predict the sound it would make by just looking at the settings, nice to be able to do if a little unproductive but it went to show how this was treated as an instrument in its own right. It takes a bit of work to get the same sweet, rich sounds out of the emulation, but it can be done with suitable tweaking.

The original was monophonic, although a polyphonic version was eventually made after Moog sold the company – the MemoryMoog. This emulation is more comparable to that model as the sound is a bit thinner and can be polyphonic. The design of this synth became the pole bearer for the following generations: it had three oscillators, one of which could become a low frequency modulator. They were fed into a mixer with a noise source, and were then fed into a filter with 2 envelope generators to contour the wave.

Modulation capabilities were not extensive, but interestingly enough it did have a frequency modulation (FM) capability, eventually used by Yamaha to revolutionise the synthesiser market starting the downfall of analogue systhesis twenty years later.

All the analogue synths were temperature sensitive. It was not unusual for the synths to ‘detune’ between sound test and performance as the evening set in.

To overcome this they could optionally produce a stable A-440Hz signal for tuning the oscillators manually – eventually being an automated option in the newer synths. Whilst this digital version has stable frequency generation the A-440 is still employed here for the sake of it.

Modifiers and mod routing are relatively simple, Osc-3 and noise can be mixed, and this signal routed to the oscillator 1 and 2 frequency or filter cutoff.