Well everyone,
Thanksgiving is almost here and it's high time to graduate from the Mini Moog and continue my journey of learning sound synthesis. I've spent a lot of time with the Mini Moog, delving into its presets and trying to deconstruct them to learn about the different types of sounds it can make, and the main, noteworthy/telltale characteristics of its sounds, oscillators, and filters. Now, I finally feel comfortable enough to "graduate" from it to my next synth. To commemorate this (or maybe just to reinforce my confidence in myself), I'm planning to make a "graduation song" with only Mini Moog sounds. By doing this, I can also show others (and myself) that I've reached the level of competence necessary to freely use the instrument how and when I please.
I plan to continue learning and practicing this way for each synth I learn, and I figure if I learn from the landscape of some of the most landmark synths of the ages, and from key synths using different types of synthesis... (syntheses?) ;-D Anyway, with this plan I'll have all I need to replicate any sound from my brain to my DAW. After all, I don't want to be just a "beat maker" or someone who just makes a song from the same old presets. I want to be a full-contact, renaissance man of a composer, able to immediately and uniquely craft whatever I need for whatever project I'm working on.
Enter the Prophet-5
The next target on my list is the Sequential Prophet-5. After the Mini Moog, I believe the Prophet-5 to be the next synth I should learn because of how groundbreaking it was and how much of an industry standard it became. Additionally, I like how different it is from the Mini Moog. In the interest of time, I'll just copy/paste from Wikipedia to show just how famous it was and how famously used it was: "It has been used by musicians including Tony Banks,[6]Phil Collins,[7]Michael Jackson, Tangerine Dream, Madonna, Patrick Cowley, Dr Dre,[4]Too Short, Radiohead,[8]John Carpenter, Alan Howarth,[9] and John Harrison.[4]Brad Fiedel used a Prophet-10 to record the soundtrack for The Terminator (1984).[10]"
I believe the Prophet-10 is a form of two Prophet 5s stacked together, but I'm not sure. Anyway, anyone who is familiar with the Terminator soundtrack knows just how interesting it is. I would like to discover the (dark) magic behind that sound.
About This Synth
This synth adds to the functionality of the Mini Moog with a 5-note polyphony, pulse width modulation (PWM), knobs, patch memory, ADSR amp and filter envelope control, and additional tuning options. The section on the left side really adds to its complexity with some useful, albeit counterintuitive (IMHO) modulation routing of the LFOs and second oscillator. To be honest, I am still a bit confused by this routing because it is a little difficult to see what is happening and some of the routing is more complex than that of the Mini Moog. However, with time I'll come to understand it more naturally.
To conclude... so far, I definitely concur with the opinions of others who say there is certainly something special about the Mini Moog's filters and low, fat bass sound. Currently, from my admittedly shallow dive into the Prophet-5, I can say I comparatively like the simplicity of the Mini Moog as well as its intuitive, left-to-right workflow layout which follows the synth's routing. However, I am excited to look into some of the Prophet's pad and brass sounds and see what's cooking there.
SCOPS
Comments