The Monkees & The Moog

Isn’t this stuff cool? In my screenshot above, I have my 901A output going into the sync of my 901Bs, and I’m getting pitch information from my midi keyboard and it’s pretty cool right now. I’m not sure if this is the way to emulate such a thing. How do we get the expander protocol? I’m unfamiliar with that. I’m also quite new to all of this modular stuff, so this is a great way to learn I think. I’m currently having trouble with understanding the CP3 mixer below the oscillator banks. I’m going to try to carve out time tonight to work on my patch and I’ll upload a work-in-progress for you if you’d like.

Thanks for everyone’s input so far. This is a great community!

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Hey, thanks to you for working on this project! It’s a neat idea and a good way to start dipping into a modular workflow.

The expander protocol is something you build in when developing modules (here’s a quick explanation in another thread), so it’d only come in to play here if someone were coding a new 901A/901B module and wanted to simulate the historical wiring approach. The sound would be the same either way–it’s just a question of whether a front panel cable is used.

I think that for this project it’s much better to depart from the design history a little and use the modern convention of front panel pitch inputs (since that way you can pick and choose oscillators). Rack modules (and modern modular design) would generally never hide a conventional input that way; back panel connections are almost always for proprietary connections between parent modules and expanders (search the Library by tag for examples).

Are you thinking about the purpose of it, or about how to emulate it? If the former, happy to help–say a bit more about what seems obscure? If the latter, here’s an interesting discussion of its particular characteristics by Chris Meyer (which you may have seen already). In particular, a clean mixer won’t get you there, because it distorted pretty easily. A lot of the available Rack mixers are ultraclean or have standard simple saturation at the rails, and I don’t know offhand if anyone has done a physical model of the CP3 in particular. The @slimechildaudio Saturating Mixer is the closest thing I know of, but it’s paid. Building a CP3-like mixer from submodules would be an interesting exercise, actually!

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Thanks for the help @gc3! I just spent some time with the video you posted about the CP3. I think I understand it a bit better. I used the mixer from Count Modula for this since it has an inverted output too. I’m going to try to stick to free modules for now, but I will keep that saturating mixer in mind.

What I’m gathering so far is this. There are four sets of oscillators. Three of those have the controller going into the three 901Bs, and then there’s a separate VCO for the fourth set. Each one of those four sets has a 4-channel mixer. The four 4-channel mixers then can feed into ANOTHER 4-channel mixer on the right panel, which is the final destination of the audio signal(s) before we hear it. I’ve spent a good solid two hours just blending the different sounds from the oscillators and it’s just too much fun. I had to upload my work in progress.

I’m really stuck with the envelope section. It looks like it’s generating different envelopes, but I don’t know how to use them. This is definitely one of those experiences where the more I learn, the more I realize I have to learn.

For now, the signal is gated from the MIDI-CV. As it’s patched right now, just plug in a midi keyboard or use your computer keyboard to play some notes. Feel free to use this as a basis for your own Moog patch too.

Let me know what you think!

Moog Modular 3P.vcv (56.4 KB)

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That’s got to be some kind of piece of broadcast equipment in the video, I’m guessing? Whatever it is, he plays the heck out of that prop! :slight_smile: Really cool to see someone tackling the laptop musician problem much earlier than I expected. I listened to some Monkees LPs when I was growing up, I had no idea they had a synth player, thanks for the interesting knowledge.

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Hi I don’t know if you’re still interested in a replica of the model III but if you are let me know and I can try and build the closest replica I can I’ve made a handful of replica synthesizers and I would be happy to try out making the synth but I only want to do it if you’re still interested in it

I just finished building a system 15 or at least the closest I can get to one

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I’m wearing my Small Faces t-shirt today so Steve Marriott must be another

Yes, good old “screamin steven”! I love the small faces! heck, I even like humble pie. So, the three artful dodgers are davy jones, steve marriot, and phill collins. All three of them took their turn in the original london production.

Thank you for making the MOOG System 15, would it be possible to have a look at the patch. U could just drag n drop it onto this thread. Welcome to the VCV Rack community forum. Much appreciated.

sorry cant “Sorry, new users can not upload attachments.”

but here is the link to my patch storage

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Thank you, I will have a play with this and see what noises I can make!