New Goodies from Moog: Expression Pedal, Little Phatty Extras
While on the subject of Moog Music, the good peoples of Moog have a number of small announcements that should be welcome news to Moog fans.
First, the new EP2 Expression Pedal is a hefty (2.55-pound) pedal with adjustable external output level. Heavy-duty build and more expression control could make this one to get at US$44.
Moog also has a couple of announcements for owners of their Little Phatty synth. The Mac/Windows Little Phatty Editor Librarian is a much-needed tool for managing presets and settings on Moog’s synth keyboard, with support for custom preset banks for performance, high-precision (up to 16-bit) sound editing, and even a “Preset Genetics” tools for morphing and mutating old presets into new presets. (Anyone remember Kai’s Power Tools, the groundbreaking visual app for Macs? Okay, I’m getting off-topic.)
The editor is US$69, and a demo is available.
Little Phatty Editor Librarian
In the free category for the Little Phatty, the 1.03c OS update has a small version number but some important features. Biggest among them: high-resolution MIDI data for modulation wheel and filter cutoff (interestingly, both send and receive). I wish more synths would implement this, in software and hardware alike. Also included in the update: some preset saving and MIDI Setup improvements, and most importantly, MIDI Merge and Poly modes. Merge gives you a real Thru; Poly provides the ability to rack together multiple Moog synths into a monster, polyphonic Moog rig, you lucky bastards with your multiple Moogs!
Little Phatty Stage Software; Tribute Software [OS updates, other updates]
4 Comments
Leave a Commentbliss
Little Phatty = $1,400, Voyager = $3,200. Really good prices, imo, when thinking about the prices one pays for Macs these days. Of course, Mac owners are considered lucky bastards by some, lol. Anyway, those toys sound so delicious. They just beautiful instruments, really. And I can think of uses for every one of Moog’s effects pedals. Fine company, fine products.
July 19, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
Fractal Dimension
That’s weird. I thought that modulation wheel data was always high resolution, just like pitch bend. Well, you live and learn…
July 20, 2007 @ 9:40 am
aaron
2 points: since when was kai power tools a mac only thing? preset morphing / “genetics” is nothing new (alot of hosts/daws have preset morphing and genetic preset generation as part of their vst loaders).. and its nice to see moog get with the ball via some preset management on the computer. about time. they’re still behind though.. should be some vst/au controllers for the synth.
July 24, 2007 @ 6:07 am
Peter Kirn
@Aaron: Hey, I *did* say I was getting off-topic. I never said KPT was Mac-only. My recollection is that the original KPT shipped for Mac first, but my recollection of 1992 ain’t so hot. I don’t recall any synths with this sort of genetic modification in 92, though morphing itself does predate that … and, like I said, I was just getting off topic. I think there are some nice concurrences between music and visual concepts, anyway, that’s my point.
@Fractal Dimension: Generally, actually, mod wheel is implemented as only 0-127, using control change 1. If CC 1 is used with CC 21, you can get a high-resolution implementation that way. Pitch bend is its own thing — it’s a channel voice message, a la aftertouch and notes. (You need two control change messages to get the same resolution because control changes also need to transmit the number of the control change.)
Um… meaning, long story short, usually you get low-resolution for mod and high-resolution for pitch.
July 24, 2007 @ 10:07 pm
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