Moog Brings Iconic Model 15 Analog Synthesizer to iOS

[PruneTracy]

Wouldn't a synthesizer from 1973 be bad? How could it keep up with today's music and create beats in genres like dubstep or trap?

Electronic music in 2016 is pretty complicated.

That's like saying "wouldn't a car from 1969 be bad" or "wouldn't a sword from 1430 be bad" because they're old?
Not at all! It's not inherently "better" or "worse", but know that a lot of modern sythns are sampling these old ones, so to get the better, original sounds you'll want to go with the vintage ones.

 

[Zimmie]

Wouldn't a synthesizer from 1973 be bad? How could it keep up with today's music and create beats in genres like dubstep or trap?

Electronic music in 2016 is pretty complicated.

Listen to Timesteps some time. Or the album Switched-On Bach. At the time, Wendy Carlos used a monophonic Moog Modular synthesizer. Lay down seven tracks, one note at a time onto an 8-track tape, bounce them all down to one, and build up the next layer. Incredibly labor-intensive and time-consuming.

Wendy Carlos is the original synth!
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It's $9,970 cheaper than one of the Model 15 reissues.

And this is polyphonic, so it's like a whole set of Model 15 units!

 

[PruneTracy]

Listen to Timesteps some time. Or the album Switched-On Bach. At the time, Wendy Carlos used a monophonic Moog Modular synthesizer. Lay down seven tracks, one note at a time onto an 8-track tape, bounce them all down to one, and build up the next layer. Incredibly labor-intensive and time-consuming.

Wendy Carlos is the original synth!
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Now that we're off topic, Timesteps is such a beautiful piece of music. A true talent, that Wendy

 

[threesixty360]

Electronic music has never been easier to make than it is today. What are you talking about?

It depends what music you're talking about. It's a lot easier to make tracks yes. However, some of the programming out there can be pretty intense. You can automate and side chain anything nowadays so some electronic musicians are taking things to even more complicated levels. You can build your own synths in Max or Reaktor and do all sorts of complex thinsg if you want. It's a different kind of complicated. It's like comparing writing software today vs 30 yrs ago. Was it harder to write an atari vcs game than a modern game? It's hard to tell.

But I agree that the general recording of electronic music is easier because so much of the crappy studio stuff (dealing with noise etc...) are things of the past.

 

[CE3]

I've only played around with a few patches, but it sounds fantastic. The interface is awesome, and it looks like a great way for people who don't have much experience with proper old school analog synths (like me) to really see how they work and learn how to use them...all on an iPad!

 

[kingtj]

This is the problem with a number of iPad simulations of instruments. Not enough screen space so you have to scroll around, which really makes for a worse experience.

On the other hand? The virtual instruments you run on a Mac or PC with big monitors lack the touch-screen capabilities so you're always clicking around them with a mouse. That's not so great either.

Of the iPad instruments I've played around with, the drum machine simulators have been among the best -- because they really were small rectangular-shaped boxes, in most cases, where the iPad screen is just about right to simulate the entire top panel.

With Animoog I found that even on an iPad it's difficult to use. The control knobs are small, panning the keyboard is a bit of a pain, and most of all, you can't see the entire instrument at once.

Looking at this demo video you can see this woman awkwardly pan upwards while she pulls a patch cable to a not-yet-visible target with the same hand. It's like trying to type something or appreciate a painting through a 2-inch hole you have to move around. You really need to see the whole panel to get the most out of these synthesizers, not panning or switching panels. That's just what the devs had to do to give you access to all the controls without making them absurdly small.

Maybe it'll be a bit better on an iPad Pro. As with Animoog, I'm sure the sounds are fantastic, and I'm sure Moog did the best they could with the UI. But stuffing a Model 15 into a small screen presents what I think are insurmountable usability sacrifices. Imagine doing it with an 88-key piano and having to pan across as you play.

Oh well. Nice effort, but I'm not sure I see myself dropping $30 on it. We'll see.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

If you're interested in the Moog 15 app, I recommend this video interview with one of the developers. It has great information on how to work with the app.

 

[Kabeyun]

Why would you pan an 88 key piano across the screen? You connect an external MIDI keyboard instead. And you can map the controls (knobs/sliders) on your keyboard to actual controls in the App.

Something tells me you don't have a clue how these tools (Apps) are actually used.

1. I wouldn't pan an 88-key piano. That was an ironic analogy of another device too big for an iPad's screen.
2. The only device with the same knobs is a Moog Model 15. And tell me how the patch cables would work.
3. Their own demo video, as I said, shows a woman awkwardly trying to plug in a virtual path cable while panning the screen. It was this that elicited my comment.

Something tells me you don't have a clue, period. Feel free to post again when you can be civil.

 

[dysamoria]

Meanwhile, Apple has set about redesigning GarageBand to look more like airport signage.

Yeah it's ugly and hard on the eyes. I used to love Apple's design. Now I hate it. It's garish, low contrast (or ridiculously contrasty with poor color combinations), too bright, hard to read, structurally boring, and no longer intuitive (well gee, is that a control, a hyperlink, a menu, a scrollable region, an editable text region, and if it's a control, how is it operated??). Nothing looks like anything anymore.

 

[Ubele]

It's $9,970 cheaper than one of the Model 15 reissues.

Actually, adjusted for inflation, it would cost $53,600 in today's dollars. You would have had to be a Wendy Carlos, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, or music school to afford the original in 1973.

As someone who was a young teenager in 1973, it amuses me that $30 is considered expensive for an app like this. It's the cost of dinner, drinks, and tip at a not-very-expensive restaurant. Prior to iOS apps, only the simplest of programs could be had for $30 on a desktop OS. But now I'm sounding like an old fart: "Back in my day, sonny, we paid $2 million for a Cray 1 computer and were grateful to have it!"

 

[OllyW]

Actually, adjusted for inflation, it would cost $53,600 in today's dollars. You would have had to be a Wendy Carlos, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, or music school to afford the original in 1973.

As someone who was a young teenager in 1973, it amuses me that $30 is considered expensive for an app like this. It's the cost of dinner, drinks, and tip at a not-very-expensive restaurant. Prior to iOS apps, only the simplest of programs could be had for $30 on a desktop OS. But now I'm sounding like an old fart: "Back in my day, sonny, we paid $2 million for a Cray 1 computer and were grateful to have it!"

The original Moog modulars are still worth a fortune so you could say the new issues are a bit of a bargain.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Actually, adjusted for inflation, it would cost $53,600 in today's dollars. You would have had to be a Wendy Carlos, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, or music school to afford the original in 1973.

As someone who was a young teenager in 1973, it amuses me that $30 is considered expensive for an app like this. It's the cost of dinner, drinks, and tip at a not-very-expensive restaurant. Prior to iOS apps, only the simplest of programs could be had for $30 on a desktop OS. But now I'm sounding like an old fart: "Back in my day, sonny, we paid $2 million for a Cray 1 computer and were grateful to have it!"

It's funny to hear people argue about 30 bucks for music software since I, as a bass player, pay about 40 bucks for a package of 5 strings and I have to do that a couple of times a year for each bass I play.

Love your Cray reference, LOL. Reminds me of that scene in some movie where Robert Redford and the bad guy are talking while the bad guy sits on the ledge of a Cray in a glass-encased climate controlled room.

 

[OcelotWreak]

It's funny to hear people argue about 30 bucks for music software since I, as a bass player, pay about 40 bucks for a package of 5 strings and I have to do that a couple of times a year for each bass I play.

Love your Cray reference, LOL. Reminds me of that scene in some movie where Robert Redford and the bad guy are talking while the bad guy sits on the ledge of a Cray in a glass-encased climate controlled room.

That was the 1992 move Sneakers, and Cosmo the 'bad guy' was played by none other than Ben Kingsley. I'm not sure it was a real Cray though, as I've sat on the leather cushions covering a Cray AC myself, just to see if they were real! The Sneakers Cray was probably just a Hollywood prop ('cause computer rooms are very noisy).

 

[CoolDerb]

This is pricey unless the buyer is a Moog fan or semi-pro musician. I think where this app would shine would be with a separate keyboard for input...this would be a neat thing, a keyboard as a peripheral, that one could map physical buttons to iOS app controls.

The Moog 15 app. has MIDI Learn so you can use an external keyboard controller and map the controls to knobs. The MIDI controllers connect to the Ipads/Iphones via lightning to USB adapters.
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It's funny to hear people argue about 30 bucks for music software since I, as a bass player, pay about 40 bucks for a package of 5 strings and I have to do that a couple of times a year for each bass I play.

Love your Cray reference, LOL. Reminds me of that scene in some movie where Robert Redford and the bad guy are talking while the bad guy sits on the ledge of a Cray in a glass-encased climate controlled room.

I've heard quite a few people moan about the price. They fail to realize the amount of programming resources required to develop such a faithful reproduction of a timeless,classic instrument. $29 is indeed a bargain. I used to pay $29 each for floppy disks containing high quality Stevie Wonder and Jackson-5 MIDI files (about 7 songs per disk). It was cool being able to play them back on my GM/XG keyboards and modules. Moog could have chosen not to develop the app. They are doing pretty well with their hardware synths. yet they gave us this gift of an app.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

That was the 1992 move Sneakers, and Cosmo the 'bad guy' was played by none other than Ben Kingsley. I'm not sure it was a real Cray though, as I've sat on the leather cushions covering a Cray AC myself, just to see if they were real! The Sneakers Cray was probably just a Hollywood prop ('cause computer rooms are very noisy).

That's the movie! Couldn't remember the name for the life of me.

 

[Ubele]

It's funny to hear people argue about 30 bucks for music software since I, as a bass player, pay about 40 bucks for a package of 5 strings and I have to do that a couple of times a year for each bass I play.

Love your Cray reference, LOL. Reminds me of that scene in some movie where Robert Redford and the bad guy are talking while the bad guy sits on the ledge of a Cray in a glass-encased climate controlled room.

About 15 years ago, there was a "for sale" ad in the back of my local newspaper, with someone selling a Cray 1 for $10,000, if I recall correctly. I wondered how someone had acquired it, and was amused to see it in a puny ad among the PCs and printers for sale. For a long, long time, "Cray" was synonymous with "supercomputer" to me, even after cheap pocket calculators had long since surpassed its processing power.
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The original Moog modulars are still worth a fortune so you could say the new issues are a bit of a bargain.

I'm hoping that the iOS version will be just as valuable in 40 years.
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The Moog 15 app. has MIDI Learn so you can use an external keyboard controller and map the controls to knobs. The MIDI controllers connect to the Ipads/Iphones via lightning to USB adapters.
[doublepost=1462559700][/doublepost]

I've heard quite a few people moan about the price. They fail to realize the amount of programming resources required to develop such a faithful reproduction of a timeless,classic instrument. $29 is indeed a bargain. I used to pay $29 each for floppy disks containing high quality Stevie Wonder and Jackson-5 MIDI files (about 7 songs per disk). It was cool being able to play them back on my GM/XG keyboards and modules. Moog could have chosen not to develop the app. They are doing pretty well with their hardware synths. yet they gave us this gift of an app.

I sometimes cringe at the tens of thousands of dollars I spent during the 1980s and 1990s on multitrack tape decks, sequencers, synthesizers, drum machines, guitars, software, Iomega Zip and Jazz drives and disks, etc. Then there were the keyboards I wanted but couldn't afford at the time: Fender Rhodes, Clavinet, Arp String Ensemble... Aside from the guitars, it's all been replaced by Logic Pro (and, honestly, GarageBand would suffice for my purposes), driven by my old Roland keyboard controller. If only I'd put that money into an IRA, I could retire early and have more time for music. Sigh...