Minimoog

The Minimoog was designed in response to the use of synthesizers in rock and pop music. Large modular synthesizers were expensive, cumbersome, and delicate, and not ideal for live performance; the Minimoog was designed to include the most important parts of a modular synthesizer in a compact package, without the need for patch cords. It later surpassed this original purpose, however, and became a distinctive and popular instrument in its own right. It remains in demand today, over four decades after its introduction, for its intuitive design and powerful bass and lead sounds.

The Minimoog is monophonic (only one note can be played at a time) and its three-oscillator design gave it its famous fat sound. Four prototypes were made over the years before a final design was decided upon to release as a commercial product. The Minimoog Model D adapted some of the circuitry (such as the filter section) from earlier modular instruments, but designed other circuitry (such as the oscillators and contour generators) from scratch. To produce a sound, the musician would first choose a sound shape to be generated from the VCO(s) and/or the type of noise (white or pink). The VCO provides a choice of several switchable waveforms:

• triangle wave
• reverse sawtooth/ramp wave
• sawtooth/triangle
• square wave
• two different width pulse waves