Thoughts on the Moog Matriarch

although many some Shoebridge and these are my thoughts on the Moog matriarch [Music] [Applause] [Music] right now before we continue with the video I just want to take a minute or so to explain what this video is not and this video is not a review of the matriarch there are people that have done full reviews of it already out there on the internet I don't think there's any point in me duplicating what they've already done what I thought might be beneficial with this video is to give you my thoughts and my impressions about the matriarch having used it in anger for quite a few months now and yes that means there's going to be about my opinions it's gonna be what I think is good about it I think is not so good about it what could be improved in the future so I appreciate that my opinions may not be the same as yours and that's absolutely fine but please bear that in mind that that is what this video is going to be about now although I'm not going to do a full review of the synth I think it's worthwhile just talking about the overall architecture of the make sure because if you're in the market for a synthesizer right now and you're looking at the matriarch I think it's very important that you understand what sets the matriarch apart from the competition so that's what's coming up next as usual thank you very very much for watching okay so in terms of the architecture we start with our voltage controlled oscillators all four of them and the outputs from those four VCOs goes into a mixer section now that mixer section also has a fifth input which is a separate noise sauce so we have five separate audio inputs mono inputs into a mixer and we have a single monophonic output from the mixer the output goes into a filter section which contains two discrete voltage controlled filters will go into the filter section a little bit more detail in a minute but crucially coming out of the filter section is actually a stereo signal path we've got left and right channels coming out of the filter section at that point and those channels go into an amplifier section where we have a pair of VCAs and then the signal path passes on from the amplifier section into the delay section where we have a pair of bucket-brigade delays and from that point we have our stereo output out of the synth to the outside world so crucially here from the filter section onwards we have a stereo signal path and that makes the matron up for me very very special right let's talk about the filter section in a little bit more detail and see what's going on in there we've actually got three separate modes that the filter can work in now in the first mode I'm going to talk about VCF number one acts as a high-pass filter and release EF number two acts as a low-pass filter and those two filters are connected in series which means the mono output from the mixer first goes into the high-pass filter then the signal passes into the low-pass filter and then the mono signal from the low-pass filter is applied equally to the left and right channels that are coming out of the filter section that means that we have a monophonic output from the filter section now there's a second mode where we have high pass filter and low pass filter but in this case those filters are connected in parallel so we have our mono output from the mixer passing equally into both the high pass filter and the low pass filter the outputs from those filters are then combined back to a mono signal and then applied equally to the left and right channels coming out of the filter section so again we have a monophonic output now the third mode is one where we have both be CFS acting as low-pass filters they're connected in parallel but crucially with this particular mode the outputs from each of the low-pass filters are kept separate VCF number one goes to the left channel and VCF number two goes to the right channel so in this particular mode we actually have a true stereo output now in that last section I kept the architecture diagram really quite simple and I did that on purpose to emphasize the stereo nature of the synth I didn't mention envelope generators lfos that sequence their arpeggiator mediator cv conversion all of that stuff and I'd - certainly I didn't mention the different playing modes you know the unison monophonic mode the duophonic mode and the four no para phonic mode it's this four note para phonic mode that everyone has been talking about ever since the matrix first announced and comparing it to the great vintage korg mono/poly but if we just come back to the stereo nature of the synthesizer just for one more minute and we look at that original architecture diagram that I put together if there's one thing that I'd really like the matriarch to have and it doesn't have it that would be a true stereo mixer section so if the stereo a signal path started at the mixer then that would mean that we would be able to so pan our vcos left and right place them within the stereo field and have a really true stereo sound all the way from the VCOs all the way out of the synthesizer and then for me the matriarch wouldn't just be an evolution of the korg mono/poly but it would also be an evolution of the dave smith instruments Evolver and poly Evolver as well [Music] [Music] and what I'm going to do next is just look at a few different sort of hands-on aspects of the synthesizer with you I'm going to look at the filters again and do a little bit of patching with them I'm going to look at the bucket brigade delay and I'm also going to look at the sequence of section as well just very very briefly there's just a few little things that I'd like to sort mention with those three sections and that's what's coming up next right for me this filter section in the center here this is where I spend an awful lot of my time noodling and fiddling around and patching and one of the main reasons of that is this is where there's sort of the stereo signal path starts you've got these two filters inside this one section here and you've got stereo low-pass filter mode and there's an awful lot of wonderful sort of stereo effects you can get from fiddling around with the filters in this mode but equally you can get some really quite fantastic modulation effects being able to modulate each of the filters independently from one another in any of these three modes here so I just want to spend just a few minutes just showing you a couple of things sort of my favorite things to do with the filter section so the first thing I just want to mention it might be obviously might not but you can get at the filters individually if you want to so here we go together here we are in series mode and we're hearing both of them together what if we just want the low-pass on its own or the high-pass on its own simplest way to do that is to patch it with just one cable we've got at the top here inputs to each of the filters individually VCF in fun number one and then for number two so if I just switch it to parallel mode if I just take a patch cable and put it into one of those patch points and not connected to anything else I'm basically bypassing the normal routing from the mixer into VCF to and all we're doing there is the high possible which is VCF one in this particular mode if I put it into the other input now we're just hearing the low-pass filter which is VCF - in this particular mode [Music] now we've got in terms of controls for these two filters we've got one sort of master cutoff control we've got individual resonance controls but just the one cutoff what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put it into drone three of my hands and I switched into stereo it's very subtly its stereo but actually both filters are Sweeting at exactly the same time so it's not really much of a stereo effect we've got individual resonances so we can create differences between them and that gives us an enhancer stereo effect but if we want to have the cut-offs of the filters different to each other and the way we do that is with this spacing control here and what the spacing control does is create an offset between the cutoff of filter 1 and filter 2 so let me just demonstrate that to you so if I just turn it towards the right positive you'll hear that the left channel is giving a milder that's because that cutoff filter number one is increasing relative to full to number two it's still sweeping both but we're now sweeping them at different conferences [Music] but it's a sort of fixed offset and if I go towards the left- you'll hear that the right channel is getting louder so cutoff frequency of VCF to is greater relative to VCF a [Music] now if we don't like using this control there's a very easy way of having complete hands-on control of both cut-offs of these two filters and the way to do that is with some patch cables so if I take these attenuators so we've got one over here we've got two over here what I'm gonna do is just take the output from this attenuator and put it into the cutoff in off filter number two and then I'm going to do this attenuator output into cutoff number one now just without any other patching I've got control of each cutscene individually [Music] and that will work in any of these three modes we're still here right now [Music] possible to cut off [Music] so that leads me on to one more thing I want to show you and that is one of my favorite ways to patch the synth is with these two cables in place for that anymore so what I'm going to do because I'm going to take the LFO over here take its triangle output and put it into this attenuator and I'm going to take the main LFO over here and take its output and put it into this attenuator so now what I can do is individually I'm doing this in stereo mode for a fact individually modulate the cutoff frequencies of each of the filters [Music] okay so so finally let's just talk about the stereo delay it's a very similar kind of situation to the filter section you've got to individual delays and they're affecting the left and the right channel and you have a single set of controls so you've got an overall time control but then you have a spacing control which means you can offset the delay time of delay number one versus delay number two so I'm just going to show you something a little bit wacky and weird I've got the LFOs going into two attenuators and then what I'm going to do because I'm going to take the output from one attenuator and control the time of the delay number to the right-hand delay and then I'm going to with a longer cable here affect time of delay number one with this other attenuator over here so I'm just going to play a little sequence so you can hear the sort of the slightly wacky effect that we get now that we are able to control times of each of those debase Epperly [Music] so just to mention just before we finish here that the filter has direct inputs to filter number one and number two and the stereo delay also has inputs directly into delay number one and delay number two and the VCA that the amplitude envelope effects has also got there are inputs into vc a number one a vc a number two so irrespective of the sounds coming out of this synthesizer and it's museos etc you can use this synth as a standalone stereo filter effect a standalone stereo delay effect or both of them combined I saw someone in the comment section of one of my videos talking about the price of the matriarch and asking you know can you use these two components separately because if you look at the cost of the you know the bucket brigade delay muga fuga pedal it's really quite expensive and quite rare these days and yes you've got a stereo delay effect here and you've got a stereo filter as well obviously you can use an ax stereo murder you can use them as a pair of mono effects so you've got an awful lot of sort of like external audio effects capability with the synthesizer yeah even if you saw like completely disregard its for PCOS the last section I want to cover is actually the sequencer over here on the left-hand side I don't use a sequencer very much in fact I don't use the sequencer of any synthesizer very much I've got my door and my PC and that's sort of central to my XOR like workflow but there's just something cool that I found with this sequencer which I just wanted to demonstrate to you just a little thing I found with it so it's a polyphonic sequencer you can record up to four notes at a time you obviously need to be in four voice mode when you play that back otherwise it's not going to sound the way you recorded it the thing I just want to show you is that I've got two sequences that I've recorded but the whole button on oppressor key okay so this is the first one monophonic sequence and I'll switch it to the other one sequence here there that it just keeps perfect time as you switch between sequences you've got to get the you know switch right in between the notes but it doesn't have to be dead accurate [Music] importantly accurate Adelman mr. new [Music] which is lots pretty cool I think from the sort of live performance point of view it's very handy that it keeps time it doesn't have to keep time but the fact that they've done it I think is really good [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] now if you've seen any of my previous videos on the matriarch my little bite-sized videos that I put together or if you've seen my grandmother video where I do talk about matriarch a little bit then you'll know that I absolutely love this synthesizer and there are four basic reasons why I love it the first reason is simply the sound the sound of the oscillators the filters the amplifiers and the delay section it's got a lovely rich creamy beefy kind of sound a vintage kind of sound it just really just sounds absolutely wonderful and talking of the sound the second reason why I love it is the thing I've been banging on about a lot in this video so far which is the stereo signal path from the filter all the way through to the outputs you've got stereo capability and that adds a real extra dimension to the sounds that you can get out of this synthesizer now thirdly talking about extra dimensions we've got four note para phonic mode that really does add an extra dimension to a synthesizer you can use it in so many more situations than you could a mono synth you can play for note chords or three note chords with a bass line it's just a wonderful capability to have and not that many synthesizers have it the fourth reason why I love the matriarch is it's a serious semi modular synthesizer it takes modular gear seriously he's got loads of patch points not just on the top on the back panel as well there's an awful lot you can do to craft the sound that you want and that's even before you start looking at integrating it with your iraq ear so those are the four reasons why I love the synthesizer but this is not going to be a hundred percent positive discussion about it there's one thing about the synth that I really do not like at all and that is called global settings right what I'm showing you here is the first global settings page in the Maitreya user manual I'll just scroll down so you can see sort of like tables and tables and tables things that you can make there are actually 46 in total 46 settings that you can change now the matriarch doesn't have a display of any description so there's no way of accessing these global settings through some sort of menu option there's not even a little numerical display like you'd get on say a prophet six or or an OB six for that matter so the only way that you can set global settings is to use key press combinations on the physical keyboard now the first ten settings then require key press combinations but the rest of them do so that's 36 different key press combinations to access a single parameter that you then change the value of by pressing a white key so you hold down two black keys to access a parameter and then press a white key to change the value now the issue I have with this whole thing is that there's no way of knowing what the value is before you set it or after you set it other than you knowing what it is by the behavior of the synthesizer now this this way of setting global settings through key presses is nothing new to mogh they've got it in there other synthesizers as well I've got the the sub phatty and you do the same kind of thing to set global settings with the sub phatty there's also a software-based editor slash librarian where you can make those changes in a far more intuitive and safe manner with the matriarch there is no software and not that I'm aware of so I think that it's an issue because the more and more settings that you have to set the more and more key key press combinations there have to be and then the more and more potential there is for error so let's say for example you want to make a setting it's been a long day you're tired instead of holding down D sharp you hold down see sharp followed by G sharp that access is a parameter but it's the wrong parameter but you don't know what that parameter is and then when you change the value you don't know what parameter value you've just set because you're thinking it's something else you've got no way of knowing what that was it's now done and that setting is now permanent which means you switch the matriarch off switch it back on again and that wrong setting is still there and the only way you'll know about it is if you happen to stumble across the behavior of the synthesizer changing and realize that if that's not the way it should be let me go and set it back again and even if you don't make a mistake let's say you set the value correctly I might change the clock setting on the synth it might be tomorrow next week or in a few weeks or a month time I want to do something with the synth and I just want to know what the clock setting is that I've set there's no way of knowing what it is there's no display you have no idea so I think this whole thing with global settings is an issue the more settings that you have and 46 settings is an awful lot of settings and it also sort of like shows you how much firmware there is inside the synthesizer you know you think it's a fully manual voltage-controlled synthesizer semi modular there won't be much firmware in there but actually there is a lot of firmware in there and it's only once I started to make some global setting changes that I came across some very very weird and strange behavior with the synthesizer where I think I had at least two or three different bugs now I don't want to talk about those bugs I need to go back and do the same thing again recreate the issues that I had document them and then I need to talk to mode technical support about them and see what they say and I haven't done that but certainly I've uncovered instability issues with the synth having made global setting changes and so that kind of worries me the level of testing that has been done on the motor out before it was released I'm assuming most people that tested it didn't go into all the global settings make changes because otherwise they would have uncovered these bugs that I have found so anyway that's the sort of the negatives of the matriarch out the way global settings for me is a bit of an issue I'm a bit concerned about them and I think that if mode were to come out with a software editor that allows you to make those changes safely and see what you so you could see what those changes are I think it would make a big big difference [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] right so I think I pretty much covered everything I wanted to say about the matriarch in this video I was originally thinking about doing another section in the video where I compared the matriarch to its closest competitor which let's face it is the burying Polly Dee but although the Polly Dee has been announced it's not yet released I don't have one I didn't get an early access to one either so I can't really talk with any authority about the Polly Dee I'm interested in it certainly I'm a little bit concerned about oscillator tuning variation there's a certain amount of tuning fluctuation going on in the bearing of model Dee's I've owned a number of those over the years are being just didn't see how bearing a have looked at that issue in terms of the poly Dee because let's face it if you're holding down you know a single note and you've got oscillator tuning fluctuation it can sound really cool but if you're holding down a whole chord and you've got some tuning and stability and you've got each VCO associated with a different note then they can actually sound really quite terrible so I'll be interesting to see how burying have solved that issue or at least modified the poly Dee compared to the original model Dee's but you really can't compare the matriarch with a poly Dee the matriarch has that true stereo signal path that only the highest-end analog synthesizers have and it's also a real serious semi modular synthesizer it's got a lot of patch points and there's an awful lot that you can do with this synthesizer even before you look at integrating it with your right gear so that's really yeah that's all I want to say about the matriarch it is a wonderful synthesizer yes it is expensive but you're getting what you pay for honestly so that's it until the next video until I next synthesize that I choose to have a look at as always thank you very very much for watching [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Tim Shoebridge

Views: 82,632

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Id: y6EQx2eXzOs

Length: 34min 6sec (2046 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 31 2019