Minimoog: Where The Two Wheels On The Left Came From

To the left of the keyboard on a Minimoog Model D there are two wheels. One bends the pitch of the note. The other sets how much modulation reaches it. The Minimoog was designed as a cut-down, hard-wired, portable version of a modular synthesizer. Its filter descends from Robert Moog's US patent 3,475,623, filed in October 1966 and granted in October 1969. The patent draws four identical stages, each a pair of transistors with a capacitor across them, tuned by a control current through the base-emitter junction. Feedback peaks the response at cutoff, and with enough of it the filter oscillates at its own cutoff frequency. On the Minimoog that feedback is the knob labelled Emphasis. In 1969 a Moog engineer, Bill Hemsath, started building a small synthesizer with help from a colleague, Chad Hunt. The keyboard was cut down to three octaves with a hacksaw, and the old keyboard case had a notch in its left cheek where a portamento control was missing. Hemsath fitted a slider there. The Model B moved the pitch slider to the bottom centre of the front panel, and the Model C brought the pitch control back to the left end with a partner: two sliders, one for pitch and one for modulation. In the Bob Moog Foundation's account, the wheels came at Moog's instruction, Hemsath designed them, and a machinist, Don Pakkala, made them. The panel's sections, left to right, are Controllers, Oscillator Bank, Mixer, Modifiers and Output, and after the controllers the sound travels through them in that order. The first production Minimoog, serial number 1001, shipped to Walter Sear in New York on 19 November 1970. Production ran until 1981, and the Moog Foundation puts the total at more than twelve thousand. CHAPTERS 0:00 Two wheels 0:45 The filter in the patent 2:46 A side project in the attic 4:43 B, C, D 7:08 The panel is the patch 9:24 Three chances to drift 10:52 What it became 11:46 The same two jobs 12:24 The notch in the cheek 13:01 Sources and credits SOURCES Robert A. Moog, US Patent 3,475,623, 1969 Bob Moog Foundation, The Birth of the Minimoog; Moog: A History in Recordings Moog, Minimoog owner's and service manuals, 1970s Keyboard, The Minimoog at 40 (Bill Hemsath interview), Oct 2010 Don Snowden, Robert Moog interview, Los Angeles Times, 1981 Sophie Weiner, Minimoog: The First Truly Portable Synthesizer, Red Bull Music Academy Daily, 2017 (citing Glinsky, Pinch, Jenkins) Gordon Reid, Moog Sonic Six, Sound On Sound, 2002 Sound On Sound, Moog Minimoog Model D review, 2016 Mix, 1970 Robert Moog Moog Music Minimoog Synthesizer, 2006 Deutsches Museum, Minimoog, Google Arts & Culture Fairchild, Linear Integrated Circuits Data Catalog, 1973 MIDI Association, MIDI 1.0 Control Change Messages IMAGE CREDITS Early Moog (28443801887) · sf-dvs · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... Michael Boddicker Modular System - Moog System 55 (1976), minimoog… · Pete Brown from Gambrills, MD, USA · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... Minimoog (Buffalo Museum of Science) · Alex Harden from Harrisburg, PA, USA · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... Minimoog Model D Synthesizer at SMEM Playroom · 1904.CC · CC BY 4.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... Minimoog Model D logo · Brandon Daniel · CC BY-SA 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... National Music Centre (38265395586) · Mack Male from Edmonton, AB, Canada · CC BY-SA 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... R.A.Moog minimoog 2 · glacial23 · CC BY-SA 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=... Public domain / CC0: Bob Moog3; Minimoog - pitch & modulation wheels, etc. - left angle view (2016-…; US Patent 3475623 Researched from service manuals, patent filings, interviews and primary documentation. Written by a designer with 25 years in interactive software; narrated in the author's own cloned voice. Original score. Visuals in this video include AI-generated imagery.