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1. Classic Minimoog lead with Minimonsta

1 The original Minimoog made its name in the hands of progressive rockers like Rick Wakeman and the late, great Keith Emerson, both of whom exploited the Mini’s wicked glide function to create swooping lead lines that were not previously available to keyboardists. Let’s create a lead of our own using GForce’s Minimonsta. We’ll start by loading up the CMInit patch (found in the Tutorial Files) as a jumping-off point. 2 Select Rect W as the Waveform for Oscillator 1. This is the second-most selection from the fully clockwise position of the Waveform rotary switch. Now, go to the Mixer section and click the blue On switch to bring Oscillator 2 into the mix.

2’. Set Oscillator 2’s Range to Give Oscillator 2’s Frequency knob a nudge to the right – to about +0.03. This detuning gives us a thicker sound. 3 Next, activate Oscillator 3 in the Mixer section. Set its Waveform to Square

4’. and its Range to Next, set its Frequency to -0.03. You might need to dial down each oscillator’s Volume knob in the Mixer a bit. We now have all three oscillators in play. Let’s turn to the Filter section, where we’ll Push the Cutoff Freq knob way down to -2. 4 Our sound has now all but disappeared, so let’s get the filter envelope (here called ‘Contour’) in on the action. Set the Amount of Contour knob to around 85. Now let’s play with the filter envelope’s shape. Kick the Attack time up to roughly 600. The Decay should be full and the Sustain set to around 6. Set Loudness Contour’s Attack at min, Decay to 5 and Sustain to 6. 5 Note the three orange rocker switches to the left of the Filter section. The bottom two dictate how much keyboard modulation is applied to the filter. Higher notes open the filter up more than lower notes. Make sure both are activated. Have a play – our envelopes cause the sound to kick in immediately, then die down after a bit, with the filter opening and then closing. 6 Now for that swooping portamento so beloved by prog rockers. Before Moog, keyboardists played pianos and organs, neither of which offered a means to bend pitch. The Moog offered a pitch wheel and Glide. Turn that Glide knob up to around 12 o’clock. The combination of envelope and glide action offers a lot of expressive potential. Brilliant! We’ll leave you to fetch your cape and rock out.