M-audio Minimonsta Quick Start Guide

Table of Contents

Mini-morphosis.................................................................3

MELOHMAN - THE CONCEPT ............................................4

The GForce Team. ..............................................................4

Mini web resources................................................................5

Mini book resources...............................................................5

Developed by: .....................................................................5

Thanks to:..........................................................................5

Sound Design. .....................................................................5

Installing the Minimonsta .................................................5

Macintosh Logic 7 and Ableton Live.............................................5

Registration.......................................................................6

Quick Start........................................................................6

Minimonsta - Patch Management .....................................7

Mini Controls ....................................................................9

THE CONTROLLERS PANEL........................................................9

THE OSCILLATOR BANK ..........................................................10

THE MIXER PANEL................................................................11

THE FILTER MODIFIERS PANEL ..................................................12

THE LOUDNESS CONTOUR MODIFIERS PANEL.................................13

THE DELAY PANEL ................................................................14

THE OUTPUT PANEL ..............................................................14

Performance Section ......................................................15

Monsta Controls...............................................................15

Patch Management section .....................................................15

THE MELOHMAN PANEL AND MORPH OPTIONS...............................17

LFO and XADSR Section....................................................19

MIDI Section.....................................................................21

Settings Section ...............................................................22

TUTORIAL SECTION...........................................................25

TUTORIAL 1: USING THE MINIMONSTA AS A PLUG-IN EFFECT ...............25

TUTORIAL 2: USING THE MINIMONSTA AS A PLUG-IN EFFECT

USING LOGIC 7..............................................................25

TUTORIAL 3: USING OSCILLATOR 3 AS A PITCH LFO ..........................26

TUTORIAL 4: THE FEEDBACK TRICK. ............................................26

TUTORIAL 5: ASSIGNING SOUNDS..............................................27

TUTORIAL 6: HOW DO I TAKE A PATCH

AND USE IT FOR THE BASIS OF A META-PATCH? ........................27

TUTORIAL 7: XADSR..............................................................28

TUTORIAL 8: FREE SELECT BUTTON..............................................28

TUTORIAL 9: MIDI CONTROL LED’S..............................................28

TUTORIAL 10: LFO ................................................................29

TUTORIAL 11: VELOCITY RESPONSE .............................................29

TUTORIAL 12: MODULATION WHEEL............................................29 DEFAULT MIDI CC SETTINGS.............................................30 Contact ............................................................................31

1Mini-morphosis

Prior to 1970, it’s fair to say that synthesizers were mostly giant modular monsters, more suited to a luxury recording studio or laboratory than being transported from stage to stage. The problems with lugging around a beast of this nature were many as GMEDIA Music’s Chris Macleod remembers from his days as Keith Emerson’s ‘grunt’.

“Lugging the Moog around was a bloody nightmare, especially as it was only used for one or two sounds in the show. It was always breaking down to the extent we took along a dedicated Moog technician, who we nicknamed ‘Mr Diode Head’. I know it was all part of Keith’s performance but frankly, I couldn’t wait to see the ass-end of it. As a result my back still suffers today and at the penultimate gig I put a big sign on it saying FOR SALE - OWNER LEAVING PLANET, much to everyones amusement”

Of course in 1970 there was already one portable synthesizer, the EMS VCS3, but this still largely clung to its academic apron strings. Clearly, if the synthesizer were to become a mainstream instrument then a portable solution based around the needs of a musician would have to be found.

The ﬁrst hint of this was the pre-production Minimoog Model A, which largely consisted of a basic collection of modules plundered from the modular instruments and which still needed basic patch-cords for routing. This was further reﬁned, initially, to the single panel and switch-routed Model B and then to the Model C, which introduced the hinged back. These prototypes ultimately lead to the production Model D but to get that far was not as straightforward as you might believe.

Due to the success of the modular instruments, Bob Moog was an in-demand speaker and synth demonstrator, and before departing for a few weeks on the road he authorized the production of ten more Model C’s. However, no doubt due to the expense involved, he speciﬁcally stated that no printed circuit boards were to be used in this small production run.

According to one of the designers, Jim Scott, as soon as Bob left most of the staff got together and argued that unless they got the instrument to a point where it could be manufactured, they’d probably be out of work in the not too distant future. So it was agreed that they would disregard Bob’s orders and build the instruments using PCBs. On his return, Bob found several instruments in assorted stages of completion and immediately called everyone into his ofﬁce demanding to know who was responsible?

According to Jim, “No one said a word and we did a lot of observing our ﬁngernails and such. He couldn’t very well ﬁre his whole staff, so the ﬁrst ever run of D Models was completed.”

The Model D Minimoog was the version that saw release in 1970 and for musicians all over the world the synthesizer had truly arrived. So too had many of the things that players would soon take for granted. For example, those vertical pitch and modulation wheels became pretty much standard fare, as did everyone’s desire for a 24dB per octave lowpass ﬁlter. And that’s where the Minimoog really shone - with both its playability and its sound.

Countless musicians quickly adopted it from early pioneers such as Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson & Chick Corea, through to latterday explorers like Gary Numan & Adrian Utley. And although the Mini ceased production in 1981 a quick glance at its user-base reveals a Who’s Who of contemporary music.

Rick Wakeman reveals, “The Minimoog is my favorite synthesizer of all-time and at one point I had nine of them with each sounding slightly different. The ﬁrst one I owned cost me £35 from the actor Jack Wilde. It should have been about £1200 but Jack told me he had bought it about two weeks previously, that it didn’t work properly and he wanted rid of it. I ﬁgured that it would cost less than £1200 to get it ﬁxed so I collected it, took it home, turned it on and couldn’t ﬁnd anything wrong with it. I called him up and told him it was ﬁne but he said that it was deﬁnitely faulty because it wouldn’t play more than one note at a time. That was a fairly common misunderstanding back then”

There were, however, more genuine problems with early models as Rick once again explains.

“The obvious nightmare was the tuning instability and I kid you not, sometimes when we used the Minimoog live, we were lucky to be able to play it at all because, pitch-wise, it was literally all over the place. Also a less well-known fact was that the Mk 1 used to suffer from radio interference. I remember playing one show at Alexandra Palace in front of twenty thousand people, and just as we were about to start all you could hear through the PA was, ‘Arsenal 2 - Wolverhampton Wanderers 1’. It was hilarious.”

Teething troubles aside though, the portability, the sound and the immediacy of the controls made the instrument essential for any touring keyboard player and it couldn’t fail to be anything but a huge commercial success. During its life approximately 13,000 were made and it remains one of the world’s most loved electronic instruments to this day.

The Minimonsta is based on our much-loved early Minimoog (serial number 1794), chosen because it represents all that was best about the hallmark Mini sound, namely, a super-fat ﬁlter, snappy envelopes and those distinctive effervescent and rich tones. In keeping with Rick Wakeman’s statement, all Minimoogs did indeed sound slightly different and this is evident in our Mini in a couple of ways. Firstly, the oscillators were the less-stable earlier ones, liable to drift at the drop of a hat. Secondly, the ﬁlter emphasis kicked in sooner than on later versions. However, while it was important to stabilize the oscillator tuning we felt it was important to remain true to our instrument’s ﬁlter and not iron any of the personality out of it.

Nonetheless, we feel it’s good to take risks and after the successes of the faithful Oddity and more daring impOSCar, we began to look at how we could do justice to such an icon, while at the same time adding features that could take it into very different sonic territory. Several ideas were discussed but nothing sat in harmony with the ethos of the original instrument until a meeting with Oddity co-conspirators, Ohm Force. This proved to be the pivotal moment and after witnessing their Symptohm Melohman synth, a joint venture was agreed. Soon after, the Melohman functionality was witnessed in all its glory on an early alpha version of the Minimonsta and we all began to salivate at the potential of this expressive intricacy sitting in tandem with the simple operation of the original instrument.

MELOHMAN - THE CONCEPT

Ohm Force’s Melohman feature set is based around an interactive set of tools that transform the playing experience of a software instrument via unique and inspirational concepts. In essence it offers a user-deﬁned octave that can be used to trigger timed or instantaneous morphs between up to twelve Patches. The morph modes are Morphing, Morph Back & Forth, Morph Sequence, Mutate and Partial Mutate. In terms of playability, this goes a considerable way to countering the argument that software synthesizers are not expressive enough in performance due to the inherent lack of a dedicated tactile interface.

Then there’s the famous Ohm Force feature of applying an additional LFO or ADSR to almost every parameter. This gives nigh-on unlimited sound design capabilities ranging from the sublime to the downright disturbed, as well as helping to circumnavigate limitations of the original instrument, such as having to lose the third oscillator to the LFO.

During development, the Minimonsta, in much the same way as the original instrument, underwent several revisions and even invoked a couple of near mutinies. But as the instrument progressed, we all began to realize that we’d created far more than a simple emulation - we’d created a Monster and from that moment the name of the synth was born.

The name Minimonsta also encapsulates the instrument because it operates on two distinct levels. Firstly, it can operate as a straightforward but highly accurate emulation of the original Mini by way of the familiar and intuitive user interface. In this mode you could largely ignore the upper section of the GUI containing the LFO, XADSR and MIDI sections and instead focus on the familiar controls and the creation of all manner of authentic Mini tones with the minimum of effort.

At its second level though, the Mini becomes a true Monster by way of the additional LFO, ADSR and dynamic MIDI controllability for every main GUI parameter. Unparalleled real-time sound mangling via the Melohman Patch Morphing options, and a plethora of triggering options including Monophonic, Polyphonic, Legato and Unison modes.

An enormous amount of care and work has gone into making sure all these elements have collided to ensure an authentic Mini tone meets a weapons-grade monster, and we sincerely hope you enjoy this instrument and make serious creative use of its unique functionality and sublime tones. The two years of development has left no stone unturned in the pursuit of sonic excellence and rest assured that no one has spent any time looking at their ﬁngernails or gazing at their navels.

2The GForce Team

An Appeal - Please support developers, not copyright theft.

If you’re reading this from the printed manual, the chances are you paid for this software and as such we’d like to say a heartfelt thanks. The money that we receive from sales of the Minimonsta will be put back into further development projects and used to create other interesting and valid musical products. However, if you did not pay for this instrument please try and understand the implications of piracy for small companies such as ours. Piracy is seriously damaging to small software companies and with the abundance of free instruments available there is no excuse for this kind of theft. As musicians ourselves, we respect anyone who creates good music using limited tools, far more than those who make average music using every tool in existence. Pick your tools wisely and learn them well - this is far more creative and rewarding.

From our perspective, this product took almost two years to produce and has involved the small development team in many personal and ﬁnancial sacriﬁces. Nonetheless we have tried to keep the cost of the instrument at an affordable level and make the copy protection as unobtrusive as possible. We will not hesitate to prosecute anyone who infringes our copyright but we would prefer to kindly ask you not to post the Minimonsta on any newsgroup or P2P group and to respect our work. Many thanks.

Mini web resources.

www.moogarchives.com

www.sonicstate.com/synth/moogmini.cfm

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The_Lords_of_the_Mini

Mini book resources.

A-Z of Analogue Synthesisers (Part One. A - M) - Pete Forrest

Vintage Synthesisers - Mark Vail.

Analog Days - Frank Trocco & Trevor Pinch

Developed by:

Ohm Force and GMEDIA Music as GForce.

Laurent de Soras, Jerome Noel, Raphael Dinge, Grégory Makles, Dave Spiers, Chris Macleod, Ian Legge and a supporting cast of many more.

Thanks to:

Flemming Bloch, Lee Groves, Matt Hooper, Jay Ahern, Ellis Breen, Bruce Satinover, Phil Hartnol, Dave Goodwin, Robin Rimbaud, Darren Price, Marius DeVries, James Towler, Steve Winwood, Pascal Gabriel, Geoff Downes, Frank Hoffmann, Nick Batt, Meffy Ellis, Putte, Malcolm Corbett, Mr Smith & Mr Hyde, Orren Merton. Uwe Bauer, Rick Wakeman

Sound Design.

Dave Spiers, Rick Wakeman, Chris Macleod, Davy Blakely, Huston Singletary,

Howard Scarr, Hans-Jorg Schlefﬂer, Matt Hooper, Brian Desmond,

Markus Hastreiter, Brice Duncan, Andreas Ehrhardt, Rory Dow, Geoff Downes,

Phil Hartnol, Steve Winwood, Marius DeVries, Pascal Gabriel & Lee Groves.

3Installing the Minimonsta

Included on the Master CD are multiple versions of the Minimonsta. The Minimonsta installer allows you to install any or all versions via a single installer, one for Mac and one for PC.

PC - Insert the Minimonsta Master CD into your CD-ROM drive. From the Setup window, select the “Install” option and follow the onscreen instructions carefully, entering your unique User Name and Registration codes EXACTLY as you ﬁnd them printed within this Getting Started guide.

Mac - Insert the Minimonsta Master CD into your CD-ROM drive. Double-click on the GForce Minimonsta disc icon to open the disc. Double-click on the Minimonsta.dmg ﬁle and then run the Minimonsta Installer, following the onscreen instructions carefully, and entering your unique User Name and Registration codes EXACTLY as you ﬁnd them printed within this Getting Started guide. During installation, be sure to click on the “Next” button until the installation routine is complete.

Macintosh Logic 7 and Ableton Live

Mac installer shown.

Once installation is complete launch Logic 7 or Ableton Live and load the Minimonsta into an instrument channel AS AN EFFECT.

4Registration

Please take the time to register your Minimonsta on-line at: www.gforcesoftware.com

Registration is required to receive free technical support.

5Quick Start

Let’s face it, reading a manual from cover to cover isn’t much fun. Most of the time when you buy a synth you just want to get started immediately and discover things as you progress. Because the Minimonsta works on two levels, provided you have a fundamental grasp of subtractive synthesis, it’s quick and easy to get going before delving in to the more complex functions of the instrument. However, there are a few things that are useful to learn from the start.

Patch Structure - What is a Meta-Patch?

The Meta-Patch is a group of up to 12 Patches (sounds) that you load from your hard drive. At its simplest, it contains only a single Patch and at its most complex 12 different Patches. All Meta-Patches supplied with the Minimonsta contain 12 different Patches except the ones within the OriginalMiniPatches folder which contain a single sound across all Patches. These sounds were transcribed from original Minimoog patch charts.

META-PATCH

A Meta-Patch is

group of up to 12 Patches (sounds)

META-PATCH

Patch 1

BoomBass

Patch 2

Default

BoomBass

Filtered

Patch 3

Default

BoomBass

MoreRez

Patch 4

Default

BoomBass

Panning

Patch 5

Default

BoomBass

SlowAttack

Patch 6

Default

BoomBass

LongDelay

Patch 7

Default

BoomBass

LevelMod

Patch 8

Default

BoomBass

FilterWah

Patch 9

Default

BoomBass

SnapDecay

Patch 10

Default

BoomBass

Sweeping

Patch 11

Default

BoomBass

MultiMods

Patch 12

Default

BoomBass

Madness

A Meta-Patch

A Meta-Patch consisting

containing

consisting of

of 12 Patches, each

a single Patch

12 identical Patches

being a variant

of Patch 1

Loading a Meta-Patch

The ﬁrst time you open the Minimonsta, after installing it, open the Meta-Patch Select Window to it’s maximum size via the dedicated rocker switch.

Meta-Patch Select Window

From here click in the small top window marked Root Directory Navigate it to the MinimonstaPatches folder. Once you’ve done this you simply select a sound from the list and play.

Your selected Root Directory will be remembered by the Minimonsta when you open it subsequently.

Meta-Patch Select Window shown at maximum size

Flying Knobs

With this feature you can grab and throw the knob of most main GUI parameters and make it move automatically, through its range, to its highest or lowest setting. To make this work simply click and hold on the highest or lowest text marking around the base of the knob and throw to the right to increase that parameter’s value, or throw to the left to decrease the value. The faster you throw, the quicker the knob moves.

Note: This does not work with the Oscillator Range and Waveform Knobs.

Melohman Octave

The Melohman Octave is used for real-time performance functions and can be assigned to any octave of the Minimonsta’s keyboard range. It is also directly associated with the control knobs to the right-hand side of the keyboard. For further details see the Morphing Section on page 17.

6Minimonsta - Patch Management (See also page 15)

Meta-Patch

As mentioned before, a Meta-Patch is a group of up to 12 Patches that you load from your hard drive.

The Minimonsta works as following: having loaded a Meta-Patch you can select or morph between its Patches in a variety of ways. Let’s start by looking at how to create a Meta-Patch with the same sound across all its Patches.

Meta-Patch Select Window

1) Create a sound on the Minimonsta that you would like to keep.

2) Click on the Patch window and name your sound.

3)Click the MEM button - it will be illuminated red.

4)Click the ALL button - this assigns your sound to all Patch memories. A window asking if you are sure you want to overwrite all your patches will appear. Click OK. (Mac window shown).

5)Click on the SAVE button to the left of the Meta-Patch Window, navigate to your Root Directory, then name and save the Meta-Patch to disc.

IMPORTANT: YOU MUST SAVE TO DISK before selecting another Meta-Patch or YOUR NEW SOUND will be lost.

Having saved your Meta-Patch you will now be able to see and select it from within the

Meta-Patch Select Window.

(For a more in-depth explanation of Patch Managment see Tutorial 5, page 27)

BLUE HIGHLIGHTS

Whenever a parameter name and position indicators are lit in BLUE this indicates that the parameter is being modulated by the additional Minimonsta LFO and/or XADSR.

RED HIGHLIGHTS

Whenever parameter positional indicators are lit in RED this indicates that the parameter is being controlled (modulated) by MIDI. This is also applicable wherever you see an LED.

BLUE AND RED HIGHLIGHTS

Whenever a parameter is lit in BLUE AND RED this indicates that the parameter is being modulated (controlled) by both the LFO/XADSR and MIDI.

GREYED-OUT LFO AND XADSR

Certain parameters cannot be modulated by the Minimonsta’s additional LFO and

XADSR, for example the Oscillator Wave Form Select Knobs. When this is the case the LFO/XADSR section is greyed-out. and “No Modulation” appers in the displays.

7 Mini Controls

THE CONTROLLERS PANEL

1. Tune Knob

This sets the global tuning for the Minimonsta oscillators from anywhere between -12 and +12 semitones. To return to the default setting at any time, simply double-click on the knob.

2. Glide Knob

When used in conjunction with the Glide On/Off Switch this sets

the glide time. Like the original instrument, the Minimonsta’s portamento is Time Constant, which means that glides are faster over larger intervals.

3. Mod Mix Knob

When Oscillator 3 is used as an LFO this knob determines the mix between the oscillator tone and noise. Noise can be either Pink or White and is selected by a switch in the Mixer Section.

Note: To hear any modulation mix settings the modulation wheel on the left of the keyboard should be pushed forward.

4. Oscillator Modulation Switch

Sets the Oscillator 3 Modulation to On or Off. (wondering what the LED is? See page 8, Red Highlights)

THE OSCILLATOR BANK

As per the original instrument there are three oscillators on the Minimonsta and the ﬂow of each one is laid out horizontally. The only real differences between them is that Oscillator 1 does not have control over its ﬁne tune and Oscillator 3 can be used as an LFO. Oscillator 3 also substitutes the sawtooth-triangular waveform for a reverse-sawtooth waveform.

1. Oscillator 1 Range Selector

ThisselectstheoctavefortheOscillator1tone.Octaves are selected in feet (as in the length of an organ pipe) 2’ is the highest and 32’ is the lowest. The Lo setting is effectively 64’ but this is so low that you’ll probably only hear a series of clicks when selected.

2. Oscillator 1 Waveform Selector

The Minimonsta has six basic waveforms. Broadly speaking, the triangle waveform has the least harmonic content and the narrow rectangular waveform has the most.

1.	Triangle	2. Saw-Triangle	3. Sawtooth
4.	Square	5. Wide Pulse	6. Narrow Pulse

3. Oscillator 2 Range Selector

As per Oscillator 1 this selects the octave for the

Oscillator 2 tone. This ranges from 2’ to 32’ and Lo.

4. Oscillator 2 Fine Tune Knob

This sets the ﬁne tune value of this oscillator between - 8 and + 8 semitones.

5. Oscillator 2 Waveform Selector

Allows Oscillator 2 the choice of the six waveforms as per Oscillator 1.

6. Osc 3 Ctrl Switch.

This determines whether the keyboard controls the pitch of Oscillator 3 or whether it plays a ﬁxed pitch across the whole keyboard. This switch is likely to be in the Off position when Osc 3 is used as an LFO (for uniform modulation across the entire keyboard) and On when used as a third oscillator. (See Tutorial 3, page 26).

7. Oscillator 3 Range Selector

As per Oscillator 1 & 2 this selects the octave for the Oscillator 3 tone. This ranges from 2’ to 32’ and Lo.

+ 21 hidden pages