Moog MAVIS Fiche technique

Mavis

Patching with Intention

Get started with patching techniques,

explore deeper synthesis concepts, and

understand full patchbay functionality

Patching with Intention | 2

Patching with Intention

There are many ways to approach patching a

synthesizer like Mavis. There’s no “wrong” way

to do it, and often randomly patching inputs to

outputs can lead to wonderful, unexpected results.

Other times, however, you may want to

patch with some intention. Perhaps you have

a sound in mind that you would like Mavis to

approximate, or an idea may strike you while

falling asleep: “I wonder what would happen

if I patched the VCO to the Filter Cutoﬀ...”

We hope that this guide will help you better

understand how to patch Mavis and learn

interesting new techniques for patching it

as you get to know the instrument.

Patching with Intention | 3

Initialized Patch

Before getting started, match your Mavis to the

initialized patch settings above. You should be able

to press one of the keyboard keys and hear a note.

Find full patch point descriptions on pages 11-14 to

reference as you move through the patching exercises.

Each section in this guide builds upon the last, so

explore them in sequential order for best results.

First Steps | 4

First Steps

Some typical patch conﬁgurations

are already available to you

through Mavis’s internal routing.

As a short exercise, let’s recreate

one of those using the patch bay.

Say you would like a nice little trill with each

note. You can achieve this by patching the

LFO to change the VCO’s pitch.

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

Connect the LFO output to the 1V/OCT input

and then press a key on the keyboard to

trigger a note.

The LFO, however, swings from -5 volts

to +5 volts—resulting in a trill spanning 10

octaves! Since that is likely too extreme for

most uses, Mavis has an attenuator, which

is like a volume knob for a control voltage.

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

Patch the LFO output to the ATTN (+5)

(attenuator) input and then patch the

ATTN (attenuator) output to the VCO’s 1 V/

OCT input.

With the attenuator knob fully clockwise

you will hear the same 10-octave trill, but

as you lower the attenuator knob that

range will diminish until there is almost no

modulation.

NOW YOU HAVE 3 KNOBS THAT SHAPE

THE TRILL/VIBRATO EFFECT:

ATTENUATOR: Controls the interval of the

trill (i.e. modulation depth)

LFO RATE: Controls the speed of the trill

LFO WAVE: Moves from a vibrato (triangle)

eect to a trill (square)

This patch, however, is already present in

Mavis’s internal routing. After unpatching

everything, all you need to do is set the

VCO MOD MIX knob fully clockwise to LFO

and the PITCH MOD AMT knob will set the

depth of the modulation.

→Let’s now use the patch bay to do some

things you can only do through patching.

Tremolo and Vibrato | 5

Tremolo and

Vibrato

Unpatch any cables and match the

settings to the initialized patch.

Then raise the PITCH MOD AMT

knob slightly so you hear a nice

trill. It might be interesting now to

hear what happens if the LFO gets

faster as the pitch gets higher.

The KB CV output sends out a voltage based

on the key pressed—the higher the key, the

higher the voltage. Each key corresponds

to a precise voltage to recreate a chromatic

scale.

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

If we patch the keyboard output KB CV

to the LFO RATE input, we can raise the

frequency of the LFO at the same time that

we raise the pitch.

A related eect to vibrato (which moves

the pitch up and down) is tremolo (which

moves the volume up and down).

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

Patch the LFO output to the VCA CV input.

Now you can hear the volume move up and

down in time with the LFO—even when no

key is pressed. This is because now the LFO

signal is controlling the volume instead of

the envelope generator.

By turning the ﬁlter CUTOFF knob completely

counterclockwise we can then silence Mavis

when no key is pressed.

TRY THIS

With the VCF MOD MIX knob set to EG and

VCF MOD AMT fully clockwise, the ﬁlter now

acts as something similar to a low pass gate,

with the envelope shaping both the ﬁlter

and the amplitude of the signal, while the

LFO adds a tremolo eect with the VCA.

→Play with the envelope parameters and

LFO RATE to explore this sound!

Exploring the Sample & Hold Circuit | 6

Exploring the

Sample &

Hold Circuit

For a more advanced exercise, let’s

investigate the Sample and Hold

(S+H) section. Unpatch any cables

and match the panel settings to the

initialized patch.

A sample and hold circuit takes two inputs:

an input to be sampled (S+H) and a gate

(S+H GATE). Whenever the GATE input

receives a gate pulse, the voltage in the

S+H input is held at the S+H output until a

new gate comes in.

On Mavis, the S+H input is normalled to

the VCO, meaning that the VCO is already

connected to the S+H input without the

need for a patch cable. If anything else

(say, the EG output) is connected to the

S+H input, the normalled connection is

overridden. Normalled connections are

indicated by parentheses on the Mavis

patch bay: the VCO is normalled to the S+H

(VCO) input and the LFO is normalled to

the S+H GATE (LFO) input.

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

Connect the S+H output to the 1V/OCT

input and press and hold a key down.

You will hear a new pitch in time with the

LFO. If the VCO WAVE knob is rotated to the

square wave you will hear only two pitches

since the square wave being sampled only

oscillates between two voltages. If the VCO

WAVE knob is turned to sawtooth you will

hear random voltages, as the sawtooth wave

sweeps continuously between +5 and -5

volts and (typically) at a rate much faster

than the LFO.

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

Rather than having to press a key, we can

instead use the LFO to trigger a new note

each time the S+H circuit is triggered by

connecting the LFO to the GATE.

Now the LFO is connected to the GATE

triggering a new note with each LFO pulse via

a patch cable, and the LFO is also connected

to the S+H GATE through normalization.

Exploring the Sample & Hold Circuit | 7

Now you will hear a procession of distinct

random notes. Remembering back to our

ﬁrst patch, you will probably note that,

again, the range of notes is quite wide–far

too wide for some musical purposes.

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

Use the attenuator to narrow that range.

Patch the S+H output to the ATTN (+5)

input. And the ATTN output to the 1V/OCT

input.

Finally, we may want to break up the rhythm

a bit and get some more motion in our patch.

By patching the S+H output to the LFO

RATE, the S+H will change the rate of the

LFO. Higher S+H values will turn the LFO

rate up while lower values will turn it down.

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

We can use the MULT to patch the S+H

output to two places at once.

The MULT is a simple utility allowing you to

patch one output to multiple inputs. Patch

the S+H output (post attenuator) to the

MULT input, and then patch MULT 1 to the

1V/OCT and MULT 2 to the LFO RATE.

→Now you will hear that as the pitch of

the oscillator goes up, so does the rate of

the LFO–resulting in quicker notes as the

pitch increases!

Expanded Wave Folding | 8

Expanded

Wave Folding

Mavis is the ﬁrst of the Moog synthesizers

to include a wave folder. A typical

component of the “West Coast” synthesis

approach, the wave folder uses distortion

to add harmonics to a signal where a ﬁlter

removes harmonics from a signal. Unpatch

cables and match the panel settings to the

initialized patch.

When a signal gets distorted, it gets

ampliﬁed past a threshold whereby the

tops and bottoms of the wave or any parts

of the signal above (or below) stay at that

threshold instead. This adds the pleasing

harmonic overtones characteristic of

distortion.

Wave folding pushes the same concept

a little further. Instead of the tops and

bottoms simply staying at the threshold,

they are folded back–the threshold acts a

little like a mirror, reﬂecting those peaks

and troughs back on themselves. This

technique also adds harmonic overtones,

but of a dierent timbral quality than

distortion. Increasing the folding amount

simply ampliﬁes the signal even more,

causing deeper reﬂections of the peaks

and troughs.

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

Let’s play a little bit with wave folding by

patching the VCO into the FOLD IN input.

Open the VCF CUTOFF knob fully clockwise

so you can hear the folding more clearly.

Now by rotating the FOLD knob you will

hear the oscillator begin to distort and fold

over on itself. Try changing the VCO WAVE

between saw and square and listening to

how that aects the FOLD.

You’ll notice using a square wave that the

wave folding has a much more subtle eect.

Expanded Wave Folding | 9

Looking at our wave folding diagram, you’ll

notice that the square wave is already fully

“squared o” and distorted. Sending this

to a wave folder yields more subtle eects

than with saw or triangle waves, whose

linear shapes result in more “teeth.”

While there is no voltage control of Mavis’s

wave folder, you can use the LFO and

the ONE+TWO mixing section to achieve

something similar.

Typically, audio oscillators are centered

around zero volts. Therefore, since the ceiling

and ﬂoor thresholds are always symmetric,

the waves distort or fold symmetrically.

However, if we shift the entire wave up or

down, the wave folder will now distort the

top and bottom of the waves dierently.

MAKE THIS CONNECTION

Patch the LFO to input ONE (-5) of the

mixer and the VCO to input TWO of the

mixer. Finally, patch the ONE+TWO mixer

output to the FOLD IN input.

With this conﬁguration, you can explore

wave folding even further—playing with

the VCO WAVE and LFO WAVE shapes, the

ONE LVL (which scales the LFO shifting

amount), and the FOLD knob.

By adding the LFO to the VCO, we are

actually shifting the VCO signal up and down

in time with the LFO. When the LFO rises

positively, the VCO signal is shifted in the

positive direction and hits the top mirror of

the wave folder, folding the positive peaks.

When the LFO falls negative, the VCO

signal is shifted in the negative direction

and hits the bottom mirror of the wave

folder, folding the negative troughs.

Further Exploration | 10

Now that you have some intuition for how

Mavis’s patch bay can be used, feel free to start

exploring it on your own. Remember: there is no

wrong way to patch—it’s all music at the end of

the day.

Either begin from a sound that grabbed you

while working through this guide (this being an

analog semi-modular synthesizer, it will never be

quite the same), or just start making connections

and see what happens.

Over the next few pages is a list of Mavis’s

inputs and outputs (organized left to right by

row) and some beginning ideas for how they

can be used. Let your imagination and your

ears be your guide.

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