#54

Mine is here, but I’m so incredibly jet lagged I’m unable to form too many coherent thoughts on it so far. It’s definitely incredibly deep, and despite being intimately familiar with modular synths, patching this thing up feels like a bit more of a challenge so far. I will say that it’s a bit annoying to have some useful jacks on the back of the unit, I might make some little labels for the jacks to stick on the back of the face so I don’t have to slide the unit around to read the labels.

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#55

Finally got a chance to play mine tonight.
I’d echo the need for a little DIY labeling solution. Def wish those jacks were on the main panel but:
¯_(ツ)_/¯

I am so, so happy to report that the delay is everything I hoped for and more. Being able to both tap the tempo AND have the pitch/time divisions follow that tapped tempo is actually one step up from the moogerfooger midi delay, IMO, bc that unit requires an external midi signal to get that time division (and its oh-so-sexy harmonic pitch relationships).

For my use cases, the delay alone is worth the price of admission.

I also note that the oscillator frequency knobs are very easy to play by hand in (western) musical ways. They don’t audibly snap to quantized pitches at all, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t landing on clean 2nds, 5ths, etc. with relative ease. Some very impressive calibration voodoo in there it seems, like a dead zone in the trim pot around those frequencies maybe.

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#56

I believe you can change the range of the frequency pots via the settings, so they must be scanned by the CPU and not directly connected to the oscillators, so it seems it would be possible they put in some deadzones around certain intervals.

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#57

Finally had a little bit of time to make a clip of the matriarch tonight. Just the Matriarch first, then I increase the mix on Mimeophon :slight_smile:

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#58

For those like me who are very interested but on the fence in terms of buying, this section of a recent Andertons video is a really great demonstration of it as a spacey, beautiful drone device (hopefully it’ll cue to the right time, 34:17):

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#59

@midilifestyle Have you tried using MIDI out yet? I’m having issues getting the Matriarch to send MIDI when the arp/seq are running.

#60

I haven’t tried that exactly, no.
I’ve encountered a few weird surprises with the midi, though. Sending it a midi clock from an MPC X and syncing the delay to that sync makes the delay time shimmy all over the place, for one.
The firmware in general seems underdone. Clock sync in general seems ridiculous. The octave switching via the key combo on the matriarch (which is a stupid key combo, btw, not ergonomic or fast for live octave changes at all) is sporadic. I’ve been emailing Moog and they’re aware.

The synth is ridiculously good as a purely analog beast, though, and it’s more than a blast. Other fun things I’ve found: cv modulation to oscillator one is internally normalled to the next three oscs. This means that playing with the octave of oscillator one (using a disting in precision added mode) changes the octaves of all four oscs. That plus the delay and I’m 90% of my way to the dream poly(ish) synth I’ve wanted for years.

3 Likes
#61

I finally got a chance to play around with the Matriarch. It is pretty incredible, and somewhat unpredictable in a fun way (esp. the delay and the voice modes). Kind of want to take a stab at making a piece in drone mode, which is way outside my comfort zone. Also nice to see that the Subsequent 37 stacks up well against it.

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#62

OK, so I’m very, very in love with the Matriarch at this point. It sounds good, but it’s also a playing and patching surface that rewards creativity. This thing is astounding.

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#63

Sorry to bump this thread but I’d love to hear some feedback on the Matriarch now that people have had them for a few months! How has it been holding up? Is it a keeper?

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#64

An absolute keeper. Maybe the richest analogue I have for just exploring, but also great once it’s time to settle down on an idea. It’s incredible.

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#65

After several trips to Asheville to hear the Mtrrch I became more and more fascinated. I have been transitioning to modular over the last year. It has been tough as the kind of music you can make easily with modular is much different than traditional synth architectures. I am not a glitcher nor an ambient randomizer. Now I can use the same skills I had as a keyboard player and mix that with modular nuances. The Moog sound is so much richer than a typical modular source, and is more more playable. I also agree with the post regarding oscillator tuning ease. It is helping me bring what is esoteric workflows and signal paths to a state of playability and gigability. And the delay (being more of a reverb fan) has a dozen more ways to manipulate it than any other approach, it appears now that this part of the Mtrrch is in fact the thing that defines it the most. But I do expect to hear a four voice oscillator sync sound on some pop-like tune soon.

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#66

Walked into the local shop to pick this one up, and ended up trying out and wanting a novation summit.

Matriarch is very nice, but I think feature set of the matrixbrute provided a better paraphonic package.

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#67

Yes, i agree, until you listen to them side by side as ‘pure analog signal path’ synths. I have both. The Mtrxbrt is very flexible and has its own sonic character compared to the Mtrrch. I will keep both.

#68

Finally took a stab at using the Matriarch’s drone mode for a song. Really out of my comfort zone, but it was a pretty rewarding experience. The Matriarch just sounds ridiculously good, even when you’re not “playing” it.

9 Likes
#69

I just got mine in today, and I might be crazy, but it seems as though the delay is intermittently entering the signal chain regardless if the mix is turned all the way off. Is there something else I should be doing? Seems a bit strange for that to be happening but maybe it needs calibrating?

#70

Not hearing anything like that with mine. Any chance you inadvertently have an external delay patched in somewhere?

#71

No, it’s definitely the built in delay because I can hear the pitch changing when I turn the time knob. It’s strange, it wasn’t doing it for awhile and I almost deleted the post and now it’s doing it again.

EDIT: something is definitely up. I’ve calibrated several times now and updated the firmware and it persists. Additionally, the delay seems to stutter in and out kind of abruptly with the mix dialed all the way down so I’m at a loss to diagnose. I also have had two instances of notes freezing on me requiring the whole thing be powered down. Overall a pretty depressing experience as I’ve been extremely excited all week for this much needed distraction…

#72

This is great! Got a new YouTube subscribe here :slight_smile:

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#73

I have read the thing you are describing before (might have been on Elektronauts). The user contacted Moog who sent them a sysex file which did some magic recalibration and solved solved this.
(Mine, too has this, but I did not find it pressing enough yet;) )