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

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.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.

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.

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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?

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

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…

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

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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;) )

Yea I did what I imagine was that (found it on the sweetwater site somehow) and it didn’t seem to affect it. I sent them an email though, so we’ll see what happens. Besides that, what a synth man. Sounds absolutely beautiful and nicely contrasts what I have already in my eurorack. Really feels like a complete instrument and the ability to integrate it with my euro means I’m only just scratching the surface.

i’ve been lowkey hosting a matriarch for a few months now (traded a buncha things) and finally feel like i have a sense of how to incorporate it into my otherwise non-keyboard life. here, i’m just running the four voices individually out through a low pass gate and into three sisters, which is being fm’d by mangrove. the fourth matriarch voice, with some noise, is also routed through the matriarch’s delay.

the rhythms and envelopes are all just friends in geode mode, being triggered through the in-progress ^^jf_geode crow m4l device.

when i first got the matriarch, i put a lot of pressure on only using it. though i got it through trading, it felt irresponsible to treat it like a zillion hp eurorack module. but it became really challenging for me to think of creative ways to exclusively use the matriarch’s on-board modularity – likely because i feel so close to the mannequins line and haven’t connected with many other modules. their perspective has guided my entire experience with modular, which has made it hard to feel engaged by a more traditional building-blocks toolkit.

all to say, it’s been really rewarding to incorporate the matriarch into my normal practice, rather than force it as a centerpiece. the oscillators are stupid gorgeous and really stable.

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Funny because I’ve avoided any interaction with Eurorack and haven’t even used a patch cable yet. Doh!

It’s great that it is such a flexible tool :slight_smile:

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