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Sunday, April 5th, 2026 11:22 am

Synth Glossary

Granular Synthesis:
The sound is split into small chunks called granules. These may then be processed in various ways to acheive various effects - for example, to stretch a sound (timestreching) the granules will be played back so as to overlap each other. An interesting effect can also be obtained by playing the granules backwards....

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Micromoog
This is Moog Music's "synthesizer for everyman. [The] design approach for the Micromoog was to use a minimal number of functional building blocks and to configure the instrument for the greatest amount of performer control over these blocks. The Micromoog consists of the basic necessities: one voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), one voltage controlled amplifier (VCA), two contour generators, and one sample and hold. The 'open system' inputs and outputs make this Micromoog a basic musical building block which can be expanded to meet the performer's growth."

This was the synth that followed the Minimoog. Having only one oscillator and using less expensive materials, this became the cheap alternative to the Minimoog. It was also one of the few and possibly the first of the early synths to use the pitch ribbon controller instead of the more popular pitch wheel found on the Minimoog.

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