What I learnt from buying my first analogue synth

The Moog Sub Phatty was the first analogue synth I ever bought. It wasn’t the first synth I ever bought. The first synth I ever bought (not including soft synths) was a dx7, which if you don’t know is a famous FM synthesiser from the 80s.

But this is about what led me to finally invest in an analogue synth and why I decided to do it and what I discovered and have learnt since doing this.

Background

I’m a guitarist so originally I’ve come from a rock background and only ever dabbled with making electronic stuff on my computer with software on the side.

But as I got more into the electronic side of things and started to mix synth sounds with guitars, I realised that the sound of soft synths didn’t gel well with more acoustic instruments.

This led me to look at bands I was listening to, bands like Mogwai and Radiohead, who were doing this and find out what they were using to achieve their sound.

Now if you’ve been in the music tech game for more than 5minutes then you would most likely have come across the analogue vs digital debate.

Digital instruments produce their sound via a computer chip whilst analogue instruments produce their sound with real circuit board components. This gives them a more unstable but warmer, phatter sound which can be more pleasing to the ear. And to me, this seems to gel better with acoustic instruments.

So I started experimenting with analogue samples and software synths that used real analogue samples to produce their sound. I had one called Tronto that ran inside Kontakt which worked well. This was a cheap alternative to actually buying a real synth. but straight away I could hear the difference. This was the sound I hearing on the records I loved. It had that presence that I could never achieve with software synths.

Buying a synth

Not long after this the Moog Sub Phatty was released and being a more affordable option I thought it would make a good first purchase, and surely you can’t go wrong with a Moog.

Having not owned a synth like this before I wasn’t sure how I was going to use it or what I would be able to get out of it. I just knew that they were rated by other people and Moog was regarded as one of the best synth brands.

After getting it and playing with it for a while it quickly became apparent that this synth was only going to be good at doing bass and leads.

Now this should have been obvious as it’s a mono synth, meaning you can’t play more than one note at a time, so no chords.

At first I thought is this all it can do. But my mind-set was wrong.

Think about it, if you buy a decent bass guitar, you can easily spend £1000. And all that instrument does it produce one sound. You see I had been spoiled with software synths that can do 1000s of different sounds.

The point of this synth, is that you get a high quality sounding instrument that will produce a quality bass and lead sounds, it’s not meant to do everything, it’s just really good at one thing, and that’s worth the money.

And this synth has since become one of my go to synths for bass. If I want a phat bass synth tone, then there’s nothing better then this, it wins every time.

The second thing I didn’t think about was effects. This synth doesn’t have any in built effects and whilst it produces a very nice tone dry, it really does spring into life when you add some reverb or delay. 

When I first tried to use it I just used it dry, but after a couple of tracks I realised that it really does need to be run through some effects. Especially if you're doing lead sounds. This is why synths that do have in built effects are so good, as you can get an almost finished sound straight out of the one device. Like the Korg Minilogue xd. Which actually comes in at a similar price.

Was it a good first synth to buy?

I think if I had to buy a first synth again I would go for a poly synth that can achieve a wider range of sounds. Which is why after I bought this I went onto to buy synths like the Dave Smith prohet08 and Juno 106.

But the thing to realise is that every synth has its own unique sound, so there will never be a one synth fits all solution. Which is why you can’t just own one! And who wants to only have one toy anyway right!

Now when I look at buying a new instrument, I ask myself, what can this be used for, what style of music can it do? Will it be good at spacey pads? Will it give me bouncey bass lines. Will it gel and fit in with what I’m currently doing, or can I just have some fun with it?