Video: Moog Subsequent 25 Demo and Review – with Moog-Only Intro Track – no Talking

The brand new Moog Subsequent 25 arrived at my place one month ago – here’s my first demo. Starting with a Moog-only song.

00:00 - Intro Song (Twenty-Five Ways to Synthesize your Lover) 02:31 - Demo / no-talking review, part I: Monophonic sounds 05:19 - Demo / no-talking review, part II: Paraphonic sounds 08:16 - Subsequent 25 sequenced by Korg Electribe ES-2 08:38 - “Get Ducky” 09:44 - Demo / no-talking review, part III: More sounds 11:34 - Subsequent 25 + ES-2 doing Roland TB-303 Bassline sounds 12:48 - Demo / no-talking review, part IV: Even more sounds 15:10 - Subsequent 25 + ES-2 doing “On the Run”

Being mainly a guitar player, I’ve still always been interested in keys/synthesizers (I currently own an old Ensoniq KS-32, a Novation Bass Station II, a Hohner Pianet T and the Korg Electribe ES-2 that you can see in the vid). Always loved the Moog sound; got the Bass Station which is great value for money, but soundwise I missed something ... so welcome at my place, dear Subsequent 25!

After few weeks of experimenting and sound programming, here’s my demo-slash-no-talking-review. Kicks off with a song that was completely created with Moog Subsequent 25 sounds only (for the drums, I sampled Moog sounds, put them in the Cubase Groove Agent SE VSTi and did some additional editing there; especially adding high pass filters on snare and hi-hats, since the Subsequent – as most Moogs except the mighty Moog One – only has a low pass filter. But what a great sounding and flexible one!)

All audio was recorded from the Moog audio out straight into my RME Babyface Pro audio interface.

The intro song was recorded into Cubase 9, some parts with direct audio recording, in other parts I first recorded MIDI tracks, in some cases edited/quantized them, for the flute-ish synth overdubbed a pitch bend controller track, then recorded the audio of the MIDI-controlled Moog (sometimes with additional live knob-twisting). Drums were played with the Moog controlling the Groove Agent VSTi (containing the Moog sampled) via MIDI, then quantized. For mixing, I mainly used the stock Cubase plugins (EQ and Dynamics; Chorus for the bass synth and the High Strings; Roomworks and Reverence, which are both great reverbs IMHO). Also, the free Spaceship Delay (https://musicalentropy.com/SpaceshipDelay.html) is all over the track. Plus a free Pultec EQ emulation. Used only one non-free/non-included plugin, the Native Instruments/Softube VC76, a Urei 1176 emulation that I bought some years ago. Great compressor, used it on drums submix, bass and some other tracks.

The live demo part audio was recorded directly into ShareX, a free screen capture software that also did the screen recording (audio and video together into an MP4). For my first takes, I didn’t know how to route the on-board delay and reverb from my RME soundcard (which I used for monitoring) to ShareX; so there, I needed to add delay and reverb in Premiere during editing. Later, I found out how loopback routing works, and recorded directly with the RME soundcard effects into ShareX. Video footage is a Canon 650D with 5mm/f1.4 lense. Edited in Premiere CS6.

The little bugs I found in the current firmware (v1.0.2) are described in detail here: https://forum.moogmusic.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=33584

Copyright for all cover songs by their respective writers and publishing companies, for the rest © 2020 TheGuacamoleXplosion