Unlocking Grandmother’s Secrets: Review, ideas and tips for Moog’s latest semi modular synth

Grandmother is the latest semi-modular analog synth from Moog. There have been increasingly more and more semi modular synths released in recent years and the demand for rewiring synths and interfacing them with other modular gear grows.

In this clip I explore what’s special about Moog’s Grandmother, and it turns out there’s quite a lot there, especially if you look beneath the surface. For example, while the front panel seems to show only two oscillators and one envelope, in reality, Grandmother has three fully functioning volt/octave oscillators (four if you count the self resonating filter), two and even three envelopes, and is capable of being played paraphonically.

All of these and plenty more patching ideas, tips and tricks are explored in this clip

Here’s a timeline of the various topics covered in the video:
1:10 What gives Grandmother her character
1:30 The Spring everb
2:30 The Mixer
3:20 Patch layout
4:20 User interface
4:50 Hard sync
5:25 Modulation
7:25 3rd oscillator
8:45 Playing chords
9:20 Short demo of the different waveforms
10:40 The low pass filter
12:40 The main envelope
13:30 A 2nd envelope
14:15 The arpeggiator and sequencer
15:45 Glide modes
16:20 Patch ideas
17:30 The utilities module
20:25 Generating feedback
20:50 More patching ideas
22:30 Playing paraphonically
25:00 Pros & cons

6 thoughts on “Unlocking Grandmother’s Secrets: Review, ideas and tips for Moog’s latest semi modular synth

  1. hi! to play it paraphonic without the help of keystep, it’s possible to to keep the keyboard out into the utilities and send the multiples to the LFO rate and and oscillator 2 pitch? thanks

    1. Hey – that would just send the same note to all three. You need some external source to generate pitch different than the one generated by the keyboard.

  2. Just picked up a g mother. I’m loving this synth. It just sounds so good !!
    I’m not exactly a pro when it comes to modular so this is prob a dumb question but :Is there any patch connections that are not advised or would mess up the synth. Or can I just start patching away ? Thanks

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