

Google Australia Doodle: Celebrate Robert Moog's 78th Birthday - dannyr
http://www.google.com.au/ 

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anigbrowl
The doodle is reminiscent of a Minimoog [1], but with several simplifications
to make programming easier and more musical.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_synthesizer>

Mixer section

The large knob at the left is overall level (which does not equate to silence
at its minimum setting, probably for UI simplicity). The three knobs to the
right govern the volume of 3 individual oscillators.

Oscillator section

The leftmost 3 knobs define the pitch octave range for each of the three
oscillators. LO is a subsonic frequency mainly used for modulation purposes in
real life. #2', 16', 8' etc. refer to the length, in feet, of the pipe on a
pipe organ that will produce tones of that frequency. A 32 foot long pipe
produces a very deep bass tone (about 16 Hz, probably sounds like noise on
most speakers), a 16 foot pipe produces a tone exactly one octave higher, and
so forth. There are no 64 foot pipes that I know of, hence the LO setting.
It's not possible on this little synth, but normally you would use those
super-low frequencies as modulation sources for other things. The two knobs in
the center allow tuning of the oscillators across a 2-octave range. Really,
this ought to be graduated in semitones. If you turn down the center
oscillator and put the other two on identical settings, you should, in theory,
get the same sound only twice as loud, but the doodle is a little bit buggy
and sometimes pegs one oscillator an octave above or below the other. It's
easiest to just reload periodically. On a real-life analog synth of that
generation, the oscillators would drift out of tune and need to be calibrated
periodically; also, the tuning would change as the machine warmed up over the
first half-hour or so of operation, so early electronic keyboard players often
had difficulty staying in tune with the band. It was this pitch instability
that caused everyone to rush towards digital synthesis at the end of the
1970s, although nowadays you can get very stable analog oscillators.

The rightmost 3 knobs set the shape for each oscillator; triangle, saw,
inverse saw, and pulse waves with 10%, 25% and 50% duty cycles respectively. I
think there is something amiss with the display of the saw waves on
oscillators 1 & 2\. Saw vs. inverse saw makes no difference on a single
oscillator but where you have 2 or 3 choosing different directions for the
wave can lead to interesting textures. The shape of the oscillator affects the
harmonic content thereof. A triangle wave sounds very close to a sine wave - a
piercing pure tone - while being computationally inexpensive. (Stable sine
waves are surprisingly hard to generate on the fly unless you have a lot of
DSP power, and even digital synthesizer manufacturers often cheat by using
lookup tables for sine waves rather than generating them.) A saw waves
contains all possible harmonics and is a good basis for brassy sounds like
those of trumpets. Square waves (pulse waves with a 50% duty cycle) sound
'hollow' because they only have odd harmonics, and are a good basis for
synthesizing woodwind sounds, where the absorbent nature of the material dulls
the sound somewhat. Combining pulse waves of different duty cycle can lead to
texturally interesting effects, although this is much more noticeable when the
length of the duty cycle can be modulated, as opposed to merely switched.

Filter section

Something has gone terribly terribly wrong here, because this does not behave
like any Moog synthesizer I have ever used. The top left knob controls the
filter cutoff of a low pass filter, ie the frequency above which higher
harmonics will be cut off. This is sort of like the effect you get if you sing
a continuous AAAAAH tone with your mouth open and then gradually close your
lips. Normally the knob tot he immediate right could control resonance, which
boosts the signal around the cutoff frequency and produces an intense
whistling/shrieking sound as it is turned up to maximum. High resonance and
low cutoff settings act like a spotlight upon the timbral complexity of the
oscillator output and are a staple of electronic music.

2\. <http://www.timstinchcombe.co.uk/synth/Moog_ladder_tf.pdf>

I am not sure what the rest of the knobs are supposed to do. They seem to
allow oscillators 2 and 3 to be individually filtered, but unfortunately when
I hold down a key and tweak the filter knobs the sound tends to break up. This
is probably because the adjustment of filter and resonance controls in DSP
require constant recalibration of filter coefficients, which is
computationally expensive and not well implemented here. It is not normal to
filter individual oscillators on an analog synthesizer. Normally one wants to
apply a single filter to the mixed sound of the oscillators and modulate that
with an envelope or low-frequency-oscillator. Visually, this looks (slightly)
reminiscent of a Moog Ladder filter [2], but that's usually a 4-stage
transistor ladder, not a front panel set of controls.

This is not how a synth of this style normally works, which is a real pity. It
does not help that there are no tooltips; I've been making electronic music
for 15 years and can't figure out exactly what's supposed to be going on here,
so I feel bad for anyone who is trying to learn something from playing with
this and getting frustrated. I tried looking at the javascript [3] but it's
unreadable outside of an editor and I have neither the time nor the
inclination to troubleshoot it.

3\. <http://www.google.com.au/logos/2012/moog.2.js>

Envelope section

This is the simplest part; the envelope defines the volume behavior when you
press a key. The topmost knob is attack, or how fast the sound fades in; very
fast for a plucked instrument like a bass guitar, slow for a string sound. The
sound swells to maximum over the duration of the attack time, then falls back
to the sustain level, adjusted by the middle knob. The last knob governs
release, how fast the sound fades away after the envelope completes its cycle.
If you set this very short the sound will die even if you hold a key down. Due
to some oddities in the input processing event queue, as with the oscillators,
the envelope's behavior is rather less than consistent.

As for the switch and the modulation wheel, I'm not clear on what is connected
to what, for the reasons described above. I'm guessing there is an invisible
low frequency oscillator for vibrato/tremolo purposes (modulation either the
base frequency or the amplitude slightly to give a sound some extra texture),
but the lack of tooltips and inconsistent behavior make them difficult to use
in any predictable way.

If you are fascinated by this tool but frustrated, as I was, by the
implementation problems, then you might like Morningstar
(<http://bitterspring.net/ms/morningstar/>) - a basic html5 emulation of a
popular Korg synthesizer/groovebox. Or Audiotool
(<http://www.audiotool.com/app>) - a fully fledged html5 electronic music tool
that sounds quite good considering it runs in the browser, but which may be
overly complex for the novice.

~~~
rwhitman
The more I play with the filters the more I think the mystery knobs are
controlling filter envelope or modulation

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OzzyB
Why on Earth is this not on the main/US homepage.

Moog is a icon across the whole tech music industry, having him remembered on
the com.au homepage as an Australian doesn't do him and his legacy justice.

Would we celebrate Einstein only on google.de?

[Addendum] Timezones, gotcha. Let's hope this great doodle makes it to the
.com homepage :)

~~~
objclxt
...because his birthday is on May 23rd, and it's not May 23rd in the US yet?
Google roll their doodles out across timezones (also, Robert Moog was
American, not Australian...)

Here's a bet: in about 8 hours of so another story bubbles up HN about this,
but on the US page instead.

------
rwhitman
An HTML5 softsynth. Words cannot describe the joy I'm getting out of learning
this is possible. My world is forever changed.

And it sounds very moog-like too

~~~
objclxt
Not just a softsynth: there's a very basic multi-tracker in there as well!

~~~
rwhitman
Wow I didn't even realize the recorder had 4 tracks. Amazing!!

------
aidos
That's great. It actually has a really good sound - wonder how it's
implemented.

Couple of niggles though - the 'doodle 'link you can make of your recording is
a short url that doesn't jump back to the au site. Worse than that, the
recording doesn't come out sounding anything like the sound I recorded in the
first place.

Really cool though.

~~~
huskyr
The synthesizer uses the Audio API on Chrome and Flash on all other browsers.

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nextstep
Those knobs are really hard to control with the mouse. Can anyone find a
resource that explains what each control changes?

~~~
teejaygreen
You can use the arrow keys to control the knobs, and
letters/numbers/punctuation to control the keys.

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krat0sprakhar
I can actually pay to find out how this (and Google's other Doodles) are made.

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udp
Is this only for Chrome? It doesn't seem to do anything in Firefox 12.

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rabidsnail
must. have. more. patches! and a sampler. and two mice.

~~~
Gring
You can play both the keyboard and turn the knobs at the same time: press the
number keys on your keyboard for the keyboard, use the mouse for the knobs.

