It started with a strange thump, thump, thump. A lilting drone coupled with an echo of black nothingness. The sound reverberated and swirled, reanimated itself, breathed life on me.
I was using the Moog Messenger synthesizer, an instrument that somehow wrapped its sonic tentacles around my brain and would not let go. I would try a few settings and leave frustrated by my own ineptitude. I’d think about a few new settings and experiment, trying to crack the code. I felt like I was building a chemistry set, except this one had black and white keys.
I’ve reviewed and tested dozens of synths in my career as a journalist but I wasn’t quite prepared for this cacophony of strangeness and wonder. Anything worth doing starts with awe and confusion, from starting a new relationship to learning an instrument.
Oddly, I had heard the results of Moog instruments many times before from bands like Chvrches and Pink Floyd. I had never produced the sounds myself. In fact, I was so unfamiliar with the Moog brand I didn’t even know it was pronounced “mog” (rhymes with vogue) by the true musical wizards who use it and know what they’re doing, despite how many people tend to mispronounce the name.
How do I unlock the mystery of this device? I wasn’t sure. So many dials, a plethora of buttons. For a few weeks, I sat dumbfounded and bewildered, tapping on piano keys I thought were meant for producing notes and chord progressions but were actually designed to extract epiphanies and dialectics from the underworld, like plumbing for silver.
With other synths I’ve tested, you are relying on the creative inspiration of someone else, likely a computer programmer skilled in music creation. The samples were created in a lab and you are simply generating them when you play notes and chords. With the Moog Messenger, you are the programmer. You are creating the sounds, often in real-time.
I didn’t know any of this beforehand, but I kept fiddling and experimenting. Then, one day in my basement, it all unfurled in a rapturous droning note. The lights came on.
What did I actually do? I wish I could tell you, but it had something to do with the oscillators and the main filter knob. Mind you, I had read the manual and watched the YouTube videos. I had an inkling about what the settings could do, I was just incredibly bad at using them until suddenly I wasn’t anymore. I had landed on a few settings that produced something adequate.
More than adequate, actually. The litting drone became a repeating pattern which in turn became an oscillating crescendo. What I was producing sounded to me like crashing waves of bliss, the guttural tones you hear in a Marvel movie or on a Radiohead song. The latest Superman movie is worth seeing in the theater for this reason alone: there are some unearthly sounds in that movie. I’m not sure if they used a Moog, but they definitely invented some new sonic signatures.
I’ve never quite had such a musical epiphany, a moment of pure sonic joy where I realized the Moog Messenger is not just a synth. It’s a way to extract sonic textures and mix them all together into new tones, tones that no one on the planet has likely heard before. Oscillating patterns, envelopes and filters — I wish I could explain what those knobs do. You can record sequences with 64 steps. There are 265 presets. The dark underlords of time immortal are included for free.
I suddenly felt like recording again, after a long absence. I fed my textures into GarageBand and layered guitar and drums on top of it. Even with my lack of experience, the Moog Messenger somehow revealed itself even to me, one droning texture at a time. I’m ready for more fiddling.