Here’s a live take I did yesterday, sound is Moog Labyrinth into A4 FX + an occasional A4 kick.
Enjoy the ride!
I’m sorry Bandcamp won’t accept the entire continuous mix, and won’t play the tracks continuously either.
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This came out really nice. I think I listened to tracks 1-8. All good stuff!
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It gets interesting in the end ^^
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What exactly does the quantizer do?
It locks the sequencer notes to a specified scale. My excitement there was that the Turing Machine, a clear inspiration here, needs to be paired with a separate quantizer for scaled notes, and its inclusion here as well as the “buffer” save state seem like useful additions.
I think in general my enthusiasm for the Labyrinth has cooled since release (I think I’m not a “generative” type), but I’m glad Moog have continued this semi modular line and am keeping a keen eye on what’s next.
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received mine last Friday and had a night to play with it before going out of town for 3 days --ran it into a delay/reverb and spent a couple of fun hours fiddling with it. became somewhat absorbed very quickly and got into some kind zone with it which is really the only objective i have with making music anyway.
have not had the opportunity to mess with it since then or get into the manual but i’m really keen to run it through a microcosm this weekend to see how far down the rabbit hole really goes. i think it will pair nicely with that pedal.
all that said, without pairing it with other modules or making extensive use of the patch bay, i’m somewhat certain it’s a bit of a one trick pony. but that’s okay, if the trick it does is a really good one. i’ve already sampled 10-12 pretty good percussive/bass loops from it that i’ll be able to use later on. can’t really anticipate running out of little interesting bits to sample from it any time soon, which is why i bought one.
solid piece of gear, glad I picked one up.
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I don’t think so. I believe it takes more than 5 days to master it.
Even without the patch bay you can get some very different and evolving tones.
The generative sequencer can be used like a random LFO that will only partially change overtime.
Been playing techno tonight with DTII and Labyrinth in unquantized mode, feels like I have to take some time to sample the best phrases, and even individual sounds, cause the sound it spits is nuts! Very inspiring little synth, I’m still discovering new sweet spots!
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yeap i’ve been keeping that record button on the DT2 ready to smash at all times! i’ve definitely captured some interesting techno oriented bassline/percussive stuff so far. when i bought it, i was not expecting it to be as good at drums as it is. it makes me wish i had an octatrack to feed the lab into for some real time loop mangling.
anyway, you’re right i need to spend more time with it before i can write it off its entire output as being samey. it’s just that i’ve watched lots of videos and the ones with the most interesting sounds were coming from people who were feeding it stuff from other modules or the other way around.
like i said, i’m excited to see what a microcosm does to it later on this weekend. should get some proper wormhole sounds that way.
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A good trick I’d to set both corrupt to 0% when you like the current phrase.
Worth keeping corrupt around 25% anyway, so that it’s not too chaotic and changes gradually.
Routing switch + blend + morphing filters are really interesting controls, together with the smaller ones that I end using most…
If you’re into sweet tones, plug MOD VCO into filter in and set its level to 0 so that it doesn’t intermodulate with Sine VCO, that you can then gently saturate around noon (switch to parallel routing)
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Got myself a Labyrinth. Taking it for a first spin with my Digitakt.
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Very nice, I love it! It makes me want to grab one. Next step maybe : connect it to the DT Input and use some FXs. It sounds really nice like that, though.
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Thanks that’s great to hear! Yes - input into Digitakt and also exploring the patch bay is the way to go. I am just scratching the surface here.
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Labyrinth, Subharmonicon and DFAM through Valhalla Supermassive
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Would you be able to elaborate more? I have a Grandmother (and love it!) and have always thought about adding something to complement it if the right thing came along. Just curious how you envision pairing the two.
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It mainly seems like the perfect injection of (excuse the term) “West Coast” experimental/pseudorandom/FM styles of synthesis into the more traditional Moog style, but made in the Moog style to match up with the other Euro panels and say, the Grandmother or Matriarch.
The Grandmother IMO is the perfect mono Moog voice. It’s beautiful, and has a lovely Moog Modular style sound, and approach to playing. As someone that appreciates this, but also things like Buchla, Wiard, Serge, etc. I feel that the Labyrinth introduces some of the synthesis, pattern, percussion concepts from those styles into the Moog environment.
Not only that though, just the fact that you can add another filter, and a couple of oscillators to the Grandmother, opens it up further for still more typical Moog things as well. The combination of the Grandmother and Labyrinth is a lot of power in a very small space, and opens things up for a bit more experimental sounds on top of the classic ones.
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Makes sense. You seem extremely knowledgeable so I guess I was thinking more of what ways you were thinking you would patch them, as I haven’t really done much with modular/semimodular gear. I’m with you that the raw tone of the Grandmother is basically my ideal monosynth tone. Sometimes I just run the random arp and let it play in the background while I do stuff around the house. It’s just that pleasing of a sound. 
(This video is a really pleasant example of just leaving the labyrinth running. Maybe I do need this in my life.)
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I use this sort of thing on the modular side of things quite frequently. Pseudo-random and random-repeating patterns with FMed oscillators used as percussive lines is something I do a lot. Much of my modular synth designs revolve around modules that facilitate this sort of thing (aside from the more typical modules).
I think in the context of the L+G combo, I would use the Labyrinth for little percussive lines, while playing over them with the Grandmother melodically, or syncing up their ARPs and SEQs.
Another fun thing is to clock shift register/pseudo-random sequencers at audio rates for early arcade style sound effects, digital noise, etc.
Patching the oscillators over for more complext modulation of the Grandmother would be nice too. Separate rates for filter and oscillator FM / Sync for example. Mixing the filters might be nice too. Different parallel and series configs could get you into some nice formant territories.
Lots of possibilities there. I have quite a few videos up in my YouTube channel of doing similar things using my modular modules that do similar functions that this combo would provide.
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I’m still a bit intrigued by this. Not in stock in Japan, so thankfully I can’t do an impulse buy.
A few questions.
(1) What’s it like playing it from a keyboard? This is obviously not what it was designed for, but do you feel that is something you would use it for or not really.
(2) How is the generative sequencer with external gear? I can’t yet wrap my head around how well it would work on external stuff. Was hoping the generative sequencer would bring something to the Moog Grandmother.
(3) While it feels like maybe the harsher tones are where they want you to go with all the different options for that, but for someone that’s more into pretty synth tones, is there enough there? I’ve heard some nice bell like sounds from it, but not sure if that side of things is more of a limited pallet.
I’ll be honest this inspired me to break out my Korg SQ-1 to sequence the Grandmother, and part of me wonders if maybe that’s good enough. I also have a Volca Drum and Volca Modular, so I’m also wondering if the sounds I would get from the Labyrinth are wildly off from what I could do with those already. 