The Bob Moog Foundation has announced the donation of a one-of-a-kind synth for the organization's MoogLab, the Dewanatron Novitiate. 

Commissioned by the Foundation, the Novitiate was designed for teaching electronic music synthesis to beginners.

Dewanatron, a boutique synth maker run by cousins Brian and Leon Dewan, began as a pair of musical performers who built electronic musical instruments to suit their own needs. Their efforts grew into a business that now supplies some of the most unusual synthesizers you can buy. 

The duo is probably best known for creating the Swarmatron - a unique synth that played an important role in the creation of the soundtrack for The Social Network. 

A few months ago, Moog Foundation Executive Director Michelle Moog-Koussa asked Dewanatron to design and build a distinctive new synth that was soon dubbed the Novitiate.

“Michelle asked us if we would make something that was specifically for teaching people about basic concepts of modular synthesis," explains Brian Dewan. "It’s the first instrument we made that was not really conceived of as first and foremost for making music.”

The front panel’s four sections - oscillator, modulation, filter, and envelope - each demonstrate a primary synthesizer function. A button in the oscillator section triggers the oscillator independently of the other sections, generating four waveforms and covering the entire range of human hearing and beyond. Pressing another button in the modulation section routes a separate modulating oscillator to the main oscillator. The modulator’s continuously variable frequency ranges from a slow pulsation to rates beyond human hearing, enabling vibrato and FM effects. Pressing a third button lets you hear the effect of the Novitiate’s resonant lowpass filter, and a fourth triggers an ADSR envelope generator. Level knobs let you apply the envelope to control filter frequency, amplifier volume, and modulation depth.

Full details on the unique instrument, along with a variety of photos, are available at The Moog Foundation Site. 

Link:

• The Bob Moog Foundation

James Lewin
Twitter @podcasting_news

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