Secrets of the Moog Prodigy

I traded a toy casio keyboard for my Prodigy around 1987. It had one cracked key, but was fully functional and in good shape other than that. The guy who had it, thought it was probably worth about $50.00. God bless him!

I love my prodigy. It took me several years though to learn to like it next to my Realistic Concertmate MG-1, which is a somewhat similar Moog synthesizer, with a few different features. I had played the MG-1 so much that I knew it like the back of my hand. Both MG-1 and Prodigy are 2-oscillator monophonic synths, both have a 24db filter, the same number of keys, etc. I had learned to coax just about all the MG-1 could deliver, but it was laid out a little differently from the Prodigy so some of the controls on the Prodigy didn't mean the same to me at first.

At first I used the CV and Trigger output from the MG-1 to control the Prodigy (this was pre-MIDI for me) and though tuning could be a little tricky, I was able to get some really fat layered synth sounds from them. I was still enamored by the MG-1 though.

A few years later, after I'd been using MIDI sequencers and synths, I'd gotten away from the analog stuff for a while, but noticed that the Prodigy was increasing in value. I just saw one on e-bay today in fact going for $975.00! So I took out the keyboard from the MG-1 and replaced the broken one in the Prodigy. Now it is in very good condition. The output jack is a little loose, and it had been pretty dusty at one time, so I've cleaned it up quite a bit.

Now, about those secrets. I picked up a few tips about the Prodigy while reading things about it on the Internet.

Some people modify their Prodigy so that oscillator 2 will go down to 32'. A very simple trick if you don't mind not syncing the oscillators is to flip the sync switch off, tune the oscillators together, and then bring the pitch bend wheel all the way down. This gives you osc. 1 at 64' and osc. 2 at 32'! I like to switch osc.1 up to 32' and then you get this really phat as hell voice using both sawtooth especially. It rivals the textures of the MiniMoog.

The second trick involves the mod wheel. The LFO is selectable as a triangle wave or a square wave with a switch. If you move the switch, ever so carefully between them so that it is set to neither, then the mod wheel gives you manual control over the filter or the oscillators, depending on which of these you have selected. It's great for expression with the filter control while playing. If you set the cutoff low enough, and put in a little emphasis - almost self-modulating, then when your rock the mod wheel, you've got this huge range of expression at your fingertips. If you select to modulate the oscillators it gives you this really wild pitch bend, way more than one octave.

Moog Music makes this thing called the Mooger Fooger CP-251 that provides alternate LFO settings, sample and hold, PWM modulation, and some other stuff. I really don't feel like I need that. For one, I haven't found much use for the sample and hold stuff. The MG-1 can do that. It is good for making a "computer sound." Some of the demos I've heard of the CP-251 weren't that musical, and I can do strange effects on my computer.

In closing, the Prodigy is often derided as a basic synth, but is really a nice piece of work. It doesn't have a 3rd oscillator like the MiniMoog, but I think it really is the poor man's MiniMoog. If you want a Moog, and want to spend less that $1500.00, the Prodigy is a great alternative. If you're on a budget and can find one, the MG-1 is a great little keyboard. Prodigy's oscillators have triangle wave shape, but you can live without that. MG-1 has sample and hold if you can think of something to do with it. It also has a continuous and auto-trigger mode, though in a MIDI-fied world, those are not as useful as a MIDI/CV kit would be.

I play the Prodigy live and in the studio. I use it to write bass and lead lines, and base songs around the sounds I get from it. I also plunk around on a Roland Juno 6, from the same era, and used to play my Korg Poly Six until it died from a battery leaking acid on the circuits. The Korg though to me was only useful in unison mode, so was kind of a one trick pony. I'd much rather have the Prodigy than that keyboard. The Juno 6 is a nice polyphonic compliment for a guy who couldn't afford a Jupiter 8.