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This page is read from MIDI Instrument Definitions, a Python library used in the author's other projects, in which every number is traced to a document its maker published. Its source is on GitHub.

Moog Music Minimoog Model D MIDI implementation

The MIDI implementation of the Moog Music Minimoog Model D: what it answers to, and the 1 control it offers.

At a glance

Firmware
Not recorded.
MIDI channel
Any one of 1 to 16.
Voices
One, so it plays one note at a time.
Note range
Not recorded.
Velocity
Sent and received.
Aftertouch
Sent. Whether it answers to any is not recorded.
Pitch bend
7 semitones.
Program change
Not recorded.
MIDI clock
Not recorded.
Start and stop
Not recorded.
Control change
1 control, in the table below, with a fine half on a second controller number.
NRPN
Not recorded.
System exclusive
Supported.

Controls

In the order the definition gives them, by group. Under each control is the name a program calls it by, once pymidiinstrumentdefs.load("moog/minimoog_model_d") has loaded them.

Control CC Values
Mod Wheel
mod_wheel		 1
fine 33		 0-127

Where these facts come from

Source documents

How they were read

Minimoog Model D User's Manual Version 2, 2022, which is 84 pages and one of only two documents Moog publishes for this instrument. The other is a sheet of blank patch templates with nothing about MIDI in it. The maker's downloads listing is cited for what it does and does not offer.

THE EDITION MATTERS MORE THAN USUAL HERE. An earlier, shorter edition of this manual is hosted by third parties, and in it Global Settings begins on page 23 where this one has it on page 46. Every page cited below is Version 2's, and against the earlier edition none of them resolves.

ONE CONTROLLER, NAMED ONCE. "It now includes mod-wheel MIDI support: CC #1 (MSB or Most Significant Byte) and CC #33 (LSB or Least Significant Byte)" (guide p. 35). That is a fourteen-bit mod wheel rather than two controls, so it is recorded as one with a fine half. The sentence is in the MIDI IN paragraph, so the numbers are stated for what the instrument receives; the manual says elsewhere that the wheel also transmits - "Mod Wheel now receives and transmits MIDI data" (guide p. 10) - without saying on what number, which is the only sensible reading but is this file's inference and not the maker's words.

Two readers found no second controller number. The second scanned every content stream in the document, recursing into all 432 form objects and counting the text-showing operators, which is how a negative claim about this manual can be made at all: nothing is hidden in a stream that the extracted text does not already carry. There are no images in the file.

AND ONE PAGE OF IT CANNOT BE READ BY ANY EXTRACTOR. Page 53, the Signal Flow diagram, is a form object with no font resources and not one text-showing operator: every label is an outlined path, so it is invisible to fitz and pypdf alike. It was rendered and looked at. It is an analogue audio and control-voltage block diagram - mixer, ladder filter, two amplifiers, the outputs, and a key - and it carries no controller number.

WHAT THE MIDI JACKS CARRY, stated twice and agreeing. "MIDI In: Note On (Trigger), Note #, Velocity, Pitch Bend, and Mod Wheel" (guide p. 81) and "MIDI Out: Note On (Trigger), Note #, Velocity, Aftertouch, Pitch Bend, and Mod Wheel" (guide p. 81), which is the same list page 35 gives in prose.

SO AFTERTOUCH IS SENT, AND NO PAGE SAYS IT IS RECEIVED. Both receive lists omit it and both send lists have it, and the power-on commands include one that "Transmits Aftertouch (After Pressure) data via MIDI" (guide p. 50). An omission from a list is not a stated no, so aftertouch is unset and aftertouch_transmits is true. Which kind it sends is not stated anywhere.

MIDI THRU IS A JACK AND NOT A MESSAGE LIST. "This jack rebroadcasts the signal arriving at the MIDI IN jack and passes it along to other MIDI equipment" (guide p. 35), so it carries everything that arrives, including messages this instrument ignores. Page 81 calls it a mirror of the MIDI In signal, which is true of the jack and would be false of the list above.

THE CHANNEL IS SET BY HOLDING KEYS WHILE THE POWER COMES ON, and so is most of the rest of the MIDI behaviour. "Sets MIDI IN to MIDI channel 1-16 or OMNI" (guide p. 49), with the input and output settable together or separately, note data transposable by "+/- 12 semitones" (guide p. 49) in either direction, local control switchable, and the pitch wheel, mod wheel and aftertouch outputs each switchable on and off.

A READER WHOSE MIDI NOTES MAKE NO SOUND IS PROBABLY IN THE WRONG GATE SOURCE. One of the power-on commands sets the gate source so that "notes received via MIDI will not trigger the contour generators" (guide p. 48). The default is all three sources together, and this is worth knowing before concluding an instrument is broken.

THE VELOCITY CURVES ARE ABOUT WHAT IT SENDS. Three of them, Soft, Medium and Hard, and "Sets MIDI Velocity Curve to medium" (guide p. 50) is the default. Every description is about physical effort at the key, so they shape the velocity this instrument transmits rather than its response to velocity arriving. What a received velocity does is never stated: the keyboard's own velocity signal is not hardwired to any parameter, and whether a MIDI velocity reaches the same place as the keyboard's is not written down.

NOT RECORDED: a note range. The manual states the keyboard outright - "Key Range: F0 to C4" (guide p. 80) and 44 keys - and anchors it to MIDI, since "This key corresponds to MIDI note 48, meaning that MIDI note 36 will produce a Pitch CV value of zero volts" (guide p. 51). That gives 41 to 84 by arithmetic the manual explains. It is still not recorded, for two reasons: the manual never says what the instrument does with a note outside that span, and the MIDI In transpose moves the mapping by up to a year of semitones either way, so there is no fixed range to record even if the first objection were answered.

NOT RECORDED: mode. There is no MIDI implementation chart; the contents list ends at the warranty with no MIDI appendix.

NOT RECORDED: clock, transport, program_change, nrpn. Both readers searched for every one of them and the manual mentions none - no MIDI clock, no start or stop, no song position, no program change, no bank select, no NRPN. It also has no USB: the MIDI is five-pin DIN only.

THE SPECIFICATIONS PAGE IS NOT CAREFULLY CHECKED, WHICH IS WORTH KNOWING BECAUSE TWO FACTS HERE REST ON IT. It gives the operational temperature as 50F to 122F where page 4 says 110F, and its storage range reads "5F to 140F (2C to 60C)" (guide p. 80) where 5F is -15C. The bend range and the MIDI jack lists come from that page, and both are corroborated elsewhere - the bend by the pitch wheel going "up a fifth" on page 24, and the jack lists by page 35 - which is why they are recorded and the temperatures are not mentioned at all.