1. Favourite knob or fader or switch on a piece of gear and why?
Look at this great filter cutoff frequency knob on the Moog Sub 25, one of my recent additions and mainly part of my setup for gigs. I guess the resulting filter sweeps when turning this knob are the most famous synth sound!
2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?
This Moog Little Phatty Stage II is the first synth I ever bought and still my go-to synth when simply wanting to play or starting a session. It’s almost perfect because of its sound and the stripped-down layout, but exactly this one-knob-for-all layout has one flaw: it results in “jumping” of the values when turning the knobs after selecting a different feature. For example, you set the cutoff first and then select the resonance, but the value will jump as you move the knob. As always with synths, it is better to try and hear it than to read about it.
3. What setup do you bring on holiday or tour or commute etc.?
This is my Mobile Modular Rack which I use for gigs because it has many essential modules and offers five or six separate voices, depending on the patch (details are available here: https://modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/1933212). I use an Arturia Keystep Pro with this rack.
4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?
No idea. I rely on hardware, but I use Ableton for mixing. I still added a picture of my Arturia Minifreak because they added a VST along with the hardware synth. I think this is a very good idea of combining both worlds (despite the VST having its flaws).
5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?
No regrets! I take a lot of time before buying or selling anything. Planning my setup before buying anything is crucial to me.
6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?
I must get back to the Little Phatty again. The classic Moog sound is what made me want to make music in the first place. Of course it is monophonic, but melodies which sound good on this synth will certainly have more to offer when you add more instruments and introduce polyphony and harmonies.
7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?
Despite loving synths, I would get a Nord keyboard like the Nord Electro 5D. It is the most versatile instrument in my setup and covers a lot of ground.
8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?
I had a Model D, the MiniMoog clone by Behringer, but it suffered from pitch drift in such a severe way that I couldn’t use it for performances anymore unless I wanted to tune every 30 minutes. This was a problem with the early runs of that model. It was long out of warranty, but to my surprise somebody bought it from me. Still, I bought another model because I need that sound in my setup. The pitch is stable so far.
9. Most surprising tip or trick or technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?
I don’t know whether this is a trick or not, but I like to combine multimode filters and two crossfaders to create a pseudo-stereo sound. The Doepfer A-121-3 multimode filter offers four filter types: low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and notch. You can pair them and send those outputs to the crossfaders. When the crossfaders and the filter module are modulated, you can create constantly evolving soundscapes with these few modules already. This works in a similar way with the Nonlinear Circuits Feague which is a filter module and a quadrature VCO. It has four outputs: two low-pass and two band-pass.
Artist or Band name?
Wolfgang Merx a.k.a. Mr. X.
Genre?
Berlin School, Kosmische Musik, Ambient, Synthwave and a bit of Funk.
Selfie?
Where are you from?
Bedburg, Germany, close to Cologne and Düsseldorf.
How did you get into music?
I started listening to hard rock and prog rock when I was a teenager. The most important band that started my interest in synths and making music is Emerson Lake & Palmer. Hearing the sounds that Keith Emerson made with his famous and enormous Moog modular has been mind-blowing and very inspiring, even to this day. Klaus Schulze is my other major influence, along with Tangerine Dream which I discovered a few years later. Schulze’s spacy and dream-like music is amazing and shows what one person can do …with a lot of synths and keyboards. Tangerine Dream, being a band, expanded this idea in their unique way, adding a sense for fantastic group improvisations.
What still drives you to make music?
Listening to other people’s music and hearing sounds, for example in nature or in everyday life.
How do you most often start a new track?
Most of the time by either improvising a soundscape with pads or Mellotron sounds or by improvising a synth sequence.
How do you know when a track is finished?
I think that music is never finished if it is performed. But when I record music for a future release, I simply feel when the music calms down and a jam is coming to an end.
Show us your current studio
Mr. X’s studio setup
Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?
Miles Davis once said: “Don’t play the butter notes.”
Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.
This is my latest album „Time Stands Still”, available on most platforms and Bandcamp, of course: https://wolfgangmerx.bandcamp.com/album/time-stands-still