I saw an original Moog Taurus synthesizer in a magazine when I was a kid.
I didn't know what it was. Given the bulk and odd shape – a black box sitting on the floor with horizontal slats sticking out – I assumed it was some sort of fancy shoeshine machine Geddy Lee used to polish his Mithril-tipped boots.
The older, wiser me can tell you it resembles, in both form and function, the array of bass pedals you'd see underneath a church organ. The musician can sit at the organ and play the bass lines with his feet, covering the low end and freeing both of his hands to play more complex chords.
Bob Moog's creation, originally released in 1976, is a synthesizer version of the old organist's foot pedals – you can play the bass with your feet while playing something else with your hands, though the companion instrument needn't be an organ. Most players use bass pedals with stringed instruments or smaller keyboards.
>The slowly pulsating lights and wooden tentacles make it look like an angry Mugwump or the glowing, metal-clad head of Cthulhu.
Moog's original Taurus is a primitive beast. It plays just one note at a time, and it only plays bass notes in the lower octaves. It's big, clunky and not at all portable. But absolutely nothing else can fully match the sound of its fat, gently pulsating bass tones, though just about everyone has tried. The synth tones it emits are huge and juicy, and about as subtle as a bear. When you step on a Taurus, the audience feels it.
The original Taurus was produced for just five years, from 1976 to 1981. Not for long, but long enough to become a hit, especially among the progressive rock and space-rock alchemists – Rush, Genesis, Yes, ELO, King Crimson – who were already experimenting with early analog synthesizers (and various substances).
The Taurus II arrived in 1981, changing the circuits and upping the number of foot-operated keys from 13 to 18. But it was discontinued after just a few years. Originals of both the Taurus and the Taurus II are rare these days, commanding top dollar on eBay.
Now Moog Music has revived the original design with the Moog Taurus 3, a 13-pedal array that looks a lot like the original Taurus, just beefier and shinier. But this isn't some digital re-do. Moog has built a fully analog signal path and even recreated the same three original sounds ("Taurus," "Tuba" and "Bass") that are generated by two sawtooth oscillators. There's a new sound ("Taurus 3") that stays close to the old formula, and then 48 additional factory sounds, all analog. There are also pitch, filter and gate controls and a multiwaveform low-frequency oscillator.
