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Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen shares his analog programming secrets and bass sound strategies developed through years of experience with Moog synths. In this exclusive, hands-on tutorial, Jorgensen creates striking low-end grooves using a Moog Messenger, Moog Grandmother and Moog Subsquent 37.
“My father was a recording engineer in New York City,” explains Jorgensen, “and between the studios and our home in New Jersey was a synthesizer repair shop. Every once in a while, he would pick up a piece of gear that had been repaired, keep it at our house overnight, and bring it back to the studios the next day. So, on one glorious night in the late ’70s, he brought home a Moog Minimoog Model D, put some earphones on me and showed me how to use the knobs to manipulate the sounds. I was like, ‘Okay, how can I do this for the rest of my life.’”
Even with so much training and experimentation as a player, Jorgensen admits he doesn’t know all of the intricacies and nuances of Moog synth circuitry. “I don’t think about that stuff, but I feel it,” he says.
“There is engineering involved in getting an oscillator to play a pitch at a certain note, but there’s also a sort of poetic layer to creating sounds on an analog synth.”
But while Jorgensen encourages players to find inspiration, variety, immediacy and surprise within the oscillators, waveforms and filters you can control with knobs, he is also a fan of having some sort of plan for the sounds you are seeking to produce.
“There are so many different flavors of sound you can use to create a bass line for a track,” says Jorgensen. “So, it’s useful to consider how much personality you want in your synth bass versus a tone that’s perhaps less thirsty for attention, and more supportive of the harmonic structure of the music you are working on.”
Jorgensen also cautions that no sound exists in a vacuum. Crafting a suitable and vibey synth tone—and bass line—isn’t something you shouldn’t do in complete isolation.
“It’s helpful to work on a sound by itself, but if you’re in the studio, try to work with it as the track is playing,” he counsels. “Don’t solo it—hear the synth bass in the context of the current mix or version of the song and make adjustments. That will never steer you wrong.”
If you want to develop a consistent feel and capability for creating sounds and musical parts on a synthesizer, Jorgensen looks back at his own youth, when he discovered the glories of that Moog Minimoog Model D his dad brought home.
“If you’ve never used an analog synthesizer before, and you want to dive into all this, my recommendation is to sacrifice your social skills and spend a lot of time at home with one of these for hours, days, weeks, months—whatever time you have,” he says. “Once you really understand one synthesizer, you can apply that knowledge, in a very general way, to almost any other synthesizer.”
If this article has made you wild about Moogs, check out our 2022 article, “The Return of the Minimoog”—the re-release of the keyboard that started Jorgensen on his synth journey.
Want to learn more about bass synthesizers? Contact a Guitar Center Gear Adviser or stop by your local Guitar Center store.