We were lucky to get our hands on Moog's new semi-modular instrument, the Subharmonicon, a bizarre instrument based on the subharmonic series. Perfect for polyrhythmic exploration, Just harmonies, and unpredictably animated sonic landscapes, the Subharmonicon is perhaps Moog's strangest instrument in a long time. With the same desktop/Eurorack form factor as the Mother-32 and DFAM, the Subharmonicon works just as well as a desktop instrument as it does an expansion of your Eurorack system.

Subharmonicon can create chords, complex rhythms, huge six-oscillator bass sounds, and more—however, some concepts in the Subharmonicon are a bit complex and might require some re-thinking of how you approach harmony and rhythm. While diving into its weird internal logic might be strange at times, it often leads you to completely new places...breaking you out of your sonic habits and revealing a rich world of kaleidoscopic rhythms and shifting harmony.

If you're just getting to know the Subharmonicon, check out the video above—our hosts Trevor and Trovarsi talk through all of its functionality, and discuss some ways that you can approaching thinking about harmony and rhythm in this bizarre and fascinating instrument.

What is Subharmonicon?

Subharmonicon is based on some bizarre musical concepts: it relies on creating harmonies and rhythms based on the subharmonic series. We cover this concept a bit more deeply in our Subharmonicon announcement article, so read there for deeper detail—but suffice to say, this isn't your standard way of creating harmony or rhythmic structures. Subharmonicon has two oscillators, each of which have two tunable sub oscillators. These sub oscillators don't allow for continuous tuning, however—they are locked to subdivisions of their respective oscillator's frequencies. By locking to integer subdivisions of the main oscillators' frequencies (subdivisions from /1 to /16, specifically), they allow the creation of bizarre microtonal scales and harmonies. The subharmonic series from /16 to /1 passes through stages of seeming somewhat like a major scale and somewhat like a minor scale...making for a novel, rich-sounding set of melodic and harmonic opportunities.

The Subharmonicon is certainly a strange synth, and one that you may not see an obvious place for in your setup. But once you start diving in and deeply listening to its bizarre, ear-bending internal rhythms and harmonies, you'll find that it is a rich world all its own—one from which entirely new musical structures will emerge and disperse through the rest of your studio.