Long live Bob Moog

[gare]

Moog synthesizers were to pop music in the 60s what Photoshop is to imaging. everyone from the Beatles to Yes featured Moog music on hit albums. It was a keyboard staple, right on top of a Fender Rhodes or a Hammond B-3. One of my uncles who worked at IBM knew Bob, and I bought one in 1975, used, for only $350. Bob was a columnist for Keyboard magazine for years, and his technology kept up with the times--I have a software MIDI MiniMoog on my desktop!

Bob Moog (rhymes with "vogue") met his fame after a Chicago tuba salesman, John Sears, encouraged Bob to abandon the punch card approach to programming and playing his invention in favor of the much more user-friendly keyboard. Bob lectured and in later years brought along Roger Powell (Todd Rundgren's Utopia) and then Keith Emerson for demonstrations. The Musician's Union was running scared over reports that the Moog synthesizer could imitate any classical instrument, and Bob set up a demonstration to allay their fears. "Just make it sound awful", John advised.

In addition to the Moog synthesizer, Bob also revived the Therimen from the 1950s. It's the only instrument you don't touch to play; you wave your hands next to a pole--you'll remember therimen music from 1950s monster movie music, the "ooooh-weee-oooh" sound.

Today, the Moog is unrivaled for deep fat bass lines and its warm sound, because it's analog, not digital. The Yamaha DX7 and Kurtzweil digital technology come close, but miss the mark.

Bob had a nasty lesson in business visted upon him after his company went public: he lost his name! Moog Music went under in the late 70s, but retained his name. Bob operated under Big Bear Music for years until he finally won back the name in 2003.
http://www.moogmusic.com/

Here's what the papers said today:



Bob Moog, inventor of his namesake range of synthesizers and one of the most significant figures in the evolution of electronic music, died yesterday (Aug. 21) at his home in Asheville, N.C. He was 71. A native of N.Y., Moog was diagnosed with brain cancer in late April and had since undergone radiation treatment and chemotherapy.

After a decade of building theremins with his father, Moog created his prototype, the Moog Modular Synthesizer, in 1963 and unveiled it the following year at the Audio Engineering Society Convention.

Among the first popular recorded music albums to feature the instrument was Wendy Carlos' 1968 release "Switched-On Bach," which sold more than one million copies and earned the artist three Grammys. Moog himself received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1970.

"[Moog] contributed to a new soundscape -- a legacy that we will continue in his honor," comments Mike Adams, president of N.C.-based Moog Music. "He was a musical pioneer for the love of it and musicians everywhere have had the opportunity to expand their own creative horizons with Bob's inventions."

An icon in electronic music circles, Moog was the focus of a Hans Fjellestad-directed documentary, "Moog," which was issued last year by Plexifilm. He was due to deliver the keynote speech at the upcoming Amsterdam Dance Event, to be held Oct. 27-29, but was forced to cancel his appearance shortly after his diagnosis.

Moog's family has established the Bob Moog Foundation, a charity dedicated to the advancement of electronic music. A host of his collaborators, including Carlos and Yes' Rick Wakeman, will sit on its board.

He is survived by his wife, Ileana, and five children. No public memorial is planned.

I'll miss him, as I'm sure we all will,

Gare

 

[Raven]

Great article and info about Bob's inventive genius and contribution! Thanks for posting that, Gare! B7

 

[ricib]

I dare say most of the younger crowd here, of which I'm not really, wouldn't know of Mr. Moog. Too sad really, as the Synth business owes him LOTS. TONS more credit than he gets, for making much of the 70s and on music what it is.

In my opinion, there are only two real Synths, A Moog, and a Synclavier. Synclaviers being much more than a Moog, but nothing sounds quite like a Moog. The first non Piano keyboard I ever played? A Moog synth that my Grandma of all people had. It helped she was and still is a music teacher, at 85.

 

[Sean]

Great article, gare. I've heard about Moog synthesizers before, but I never knew much about them. In my school we have two Kurzweil (not Kurtzweil) PC2x and they are preatty nice, but I like samplers the best cause they're accually playing real sound recordings of instruments which makes them sound realistic. I would reall love to get my hands on a Moog though. %}

 

[sPECtre]

A true pioneer. As I'm fond of electronic musics, it is indeed a big loss...

You can also hear Wendy Carlos' moog versions of Classical music in "Clockwork Orange"

I think that it is "Theremin", Gare.

 

[gare]

Yeah

In my haste, I typo-ed "Kurzweil", and "Theremin"--appy-polly-loggies, as they said in A Clockwork Orange, whose score was done by Moogist Wendy Carlos. I own a Kurzweil Stage Piano, but I still want to get a Minimoog; eBay usually has 'em used starting at $1,500 US...a little out of my range.

Here's where technologies converge--Bob did his own thing with synthesis architecture, building from the inside out. That is, analog synthesis is built in blocks, the destination being a sound, realistic or fantasy. My inner feeling is that Bob was unconcerned with a "realistic musical instrument" generator, instead, making a device for sound exploration. But creative human beings need a baseline from which to spring--I think that's why Poser is so popular, and 3D modeling in general. We need a grain of realism from which to grow stuff.

In music technology, Pulse Code Modulation, PCM, was the next step after analog synthesis. Yamaha capitalized on this with the DX line of synthesizers, and today, you can pick up a home Yamaha keyboard that sounds very much like an acoustic piano for around $150 at Best Buy. But PCM is still working from the inside out, as it doesn't sample live instruments, but instead modifies a wave that has been cobbled to imitate a real sound wave.

Brief diversion: "Stuart Little" special effects, headed by John Dykstra (don't ever forgive him for TV's "Battlestar Galactica"!) and his production company worked from the outside-in, as did the fx crew that did the 100 Agent Smiths in Matrix 2. In fact, they sampled Hugo Weaving (Smith) to the tune of 9GB/second, to then proceed inside the realization pipeline.

"Purists" scoff at the "outside-in" approach, preferring to sculpt faces by hand instead of using Poser's Face Room, for example. But I personally, in my work, tend to use, for instance, scans of wood instead of procedural synthetic textures. Pixar are the masters of procedural texture-making IMO, but they never totally compare to a physical sample of a real-life texture.

Back to music: Raymond Kurzweil is left to pick up Bob Moog's torch, I feel. He's a mathematician, and actually Stevie Wonder came to him with a request to build him a reading machine. And so he did; every fiscally-healthy public library now has a Kurzweil reading machine. So a few years later, Stevie says to Ray, "Okay, lugging around a real piano on gigs is a backache, and they need retuning after moving. Can you make a synthetic piano?"

And so he did, working from the outside-in. He sampled a real piano, and then mathematically tweaked the data. I think, but am not sure, that the Kurzweil pianos were sampled every three notes, to prevent a "chipmonking" effect. A concert was held in a Japanese arena, a concert for two pianos was the piece. A Steinway 12" and a Kurtweil were used, and the officianados in the audience were baffled.

Kurzweil has developed module blocks for the basis synth, expanding it to faithfully emulate violins, brass sections, you name it. I hope to get a block soon for my piano; they're only $400. Kurzweil is run by Young Chang these days, an Asian concern, with R&D still done here in the States. Mr. Kurzweil is relatively uninterested in the business end of his pursuits.

Hey, it's all math, and it's all art.

My Best,

Gare

 

[mflintjer]

Hate it...just hate it, when musical pioneers have to pass on. I loved the music in "A Clockwork Orange", and didn't know exactly how it was created. If my guess is right, you are referring to Beethoven's 9th, during our villian's rehabilitation -- correct!? B7

 

[gare]

Yep, Wendy Carlos used a Moog synthesizer to interpret Ludwig's score.

BTW, "Switched-On Bach" was Wendy's debut. The album's been digitized since its 1969 release, and it's one of four most important works of our era, IMFFHO.

Sgt. Pepper's, Don Byron's bug Music, and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon being the others.

My Best,

Gare