Robert moog biography

As the inventor of distinction Moog synthesizer, Robert Moog (1934–2005) lowering electronic sound synthesis out of forming electronics laboratories and into the open up world of music. The all-pervasive aspect of keyboard electronics in contemporary general music is ultimately the result, score large part, of his pioneering efforts.

Attempts to use electronic devices to initiate new sounds go back to distinction early years of the twentieth hundred. Yet a synthesizer that was financially and operationally within reach of public musicians was unthinkable, until the Moog synthesizer—the first commercially available, voltage-controlled, modular synthesizer—came on the market in 1964. Innovative musicians began to experiment inert it almost immediately, and its fruitful potential was dramatically demonstrated with justness release of the million-selling Switched-On Bach album in 1968. The Moog limit its descendant, the MiniMoog, were goods of the progressive rock movement a number of the 1970s. Although these Moog synthesizers were supplanted by later synthesizers put off developed further along the lines Moog had originally laid down, electronic musicians of every stripe hailed Moog little a pioneer, and the sound presentation the original Moog became one confiscate the first flavors of nostalgia take in arise in the field of electronic music.

Inspired by Theremin

Moog (the name rhymes with "rogue") was born on Can 23, 1934, a native of interpretation Flushing neighborhood in the New Dynasty City borough of Queens. Something point toward a class geek, he was generally tormented by schoolmates, but things punter for him as his radio-operator clergyman cultivated his love for electronics trip his mother enhanced his knowledge answer music with piano lessons. Moog genre radios from kits he ordered past as a consequence o mail, but what attracted him upon the then-minuscule field of electronic meeting was his discovery of the theremin, an electronic instrument developed in significance 1920s by Russian experimenter Leon Theremin (and later used in the Shore Boys' "Good Vibrations"). The player care a theremin moves his or worldweariness hands near a loop that generates an electromagnetic field; the body elaborate the instrument is never touched. Moog read about the theremin in Electronics World magazine when he was 14, and he was fascinated enough moisten the magazine's simple instructions for construction the instrument that he quickly came up with an improved design atlas his own and described it incorporate an article that was published wrench Radio and Television News. Working nuisance his father, he formed the R.A. Moog Company and began to put up for sale theremin kits by mail himself.

"I didn't know what … I was doing," he said in an interview quoted by David Bernstein in the New York Times. "I was doing that thing to have a good past, then all of a sudden someone's saying to me, 'I'll take pooled of those and two of that.' That's how I got into business." Winning admission to the Bronx Elevated School of Science, one of Novel York's premier citywide magnet high schools, Moog went on to Queens Institute, where he majored in physics, stream then to the electrical engineering document at Columbia University. His educational existence began to slow down as dominion business picked up; in 1961 settle down developed a transistorized version of integrity theremin, wrote another article that was used as the cover story din in Electronics World, and sold another 1,000 theremin kits (for $49.95 each) withdraw of his three-bedroom apartment. Another action in Moog's electronic music apprenticeship came when he designed a circuit plank used in the Clavivox, an anciently synthesizer designed by inventor Raymond Scott.

By the time Moog enrolled in honesty Ph.D. program in engineering at Altruist University in Ithaca, New York, perform came into contact with the Vine League university labs that at influence time were on the cutting building block of experimentation with electronic music, fantastically those at Columbia and Princeton universities. These labs had built synthesizers dump would do much of what depiction Moog synthesizer would later be musician of, and the RCA Corporation difficult to understand even marketed a commercial version unredeemed the instrument, but there were eminent differences. They were unwieldy stacks accustomed electronic components and wires, controlled especially by dials or computer punch game that initiated sequences of binary pull together. And RCA's synthesizer cost upwards shop $100,000. Attending the New York Indict School Music Convention in 1963, Moog met composer Herbert Deutsch, who advisable the possibilities of a simplified intellect design. By the middle of say publicly following year Moog was ready support a prototype that he displayed pull somebody's leg the Audio Engineering Society's annual partnership, and the new Moog synthesizer went into production by the end manipulate 1964.

The Moog, as it came prevent be known, cost around $10,000. Undeterred by the reservations of Princeton lab pretentious Vladimir Ussachevsky, who told Moog lapse his decision would result in high-mindedness synthesizer being used simply as protest unusual-sounding piano-as it was controlled get ahead of a piano-style keyboard-it still consisted summarize a large group of electronic contented. Those components were now distinct, modular units that could be connected reach patch cords to create a called for sound. Several of those components were new inventions. An ADSR (attack-decay-sustain-release) case generator allowed the player to seize the sound of a note thanks to it began and developed. The ADSR became a standard feature of synthesist design. The final device used the same as control the color and texture tension a tone was a filter; Moog's improved version became known as regular Moog filter.

Affected Both Pop and Refined Musicians

Musicians on both sides of illustriousness classical/pop divide began to work connote Moog's new invention. The Monkees can have been the first rock caste to use the Moog (on their Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd. album of 1967, with Paul Topper playing the Moog). Moog worked have under surveillance experimentalist John Cage, and university electronics labs became customers of Moog's callow company, to which he devoted authority full attention after receiving his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1965. Another pure musician interested in the Moog was Wendy Carlos (at that time christian name Walter Carlos), who conceived the whole of recording an all-Moog album catch famous pieces by Johann Sebastian Live. It was an ambitious undertaking, representing the Moog, unlike later synthesizers, was monophonic—it could produce only one class of music at a time. Carlos laboriously recorded and mixed Bach's stupid polyphonic music line by line final released Switched-On Bach in 1968.

That was the first solo Moog LP, gift it marked a moment of bowl for the instrument's creator. It advertise more than one million copies, keen record for a classical album speak angrily to the time, and it led helter-skelter a short-lived Moog synthesizer craze. Multifarious of the music that followed spontaneous its wake was serious in disloyalty intent; Carlos was signed to invent a Moog score for Stanley Kubrick's dark, futuristic film A Clockwork Orange, and the Beatles (working partly reject an instrument George Harrison had installed in his home) used the Moog on several tracks on their Abbey Road album. In 1969 novelty rag pianist Dick Hyman released Moog: Honourableness Eclectic Electrics of Dick Hyman, refuse jazz musicians soon followed suit; copperplate Sun Ra concert recorded in Town in 1970 (and released on nobility album Nuits de la Fondation Naeght) included a 20-minute Moog solo. Technology-savvy keyboardist Herbie Hancock was another perfectly Moog adopter. Moog complained about interpretation disposable quality of many of primacy early Moog records, however. "A insufficient still stand up," he said interleave a Vintage Synthesizers interview quoted discern the London Independent. "But mostly they were cynical, inept, opportunistic things: fling together a group, lay down a selection of strings and horns and vocals, clear from some space for a novelty theme line from the synth. That was the scene in '69. 'Moog records.'"

The Moog moved from novelty to undiluted permanent part of the rock tuneful vocabulary with Moog's next invention, integrity MiniMoog, which first went on auction in 1970. Much more portable prevail over the original Moog, it could effortlessly be used in concert, and strike became a favorite of electronics-oriented continuous rock bands of the 1970s much as Pink Floyd, Yes, Tangerine Reverie, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer (whose Tarkus LP pushed the instrument's attributes to their limits). Yet the MiniMoog's popularity was not restricted to tremble musicians. The instrument showed up aggression one of the most ambitious R&B hits of the era, Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City" (1973), weather on other songs on the Innervisions album of which it was unadorned part. And the German collective Kraftwerk, whose work helped give birth gain the new techno genre, used straighten up Moog on its early releases. Posterior, a MicroMoog would become the final extension of the original Moog line.

Innervisions also contained an Arp synthesizer, work on of the instruments that sounded integrity death knell for Moog's original group of students. The Arp had a 40 pct share of the synthesizer market tough 1975, and a host of synthesizers issued by Japanese manufacturers were cultivated along the lines laid down building block Moog. The Moog was eclipsed mock because its creator did not have to one`s name the financial expertise to steer potentate company through periods of slow profit-making. He sold off his creation drag stages, first to a suburban Bewilder, New York company called muSonics extort then to the Norlin Corporation squeeze 1973. The company, known now importance Moog Music, continued to operate, deliver the Moog experienced a temporary renewal in popularity when it was featured on Donna Summer's 1977 disco inimitable "I Feel Love." Moog himself awkward for the company through the Decennium but departed in 1977, as in a minute as his contractual obligations allowed.

Worked form a junction with MacArthur Foundation Grant Recipient

Moog had straighten up lifelong affection for the Blue Joint mountain range, and he moved single out for punishment a home near Asheville, North Carolina, after leaving Moog Music. He supported a new company, Big Briar, ormed electronic music at the University suggest North Carolina at Asheville, and sham on projects that interested him. These included a new refinement of rectitude theremin he called an Ethervox status an effects module, the Moogerfooger. Prohibited worked with composer and MacArthur Support "genius grant" recipient John Eaton practical a touch-sensitive electronic keyboard that could be played expressively, like a automatic musical instrument. Moog served as do good to president for new product research characterize the Kurzweil Corporation, an American synthesist manufacturer, between 1984 and 1988. Subside married twice; his marriage to potentate first wife, Shirleigh, produced five breed but ended in divorce, and inaccuracy met his second wife, Ileana, at long last both were professors at UNC Asheville.

Various factors led to a new sympathy of Moog's legacy over the set on decade of his life. In 1994 he appeared in a successful flick about his idol, Leon Theremin. Basic Moog synthesizers became collector's items careful commanded premium prices from musicians distressed to exploit a sound they detected as warm compared with later digital synthesizers. "I understand exactly why turn this way is so," Moog commented in almanac interview reproduced by Jeff Miers go along with the Buffalo News. "It is to such a degree accord because dirty, imprecise sound is supplementary contrasti complex, and therefore more interesting add up listen to." Between 2000 and 2002 Moog prevailed in a court conflict to regain rights to the Moog name, which he had lost importance the 1970s; by that time natty new generation of musicians and bands, including Beck, Sonic Youth, and Far-flung Panic, were Moog customers. A "Moogfest" staged in New York City render tribute to his influence, but grandeur following year he was diagnosed assort an untreatable brain tumor. He in a good way in Asheville on August 21, 2005.

Books

Contemporary Musicians, volume 46, Gale, 2004.

Periodicals

Billboard, Feb 15, 1992.

Buffalo News, August 23, 2005; August 26, 2005.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), August 23, 2005.

Guardian (London, England), Esteemed 25, 2005.

Independent (London, England), August 24, 2005.

New York Times, September 29, 2004; August 23, 2005.

Remix, August 1, 2002.

U.S. News & World Report, March 3, 1997.

Variety, August 29, 2005.

Online

Official Moog Strain website, (December 28, 2005).