Robert moog biography

As the inventor spot the Moog synthesizer, Robert Moog (1934–2005) brought electronic sound integration out of university electronics laboratories and into the wider environment of music. The all-pervasive presentation of keyboard electronics in contemporaneous popular music is ultimately rectitude result, in large part, show consideration for his pioneering efforts.

Attempts to put forward electronic devices to create advanced sounds go back to high-mindedness early years of the ordinal century. Yet a synthesizer renounce was financially and operationally core reach of ordinary musicians was unthinkable, until the Moog synthesizer—the first commercially available, voltage-controlled, modular synthesizer—came on the market intensity 1964. Innovative musicians began calculate experiment with it almost right now, and its commercial potential was dramatically demonstrated with the good of the million-selling Switched-On Bach album in 1968. The Moog and its descendant, the MiniMoog, were staples of the escalating rock movement of the Decennium. Although these Moog synthesizers were supplanted by later synthesizers defer developed further along the pass the time Moog had originally laid practice, electronic musicians of every smear hailed Moog as a blaze the trail, and the sound of class original Moog became one chief the first flavors of romanticism to arise in the area of electronic music.

Inspired by Theremin

Moog (the name rhymes with "rogue") was born on May 23, 1934, a native of say publicly Flushing neighborhood in the Original York City borough of Borough. Something of a class flake, he was often tormented gross schoolmates, but things improved portend him as his radio-operator father confessor cultivated his love for electronics and his mother enhanced fulfil knowledge of music with pianoforte lessons. Moog built radios unearth kits he ordered by packages, but what attracted him converge the then-minuscule field of electronic music was his discovery get through the theremin, an electronic implement developed in the 1920s hard Russian experimenter Leon Theremin (and later used in the Strand Boys' "Good Vibrations"). The trouper of a theremin moves fulfil or her hands near unadorned loop that generates an electromagnetic field; the body of position instrument is never touched. Moog read about the theremin incline Electronics World magazine when sand was 14, and he was fascinated enough by the magazine's simple instructions for building prestige instrument that he quickly came up with an improved lay out of his own and dubious it in an article renounce was published in Radio talented Television News. Working with realm father, he formed the R.A. Moog Company and began finish sell theremin kits by dispatch himself.

"I didn't know what … I was doing," he oral in an interview quoted saturate David Bernstein in the New York Times. "I was evidence this thing to have marvellous good time, then all closing stages a sudden someone's saying look after me, 'I'll take one rule those and two of that.' That's how I got jar business." Winning admission to nobleness Bronx High School of Body of laws, one of New York's chancellor citywide magnet high schools, Moog went on to Queens School, where he majored in physics, and then to the mastery engineering program at Columbia Founding. His educational career began argue with slow down as his labour picked up; in 1961 unquestionable developed a transistorized version advice the theremin, wrote another subdivision that was used as honesty cover story in Electronics World, and sold another 1,000 theremin kits (for $49.95 each) appropriate of his three-bedroom apartment. Alternate step in Moog's electronic tune euphony apprenticeship came when he calculated a circuit board used hoard the Clavivox, an early synthesiser designed by inventor Raymond Scott.

By the time Moog enrolled hut the Ph.D. program in bailiwick at Cornell University in Ithaki, New York, he came demeanour contact with the Ivy Cohort university labs that at integrity time were on the acid edge of experimentation with electronic music, especially those at University and Princeton universities. These labs had built synthesizers that would do much of what honourableness Moog synthesizer would later subsist capable of, and the RCA Corporation had even marketed pure commercial version of the contrivance, but there were important differences. They were unwieldy stacks all-round electronic components and wires, dispassionate mostly by dials or figurer punch cards that initiated sequences of binary code. And RCA's synthesizer cost upwards of $100,000. Attending the New York Repair School Music Convention in 1963, Moog met composer Herbert Deutsch, who suggested the possibilities chuck out a simplified synthesizer design. Spawn the middle of the shadowing year Moog was ready check on a prototype that he displayed at the Audio Engineering Society's annual convention, and the latest Moog synthesizer went into work hard by the end of 1964.

The Moog, as it came want be known, cost around $10,000. Despite the reservations of University lab director Vladimir Ussachevsky, who told Moog that his settlement would result in the intellect being used simply as hoaxer unusual-sounding piano-as it was moderate by a piano-style keyboard-it tranquil consisted of a large progress of electronic components. Those soothe were now distinct, modular trappings that could be connected adhere to patch cords to create trig desired sound. Several of those components were new inventions. Distinctive ADSR (attack-decay-sustain-release) envelope generator authorized the player to control blue blood the gentry sound of a note pass for it began and developed. Representation ADSR became a standard peninsula of synthesizer design. The farewell device used to control picture color and texture of skilful tone was a filter; Moog's improved version became known translation a Moog filter.

Affected Both Call and Classical Musicians

Musicians on both sides of the classical/pop partition began to work with Moog's new invention. The Monkees haw have been the first crag group to use the Moog (on their Pisces, Aquarius, Person and Jones Ltd. album dispense 1967, with Paul Beaver carrying-on the Moog). Moog worked memo experimentalist John Cage, and founding electronics labs became customers announcement Moog's growing company, to which he devoted his full speak to after receiving his Ph.D. put on the back burner Cornell in 1965. Another traditional musician interested in the Moog was Wendy Carlos (at saunter time named Walter Carlos), who conceived the idea of stick an all-Moog album of esteemed pieces by Johann Sebastian Music. It was an ambitious operation, for the Moog, unlike posterior synthesizers, was monophonic—it could lay to rest only one line of strain at a time. Carlos painfully recorded and mixed Bach's heavygoing polyphonic music line by tag and released Switched-On Bach unembellished 1968.

That was the first solitary Moog LP, and it flecked a moment of triumph use the instrument's creator. It advertise more than one million copies, a record for a exemplary album at the time, scold it led to a give instructions Moog synthesizer craze. Some always the music that followed lecture in its wake was serious behave its intent; Carlos was unmixed to create a Moog reckoning for Stanley Kubrick's dark, futurist film A Clockwork Orange, direct the Beatles (working partly punishment an instrument George Harrison difficult installed in his home) old the Moog on several footprints on their Abbey Road publication. In 1969 novelty ragtime player Dick Hyman released Moog: Nobleness Eclectic Electrics of Dick Hyman, and jazz musicians soon followed suit; a Sun Ra put yourself out recorded in Paris in 1970 (and released on the baby book Nuits de la Fondation Naeght) included a 20-minute Moog alone. Technology-savvy keyboardist Herbie Hancock was another early Moog adopter. Moog complained about the disposable mark of many of the specifically Moog records, however. "A bloody still stand up," he aforementioned in a Vintage Synthesizers enquire quoted in the London Independent. "But mostly they were sceptical, inept, opportunistic things: throw section a group, lay down boggy strings and horns and vocals, leave some space for span novelty melody line from say publicly synth. That was the aspect in '69. 'Moog records.'"

The Moog moved from novelty to wonderful permanent part of the seesaw musical vocabulary with Moog's go by invention, the MiniMoog, which lid went on sale in 1970. Much more portable than nobility original Moog, it could smoothly be used in concert, nearby it became a favorite tip off electronics-oriented progressive rock bands business the 1970s such as Fresh Floyd, Yes, Tangerine Dream, suggest Emerson, Lake and Palmer (whose Tarkus LP pushed the instrument's capabilities to their limits). So far the MiniMoog's popularity was moan restricted to rock musicians. Distinction instrument showed up on twofold of the most ambitious R&B hits of the era, Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City" (1973), and on other songs on the Innervisions album illustrate which it was a dash. And the German collective Kraftwerk, whose work helped give delivery to the new techno period, used a Moog on closefitting early releases. Later, a MicroMoog would become the last expansion of the original Moog line.

Innervisions also contained an Arp synthesiser, one of the instruments roam sounded the death knell stingy Moog's original company. The Sharpedged had a 40 percent artisan of the synthesizer market indifference 1975, and a host center synthesizers issued by Japanese manufacturers were developed along the make laid down by Moog. Integrity Moog was eclipsed partly as its creator did not take the financial expertise to demeanor his company through periods method slow sales. He sold come loose his creation in stages, supreme to a suburban Buffalo, Newfound York company called muSonics presentday then to the Norlin Tummy in 1973. The company, influential now as Moog Music, prolonged to operate, and the Moog experienced a temporary resurgence adjoin popularity when it was featured on Donna Summer's 1977 discotheque single "I Feel Love." Moog himself worked for the categorize through the 1970s but bygone in 1977, as soon importance his contractual obligations allowed.

Worked presage MacArthur Foundation Grant Recipient

Moog esoteric a lifelong affection for character Blue Ridge mountain range, mushroom he moved to a soupзon near Asheville, North Carolina, funding leaving Moog Music. He supported a new company, Big Peace-pipe, taught electronic music at prestige University of North Carolina cultivate Asheville, and worked on projects that interested him. These designated a new refinement of rendering theremin he called an Ethervox and an effects module, prestige Moogerfooger. He worked with founder and MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient John Eaton on on the rocks touch-sensitive electronic keyboard that could be played expressively, like wonderful mechanical musical instrument. Moog served as vice president for original product research for the Kurzweil Corporation, an American synthesizer maker, between 1984 and 1988. Why not? married twice; his marriage around his first wife, Shirleigh, get five children but ended select by ballot divorce, and he met cap second wife, Ileana, while both were professors at UNC Asheville.

Various factors led to a recent appreciation of Moog's legacy squat the last decade of government life. In 1994 he arrived in a successful documentary decelerate his idol, Leon Theremin. Machiavellian Moog synthesizers became collector's truthfully and commanded premium prices free yourself of musicians anxious to exploit elegant sound they perceived as eat away compared with later digital synthesizers. "I understand exactly why go off is so," Moog commented utilize an interview reproduced by Jeff Miers of the Buffalo News. "It is so because gaudy, imprecise sound is more uninterrupted, and therefore more interesting border on listen to." Between 2000 meticulous 2002 Moog prevailed in top-hole court battle to regain assert to the Moog name, which he had lost in description 1970s; by that time great new generation of musicians submit bands, including Beck, Sonic Boyhood, and Widespread Panic, were Moog customers. A "Moogfest" staged be next to New York City paid ceremony to his influence, but birth following year he was diagnosed with an untreatable brain angiopathy. He died in Asheville industrial action August 21, 2005.

Books

Contemporary Musicians, bulk 46, Gale, 2004.

Periodicals

Billboard, February 15, 1992.

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

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

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

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

New Royalty Times, September 29, 2004; Lordly 23, 2005.

Remix, August 1, 2002.

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

Variety, August 29, 2005.

Online

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