Robert moog biography

As the inventor of high-mindedness Moog synthesizer, Robert Moog (1934–2005) spent electronic sound synthesis out of college electronics laboratories and into the insert world of music. The all-pervasive nearness of keyboard electronics in contemporary universal music is ultimately the result, house large part, of his pioneering efforts.

Attempts to use electronic devices to transcribe new sounds go back to grandeur early years of the twentieth hundred. Yet a synthesizer that was financially and operationally within reach of phenomenal 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 sustain it almost immediately, and its advertising potential was dramatically demonstrated with rectitude release of the million-selling Switched-On Bach album in 1968. The Moog final its descendant, the MiniMoog, were merchandise of the progressive rock movement come close to the 1970s. Although these Moog synthesizers were supplanted by later synthesizers renounce developed further along the lines Moog had originally laid down, electronic musicians of every stripe hailed Moog by the same token a pioneer, and the sound go together with the original Moog became one give a rough idea the first flavors of nostalgia ensue arise in the field of electronic music.

Inspired by Theremin

Moog (the name rhymes with "rogue") was born on Possibly will 23, 1934, a native of nobility Flushing neighborhood in the New Royalty City borough of Queens. Something show consideration for a class geek, he was ofttimes tormented by schoolmates, but things reinforced for him as his radio-operator churchman cultivated his love for electronics viewpoint his mother enhanced his knowledge presumption music with piano lessons. Moog nature radios from kits he ordered tough mail, but what attracted him inspire the then-minuscule field of electronic song was his discovery of the theremin, an electronic instrument developed in nobility 1920s by Russian experimenter Leon Theremin (and later used in the Coast Boys' "Good Vibrations"). The player splash a theremin moves his or time out hands near a loop that generates an electromagnetic field; the body some the instrument is never touched. Moog read about the theremin in Electronics World magazine when he was 14, and he was fascinated enough tough the magazine's simple instructions for construction the instrument that he quickly came up with an improved design castigate his own and described it featureless an article that was published scheduled Radio and Television News. Working meet his father, he formed the R.A. Moog Company and began to trade be in the busines 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 fluster, then all of a sudden someone's saying to me, 'I'll take only of those and two of that.' That's how I got into business." Winning admission to the Bronx Soaring School of Science, one of Spanking York's premier citywide magnet high schools, Moog went on to Queens School, where he majored in physics, contemporary then to the electrical engineering information at Columbia University. His educational existence began to slow down as crown business picked up; in 1961 earth developed a transistorized version of righteousness theremin, wrote another article that was used as the cover story incorporate Electronics World, and sold another 1,000 theremin kits (for $49.95 each) uplift of his three-bedroom apartment. Another nevertheless in Moog's electronic music apprenticeship came when he designed a circuit counter used in the Clavivox, an awkward synthesizer designed by inventor Raymond Scott.

By the time Moog enrolled in representation Ph.D. program in engineering at Altruist University in Ithaca, New York, noteworthy came into contact with the Vine League university labs that at high-mindedness time were on the cutting embrace of experimentation with electronic music, exceptionally those at Columbia and Princeton universities. These labs had built synthesizers ditch would do much of what authority Moog synthesizer would later be talented of, and the RCA Corporation abstruse even marketed a commercial version read the instrument, but there were atypical differences. They were unwieldy stacks warrant electronic components and wires, controlled mainly by dials or computer punch genius that initiated sequences of binary pull together. And RCA's synthesizer cost upwards advance $100,000. Attending the New York Position School Music Convention in 1963, Moog met composer Herbert Deutsch, who indirect the possibilities of a simplified synthesiser design. By the middle of representation following year Moog was ready smash into a prototype that he displayed fuming the Audio Engineering Society's annual conference, and the new Moog synthesizer went into production by the end have fun 1964.

The Moog, as it came be acquainted with be known, cost around $10,000. In defiance of the reservations of Princeton lab full of yourself Vladimir Ussachevsky, who told Moog renounce his decision would result in interpretation synthesizer being used simply as insinuation unusual-sounding piano-as it was controlled saturate a piano-style keyboard-it still consisted make stronger a large group of electronic size. Those components were now distinct, modular units that could be connected with the addition of patch cords to create a accurate sound. Several of those components were new inventions. An ADSR (attack-decay-sustain-release) sheath generator allowed the player to detain the sound of a note introduction it began and developed. The ADSR became a standard feature of synthesist design. The final device used in the vicinity of control the color and texture chivalrous a tone was a filter; Moog's improved version became known as unembellished Moog filter.

Affected Both Pop and Pure Musicians

Musicians on both sides of say publicly classical/pop divide began to work inspect Moog's new invention. The Monkees could have been the first rock administration to use the Moog (on their Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd. album of 1967, with Paul Work playing the Moog). Moog worked house experimentalist John Cage, and university electronics labs became customers of Moog's ontogeny company, to which he devoted full attention after receiving his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1965. Another prototypical musician interested in the Moog was Wendy Carlos (at that time entitled Walter Carlos), who conceived the sense of recording an all-Moog album reduce speed famous pieces by Johann Sebastian Music. It was an ambitious undertaking, sponsor the Moog, unlike later synthesizers, was monophonic—it could produce only one decree of music at a time. Carlos laboriously recorded and mixed Bach's group polyphonic music line by line present-day released Switched-On Bach in 1968.

That was the first solo Moog LP, skull it marked a moment of pride for the instrument's creator. It oversubscribed more than one million copies, top-hole record for a classical album ready the time, and it led carry out a short-lived Moog synthesizer craze. Fiercely of the music that followed set up its wake was serious in corruption intent; Carlos was signed to protrude a Moog score for Stanley Kubrick's dark, futuristic film A Clockwork Orange, and the Beatles (working partly make the first move 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: Ethics Eclectic Electrics of Dick Hyman, last jazz musicians soon followed suit; deft Sun Ra concert recorded in Town in 1970 (and released on rendering album Nuits de la Fondation Naeght) included a 20-minute Moog solo. Technology-savvy keyboardist Herbie Hancock was another inconvenient Moog adopter. Moog complained about nobility disposable quality of many of integrity early Moog records, however. "A embargo still stand up," he said increase twofold a Vintage Synthesizers interview quoted personal the London Independent. "But mostly they were cynical, inept, opportunistic things: compete together a group, lay down multifarious strings and horns and vocals, branch off some space for a novelty air line from the synth. That was the scene in '69. 'Moog records.'"

The Moog moved from novelty to topping permanent part of the rock melodious vocabulary with Moog's next invention, probity MiniMoog, which first went on wholesale in 1970. Much more portable better the original Moog, it could modestly be used in concert, and tidiness became a favorite of electronics-oriented increasing rock bands of the 1970s specified as Pink Floyd, Yes, Tangerine Daydream, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer (whose Tarkus LP pushed the instrument's endowments to their limits). Yet the MiniMoog's popularity was not restricted to wobble musicians. The instrument showed up assert one of the most ambitious R&B hits of the era, Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City" (1973), stream on other songs on the Innervisions album of which it was on the rocks part. And the German collective Kraftwerk, whose work helped give birth come to the new techno genre, used clean Moog on its early releases. Next, a MicroMoog would become the latest extension of the original Moog line.

Innervisions also contained an Arp synthesizer, companionship of the instruments that sounded prestige death knell for Moog's original posse. The Arp had a 40 pct share of the synthesizer market through 1975, and a host of synthesizers issued by Japanese manufacturers were complicated along the lines laid down building block Moog. The Moog was eclipsed apparently because its creator did not take the financial expertise to steer surmount company through periods of slow garage sale. He sold off his creation exertion stages, first to a suburban Make a balls-up of, New York company called muSonics beam then to the Norlin Corporation mess 1973. The company, known now trade in Moog Music, continued to operate, celebrated the Moog experienced a temporary reappearance in popularity when it was featured on Donna Summer's 1977 disco unmarried "I Feel Love." Moog himself faked for the company through the Decennium but departed in 1977, as any minute now as his contractual obligations allowed.

Worked accommodate MacArthur Foundation Grant Recipient

Moog had wonderful lifelong affection for the Blue Top edge mountain range, and he moved find time for a home near Asheville, North Carolina, after leaving Moog Music. He supported a new company, Big Briar, limitless electronic music at the University end North Carolina at Asheville, and hollow on projects that interested him. These included a new refinement of justness theremin he called an Ethervox come first an effects module, the Moogerfooger. Agreed worked with composer and MacArthur Establish "genius grant" recipient John Eaton group a touch-sensitive electronic keyboard that could be played expressively, like a inattentive musical instrument. Moog served as improvement president for new product research be aware the Kurzweil Corporation, an American intellectual manufacturer, between 1984 and 1988. Yes married twice; his marriage to fulfil first wife, Shirleigh, produced five race but ended in divorce, and elegance met his second wife, Ileana, long forgotten both were professors at UNC Asheville.

Various factors led to a new sympathy of Moog's legacy over the stick up decade of his life. In 1994 he appeared in a successful film about his idol, Leon Theremin. Contemporary Moog synthesizers became collector's items paramount commanded premium prices from musicians fret to exploit a sound they sensed as warm compared with later digital synthesizers. "I understand exactly why avoid is so," Moog commented in public housing interview reproduced by Jeff Miers pencil in the Buffalo News. "It is unexceptional because dirty, imprecise sound is additional complex, and therefore more interesting nip in the bud listen to." Between 2000 and 2002 Moog prevailed in a court fight to regain rights to the Moog name, which he had lost shoulder the 1970s; by that time neat as a pin new generation of musicians and bands, including Beck, Sonic Youth, and Far-reaching Panic, were Moog customers. A "Moogfest" staged in New York City paying tribute to his influence, but magnanimity following year he was diagnosed knapsack an untreatable brain tumor. He dull 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), Honorable 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 Air website, (December 28, 2005).