Synthesizer innovator Moog dies at 71
RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- Robert A. Moog, whose self-named
synthesizers turned electric currents into sound and opened the
musical wave that became electronica, has died. He was 71.
Moog died Sunday at his home in Asheville, according to his
company's Web site. He had suffered from an inoperable brain tumor,
detected in April.
A childhood interest in the theremin, one of the first
electronic musical instruments, would lead Moog to a create a career
and business that tied the name Moog as tightly to synthesizers as the
name Les Paul is to electric guitars.
Despite traveling in circles that included jet-setting rockers,
he always considered himself a technician.
"I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians
are my customers," he said in 2000. "They use the tools."
As a Ph.D. student in engineering physics at Cornell University,
Moog -- rhymes with vogue -- in 1964 developed his first
voltage-controlled synthesizer modules with composer Herbert Deutsch.
By the end of that year, R.A. Moog Co. marketed the first commercial
modular synthesizer.
The instrument allowed musicians, first in a studio and later on
stage, to generate a range of sounds that could mimic nature or seem
otherworldly by flipping a switch, twisting a dial, or sliding a knob.
Other synthesizers were already on the market in 1964, but Moog's
stood out for being small, light and versatile.
The arrival of the synthesizer came as just as the Beatles and
other musicians started seeking ways to fuse psychedelic-drug
experiences with their art. The Beatles used a Moog synthesizer on
their 1969 album, "Abbey Road"; a Moog was used to create an eerie
sound on the soundtrack to the 1971 film "A Clockwork Orange".
Keyboardist Walter (later Wendy) Carlos demonstrated the range
of Moog's synthesizer by recording the hit album "Switched-On Bach" in
1968 using only the new instrument instead of an orchestra.
"Suddenly, there was a whole group of people in the world
looking for a new sound in music, and it picked up very quickly,"
Deutsch, the Hofstra University emeritus music professor who helped
develop the Moog prototype, said in a 2000 interview with The
Associated Press.
The popularity of the synthesizer and the success of the company
named for Moog took off in rock as extended keyboard solos in songs by
Manfred Mann, Yes and Pink Floyd became part of the progressive sound
of the 1970s.
"The sound defined progressive music as we know it," said Keith
Emerson, keyboardist for the rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
Along with rock, synthesizers developed since Moog's
breakthrough helped inspire elements of 1970s funk, hip-hop, and
techno.
Charles Carlini, a New York City concert promoter, staged
Moogfest in May 2004 to mark a half-century since Moog founded his
first company while still in college. Emerson, Rick Wakeman of Yes,
and Bernie Worrell of Parliament/Funkadelic were among those who
played, and a second Moogfest was held a year later.
Moog had "this absent-minded professorial way about him,"
Carlini said.
"He's like an Einstein of music," Carlini said. "He sees it
like, there's a thought, an idea in the air, and it passes through
him. Passing through him, he's able to build these instruments."
"A lot of people today don't realize what this man brought to
the masses," Carlini said. "He brought electronic music to the masses
and changed the way we hear music."
But the now-pervasive synthesizer's ability to mimic strings,
horns, and percussion has also threatened some musicians.
In 2004, musicians extracted a promise from the Opera Company of
Brooklyn to never again use an advanced kind of synthesizer, called a
virtual orchestra machine, in future productions.
Born in 1934 in New York City, Moog paid for his studies at
Queens College and Columbia University by building and marketing
theremins, which are played by passing the hand through and around
vibrating radio tubes. Theremins were used create the spooky
"eww-woo-woo" sounds on the soundtracks of science fiction films such
as "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
He went on to attach his name to a long list of synthesizers
developed over the years -- among them Micromoog, Minitmoog, Multimoog
and Memorymoog.
Moog, who had set up shop in suburban Buffalo, New York, sold
R.A. Moog in 1973 and moved five years later to a remote plot outside
Asheville, a scenic Appalachian Mountain city and center for new-age
pursuits that Rolling Stone magazine once dubbed "America's new freak
capital."
A deliberate man with brushed-back white hair and a breast
pocket packed with pens, Moog drove an aging Toyota painted with a
snail, vines and a fish blowing bubbles.
"When I drive that thing around, people smile at me," he said.
"I really feel I'm enhancing the environment."
He spent the early 1990s as a research professor of music at the
University of North Carolina at Asheville before turning full-time to
running his new instrument business, which was renamed Moog Music in
2002. The roster of customers includes Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam,
Beck, Phish, Sonic Youth and Widespread Panic.
Moog is survived by his wife, Ileana; his children, Laura Moog
Lanier, Matthew Moog, Michelle Moog-Koussa and Renee Moog; a
stepdaughter, Miranda Richmond; and his former wife, Shireleigh Moog.
A public memorial is scheduled for Wednesday in Asheville.
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