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Robert Moog, RIP
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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 was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, detected in April. He died Sunday at his home in Asheville, according to his company's Web site.
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.
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.
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Nothing beats that fat analog sound!!
Often copied... But never very well..
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Favorite Moog sound song from a ski movie:
Aries, the fire fighter - Zodiac Cosmic Sounds, from Clay Pigeons
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Just saw this one. The guy was a poineer to say the least. Long live the VCO, VCA, and VCF! Synthesizers that look like old phone switchboards will always be cool no matter how powerful computers get.
http://www.synthfool.com/images/jk2.jpg
http://www.synthfool.com/images/ppgmoog2.jpg
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thank god for bob. we'd still be listening to rock and roll without him.
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Modulars rule.
Good night and thank you, Bob.
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hope he got an appreciative blow job or two from Everson Lake and Palmer groupies in the time.
