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EYE

March 68
ELEVATOR People on the way up - ROBERT A. MOOG By Merle Goldberg

Tucked away on a 52-acre farm in Trumansburg, N.Y., amid trees and big barns, is the man who is revolutionizing electronic music. And it is just this contrast that R. (for Robert) A. Moog (rhymes with vogue), the 33-year-old inventor of the Moog synthesizer, enjoys.

The synthesizer, a keyboard-controlled instrument, is capable of duplicating an incredible array of sounds. For example, it can reproduce most orchestral instruments (up to twelve of these simultaneously); sounds from nature; animal sounds; sound effects; and even some speech-like sounds.

The synthesizer has already been used on a number of records. Elektra's album, Zodiac, used it; Motown uses it; even Simon and Garfunkel have gotten in on what offers unlimited promise in the sound field.

It started, the man will tell you, with his grandfather, who wanted Moog's mother to be a great pianist. She didn't make it, but she hoped her son would fulfill the dream. "I didn't pull it off," he says, "and at 16 I gave it up as a lost cause," That, however, came two years after he developed his first electronic instrument, a theremin, which is played by waving one's hand over the equipment. The concept of the theremin was not Moog's- RCA engineers had invented it in the 30's-but he did develop a modern version in 1949. Moog, described by one friend as "not realistic..something of dreamer," has turned his

music hobby and engineering profession (He has a PhD from Cornell in engineering physics) into a business that has had a 300 percent growth rate and pulled in a quarter of a million dollars last year.

The synthesizer, a collection of modular instruments, each of which does something different toward creating a sound, is now the sole product of Moog, Inc. Ranging in size from a small suitcase to a large coffin, the instrument costs anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000. There are now 70 in use and many more being asked for.

Although the synthesizer is electronically complex, it is actually a musical instrument- and only members of the musician's union may play it.

From here, or rather from the farm which Moog and his family bought 10 years ago aftter developing a health hatred for New York City, Moog sees no end to the possibilities in electronic music. "There are so many things that can be developed-." He says, "-instruments for performance. Kids are now taking electronic organ lessons . . . more than half the guitars today are electronic. There's so much more that can be done."

And then Moog, who sees himself as "a link between musicians and engineers because I understand both languages, and they're both saying the same thing in different words-sound; communication by sound is important'; begins talking about the trees on his farm.

Merle Goldberg