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The Miami Herald

December 23, 1969

What's That Noise? A MOOG Synthesizer

TALLAHASSEE Fla. - (AP) - No," says the leader, "that's still not it. Try it again."
The three of them return to the thing. With quick, agile fingers they flip its switches and turn its dials. The one with the copper beard pushes the 'on' switch. The machine emits a deep pulsating rumble.
"That's it." cries the leader, "that's it."

ONE SMALL musical step for mankind as Professor John Boda and students Bob Palmer, Bob Greenleaf and Carter Wailes reproduce sound No. 50 on the MOOG synthesizer.

With the capturing of No. 50, one of a series of musical noises on an Ohio State University demonstration tape, the Florida State University MOOG crew has moved a little closer to mastering its fantastic instrument. The MOOG Synthesizer is a $14,000 collection of three banks of spaghetti-wired switchboards, two speakers, a keyboard and a complex tape recorder.

TO ADEQLATELY describe how the MOOG works would require the combined electronic and journalistic genius of a Ben Franklin.
"We don't know ourselves," jokes Boda "it's all trial and error."
The bearded one, Wailes, who plays flute and drums in dance bands when he's not playing with the MOOG, explains "you can use it to modify any sound source."
He demonstrates with a tape, and the creaks of a balmy spring night in the swamps sound from the speakers.

BUT FROGS ARE beneath the scope of Wailes' imagination. "I'm doing a piece in which I have the narrator read the poem and treat the person's voice with the MOOG," says the music composition graduate student.

Wailes explains that the synthesizer can be programmed to expand, compress, raise, lower and otherwise alter inputs in an orgy of sound called an event. An event, theoretically at least, could last to infinity without repeating its musical pattern.
Boda, who will present his own composition at the MOOG's first public performance here in February, plans to take advantage of the synthesizers ability to imitate virtually any musical instrument.

THE MOOG, when the keyboard is played without electronic refinenment, sounds like a supper club organ.

"If the people are going to expect electronic sound in every bar of my performance they're going to be disappointed," Boda said. "I'm going to use it as an instrument rather than have it compose for me."

The MOOG, in the midst of an event, will compose on its own electronic music far beyond the wildest imaginings of the humans who tinker with it.