Archives - 1970

Archives Main | 1970

 

Cornell Daily Sun

MAR 17 1970

Inventor Makes Electronic Music
By SUE METZGER

Driving down the quiet, small-town streets of Trumansburg one has to be careful lest he miss an unassuming white building. Lodged between a barbershop and a second hand store, it gives no indication that inside is the factory of Moog Synthesizers. The only visible evidence that something unusual might be going on inside is a black and white sign bearing simply the legend "R.A. Moog."

Inside, there is a large brightly lit, drafting room. Men and women lean over little electronic equipment components that are being made up to fill one of the ten to twenty monthly orders for the synthesizers. The main source of color in the room is the bobbins spooled with striped and solid colored wires.

Upstairs, clippings about the man and his machine cover one wall. A strange series of sounds emanates from behind one of the paneled walls. It was produced, of course, by the Moog Synthesizer.

Through the synthesizer, Robert A. Moog professor of engineering, physics and inventor of the Moog Synthesizer, combines his interest in music and electronics. He explains part of his interest in music by saying "My mother gave me piano lessons for 12 years".

Some of his interest in electronic music dates from the time that he began producing and selling an electronic musical instrument called a theremin. Passing one's hand over an antenna produces a large range of musical notes. A tune 'played' on the theremin is difficult to distinguish from a tune comprised of traditional musical instruments.

As a grad student in the early 1960's at Cornell in engineering physics. Moog spent part of his time producing the theremins for sale. He was "running quite a business out of my three room apartment in Slaterville."

Moog's interest in synthesizers dates from a summer during his graduate studies when he met an electronic composer who interested him in building a music synthesizer. By this time, one synthesizer had been produced by RCA at a cost of about$250,000. Moog invented his own, less expensive, version and has patented the electronic circuitry used in it.

It works by producing a pitch such as the musical note C and then modifying or changing the tone color of that pitch. The tone color is the quality that makes the note C sound different on a violin than on a piano. According to Moog, a musical composition can be produced by changing the tone color and rhythm sounds without emphasis on the pitch. He questioned whether music would continue to be something "that you hum." The emphasis, he said, will be on "textures rather than pitches."

"What is interesting is not the sounds themselves," he said, "but the way they are changed. The textures are gotten by changing the way of changing."

The company employs a musician-composer, Chris Swanson, in addition to engineers, a cabinet maker, repairmen and assemblers. "It is unusual for a profit-making company to hire a composer, commented Moog. But he said that he enjoys working with musicians and described his working relationship with Swanson as "symbiotic." "Swanson tries things out and also suggests ways of improving the synthesizer."

"Every composer has his own way of musical notation." Swanson uses the traditional method since he uses pitch difference, in addition to tone color differences. Moog himself does not compose. "It's not my bag", he explained. A composer such as Walter Carlos creator of "Switched on Bach" really does a good deal of composing when using the synthesizer to get the tone colors and effects he wants.

For example, he would first take a phrase of music and play it on the synthesizer already preset to produce the desired sounds. Most of the time this series of modifications is not enough to produce the final effect. He must then record a second set of modifications of the original work and then tape the two together.

This is called 'overdubbing" or "building on sound." Moog compared the process to that employed in mixing colors where a series of small additions combines to make a vastly different color. According to him, sometimes as many as 20 to 30 overdubs are required to produce one final phrase of music. To date, about 250 synthesizers have been sold. They ranged in price from about $3.000-$12,000 for a standard recording model. Some of the Moog Synthesizers that were sold to private recording artists turn up in high places. The Beatles own two, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and the Monkeys each own one. In addition, the theme songs to several popular movies have been composed with the aid of a Moog synthesizer. When asked how he felt about this, Moog said. "I hold my breath and hope that they do a good job."