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St. Paul Pioneer Press

April 19, 1970

The Moog Eerie Sound Of Music
By ROGER BERGERSON Staff Writer

ONE REASON the now apparently disbanded Beatles quit giving concerts several years ago, in the words of John Lennon, was that the increasingly complex electronic music they were recording could not be duplicated before a live audience.

A proposed solution to that problem, the linking of a Moog Synthesizer to a computer, could be found at the University of Minnesota if someone would come up with $l00,000.
Named after its New York inventor, Robert Moog, the synthesizer is a complex collection of amplifiers, oscillators, generators and other electronic paraphernalia, which to the layman looks something like a telephone switchboard with piano keyboard attached.
Its attractiveness to pop groups like the Beatles and Rolling Stones (each group owns one) is that it can produce an eerie assortment of sounds, including just about every one known to man and a few that are not.

Ten selections of classical music performed on a Moog became one of the best-selling classical LP's of all time, "Switched on Bach," and the synthesizer has been used for the soundtracks of "Candy" and other films.

But the Moog has not adapted to the concert stage, say the men behind the proposed university project, because its intricacy overwhelms the artist, preoccupying him with mechanics rather than virtuosity.

Until now, the only person to perform electronic music live, without the assist- ance of recorded tapes, has been John Eaton, composer in residence at the University of ??????

Electronic and standard selections, and, on one number simultaneously played a Moog, Syn-Ket (a smaller instrument) and regular piano.

His performance was attended by Dr. Stephen Kahne, director of the university's hybrid computer lab, who for some time had been interested in linking his computers to a Moog.
Kahne found Eaton enthusiastic about the project and together they enlisted the aid of the Moog's inventor.
Moog, an engineering physicist who did his post-graduate work at Cornell University, cannot claim credit for developing the first synthesizer. RCA built it in 1955 at a cost of $100,000. Moog, however, produced one with less bulk (the size of an up-right piano as compared to a whole room) and cost. His range from $3,000 to $10,000.

DURIING THE LAST FIVE YEARS, he has sold over 200 synthesizers made in his Trumansburg, N.Y., workshop. Besides, one in the university's music de- artment, according to Kahne, the only other one in Minnesota belongs to Herb Pilhofer, music director of the Guthrie.

In a telephone interview last week, Eaton said that the desired result of the university project, should it find financing, would be to create the same kind of relationship between Moog and performer as is enjoyed, for instance, by a cellist.
"What we want to do," he said, "is to create as big a 'warehouse' of musical material as possible, which the performer would call forth at a very rapid rate."
Instead of merely choosing pre-programmed material, therefore, the Moog artist would be making use of the tonal capabilities of his instrument in the same manner that a violinist plays upon the strings.

"The performer wouldn't necessarily be improvising on those materials, he'd control them with great sensitivity, exercising the same kind of control that gets good and bad performances out of any instrument," said Eaton.

BESIDES TUE MOOG'S abi1ity to accurately hold notes for considerable lengths of time, its keys produce sounds which can be modulated by using added or decreased pressure, or even by wiggling one's finger from side to side. In the beginning of the project's practical application, Kahne said, the computer like to the Moog would be a telephone connection from the lab to the performance site.
"We won't know how big a computer will be needed until later on," he said. "Eventually we might be able to truck a small one right into the concert hall with the synthesizer.
"Somehow, the thought of getting a busy signal at concert time isn't too appealing." As outlined in the prospectus that the three have sent to possible project backers,

ELECTRONIC MUSIC has its critics, as the prospectus acknowledges. Some of them, it says, would rather call the Moog's product, "sound" than "music."
How does he, a serious musician, view the "purist" attacks, Eaton was asked.
"Some people would probably be critical of the violin," he said. "One must remember that electronic music is still in its early stages. Some music that has been produced has been good, some bad."

He chuckled at the thought of an encounter he had had with just such a critic.
"I wrote a wedding march for some friends who were being
married in Rome," he recalled, "and was going to perform it, on a Syn-Ket.
"During the dress rehearsal, the choir master came down and said, 'You can't play that, God doesn't like electronic music. He only likes Geogorian Chant."'

In an effort to smooth things a bit, Eaton replied that he could include some Gregorian Chant in the march. The choir master said that too would be unacceptable since God only liked the chant of a certain composer. "God must have very narrow taste," Eaton observed. "God does!" come the icy reply.