Archives - 1974

Archives Main | 1974

 

San Antonio Express

July 29, 1974
It's Moog Point: Music Comes from Musician
By Jack Handey

"Music doesn't come from machines," the man sniffed. "It never has. It comes from musicians." This pronouncement would seem obvious to Most people, except the man saying it has created a brain-child which is criticized for emitting a kind of test-tube variety of musical sound.
The man is Dr. Robert Moog, who is in San Antonio to show various groups just what his electronic marvel will do.
"You call it a synthesizer because you use it to synthesize sound, to put it together from its component parts," he explained.
"A musician who uses it never considers it artificial, but as building up new sound in ways that aren't possible on traditional acoustic instrument"
The synthesizer is hardly traditional. Spawned in 1964 by New York electronics engineer Moog, it is a maze of inter-connecting circuits which can be packed into an electric-organ-looking package about the size of a trumpet case or expanded to a five by five foot monolith. It has a keyboard and a panel full of knobs."
The synthesizer first drew wide attention when it surfaced in "Switched-On Bach." A spacey sounding recording of the old master's music which Moog says has outsold every other classical album.
The synthesizer, which costs anywhere from $500 to $15,000 actually made its debut in commercials Moog said, such as the Maxwell House coffee ad where the synthesizer cooks up the percolation sound. "More than halt the commercials you hear nowadays use the synthesizer," intoned Moog.
Real Sanctuary - But the real sanctuary of the synthesizer has been rock music, where it has been employed by such groups as Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull and others to produce a whole range of sounds to put electronic, inter-galactic goose-bumps on young listeners.
Referring to Emerson, Lake and Palmer, a rock group known for its wild shows and frequent use of the synthesizer, Moog says: "They're fantastic. They're pushing, the frontiers of music as much as any classical musician.
Moog clearly has nothing against the adoption of the synthesizer by the rock world. But he is quick to point out "Musicians today don't look on it as a rock device," referring to new classical and even country-western records where it is used.
Moog insists that any musical instrument, including the synthesizer, is only as good as the musician playing it.
And he asserts that "Except for the human voice, instrument that musicians use have always been highly scientific or highly technical." The skin drum was a complex device for the cave man, he said.
"In the 17th century it was wood; In the past century it was metals; In the 20th century it's electronics... We're not bypassing the musician at al. All we're doing is giving him a tool."
The next phase, Moog said, will include computers ("That really frightens people.")-translating a musician's commands into sounds.
But what happens, Moog was asked: when a card placed into a music device replaces a plunking, picking or fiddling musician. 1984?
He leaned forward, executed a deft two-handed slap toward the fly hovering before him, and said: "They've done that. It was the player piano."