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PLUG

FALL 1974
The man who made the Moog

Dr. Robert Moog, creator of the Moog Synthesizer. . . it was easy for us to conjure up an image at a wizard-type happy only in his laboratory surrounded by wires and electronic gadgets. He looks the part, with prematurely gray, curly hair (he's only 40) wearing a tweed jacket and Hush puppies- just borderline of looking rumpled. But our preconceptions vanished within minutes as we discovered what a warm, witty, "down home" personality exists behind Moog's penetrating gray eyes.
Roger Powell, a talented synthesizer player with Atlantic, and Dr. Moog responded to our questions about the synthesizer industry- past, present and future- and at the same time provided some interesting insights into Moog the man versus Moog the brilliant creator.

Plug: There are those who feel that the word "synthesizer" may create a negative connotation- do you agree?
Moog: In 1967 we first applied the term synthesizer to a voltage controlled key-board instrument. The word itself is hard to pronounce, so maybe we could do with another. But what it means is to the point- it's called a synthesizer because of the way musicians think about it: a means of putting a sound together out of its component parts. The musician synthesizes the sound. The adjective synthetic has the connotation of being artificial, and that's something we like to avoid. The adjective we use is synthesized, not synthetic. There is nothing fake about the music just because it's made with electronic circuits instead of brass or wood.
A violinist or a guitar player develops an intuitive understanding of the feel of his instrument. He learns how his instrument works by practicing the hell out of it. But a synthesizer player has to understand and think of the various parts in order to conceptualize the whole- in that way a synthesizer player is different from an acoustic instrument player.
Powell: I studied piano before I got interested in synthesizers; and I feel
most musicians, even concert pianists, know very little about the acoustics of their instrument. The point that Bob is making is that a synthesizer player begins to get a greater understanding and appreciation of all the sounds he
hears. I've found that many synthesizer players begin almost in rebellion against acoustic instruments because of the greater subtleties available with
electronics. They work with the synthesizer, begin to understand how sound is made, and end up in awe and respectful of acoustic instruments. You begin to see how really hard it is to get an exact replica of the sound of an acoustic instrument. First you'll get something suggestive of a clarinet, then as you get more into the synthesizer, a month later the sound you made for a clarinet sounds ridiculous to you.
Plug: Do you feel that the technical aspects of the synthesizer limit the number of musicians able to become proficient with it?

Moog: Well, it may not be something that an established, middle-aged musician would be inclined to pick up. By the time he has practiced and worked Fridays and Saturdays for 20 years, he tends to get in a rut- he feels that what worked last week will work this week, and will work a year from now. So why start from scratch? And maybe that's the point- it takes a hell of a long time to develop real command of a medium whether it's playing piano, a synthesizer, painting or God knows what.
I'm not one of those who believe that musicians should be free from having to learn technique. To me, music is not that sort of an activity. It's a very visceral thing. Musicians use their hands and their breath as extensions from their body to the instrument body. When you realize that our fingers are the most versatile interface we have between us and outside machines you can understand why it is really necessary for musicians to have some manual technique. The method of control of a synthesizer is different from, say, a guitar or a trumpet. You have knobs. But you can play a knob just as well as you can play a valve on a trumpet- it's practice.
For the kids in school now or just out of school, thinking of sound as something that you manipulate electronically is very natural. Today's kids are born with a TV switch in their hands. They're used to plugging in guitars or hooking up hi-fi sets. The idea of thinking of sound as coming out of this box, going through a wire, going into that box and changing along the way comes very naturally to today's musicians.
One of our problems is getting good teachers out to where these young musicians are who want to learn how to play the synthesizer. We're working on programs, such as film strips, that will make instruction available right in the store. But it's going to take more time before all dealers are knowledge able enough to conduct instruction.
Plug: You were once quoted as saying you felt almost like Frankenstein after the rush of bad recordings that were released a few years ago. Do you feel we've seen the end of electronic music as a fad?
Moog: Yes, that's exactly what I think. I think' a little history is needed here
...We started selling our stuff to commercial musicians in 1967. Only the very adventurous musicians got into it at all, and by and large they didn't have any idea of the whole potential. They only knew that this was something that should be experimented with and developed.
When Walter Carlos came out with Switched-on Bach, nobody in the industry knew what he had. Least of all the record company that bought the album. I remember CBS gave a press party, I think it was late '68, in New York City - one of these very fashionable, chic things with a big bowl of joints beside the cocktails, that sort of thing. They had the press party for three records: Rock and Other Four Letter Words, a Terry Riley record, and Switched on Bach. They lumped the three together because they were three pieces of electronic music and that's all Columbia knew. Six months after being released, Rock and Other Four Letter Words had sold a few thousand while Switched On Bach was up around 300,000 - and today it's pushing one million copies.
Columbia thought that this funny stuff called electronic music was something they could make some money on, if the right people got hold of it and pushed it. But the only one that ever made them a lot of money was Switched On Bach. So the commercial music producers in New York and L. A. analyzed it in the only terms they could and said this must be the gimmick of the year. Walter Carlos had used a Moog synthesizer- so the Moog must be the gimmick. It couldn't be the artist- it had to be the machine.

That's when our sales skyrocketed and Dick Hyman, Richard Heyman, Hugo Montenegro, on and on- all these people made their Moog record for 1969. It was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. While some of them took it seriously, many others regarded it cynically as a gimmick. The music shows it, and few people bought their records. So they were right - it was a gimmick. That's what I had in mind when I said I felt like a Frankenstein. It got too big too fast through one record - a work of genius - and it just brought in all the wolves.
Plug: Were you surprised by the success of Switched-On Bach?
Moog: Sure, I'm surprised when any good fortune befalls me. But the shit really hit the fan then. We were so busy, we didn't have time to be surprised. We were shoveling large studio instruments out, making guest appearances, trying to pay bills, and working 16 hours a day.
Plug: Did you ever envision the enormous success of the Moog synthesizer?
Moog: If there is anything that is the imagination of the people in the media it's that this was some kind of dream of mine. I just did it, and still do it, because I enjoy it. I know Walter Carlos and I know what I have contributed to his life by making this instrument. Somebody else could have done it, but they didn't. So it's a way of getting to know somebody, a way of developing a human relationship.
Powell: That's exactly how the first instruments were made. They weren't made in a laboratory under sterile conditions, and then thrown out for musicians to try to figure out. They were actually designed in collaboration with musicians.
Plug: Do you think you could have developed it without all those years of piano when you were a kid?
Moog: Probably not. It's funny, when I studied piano I didn't really like it. And I had a lousy ear. I developed my ear when I began building theremins (something I did just for the hell of it).
There you have to have a good ear since it's played by waving your hands around - there's nothing to put your fingers on. And then building synthesizers and having musicians constantly crabbing they were out of tune, I was forced to develop a good ear. Learning to play the piano was just a way for me to learn about music, so I could talk a common language with musicians.
Plug: I understand your father was an electrical engineer. Did he influence you, get you started?
Moog: He got me started. Not only was he an electrical engineer but he was one of the first ham-radio operators in the country, so he knew something about electronics. I think he got sort of lost as electronics became more complicated. In the old days there were only two or three vacuum tubes you could buy and everybody knew how to build a radio because there was only one design in existence. But he taught me how to use-a soldering iron and a voltmeter.
Plug: What's your father's reaction to what you've done?
Moog: I don't think he understands it, but then I don't understand it either!
Plug: Did you have much trouble in the beginning with the AF of M?
Moog: Oh yeah! What happened was the union negotiated with the advertising agencies and music producers in New York City and expressly prohibited the use of the Moog synthesizer- by name!- in the making of advertising commercials. The contract became public and, of course, there were all of our customers out there. This was around 1969.

Basically the union didn't understand what the synthesizer was. They thought it was something like a super Mellotron. All the sounds that musicians could make somehow existed in the Moog- all you had to do was push a button that said Jascha lieifetz and out would come the most fantastic violin player!
At that time we had a friend in New York City who was a long-time member of the union. He knew the business and had a better perspective than I did. What he did was convene a meeting of some of the higher-ups in the union, bring his instrument in, and set it up to sound like a bad Hammond organ: "You see, it sounds like a bad Hammond organ, there's nothing to worry about. If you guys insist on worrying about this, you're going to have a lawsuit on your hands, but there's nothing to worry about." Now while he was doing this, I made the mistake of making some wisecrack about the union that got into the papers. That flared the union up even worse, and it took a couple more months for my friend in New York to cool the union people down. But he did it.
That was before there was the category of synthesizer players in the union. Now there is, and synthesizer players have their own political clout in the union. There's no possibility of the synthesizer being banned again.
Plug: Keith Emerson has recently said he is using synthesizers partly because of the attitudes of studio musicians - watching the clock for one thing. Do you think this is a valid reason for more and more groups to use synthesizers?
Moog: No, but I do think it's important in fields other than rock music. To con vene a 20-piece group for three hours to make a couple of commercials is going to cost several thousand dollars. Inevitably if someone can make a musical product at a much cheaper price, their services will become more valuable. The sounds of our instruments were really heard first throughout the commercial music world. Most of the commercial music producers in New York and in L.A. had our equipment by 1968. So when Switched On Bach, (and later the rock groups), came out, people were already used to hearing the sound of the synthesizer.
Emerson went out and bought one of our instruments without us even knowing it. At that time you wouldn't call him a big name, at least not in the States. Mick Jagger bought one, George Harrison bought one and made an album. The Beatles' producer, George Martin, bought one for his studios in London.
But Emerson was the first to have the guts to take one of these big modular studio systems on stage. Up until 1970 nobody made synthesizers for stage use. The first one we made was the Minimoog - and even then we didn't know that rock groups were going to be using these on stage. We did know that quite a few studio musicians wanted to have their own portable instruments to take around. So we designed the Minimoog with that in mind, and other synthesizer manufacturers designed similar sized instruments. But it took musicians like KEITH Emerson and Don Preston to get it going.
Plug: Do you see the day when synthesizers will become part of the average home- like say the piano?
Moog: Well in the first place a piano isn't really a part of the average home because of its musical value. What you find is usually a piece of furniture, a status symbol, or a means of family entertainment. And family entertainment seems to require a polyphonic instrument- one that can play chords, like a piano or an organ. At present, synthesizers are monophonic. Monophonic instruments play one, maybe two, notes at a time, like a violin or a trumpet. There is no monophonic instrument now that is popular as a home instrument. It's pianos or organs, period.

Plug: Do you think the synthesizer industry will develop products that are accessible to more musicians? Can they be made suitable for home entertainment? Moog: Now you're at the heart of the problem. With a monophonic instrument, you use all of your facilities to shape and contour individual sounds. A violinist is producing a vibrato by rocking his finger on a string, or coloring his tone by the position and force of the bow. A pianist can hit a lot of keys, but after he hits them he has no way of shaping the sound at all.
To have a complete musical group, you really have to have both types of instruments. The synthesizers sold today, like the Minimoog, are monophonic instruments but they have the ability to shape the sound in a great many ways. We are currently working on a line of chord-playing synthesizers that will have less capability for shaping and bending sound, but will be able to play chords or any number of notes. And the color of the notes will be richer, more complex and more controllable than the tone color of any other polyphonic electronic keyboard instrument.
For monophonic instruments, we'll be working on different methods of controlling the sound - the keyboard is just one way. We already make accessories that are additional means of controlling the instrument, and in the coming years we'll be experimenting with as many ways of controlling the sound as possible.
Powell: The idea now is to take the sound capabilities we already have an build new ways of controlling it. It's fitting the instrument-to the performer so he gets some kind of feedback response. When you play a trumpet, there are all kinds of things going on in your body that you can feel. You get a feedback that tells you if you're doing the right thing. That's why some people have difficulty relating to playing a synthesizer. They think of it as electronic-turning a knob. They think they can't get any kind of visceral response from it. People just don't understand that you can get the same kind of response from a synthesizer by pushing in more voltage as when you bend a note on a trumpet.
Moog: In the end, the only limitation should be the dexterity and virtuosity of the musician. You know, a lot of musicians dream of the day when there will be brain wave music - all they'll have to do is sit there and think and out it comes ...
Powell: But Bob's not talking about being able to think of flowers and out will come Mozart. The fallacy of that is that it would require learning to control brain waves. There are all sorts of body potentials. Every time you flex a muscle there is an electrical charge- the heartbeat, eye movements even respiration. All of these are potential controllers of the synthesizer. I don't wish to conjure up the image of someone lying on a table with a bunch of electrodes attached to him, but that would be one way of controlling a complex array of synthesizer gear.
Moog: I guess in summation you could say that the whole thing has really just begun.