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The Buffalo News

April 2, 1978
Moog Wizardry Has Given World The Synthesizer
By Cindy SKRZYCKI

The high priest of electronic music has equal reverence for the measured restraint of baroque melody and the hot, heavy sweat of jazz and rock.
Bob Moog, 43, the silver-haired man who has made synthesizer a household word in musical circles, is the highly venerated inventor who patiently soldered thousands of circuits to produce the first practical, marketable electronic sound machine.
And it was, literally, a sound unheard of before stars like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones took America's ears by storm.
* * *
THE SYNTHESIZER is a keyboard instrument that creates and shapes sound electronically via monophonic and polyphonic models. It is more sophisticated than an electronic organ and is capable of simulating violins, flutes and countless other instruments.
The classical music world, too, pricked up its ears when Switched on Bach zoomed to the top of the Billboard charts.
Blueprints, circuit boards and modules had become a musical instrument. And, unwittingly, Bob Moog had become a businessman.
For him, the synthesizer was the logical, but perhaps unconscious outgrowth, of more modest electronically oriented musical products.
* * *

BEFORE HIS synthesizer hit the market in 1964, he was developing a voltage controlled oscillator, a voltage controlled amplifier and a keyboard- all mainstays of the synthesizer.
And previous to that, the Flushing, Long Island native, was making a living by making and selling theramin kits.
The theramin, an electronic musical instrument that is played by waving the hands over its antannae, saw him through some of his tightest financial years when he was studying at Cornell University for his Ph.D. in engineering/physics.
"About 1960, my fellowship ran out, my wife was pregnant, and I had to think of some kind of way to make money," said Mr. Moog. "So I decided on a theramin kit. We sold $50,000 worth of theramin kits in a year."
* *

THAT INVESTMENT of time and talent in tiny Trumansburg, N.Y., tuned him in to composers and musicians who were tapping their feet impatiently while waiting for the day when they could create and become a part of electronic music.
RCA produced a synthesizer in 1955 with a revision of that model - the Mark II - in 1959. Huge in size and formidable in price, it never became a standard on stage.
Musicians who knew Bob Moog encouraged him to put his electronic know-how and wizardry into a keyboard that could bend and stretch notes right out of the musical spectrum as they knew it.
"I didn't have any money and I had no idea I was into the synthesizer business," he said. "With the series of small panels that I developed initially, I was one step above rank amateurism."
* * *

HE SOLD 40 synthesizers in New York City in 1966. Just two years later, Moog records were all the rage and alien ears were becoming increasingly attuned to the new full-bodied sound.
Sales, said Mr. Moog, also a musician, climbed to $800,000 in 1970. His initial investment, back in 1964, "was all my life's savings - $18,000."
The recession and hard times hit Bob and Shirleigh Moog - and their three children - like a ton of bricks. He came frighteningly close to losing it all.
A scientist, not a salesman, at heart, Bob Moog admits: "I Just didn't sell hard enough."
THE DEVELOPMENT of the Mini-moog and a merger with Musonics, then on Academy Street in Williamsvile, put the inventor back on his feet and afforded him richer development resources.
The Moogs left their loosly-managed, two-storefront plant in Trumansburg, which employed 42 persons, to make their home in East Aurora.
The marriage was a good one and Moog synthesizer offspring followed a quick, brilliant succession - the Polymoog, the Micromoog.
* * *

THE MINIMOOG, developed with the help of engineer Jim Scott, retails for $18,000. Since its first days, 25,000 have been sold.
The Polymoog, flagship of the fleet, sells for $45,000. It is capable of producing heavenly strains as well as hellish harping.
Another new Moog product, the Taurus Bass Pedal Synthesizer, was created in a new, even more hospitable environment right after Moog Music (formerly Musonics) was acquired by the Norlin Corp. in 1973.
* * *

"WE SOLD TO Norlin, the nation's largest musical instrument
manufacturer, to bring in capital," he explained. "The business was growing steadily but it was becoming increasingly more expensive to do the necessary high technology research."
Norlin Music, whose other trademarks include Lowrey, Gibson and electronic sound products and a new line of guitar amplifiers.

* * *

BOB MOOG, now a part-time consultant to the company, hopes that four sleek new synthesizer models will be ready for showing at the National Association of Music Merchants show in June.
Mr. Moog who is "fixing" to move onto an 89-acre farm in North Carolina
with his wife and four children, is content to leave the hustle and bustle of marketing the synthesizers which bear name as a trademark to Norlin and men like Thomas J. Gullo, plant manager of Moog Music. Known on a first-name basis by many of the employees on Walden Ave., it's enough for him to know that he's the father of an idea that has kept humming.
Story & Clark, has two other divisions: Norlin International, a beverage business based in Ecuador, and Norlin Science and Technology
After the $1.5 million deal was closed, Norlin took over sales and distribution. Manufacturing and design was now done at Moog Music Inc., 2500 Walden Ave., Cheektowaga
* * *

AT THE TIME of the acquisition, synthesizer sales were at $2 million; in 1978, sales will exceed $10 million.
Norlin's 1976 annual report stated: "Moog is the choice of leading synthesizer players around the world. Polymoog is played by such artists as Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Billy Preston, Keith Emerson, Pat Moraz and Larry Fast."