Archives - 1997

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EQ

April 1997
Robert Moog
Find out what's the next wave for this synthesizer pioneer
BY MR. BONZAI

MR. BONZAI: Which came first, the music or the musician?

MOOG: My mother gave me piano lessons when I was a kid. By the time I was eight I could play the likes of Beethoven, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff. Buti never liked it. I was always much happier hanging out with my father in his hobby shop. So I guess I was a musician well before I understood or enjoyed music.

Who were your heroes when you were a teenager?

Leon Theremin; Laurens Hammond (inventor of the Hammond Organ); Winston Koch (inventor of the first Baldwin Organ). In fact, I read everything about electronic musical instruments that I could get my hands on. I still have some of the very early Hammond service manuals that they were kind enough to send me. Also, my father was a hero of mine because he could make anything.

If you could go back in time before the birth of recording, what would you like to hear?

Well, it would be a groove to hear what Moses heard when he was up there on Mount Sinai.

What are you up to now?

I'm the Grand Pooh-Bah of Big Briar. We build Theremins and other neat electronic music gear.

What's the connection between what you're doing now and the "golden age" of the Moog Synthesizer?

I guess the biggest connection is that we're still into analog. You know, the golden age" of analog came to an end only because digital FM synthesis hit the streets. It's not like everything that could be done with analog had actually been done. There's still a bunch of stuff that I'd like to try.

The glorious Moog name-how can upstart companies rip off your name?

The Moog name went along with my old company, which went defunct a few years after I left it. As far as the United States Trademark Office is concerned, the "glorious Moog name was abandoned, and is now available for reregistration. My position is that I have the exclusive right to use the Moog name because it is my name, I am well known by musicians, and Moog products are strongly identified with me. My application to re-register the Moog name as a trademark Will take a year or two to go through the Trademark Office. Until then, I am opposing the use of my name by other companies.

 

 

What's your next project?

We're getting ready to launch our stare-of- the-art MIDI Theremin this coming summer.

Do we really need a MIDI Theremin?

Why Mr.B, that's the same kind of question that they asked about synthesizers back in the mid-'60s. Fact is, our MIDI Theremin will be an important resource for anyone who wants to work with continuous pitch and volume changes. For instance, imagine doing a MIDI recording of a Theremin performance,
and then being able to carefully edit the pitch variations or reshape the envelopes.

Are you going to re-introduce the Minimoog?

It could happen. If we do, we'll preserve the "Classic Minimoog Sound" while adding some new features.

What are your long-term inventive plans?

Just to keep at it until my brain shuts down.

What do you make of the current popularity of the old analog shit in this, the digital age?

Hey, it sounds good and it's easy to play. That's always been true. It's just that musicians have been temporarily distracted by a bunch of fancy digital whizbangs for the past 15 years or so. Now they're understanding that nice round knobs and truly continuously changing waveforms are good.

Do you know any interesting business tricks?

I received the New York State Small Businessman of the Year Award in 1970 at exactly the time that I was losing control of my old company, so I know how to do that.

What old proverb do you really dislike?

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law." Think about it. It means that I am entitled, at some level, to keep anything I take, whether or not I'm entitled to it, and whether or not I use force or deception. It's unethical, to say the least. And it's probably what's behind the various "upstart companies" appropriating the Moog name for their own purposes.

What music would you like played at your funeral?

In Steve Martin's documentary, Theremin - An Electronic Odyssey, there's a particularly moving sequence in which Theremin virtuosa Clara Rockmore plays Ravel's "Kaddish" from beginning to end. ("Kaddish" is a traditional Jewish prayer.) It would be very nice to have that played at my funeral.

What animal do you identify with?

 

 

Ferdinand the Bull. He's the main character in a Spanish children's that I was particularly fond of. Ferdinand liked to sit peacefully under a big cork tree and smell the flowers. His handlers overestimated his ferocity and sent him to the city to be in a bullfight. Once in the ring, Ferdinand sat down and smelled the ladies' flowers, soo there was no bullfight. They took him back to his cork tree where he lived out his life in peace. Now you know.

Are you happy with the way things are going in your life?

Oh, yeah! I'm working with a group of people who know how to be productive and get along with each other. Our business is developing in small, manageable steps, and our customers seem to enjoy doing business with us. On the personal side, my children are all leading productive lives and Ileana Grams, a philosophy professor atUNC/Asheville and my wife of one year, takes professional pride in being reasonable and seeing other people's point of view. Sure I'm happy!

OK, what's the biggest mistake of your life?

Look, I'm an experimenter, an inventor. I'm always out there at the fringe, looking for new, unpredictable things to make and do. In retrospect, it seems that most of what I've done have been mistakes of one sort or another. But what's the alternative for me2 If I took a job as an industrial physicist instead of starting a synthesizer business, I might have been better off financially than lam today. Or maybe I would have been fired for being too oddball, and had a nervous breakdown. Who knows? For me, the point is that everything that I've gotten into, mistakes as well as successes, I chose to get into. And every mistake that I've made has rippled through my life, influencing other things that I've done. Without my "biggest mistake," whatever that might be, my life might have turned out to be so different that I wouldn't even recognize it. Besides, I'm a happy person at this point in my life, mistakes and all- so how bad could my biggest mistake be?

Mr. Bonzai wonders: Are human beings analog or digital?