ROBERT MOOG Moog Modular Audio Synthesizer, 1964

THE O M N I P RESENT Ilichard Lowenberg broughtus right to the beast. "the Moog"was a series of black closets with intimidating front panels, crisscrossed with tens ofpatchcords. Itmusthave been somewhere on I"lfth or Park, a Mid-town place that was elegantand pleasant. Me music-man operating the Moog fitthe interior(although we somehow had the impression thatneitherthe interior nor the instrumentbelonged to him) . Gino Pisserchio was his name and we later learned he was an early Andy Warhol star. We brought a tape, a movement/dance improvisation, and patched the video into the Moog. Me resultant successwasthe workofthe patch: peaks ofvideo triggering the sequencersteps. Laterwe went through another adventure in interactivity with Lowenberg . We hired a dancerby the name ofHei Taker and wired her up for muscle monitoring. -W.V.

RO BERT Arthur Moog was born in Flushing New ROBERTMOOGISWELLALONGtheway York in 1934. He took degrees in physics from tojoining those men whose last names have become Queens College, NewYork, in electrical engineering common nouns in the language. Although the Moog from Columbia University, and received a Ph.D . in Synthesizer is only one of several manufactured engineering physics fromCornellUniversityin 1965. synthesizers, increasingly these days, a "Moog" In the mid-50s hefoundedtheR. A. Moog Co. forthe means a music synthesizer. manufacture of theremins ; the company began Moog lives and works in Trumansburg, NY. You makingelectronicmusicsynthesizers in 1965which canget there by taking route 96 north out ofIthaca. became its primary concern. Moog's first synthesiz- up the west side of Cayuga Lake. The R.A. Moog ers were designedin collaboration with the compos- Corporation is located in a white, two-story main ers Herbert A. Deutsch, and Walter Carlos; other street building, next to the local drug store, and composers who have since worked with Moog in- across the street from a service station, on the right clude John Cage, David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, as you come into townfrom the south. Richard Teitelbaum, Chris Swanson, and David Inside and up a longflight ofstairs you meet a Borden.Withthesuccess ofWalterCarlos' Switched receptionist, who will wind you through two drafting On Bach recording released in 1969 which uses a rooms and into a large room scattered with draw- Moog synthesizer, Moog's name and equipment ings, tape recorders, synthesizer components and have become widely identified with electronic syn- drafting tables. Moog's desk is the far one on the thesizers. Moog is currently active in music re- right, nextto the window, with the computerprint-out search and inthe development ofnewinstruments, ofSnoopy hanging above. with particular interest in evolving more sophisti- Bob Moog does not look like you'd expect him to. cated control devices and more complex ways of That is to say he is not a weirdo long-hair electronic applying control signals to add aural interest to freak who looks like he hasjustgrabbed a capacitor. sounds. His build is slender, and he might be described as looking "straight." He is reserved, but cordial. Before sitting down to talk, we toured the plant, looking at the assembly room and cabinet shop IIIIIIIuuuiunun 11111111111111 FRAME 069 step through next 5 frames STEP FORWARD downstairs. Since thepermanently installedsynthe- sizer downstairs was being used, we returned to his "office" for a demonstration on a smaller portable model. After looking ata tapedeck builtby Magnetic STEP BACK Recording, for which Moog's company is designing

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MOOG Modular Audio Synthesizer, 1968-69

Robert A . Moog at conference on Electronic Art Tools, at SUNY, Buffalo, 1977 The unusual quality about this whole thing, Iguess, is thefact that it's been so long since a new major musical instrument has come out. Well, it's tooearlyto tellifthisis goingto be accepted electronics, we sat down again, rolled our tape re- in the long run. For instance, in 1929 and 1930 corder, and began. there was a huge flurry of excitement about the J.R.: How did you get into this? theremin. Today a lot of people don't even know MOOG: Out of interest. I began working with an what a theremin is. No one plays it. electronic music composer and we developed some Do you think a lotofpeople, like rock bands, are buy- of the first ideas and then itjust grew from there. ing these because it is likea sophisticatedorgan,just About when was this? another keyboard accessory, and aren't utilizing it? Well, we began in '63. It's true. It's years before you really know basically what a synthesizer is musically. Had you been tied in with any ofRCA's synthesizer work in the middle '50s? It seems like many of the people in the pop field haven't really gotten into it. No, Iwas independent. Remember thatVictornever made anything commercially. It wasjust an experi- It will be years. Dick Hyman is learning, but he is ment. learning slowly. The trouble is that guys like him and Peter Nero and George Harrison are successful Do youperform yourselp pop musicians who have made a shithouse full of No! We sponsored a concert in New York, but I am money, youknow, with traditional instruments and not a performing musician. I'm purely a designer. they are not psychologically prepared to bust their Is each unit custom built today? hump to really do a job in a new medium because they are making so much money in the old one. So Alot ofthem are standardsynthesizer systems now. they skim a little cream offthe top. Publicity value, Most of our synthesizers are built out of standard and that's it. But Hyman is doing things, he's modules, but we do some customwork. The module working. is the component ofthe synthesizer. Is it all built here?

Yeah. The cabinets are built here and the modules 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 are all assembled here. INFO Frame 16508 to 18820 EI GEN W ELT D ER A PPA RA TEW ELT

Youjust don't hear that much good stuff. a keyboard, couldyou use yourkeyboard to not only No, there isn't that much around. That's the short- change your oscillator, but control otherfunctions too? age. Does it take a special type ofmentality to work with Yes. We can use the keyboard to change anything a Moog? that is changeable at all. But it isn't necessary to have a keyboard to control I suppose it does, but we can't characterize it. It takes a guywho's a goodmusician, andlikes towork the instrument? alone, and has a rational mind. Right. There is usually a keyboard, but the key- Why don't you try to explain to me how a Moog board is only one way ofcontrolling the instrument, synthesizer differsfrom an electronic organ in the of playing it. way it develops or duplicates sound. fyou want to make a "replica" ofa sound . . . like An organ is a device on which you can playas many reproduce a trumpet or violin, how do you . . . ? notes as you want. There are a great many note Musicians don't usually think ofmaking replicas. It generators or oscillators in it. And that's about all is sort of a futile exercise. The synthesizer works there are. Ifyou play one note the note, has a simple according to a certain pattern oflogic and by using tone color, a tone color that cannot be varied or this pattern oflogic you can construct a great many shaped by the musician as it is being played. You sounds, some of which are trumpet-like, some of putyour fingeronakey, the note starts, you lift your which are violin-like, and some of which you never fingerfrom the key, thenote stops. Thatsort oftone, heard before. But if you think in terms of starting a tone that does not vary as it goes on, is only one with something that makes sense with acoustical of a great many types of musical tones. instruments and trying to force the synthesizer to Just about all other musical tones vary a great dothat, you'llgenerallyfail.You thinkmoreinterms deal as they go on. When a violinist plays he is offollowing thelogic ofthe synthesizer, ofthe sort of constantlymoving his hands, changingthe amount things it can do well, to get the sort oftone color as ofpressure with the bow. And these things result in close to the sort of tone color you want. variations in pitch, tone color and loudness. These Could you elaborate on that? Where does it excel? greatly affectthe expressive content ofthesounding of the music that is made up from sounds. Let's assumewewanttobuild a violin-like sound, as What the synthesizer is all about is giving this an example. We are never going to make a sound sort of control over the sounds to the musician. thatis completely violin-like, because a synthesizer Once the musician sets up a sound he can then doesn't function like a violin. impart as many variations as he wants into the We can do the following things: Firstwe can pick various properties of the sounds, either directly a wave-form that's close to the wave-form of a with his hands, or by mechanical means, program vibrating string that's being bowed. Right? Then we means. canpick a filter thathas the same resonant charac- That's the difference between a synthesizer and teristics as the bodyofa violin. Okay, so far so good. an organ. The same difference exists between a Now, we can shape theloudness, causing itto build trumpet and an organ. The synthesizer plays one up in the sameway as a violinist does when he puts note at a time, and at the most two or three, but the bow down on the string. The loudness builds those can be shaped very carefully. with a certain characteristic time. So when a violin- We would also allowfor its speed to build upwith ist plays, when he starts a note, he'll put the bow a characteristic time. All these things I mention down on the string and he'll gradually, with his left correspond to a simple electronic mode ofoperation handon the fingerboard, build up a vibrato, both in thatyou establish with one ortwo patch cords, and speed and intensity. He'll start off very slowly, and one or two dial settings. What the musician gets then build up faster. This is for a long violin tone. used to is thinking in terms of these operations, Suppose you want to do the same thing on a which have direct musical meaning . . . synthesizer. Well, what we could do is use another periodic generator, or oscillator, to produce a slow Actually, since you are controlling with,for example, variation that would correspond to the vibrato, a

102 ROBERT MOOG variation ofsix cycles per second. Wewould arrange what we have now. And in opening up two new for that to build up with a certain characteristic markets. One ofthem is a small, light portable unit time,just the same wayaswe allowed for the sound that rock groups might use . . . keyboard accesso- itself to build up with a characteristic time. ries. And the other is teaching equipment for high How else would you do it? schools that are interested in electronic music. A computer program. Other control devices, man- Is your biggest market now with theclassical people or the rock bands? ual control devices like a ribbon controller. Sequen- tial control which allows you to set up automatic What does classical mean? patterns. The simplest way is, ofcourse, just turn- Well, serious music. ing the dials on the instruments themselves. And there is what we might call analogue programming Half go to serious composers and universities, and . . . using other modularinstruments to produce the halfgo to recording people . . . recording studios and contours of the variations. independent commercial producers . What type of work is being done with computer Somehow I'dgotten the idea thatsome ofthe serious programming into the control circuits? music composers consider theMoog alate comer that is nottotallywelcome. Likeprogressstoppedwiththe The most interesting work is being done at Bell synthesizer built by RCA. Labs. They set up a fairly elaborate program to enable assembly ofsound sequences andeditthem. That's one extreme point ofview, I'd say. Thefact is The most interesting part is the array of input the RCA sound synthesizer has been used by eight points. They have a couple of keyboards and ajoy or 10 people in the world, ever, in any music hall. It stick-like affair and pots, a panel full ofpots. They costs nearly $200,000. Our customers number in have a great big cathode ray tube. the hundreds, and I think as far as they are con- The output of this program, the output of the cerned, our equipment is welcome. computer I should say, contains 14 signals, control What is the Buchla? signals, and they go offto the oscillators and ampli- Well, it is a synthesizer developed independently fiers and so on and produce the variations. Well, fromours . Ituses some ofthesameideas, and some these 14 signals are plotted on the cathode ray tube are different. The differences are in the way it is at the same time, and so you have 14 little squiggly organized. The Buchla is organized toward making lines. And a vertical line goes across the screen and automatic sequences ofsound. Any sound is rather tells you where you are in time, as time progresses. simple. Ours is not organized to make automatic Then you can stop it, you can stop the parame- sequences like the Buchla; it's organized to playing ters and you can vary any of the 14 parameters, . the sounds, but where the sounds can be very move it up or down and then go right on I think it complex. is a light pen that they use. You know, without touching tape, without even getting involved with What's the effect ofthe new quadrasonic stereo? tape you can edit the whole thing. Really beautiful . Well, some electronic music composers have been Is any ofthis available on record? doing that for years. Now the Columbia-Princeton people never did anything else except four channel There's no music onit, it's just experimental work. sound. Howimportant itwill be commercially I can't Are you involved much with the creating ofspecial say. new sounds, like the human voice? Where do you get your ideasfrom? Not really. Carlos did a little of that in Well-Tem- It's a combination. Many come from musicians and pered Synthesizer, but we're not really into that. It some come from our engineering people here. It is is something the computer people are very inter- very much of an interrelated thing. estedin, as amethodofgiving the computer avoice. -Judson Rosebush, 1972 Where is your primary design effort going? Two or three areas. It's in improving the circuitry of

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