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New York Times Obituary
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/22/t...artner=homepage
August 22, 2005
Robert Moog, Music Synthesizer Creator, Dies
By ALLAN KOZINN
Robert Moog, the creator of the electronic music synthesizer that bears his name and that became ubiquitous among both experimental composers and rock musicians in the 1960's and 1970's, died on Sunday at his home in Ashville, N.C. He was 71.
The cause of death was a brain tumor, according to his daughter Michelle Moog-Koussa.
At the height of his synthesizer's popularity, when progressive rock bands like Yes, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer built their sounds around the assertive, bouncy, exotically wheezy and occasionally explosive timbres of Mr. Moog's instruments, his name (which rhymes with vogue) became so closely associated with electronic sound that it was often used generically, if incorrectly, to describe synthesizers of all kinds.
Mr. Moog's earliest instruments were collections of modules better suited to studio work than live performance, and as rock bands adopted them, Mr. Moog expanded his line to include the Minimoog and the Micromoog, instruments that could be used more easily on stage. He also expanded on his original monophonic models, which could play only a single musical line at a time, to polyphonic instruments that allowed for harmony and counterpoint.
Even so, by the end of the 1970's, Mr. Moog's instruments were being supplanted by those of competing companies like Arp, Aries, Roland and Emu, which produced synthesizers that were less expensive, easier to use and more portable. (Those instruments, in turn, were displayed in the 1980's by keyboard-contained digital devices by Kurzweil, Yamaha and others.)
In 1978, Mr. Moog moved from western New York to North Carolina, where he started a new company, Big Briar (later Moog Music), that produced synthesizer modules and alternative controllers - devices other than keyboards, with which musician could play electronic instruments. His particular specialty was the Ethervox, a version of the theremin, an eerie-toned instrument created by the Russian inventor Leon Theremin in the 1920's that allows performers to create pitches by moving their hands between two metal rods.
It was the theremin, in fact, that got Mr. Moog interested in electronic music as a child in the 1940's. In 1949, when he was 14, he built a theremin from plans he found in a magazine, Electronics World. He tinkered with the instrument until he produced a design of his own in 1953, and in 1954 he published an article on the theremin in "Radio and Television News" and started the R. A. Moog Company, which sold his own theremins and theremin kits.
Mr. Moog was born in New York City on May 23, 1934, and although he studied the piano while he was growing up in Flushing, Queens, his real interest was physics. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and earned undergraduate degrees in physics from Queens College and electrical engineering from Columbia University.
By the time he completed his Ph.D in engineering physics at Cornell University, in 1965, his theremin business had taken off, and he had started working with a composer, Herbert Deutsch, on his first synthesizer modules. Mr. Moog was familiar with the huge synthesizers in use at Columbia University and RCA and those that European composers were experimenting with, and his goal was to create instruments that were both more compact and accessible to musicians.
The first Moog synthesizers were collections of modules, connected by electronic patch cords, something like those that connect stereo components. The first module, an oscillator, would produce a sound wave, giving a musician a choice of several kinds, ranging from the gracefully undulating purity of a sine wave to the more complex, angular or abrasive sounds of square and sawtooth waves. The wave was sent to the next module, called an A.D.S.R. (attack-decay-sustain-release) envelope generator, with which the player defined the way a note begins and ends, and how long it is held. A note might, for example, explode in a sudden burst, like a trumpet blast, or it could fade in at any number of speeds. From there, the sound went to a third module, a filter, which was used to shape its color and texture.
Using these modules and others that Mr. Moog went on to create, a musician could either imitate acoustic instruments or create purely electronic sounds. A keyboard, attached to this setup, let the performer control when the oscillator produced a tone, and at what pitch.
"Artist feedback drove all my development work," Mr. Moog said in an interview with the online magazine Salon in 2000. "The first synthesizers I made were in response to what [composer] Herb Deutsch wanted. The now-famous Moog filter was suggested by several musicians. The so-called A.D.S.R. envelope, which is now a basic element in all contemporary synthesizers and programmable keyboard instruments, was originally specified in 1965 by Vladimir Ussachevsky, then head of the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center. The point is that I don't design stuff for myself. I'm a toolmaker. I design things that other people want to use."
University music schools quickly established electronic music labs built around the Moog synthesizer, and composers like Richard Teitelbaum, Dick Hyman and Walter (also known as Wendy) Carlos adopted them. For most listeners, though, it was a crossover album, Ms. Carlos's "Switched-On Bach," that ushered the instrument into the spotlight. A collection of Bach transcriptions, meticulously recorded one line at a time, "Switched-On Bach" was meant to persuade casual listeners who regarded synthesizers as random noise machines that the instrument could be used in thoroughly musical ways. Ms. Carlos's sequels included the haunting Purcell and Beethoven transcriptions used in the Stanley Kubrick film, "A Clockwork Orange."
Rock groups were attracted to the Moog as well. The Monkees used the instrument as early as 1967, on their "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd." Album. In early 1969, George Harrison of the Beatles had a Moog synthesizer installed in his home and released an album of his practice tapes, "Electronic Sound," that May. The Beatles used the synthesizer to adorn several tracks on the "Abbey Road" album, most notably John Lennon's "Because," Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" and Paul McCartney's "Maxwell's Silver Hammer."
Among jazz musicians, Herbie Hancock, Jan Hammer and Sun Ra adopted the synthesizer quickly. And with the advent of progressive rock in the early 1970's, the sound of the Moog synthesizer and its imitators became ubiquitous.
In 1971, Mr. Moog sold his company, Moog Music, to Norlin Musical Instruments Inc., but he continued to design instruments for the company until 1977. When he moved to North Carolina, in 1978, he started Big Briar, to make new devices, and he renamed the company Moog Music when he bought back the name in 2002. He also worked as a consultant and vice president for new product research at Kurzweil Music Systems, from 1984 to 1988.
In 2004, Mr. Moog was the subject of "Moog," a documentary by the filmmaker Hans Fjellestad.
"Bob Moog embodies the archetypal American maverick inventor," Mr. Fjellestad wrote when the film was released.
His marriage to Shirleigh Moog ended in divorce. Mr. Moog is survived by his wife, Ileana, and his children, Laura Moog Lanier, Matthew Moog, Michelle Moog-Koussa, Renee Moog and Miranda Richmond.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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