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even The Economist ran an obituary on Moog:
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Robert Moog, an electronic-music pioneer, died on August 21st, aged 71
IN ONE sense, music went electric in the 1950s when companies such as Fender and Gibson began mass-producing electric guitars. But that was only half a revolution. The music was electronically amplified, but the original sound was still generated by mechanical vibrations, as it had been for thousands of years.
Glimpses of an all-electronic future had been offered since the end of the 19th century. The Telharmonium, a 200-ton mechanical ancestor of the Hammond organ designed to be played down the telephone, had allowed musicians to tinker with sound waves to produce interesting new noises as early as 1897. From 1920 the Theremin, played by waving one's hands in front of two radio receivers, generated eerie electronic glissandi without any moving parts.
In 1955 RCA, an American industrial company, combined these innovations in their Mark II Synthesiser, which used electric currents both to generate and manipulate sound waves. The Synthesiser was “played” using a binary programming language stored on punch tape, and it filled a whole room at the University of Columbia. Electronic music seemed destined to remain a curiosity—until, in 1964, a shy young man called Robert Moog, a graduate student at Cornell University, unveiled his own analogue synthesiser at a meeting of America's Audio Engineering Society.
Mr Moog's background was ideal. He had been the class swot in Queens, and bullied for it. His mother had nagged him to become a concert pianist; his father, who loved to tinker with electronics, had kept him amused out of class by helping him to build a Theremin, whose subtleties enchanted him. His analogue synthesiser was elegant, turning a room-sized machine into something that could be set up in a recording studio; and it was musician-friendly, with a keyboard just like the one his mother had kept his nose to.
Musicians wishing to master the instrument still had to learn a new vocabulary of waveforms, oscillators and filters. But it was a rewarding study. Synthesisers can generate an almost infinite variety of sounds, ranging from simulated guitars or pianos to, as Jim Morrison of The Doors once claimed, “the sound of broken glass falling from the void into creation”.
News of the invention spread fast. In 1968 it found fame when Walter (now Wendy) Carlos, an early practitioner of electronic music, released “Switched-on Bach”, a hit album of Bach recorded entirely on Mr Moog's equipment. But the instrument's big impact was on popular music. The dark, druggy, disillusioned pop Zeitgeist of the late 1960s exactly suited the weird sounds made by the new machine. The Beatles used a Moog extensively on their late album “Abbey Road”. Emerson Lake and Palmer, an early progressive rock band, were so enamoured of Moogs that they took one on tour with them, despite its bulk and delicate temperament.
Music to the masses
Other firms were quick to realise the potential of the new invention. By the 1970s, there were several competing models. Mr Moog continued to innovate, introducing in 1970 the smaller, portable Minimoog that allowed electronic music to get to night clubs or the beach. He kept at the cutting edge until the 1980s, and the arrival of computer-based digital synthesisers. Even now, some musicians—Fatboy Slim, for one—continue to prefer the warm, analogue Moog sound.
His invention kick-started electronic music, both as an influence on mainstream music and as a sub-genre in itself. Bands such as Pink Floyd spearheaded the new sound, their music featuring long keyboard solos that seemed to originate in the emptiness of outer space. Stevie Wonder brought the synthesiser to a more mainstream audience; Herbie Hancock helped introduce it to jazz fans. Later, Kraftwerk and similar groups released entire albums of ghostly, futuristic music made without a traditional instrument in sight.
For all his electronic and musical talent, Mr Moog was no businessman. He had begun well enough, making a packet as a young man by selling build-it-yourself Theremin kits, but after he had invented his synthesiser he could not manage its success. When Moog Music was bought by a firm called Norlin, he was relegated to minor musical-engineering tasks.
He left in 1977, setting up another company, Big Briar Productions, and working on a variety of strange new instruments that he hoped would allow musicians even greater expressiveness. (His ideal, for all his modernity, was to produce an electronic instrument that could be played with the human emotion of a cello or a flute.) None of his later inventions had the same impact as his original synthesiser, but that didn't bother him. He saw himself as a simple “toolmaker”, working to give other musicians the sounds they wanted. He rejected the idea that he had democratised electronic music; that, he insisted, had been achieved by cheap Japanese keyboards in the 1980s.
Here, at least, he was mistaken. Without his inventions, thousands of composers in almost every conceivable genre of music—and millions of their listeners—would have been restricted to the familiar sounds of traditional instruments. And music would have been the poorer for it. |
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Sigs are too much work for me.
GTA#34
Efficiency is the key to successful laziness. (R.A.)
45rpm
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