Robert Arthur "Bob" Moog, founder of Moog Music, was an American pioneer of
electronic music, best known as the inventor of the Moog synthesizer.
Moog's innovative electronic design is employed in numerous synthesizers
including the Minimoog Model D, Minimoog Voyager, Little Phatty, Sub 37, Moog
Taurus Bass Pedals, Moog Minitaur, and the Moogerfooger line of effects pedals.
Life A native of New York City, Moog attended
the Bronx High School of Science in New York, graduating in 1952. Moog earned a
bachelor's degree in physics from Queens College, New York in 1957, another in
electrical engineering from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in engineering
physics from Cornell University. Moog's awards include honorary doctorates from
Polytechnic Institute of New York University and Lycoming College.
During his lifetime, Moog founded two companies for manufacturing electronic
musical instruments. He also worked as a consultant and vice president for new
product research at Kurzweil Music Systems from 1984 to 1988, helping to
develop the Kurzweil K2000. He spent the early 1990s as a research professor of
music at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
Moog received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1970. In
2002, Moog was honored with a Special Merit/Technical Grammy Award, and an
honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music.
He gave an enthusiastically-received lecture at the 2004 New Interfaces for
Musical Expression, held in Hamamatsu, Japan's "City of Musical Instruments",
in June, 2004. Moog was the inspiration behind the 2004 film Moog.
Moog's first wife was Shirleigh Moog, a grammar school teacher whom he married
in 1958. The couple had three daughters and one son before their divorce. Moog
was married to his second wife Ileana Grams, a philosophy professor, for nine
years until his death. Moog's stepdaughter, Miranda Richmond, is
Grams's daughter from a previous marriage. Moog also had five
grandchildren. Moog was diagnosed with a glioblastoma
multiforme brain tumor on April 28, 2005, and died at the age of 71 in
Asheville, North Carolina on August 21, 2005. He is buried in the Lou Pollack
Cemetery in Asheville. The Bob Moog Foundation was created as a memorial,
with the aim of continuing his life's work of developing electronic music.
In 2009 Albert Glinsky was invited by Moog's widow, Ileana Grams Moog, and his
daughter, Michelle Moog-Koussa, to write the authorized biography of Bob Moog.
An announcement was made public on the Bob Moog Foundation website on the
anniversary of the inventor's birthday. Moog contributed the Foreword to
Glinsky's first book, Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage, which has become
the standard biography of Leon Theremin. Development of the Moog synthesizer
The Moog synthesizer was one of the first widely used electronic musical
instruments. Early developmental work on the components of the synthesizer
occurred at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, now the
Computer Music Center. While there, Moog developed the voltage controlled
oscillators, ADSR envelope generators, and other synthesizer modules with
composer Herbert Deutsch. Moog created the first
voltage-controlled subtractive synthesizer to utilize a keyboard as a
controller and demonstrated it at the AES convention in 1964. In 1966, Moog
filed a patent application for his unique low-pass filter U.S. Patent
3,475,623, issued in October, 1969. He is a listed inventor on ten US patents.
Moog had his theremin company manufacture and market his synthesizers.
Unlike the few other 1960s synthesizer manufacturers, Moog shipped a
piano-style keyboard as the standard user interface. Moog also established
standards for analog synthesizer control interfacing, with a logarithmic one
volt-per-octave pitch control and a separate pulse triggering signal.
The first Moog instruments were modular synthesizers. In 1971 Moog Music began
production of the Minimoog Model D, which was among the first synthesizers
that was widely available, portable, and relatively affordable. The first
prototype of the minimoog only had about two filters, a couple envelope
generators, and a very small keyboard. Robert knew that this wouldn’t be good
enough for the average musician, so he kept working on the synthesizer and was
able to add more filters, oscillators, and a wider key range.
One of Moog's earliest musical customers was Wendy Carlos, whom he credits with
providing feedback valuable to further development. Through his involvement in
electronic music, Moog developed close professional relationships with artists
such as Don Buchla, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, John Cage, Gershon Kingsley,
Clara Rockmore, Jean Jacques Perrey, and Pamelia Kurstin. In a 2000 interview,
Moog said, "I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians
are my customers. They use my tools." R.A. Moog Co. and Moog Music
In 1953 at age 19, Moog founded his first company, R.A. Moog Co., to
manufacture theremin kits. During the 1950s, composer and electronic music
pioneer Raymond Scott approached Moog, asking him to design circuits for him.
Moog later acknowledged Scott as an important influence. Later, in the
1960s, the company was employed to build modular synthesizers based on Moog's
designs. In 1972 Moog changed the company's name
to Moog Music. Throughout the 1970s, Moog Music went through various changes
of ownership, eventually being bought out by musical instrument manufacturer
Norlin. Poor management and marketing led to Moog's departure from his own
company in 1977. In 1978 after leaving his namesake firm,
Moog started making electronic musical instruments again with a new company,
Big Briar. Their first specialty was theremins, but by 1999 the company
expanded to produce a line of analog effects pedals called moogerfoogers. In
1999, Moog partnered with Bomb Factory to co-develop the first digital effects
based on Moog technology in the form of plugins for Pro Tools software.
Despite Moog Music's closing in 1993, Moog did not have the rights to market
products using his own name throughout the 1990s. Big Briar acquired the rights
to use the Moog Music name in 2002 after a legal battle with Don Martin who had
previously bought the rights to the name Moog Music. At the same time, Moog
designed a new version of the Minimoog called the Minimoog Voyager. The Voyager
includes nearly all of the features of the original Model D in addition to
numerous modern features. Theremin
Moog constructed his own theremin as early as 1948. Later he described a
theremin in the hobbyist magazine Electronics World and offered a kit of
parts for the construction of the Electronic World's Theremin, which
became very successful. In the late 1980s Moog repaired the original
theremin of Clara Rockmore, an accomplishment he considered a high
point of his professional career. He also produced, in collaboration with
first wife Shirleigh Moog, Mrs. Rockmore's album, The Art of the
Theremin. Moog was a principal interview subject in the award-winning documentary
film, Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, the success of which revived interest in
the theremin. Moog wrote the foreword to Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage, the
biography of Leon Theremin by Albert Glinsky, published in 2000. Moog Music
went back to its roots, and once again began manufacturing theremins. Thousands
have been sold to date, and are used by both professional and amateur musicians
around the globe. In 1996 he published another do-it-yourself theremin guide.
Today, Moog Music is the leading manufacturer of performance-quality
theremins. Archives
On July 18, 2013, Ileana Grams-Moog said she planned to give her late husband's
archives, maintained by Bob Moog Foundation, to Cornell University. The
foundation offered her $100,000, but Grams-Moog said she would not sell them.
She said Cornell could provide better access for researchers, and that the
foundation had not made enough progress toward a planned museum to indicate it
would be worthy of keeping the collection. The foundation responded
that it had sufficiently preserved the collection and made efforts to improve
storage, though it could not afford to build the museum yet.
Pronunciation The surname Moog is often mispronounced.
The following interview excerpt reveals Robert Moog's preferred pronunciation:
— Reviewer: First off: Does your name rhyme with "vogue" or is like a cow’s
"moo" plus a g at the end? — Dr. Robert Moog: It rhymes with
"vogue." That is the usual German pronunciation. My father's grandfather
came from Marburg, Germany. I like the way that pronunciation sounds better
than the way the cow's "moo-g" sounds. In a deleted scene from the DVD version
of the documentary Moog, Moog describes the three pronunciations of the name
Moog: the Dutch , which he believes would be too demanding of English
speakers; the preferred Anglo-German pronunciation, ; and a more anglicized
pronunciation, . Moog reveals that some of his family members prefer the
anglicized pronunciation, while others, including himself prefer the
Anglo-German pronunciation. See also
Bruce Haack Harald Bode
Léon Theremin List of brain tumor patients
List of Moog synthesizer players Moogfest
Footnotes References
Pinch, Trevor and Trocco, Frank. Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the
Moog Synthesizer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hardcover: ISBN
0-674-00889-8, 2004 paperback: ISBN 0-674-01617-3
.moogmusic.combob-moog-pioneering-synths http:www.furious.commoog.html
www.soundonsound.comjun03moogvoyager.asp External links
= Interviews and articles= = Patents=
= Obituaries= = Tributes=