Today is the birthday of Robert Moog (1934-2005), inventor of the electronic synthesizer. In his honor Google has a special icon: a synthesizer you can actually play. You can also manipulate the controls and change the sounds in a gazillion ways (explanation here). Check it out.
Funny!
They should call it Moogle today…
Sadly UCL’s browsers are not up to it!
Love it. As a keyboard player from back in the days that these things were just hitting the market, am also happy to see the “rhymes with vogue” in the caption. I’ve heard the name mangled so many times over the years, I was starting to think it was my brain gone bad.
It also occurred to me that I actually have a Moog in my closet, quietly whimpering that it needs repair. Most people wouldn’t recognize it as a Moog, though… as it’s a Radio Shack special. The Realistic MG-1.
I just have to boast that I own a Robert Moog theremin, circa 1965, complete with owner’s manual and a charming sales brochure.
But can you play it?
The fact that you ask shows that you know something about theremins! No, I can’t say that I can.
Great stuff. Brilliant mind. The pitch would drift though. It took forever to get the tuning to settle down. I can remember constantly having to reach over during gigs and tweak the tuning pot on the back for our keyboardist. You can hear how flat the synth is at the end of ELP’s “Lucky Man”, which they did in one take. Drives me nuts.
Somewhere deep in my memory is a story about how a big modular Moog was never turned off, so that it wouldn’t drift. The “power on” indicator light had burned out years earlier. Maybe that was at a university electronic music studio somewhere, maybe it in was Walter Carlos’ personal studio. In those days, if you found a cool sound, you had to get it recorded right away, because you’d never get it back. Exciting times!
Thank God (oooops) for Bob Moog, Alan R. Pearlman and the tools they made for all of us, the synth junkies!!!
And don’t forget, you can even record your masterpiece, in up to 4 part harmony! Click the record button!
😉
keith Emmerson was so impressed with the keybourd skills of blind teenager Rachel Flowers that he sent her his Moog synthesizer to play with.