Music history is not an area Dr. Chamberlain has studied. He grew up loving keyboards and fell in love with the Moog synthesizer, the mellotron, and all sorts of “other neat stuff that made cool sounds,” and so, over the years, he has thought about the keyboard and music a lot. Thus what follows is based more on memory than the study of history, and given the number of brain cells that he left in the 1970s while listening to music, some of the memory data may have become distorted.

Robert Moog died yesterday. He developed the first widely popular synthesizer for musical sounds in the mid 1960s. Various forms of electronic sound production had been around since the theremin was invented in 1919. A few classical composers utilized it, but is best known as providing the “whooo-oo-ooo” sounds in the Beach Boy’s “Good Vibrations,” which, if the site I’ve linked you to is accurate, was about an acid trip. There was also the mellotron, a keyboard synthesizer that provided a sort of wall-to-wall electronic string sound that fit in well (and also helped to shape) the music of the mid-to-late ‘60s and the early '70s.

What made Moog's synthesizer special . . . .

What made Moog’s synthesizer special was that it was comparatively compact and specifically designed to fit into western music’s 12 tone universe, which is what the keyboard was for. However, like earlier synthesizers that did not use keyboards, it offered an extraordinarily wide range of possible “sounds” that totally eclipsed any keyboard competitors.

That range made Moog’s early model deucedly difficult to operate when compared with present day synthesizers. It was analogue, not digital, and a lot of knobs had to be tweaked to come up with a particular timbre and intonation, and only one note could be played at a time. That’s why the early well-known rock uses of it were one-line solos such as the one at the end of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s “Lucky Man.”

However, for me, and for a lot of other people, the first close encounter with the Moog was via a classical album called “Switched on Bach. I remember my encounter—or at least the first part of it—vividly. A friend had recommended it, and I bought it while on the way to get my wisdom teeth pulled. My dentist only used a local anesthetic, and then sent me home with a one-an-hour Darvon prescription. I put the album on, and, to use the vernacular, “Oh wow, Man.”

The performer was Wendy Carlos. For some people it probably seemed a gimmick, but even on sober examination, Carlos' work remains an extraordinary album of fine interpretations of Bach. The Third Brandenburg Concerto is a particular marvel. If the performances had not been good, the album—and perhaps the machine, too--would not have been nearly as popular. However, the newness of the sound, perhaps combined with the cover art that juxtaposed the synthesizer with a guy dressed up like Bach, caused many in the audience, including me, to think more of Moog than of Carlos.

That was unfortunate. Carlos had achieved these fine interpretations from hours and hours of tweaking sounds and over-dubbing lines. There’s a bit of a discussion about that here. Moog and Carlos worked together closely in this process, and her work forced moog to improve the device even as the recording was made. The liner notes for the next album, “The Well Tempered Synthesizer” lamented the fact that the machine had become better known than the artist who played it well, but it is clear that their working relationship was a good and productive one.

The Moog changed the development of music (though, ironically, less in the classical world than in more popular genres). In rock music, and to a lesser extent jazz, the multi-instrument keyboardist moved to the center of a number of groups. Although the rock star swimming in keyboards became a cliché quickly, it grew out of necessity. The sound settings on early Moogs could not be altered easily in concert. Organs and pianos created sets of additional sounds and moods, and the mellotron provided a wall-to-wall soundscape that the instrumentals and vocals floated upon. Over time, improvements in synthesizers allowed keybardists to reduce the amount of equipment while maintaining a wide range of sounds.

However, the opening of that range of sounds may have closed off others. (I’m beginning to speculate a bit here) Many rock musicians, as they attempted to expand their musical universes, looked in both the jazz and classical traditions. You can here both pretty clearly in the Door’s 1969 album “Soft Parade” and in some of the early King Crimson, in particular, the long “side 2 cut” (for those who remember sides 1 and 2) on “Lizard” (1970).

But most keyboardists, particularly organists, who were a bit better suited to instruments on which the sounds had to be set, learned music in the classical/church music tradition. And once a group had a keyboardist, it didn’t need to import sidemen to expand the sound. Good jazz, even as “color” rather than substance, required good jazz musicians, and working well with them required a different set of skills).

However, none of this should be at Robert Moog’s feet. Over time, digital technology created a whole new transformation by uniting sound and computer together, creating entirely new options in music creation. Moog himself continued developing synthesizers, but preferred to use analog technology, which I believe has some advantages in allowing the performer to create new sounds. In the 1990s, he even returned to the theremin—which he had worked with early in his career—and developed a new version that has sold well.

So farewell Robert Moog. Few people can claim to have shaped the sound of a culture. You did.

PS My thanks to Scott for this link to a book review of his concerning Moog and the synthesizer.

Oscar Chamberlain - 8/24/2005

Thanks!. The H-G is also kind eough to appear in my syllabi a couple of times.

Ed Schmitt - 8/23/2005

Thanks for the retrospective. My personal favorite display of the machine's varied capacities is this
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00008WD0X/qid=1124851697/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl15/103-9979473-1895867?v=glance&;s=music&n=507846
and perhaps the best single moog based song is Mike Melvoin's "The Plastic Cow" from the LP "The Plastic Cow Goes Mooooog"

Van L. Hayhow - 8/23/2005

Do you know if any groups currently playing have gone retro and are using one now?

Van L. Hayhow - 8/23/2005

By the way, I forgot to mention, I loved the expression, historian general.

Nathanael D. Robinson - 8/22/2005

The most interesting (non-) musician who influenced how Moog synths were used was Brian Eno, who in many performances did not even touch the keyboard, but ran the sounds played by the band into the unit.

Nathanael D. Robinson - 8/22/2005

The Mellotron was not a synthesizer, more of a primitive sampler in which each key played a tape of a string sound. I remember them best from the heavy-handed King Crimson recordings.

Van L. Hayhow - 8/22/2005

I haven't heard that word in a couple of decades. The first time I heard of the mellotron was when the Moody Blues moved from a straight rock group into a group with aspirations to mix their sound with classical music. They recorded on album backed by an English orchestra (Days of Future Passed) but could not regularly record or tour with that type of back up. Starting with their album In Search of the Lost Chord; they used the mellotron.