[Dixielandjazz] Moog Obit

[Steve barbone]

Here is a very complete obit of Robert Moog. He is the same age as I am and
grew up in my home town of Flushing NY. (Queens County NYC). Note the
mention of Herbert Deutsch just past the middle. Herb played piano and
trumpet in a Dixieland Band fronted by Ken Butterfield (trumpet) in the mid
1950s. Ken is trombonist Charlie Butterfield's son.

I was the clarinetist in that band. (Beale Street Stompers)

Herb Deutsch (PHD music) was also a composer and worked with Moog on the
synthesizer in the 1950's and 60's.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Robert Moog, Creator of Music Synthesizer, Dies at 71

By ALLAN KOZINN  August 23, 2005 - NY Times

Robert Moog, the creator of the electronic music synthesizer that bears his
name and that became ubiquitous among experimental composers as well as rock
musicians in the 1960's and 70's, died on Sunday at his home in Asheville,
N.C. He was 71.
  
The Music of Robert Moog

The cause was an inoperable brain tumor, discovered in April, his daughter
Michelle Moog-Koussa said.

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. 

More recently, hip-hop groups like the Beastie Boys and rock bands with more
experimentalist leanings, from They Might Be Giants to Wilco, have revived
an interest in the early Moog synthesizer timbres. Partly because of this
renewed interest, Mr. Moog and his instruments were the subjects of a
documentary, "Moog," which opened in the fall of 2004. In an interview last
year with The New York Times, Hans Fjellestad, who directed the film,
likened Mr. Moog to Les Paul and Leo Fender, who are widely regarded as the
fathers of the electric guitar.

"He embodies that sort of visionary, maverick spirit and that inventor
mythology," Mr. Fjellestad said at the time.

Mr. Moog's earliest instruments were collections of modules better suited to
studio work than live performance, and as rock bands adopted them, he
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 played only a single musical line at a time,
creating 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 displaced 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 a 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 when he was 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 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 Herbert Deutsch, a composer, on his first synthesizer modules.
Mr. Moog was familiar with the huge synthesizers in use at Columbia
University and at RCA and that European composers were experimenting with;
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 Salon in 2000. "The first synthesizers I made were in
response to what 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 Carlos (who later had a sex-change operation and is now
Wendy Carlos) adopted them. For most listeners, though, it was a crossover
album, Walter 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. The album'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, 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.

His first marriage, to Shirleigh Moog, ended in divorce. He is survived by
his wife, Ileana; his children, Laura Moog Lanier, Matthew Moog, Michelle
Moog-Koussa, Renee Moog and Miranda Richmond; and five grandchildren.