[Dixielandjazz] Yet More Moog.

[Fr M J (Mike) Logsdon]

Forwarded with permission.

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Kathryn Mettelka/Steve Schwartz <sschwa at BELLSOUTH.NET>
Sent: Aug 23, 2005 9:59 PM
To: CLASSM-L at listserv.brown.edu
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Synthesizer Innovator Robert A. Moog Dies

My experience with the Moog was with the idea of it, rather than the
machine.  One of my composition teachers, a masters in math, had spent the
summer at the Columbia-Princeton synthesizer working like a dog fifteen
hours a day to produce three minutes worth of music in six months.  Then
came the Switched-On Bach album, which hit the conservatory composition
students with the force of a 2001-monolith revelation.  Human players -
especially human players of contemporary music, such as it was in the
Sixties and early Seventies - seemed about to go the way of the passenger
pigeon.

Of course, none of us had ever seen a Moog, other than in still photos.  I
got my first real look at the Cunning Device during, of all things, a
televised Boston Pops concert - Gershon Kingsley's Concerto for Four Moog
Synthesizers and Orchestra.  I wondered why Kingsley needed four.  I saw
four rather unremarkable-looking boxes (reminding me of Ernestine's
switchboard) attached to keyboards and a Medusa-head arrangement of cables.
They rarely played together.  Rather, usually one would play while the other
three performers were busily pulling and pushing plugs.  A little later, I
read an essay by (then) Walter Carlos which made it clear that Switched-On
Bach (SOB) was as much a triumph of tape splicing as revolutionary
electronics.  Still, it seemed much less of a pain than the
Columbia-Princeton synthesizer.  For right now, however, the symphony
orchestra was definitely off the endangered species list.

Still, it was near the start of a long road that led to the truly
revolutionary MIDI and sampling technology.  I think the University of
Toronto had one of the earliest computer-music setups that used an interface
friendly to musicians rather than to mathematicians.  I saw a very
impressive video demonstration and have often wondered what happened to that
thing, other than obsolescence.  After all, one of my degree projects in
computer science was to develop a music-sequencing program for, of all
things, an early Pentium-chip personal computer.  It worked.  And now we've
got Finale, Overture, and Sibelius, as well as sound cards and GPOs that
almost sound human.  Amazing.  All of this has put real composing power into
the hands of amateurs and even children.  Wow.

Steve Schwartz

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