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Brilliant Careers: Robert Moog
citmanual wrote in to tell us about a fantastic article over at Salon about Robert Moog, the creator of the Moog and Minimoog synthesizers.
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I really don't care how a song was made, or how much money was made, or who listens to it, as long as I think it sounds good.
Kraftwerk started back in 1968 before the synthesizer, they invented techno and they had to generate some pretty whacked out sounds using primitive techniques. Now any eight year old can make the same sounds, but you know what? If it sounds good to me, I don't care!
Fuck Ajit Pai
Reading the article, you'll see that even the Beatles used synths.
I'm taking a course called Introduction to Digital Music, which is taught by one of Moog's "beta testers"/"guinea pigs". (Professor David Borden). Since beginning, I've noticed that almost every piece of music since the 80s that I've listened to has a synth. (Examples include Genesis, Phil Collins, and Van Halen among many others.)
And in modern days, there are those who are just "8-year-old-button pushers" *coughcoughSpearscoughcough*, and then there are those who are extremely skilled artists. (Orbital, Juno Reactor, Propellerheads to name a few). Haven't listened to Aphex Twin yet, but I intend to.
I nearly had a chance to participate in a videoconference with Keith Emerson and Robert Moog in addition to a few other people. Unfortunately, it was the same time as one of my exams. DAMN!
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
For those that are interested in Moog music, the Dark Side of the Moog series on FAX Records out of Germany.. it's a collaboration between Pete Namlook, Klaus Schulze, and on a couple of the albums in the series, Bill Laswell. Really interesting stuff. Dark Side of the Moog I has been re-released a number of times on Ambient World records, as well as a couple of other labels, and is a fantastic example of what the Moog organ can do.
-s
---- noi non potemo aver perfetta vita senza amici -- Dante
Bach's music was kind of unique because he was writing during the Baroque period, a time when music began its transition from being played in private residences to larger public performances.
;)
He certainly was the master of the counterpoint, that's to be sure. It's small wonder why the two-part and three-part Inventions Bach wrote some so great on modern electronic keyboards.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I think the album of "strange Moog country music" was SONIC SEASONINGS.
The reason I LOVED SWITCHED-ON BACH was that you could HEAR many notes with greater clarity than you did with traditional instruments. Brandenbug Concerto No. 3 was particularly amazing--listening to the synthesizer version and then listening to the version done by a traditional orchestra was like putting a muffler on your ear the second time around. The third movement of this Concerto just blew me away at just how Carlos breathed new life into an old piece of classical music.
In fact, IMHO Bach's music is perhaps one of the very few composers whose music could be adapted to almost any musical instrument. Well, that's not such a stretch given what I said earlier about Bach writing music for practically every important musical instrument in his lifetime.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I suppose like many others, the poster still find the whole sex change thing it a bit wierd. I was really into electronic music a (ahem) few years ago and remember when the Carlos's Playboy interview came out. The reaction of a bunch of musician friends was ``Who-o-o-o-a! What the???''.
I still find it a bit, oh, I don't know, amusing when I pull out my vinyl copy of ``Switched On Bach'' by Walter and the CD re-issue which is from Wendy. Anyway... I saw an interview with Wendy on TV a few years ago; pretty interesting.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I took a class on electronic music back in the late '70s (or was it early '80?). The class used a Moog 2 (if memory serves). Using it was a blast. I had a TEAC 1/4" tape deck that I would record things on then take the tapes to the lab to run through their battery of effects, make loops, run tapes through the Moog filters. Gawd, it was fun. (I still have the tapes I made back then but one of these days the TEAC is gonna up and die on me :-) )
You could do some very interesting things but you had to be willing to get very ``hands-on''. Unlike today, where kids pick up the latest keyboard from Casio and press a button to get the latest stock synthesizer sound. I'd rather that my daughters had the chance to work with a Moog than one of those things. Let 'em twiddle the knobs and create a sound that no one's ever made or heard before. But I'd have to put an addition on the house to have some place to put the beast. I guess a PC with a MIDI port'll have to do until the construction loan goes through.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
By the way..
I have a box here at the apartment that I picked up from the University of Arizona Surplus auction.. Its a big honkin' patchcord synthesizer from the late 60's or early 70's, originally designed as a hearing tester.
It has a 100-step programmable sequencer, 4 VCO's, 3 bypass filters, AGC control and a few other oddities. The name on the front is "Starkey Hearing Sciences Laboratory".
If anyone has any information about this box, or this company, please contact me. I've figured out how to play it and all, but im more interested in its history than anything else. Any ex-Starkey Labs employees out there?
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Bowie J. Poag
"Unfortunately, the trend is toward user interfaces that are simpler, not more complex. Most people don't care enough about the increased possibilities for expression to sacrifice years of their lives mastering an instrument," says Keislar. "They want to press a button and hear music come out. As a result, such systems are probably destined to remain experimental, even if elegant."
I think that particular quote applies to a lot more than just the design of an electronic musical instrument. It seems to be quite true of almost everything nowadays. Most people would be horrified, for example, to have to learn to use a command line over some kind of WIMP GUI. Or imagine a video recorder which was controlled with a keyboard and cron jobs, for example. Sure, geeks would love it, but people in general wouldn't touch the thing with a barge pole (so to speak), and either it would fail, or someone would make a much more simple design.
Nice article about Moog, I didn't know anything about his history really... I've experimented with a friend's minimoog though, playing with the sounds in that is almost like Kraftwerk in a box. ;-)
If any of you are ever in Milwaukee when SpoofFest is going on, definetely check it out... it is always a great show. They practically brought the house down this year!
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
There's a digital version for music DSP nuts in the article by Tim Stilson called "Analyzing the Moog VCF with consideration to digital implementation". You can find the paper somewhere around Stilson's homepage HINT: it's really simple to implement (~10 LOC), you can get my implementation from deja.com by searching comp.dsp.
Metaphysicist
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed"
- Cu
Simple and intuitive interfaces work just fine and as long as powerusers have access to command prompts I don't see a problem. If Keisler thinks there aren't any complex instruments out there he hasn't been to his local music store lately, check out some of the high-end synths for a dazzling display of features and buttons.
I think what he's responding to is how electronica is heavily loop based and you can literally make a song with only pressing a few buttons. It won't be original, but it'll be cliched enough to dance to.
And let me add the Fifth Element to your list!
Excellent work with synthesizers on that one. I'm not talking about the "Ruby Rod" techno stuff (which is also pretty cool) but the various motives used throughout.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
As long as you can produce interesting and endlessly varying results with a simple interface, more power to them (the manufacturers that is). Many synths don't though. In fact my wavestation SR has a simple interface (a few buttons on the front) which actually cripples it, because it's a pain to program it to its full potential, without 3rd party software like UniSYN. It's an amazing amount of programmability stuff behind a crappy interface.
But look at an acoustic instrument. A harmonica. Hear what John Popper does with a simplistic interface (no buttons, no knobs, just a bunch O'holes!)
I could demonstrate to you an amazing amount of sounds that can be generated from a simple frame drum played with hands. Glen Velez can do it even better.
Now it's easy to get into an acoustic vs. electronic instrument argument. I'm a fan of both of course.
But ideally it's not the interface itself that really matters, it's what you can do with it.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
I sincerely hope that you're trolling in this post and you aren't at all serious!
The fact that the best example that you can come up with for synthesized music is 'britanny spears' and that production can be done by pressing 'a few buttons' shows an ignorance that beggars beleif, and is either a) a joke/troll or b) a post by some MTV following, 13 year old cultural robot.
The only interesting and exciting music being made today is done using synthesizers. Some of the most amazing music is coming out of your own american backyard and you have been steadfastly ignoring it for the past 10-15 years.
Detroit Techno and Chicago House for instance contain more intelligence and originality than an infinite number of bush/blink182 or whatever carbon copy songs that MTV is shoving down your throat right now.
Especially in detroit, stuff coming out from Underground Resistance, Planet E, Transmat and Metroplex are as close to undiscovered genius as you can get, involving a great deal of raw creativity and expression.
Creativity and Expression - That's what I value. Unlike yourself I'm not an elitist or a traditionalist. I want to hear something that makes me sit up and go 'wow' and I dont care if it was done using 'proper instruments'.
In a way I can see where you are coming from - since I understand the *popular* american dance scene is indeed utterly turgid and full of dire trance tracks put together in 5 seconds using Cubase and a cute sample that says 'ecstacy' or some such.
But, I would not dare suggest that computer scientists should chuck out their PCs and return to vaccum-tube mainframes and punchcards because they are harder to use, and thus the results must be better. Do you code exclusively in assembler? I bet you dont. (in this case the results might actually be better, i concede)
I suggest you educate yourself before you open your mouth on this topic again.
www.kraftwerk.com
www.transmat.com
www.submerge.com
www.hyperreal.org
Yeah, the TB-303 can produce some truly amazing sounds, especially with a little bit of effects magic slapped on afterwards. I'm mainly into acid techno stuff, and some of the 303 sounds on that are truly unbelievable, covering a lot of the aural spectrum from bassy growls to soft pad-type sounds to metallic rings.
The trouble is, they are a complete nightmare to program and use. My old housemate had one, and I used to spend a fair bit of time playing with it, but it takes a long time just to get used to the step mode way of entering rhythms and then trying to tweak the filter and accent. Saying that though, I think the accent feature of the 303 is why it has lasted so well - it's quite different from most synths - the decay on the accent is unique AFAIK.
moog-influenced station
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I'd like to see a return of music to the days . . . when music required skill and talent to create and produce.
You should check out "less popular" (i.e. not overhyped by record labels trying to make money off mediocre-at-best "bands") groups like Kraftwerk, Apoptygma Berzerk, MDFMK (KMFDM), Spahn Ranch, Front Line Assembly... I could go on... but this isn't my field of expertise, and five minutes on Napster will give you a halfway decent taste for what I'm talking about (or would if 99% of the MP3s on there weren't so poorly ripped and/or encoded).
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Most of Wendy Carlos' early recordings have now been remastered (by Wendy) and are available as the "Switched On Box Set". Check Wendy's web site for more info.
Keith IMO was one of the all time greats, but seems to be largely forgotten these days. Back in their time Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were big enough to take the London Symphony Orchestra on tour & spend 2 million bucks making an album. These days, all you ever hear on the radio from ELP is 'Lucky Man' which doesn't give the slightest clue as to how fscking brilliant a keyboardist Emerson was.
If you really want to hear the Moog tortured and played to its limit, check out any of their first 5 albums - ELP, Tarkus, Pictures at an Exhibition, Trilogy, or Brain Salad Surgery.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
The folks over at Synaptics (the touchpad company) wrote a Theremin program for Windows - the link is here. It's a cool little toy that kind of gives people an idea of what the instrument is about.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
This site has more info on the Theremin synth mentioned in the article, even including schematics and other info to build one yourself! I've seen the Theremin being played on a Jean-Michel Jarre concert, and boy, that's weird!
-John
The article does not mention the real innovator of electronic instruments, the man who invented the oscillator, a basic component of most synths. Just as he the confusion arose surrounding the invention of the telephone (as well as long court battles), so we see that Elisha Gray is once again losing credit for his inventions. The first electronic instrument created was not the theremin or the telharmonium, but rather Gray's Musical Telegraph, created in the 1870's. He tried to make it work over telephone lines. Read more here.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
What I find interesting about all the comments about Bob Moog's synthesizers here is that only ONE person mentioned Wendy (neé Walter) Carlos' major breakthrough album, SWITCHED-ON BACH.
Remember, up until SWITCHED-ON BACH, electronic musical instruments were regarded more as curiosities and things to create "avant-garde" music. When SWITCHED-ON BACH was released in late 1968, it was a HUGE, HUGE breakthrough for synthesizers in general. For one thing, it incredibly refreshing to hear the music of Johann Sebestian Bach in such an innovative manner. You could hear with great clarity how Bach mastered the use of the counterpoint in music.
This album was (IMHO) proof that Bach is perhaps the greatest music composer of all time, because Bach composed superb music for everything from clavicord, harpsicord, string quartets, small orchestras, big orchestras with a choir, pipe organs and even the early pianos.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
While Bob Moog was important (and does rule), there's also another guy whom Moog worked with in the late 60's and early 70's who is probably the biggest unsung hero in the history of electronic music.
Hop over to RaymondScott.com and have a look. This guy built a goddamn self-programmable synthesizer out of thousands of pieces of discarded telephone switching equiptment in his basement before the era of MIDI. A 6 foot tall, 30-foot long array of telephone switching relays, tone circuits and oscillators to be exact.
Scott is also the person credited with inventing the sequencer, and ambient electronic music in the early 1960's..A double-album set of pure electronic music designed for babies to listen to, believe it or not.
For those of you who want to hear what the giant array of telephone relays sounds like, go here. Decompress the file and cat it to >/dev/audio
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Bowie J. Poag