Bob Moog
interview by Skylaire Alfvegren
SECONDS: You were born in New York City. Could you tell me a little bit about your childhood and what got you interested in electronics?
MOOG: I'm an only child. My mother gave me piano lessons but I was always more interested in working with my father in his shop. He had a super-duper hobby shop where we did a lot of woodwork and that sort of thing. I liked to build stuff with him and he taught me how to solder when I was eight years old. I've enjoyed electronic stuff ever since.
SECONDS: Did you also have an interest in science at a young age?
MOOG: Yeah, I was more a technician than musician.
SECONDS: Were you interested in Avant-garde European Electronic Music or Musique Concrete?
MOOG: Not especially. I met Herb Deutsch in 1964 and we did the initial work that led to the Moog synthesizer.
[talk about Deutsch and initial work]
SECONDS: That was the year you came out with the modular Moog.
MOOG: Right.
SECONDS: Did you feel you were at the forefront of a revolution with that?
MOOG: No. Herb and I were just having a good time. There was no long-term vision at all.
SECONDS: Didn't RCA build the first synthesizers in the Fifties?
MOOG: There was synthesizers before that. The earliest one I know of was called the Couplo Givaleux synthesizer, which was built in France and exhibited at the 1929 World's Fair in Paris. It had completely Electronic sounds. They were very dull sounds by today's standards.
SECONDS: Before you were interested in synthesizers, you were interested in Theremins —
MOOG: The first one I built was in 1949 from an article in a hobbyist's magazine called Radio & Television News.
[describe theremins]
SECONDS: In 1954, you founded the R.A. Moog company. What were you up to between in 1949 and 1954.
MOOG: I was a graduate student. I have a B.S. in Physics from Queens College, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia Engineering School and a Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from Cornell University.
SECONDS: Was it your meeting with Herb Deutsch that you got you interested in electronic synthesizers?
MOOG: Yes.
SECONDS: That was around '64 or so?
MOOG: Yes.
SECONDS: I saw in one interview you did that you were working with a number of composers in those early years. Who were they?
MOOG: First it was Herb. The first person who actually ordered something was Alwyn Nikolais. He was a choreographer in New York City at the Alwyn Nikolais Dance Troupe and he composed all the music for his dance scores. It was very experimental Avant-garde dancing and he used electronic instruments to compose the scores. The second person was a musician and composer who produced commercial music for radio and television. His name was Eric Siday. He would compose five-second sound-bites for radio and television stations that were what was called sound logos. He was one of the top people doing that in New York City at the time. Another composer I worked with Vladmir Usetchesky at the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center. Lajran Hiller was at the University Of Illinois, George Rockburg was at the University of Pennsylvania — am I going too fast?
