Bob Moog
interview by Skylaire Alfvegren
[describe what a synthesizer does]
SECONDS: Oh, not at all. Did people find out about your synthesizers mostly through universities?
MOOG: From the time I began, till about 1967 or so, most of our customers were universities and a few oddball experimental musicians like Eric Siday.
[Describe Mini-Moog as opposed to regular Moog]
SECONDS: You introduced the Mini-Moog in 1971, right?
MOOG: Uh-huh.
SECONDS: Would you say that the integration of electronics into the Rock mainstream occurred at that time because of the Mini-Moog?
MOOG: I guess that was the first synthesizer that we made that was designed more for stage performance than for experimental studio composition.
But Keith Emerson, for instance, had one of our modular synthesizers and was on stage with that thing even before we introduced the Mini-Moog.
SECONDS: As I understand it, The Mothers Of Invention were the first to record using the Mini-Moog —
MOOG: I never heard they were first but they might have been. Don Preston may have been the person who played the Mini Moog with Frank Zappa.
[Talk about Don Preston and Hammer, Wakeman, Corea]
SECONDS: What other Rock artists expressed an early interest in the Mini Moog?
MOOG: Jan Hammer. He was a Mini-Moog virtuoso. Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson, Chick Corea — lots of people.
SECONDS: You've said that you didn't intend for your synthesizers to mimic the sounds of conventional instruments, that the equipment was designed to make new sounds. Are you surprised that synthesizers have come to replace everything from strings to piano to trombone?
MOOG: Well, they don't. The musicians union was worried about that but in fact what synthesizers are used for today is to make new, distinctly electronic sounds. A lot of the digital stuff doesn't synthesize anything but instead plays back recordings of specific musical sounds. These are the things they use to play piano sounds and choir sounds, the more conventional acoustic sounds.
[talk about musicians's union and politics vis-a-vis soundtracks]
SECONDS: Did the synthesizer revolution take a different course than you expected it to?
MOOG: I don't think I had any expectations. It was a show unfolding before me.
SECONDS: Who else was developing synthesizer technology in the early Sixties?
MOOG: There were two of us. I was on the East Coast and Donald Buchla was on the West Coast. We were pretty much doing the same thing with the same kind of technology but Don's music orientation was a lot more experimental. Whereas I equipped some of the instruments we made with keyboards, Don would never do that because a keyboard was too conventional. He used different ways of playing sounds. That took him to one group of musicians and my approach took me to another group. The commercial musicians found my stuff more accessible.
[Describe different approaches, musicians]
SECONDS: In the Sixties and Seventies, the synthesizer was found in everything from Easy Listening to Hard Rock. What were you most surprised to find it used for?
MOOG: I can't remember being surprised by any particular type of music that it was used for. I can be surprised by how musical a particular musician was with the instrument. One after another, musicians found different things to do with the instrument that other people didn't find.
