Bob Moog
interview by Skylaire Alfvegren
SECONDS: To get back to Theremins, the first time I saw how empty and simple the interior of a Theremin was, I was very surprised. Could you explain in layman's terms the principle by which the Theremin works?
MOOG: The very first Theremins used vacuum tubes. To use a technical term, an oscillator makes a repeating wave form and if the repeating wave form is in the human hearing range than you hear it as a tone but if it's faster than the human hearing range, you don't hear it. The way a Theremin works is that there are two oscillators, each of them going in the radio frequency range, but the frequency difference between them is something you can hear. With my hand, I can change the frequency of one oscillator a little bit, but the difference between it and a fixed oscillator is a big difference. That's how with the small effect of moving your hands you can cover a range of five octaves. The Theremins we make now have a lot more features but the basic idea is still the frequency difference between two high-frequency oscillators.
SECONDS: How did you come to meet Leon Theremin for the first time?
MOOG: It was at an electro-acoustic music festival in Bourges, France in 1989. This is just as the Iron Curtain was falling and Theremin was able to get out. He was ninety-four years old and he came to this music festival as an honored guest. He'd been like a god to me all my adult life. At ninety-four, he didn't come across as a god at all, he came across as an old man hazily remembering what he had done with his life.
SECONDS: Do you sell anything besides the Theremins?
MOOG: We sell things that people who buy theremins would be interested in having, from a gig bag for your theremin to bumper stickers.
SECONDS: People have commented that you're not at the forefront of technology anymore.
MOOG: After I left my old company, Moog Music, I didn't do much of anything for years and then I worked for Kurzweil for years and then I came back and taught part-time while doing consulting. Within the last few years, we've started up Big Briar and have been making Theremins. It's my intention to come out with a new version of the Mini-Moog, which we hope will put the name ÒMoogÓ back in the musical instrument arena.
SECONDS: How is it going to differ from the original model?
MOOG: We've been planning it for quite a while; we're doing the engineering now. It will have the authentic sound of the Mini-Moog — that we will not change at all. It will have all the functions of the Mini-Moog and look like it but in addition will have some new features, such as MIDI.
SECONDS: Were you involved in the development of MIDI?
MOOG: The basic MIDI standards were proposed in 1981 by Dave Smith and É I forgot what the other's name was. Dave Smith, at that time, was the head of Sequential Circuits. He made his proposal and there wasn't much development, it was just people talking about it and I was one of the ones who talked about it. I had a lot of articles in magazines in 1982-1983 getting people interested but I didn't actually develop the MIDI protocol.
SECONDS: Will you stop with the MIDI Theremin interface or continue to develop computer software?
MOOG: I have no plans to stop doing anything. We have a lot of ideas and I'd like nothing better than to introduce things as fast I can think of them but it costs money to introduce a new product. Before we do, we get some solid evidence we can sell it and that changes as a function of time. It looks like a lot people out there would like a Mini-Moog now, and we want to see what people want before we design the next thing.
SECONDS: Is the home computer becoming more of an outlet for music production?
MOOG: Oh gosh, yes. I can't imagine being a musician today without using a computer. I think the computer is the greatest tool for musicians since the invention of catgut.
SECONDS: Did you ever imagine you'd be able to have equipment on your desktop?
MOOG: I don't know what I thought twenty years ago. Electronics has always advanced faster than people could predict. I wrote an article in 1976 for a magazine called The Music Journal where I predicted MIDI within one year. I also predicted sound synthesis would become standardized, which is certainly true today with the general MIDI sound-set. I predicted in 1976 that what was unique to a given musician was not the sound producing technology but the control of technology. I said everybody was going to have their own finely tuned controller, whether it was a Theremin or a keyboard, and sure enough that's the way things are going.
