Synthesizer

'I just wanted to give the musicians new sounds.'

Robert Moog (New York City, May 23, 1934 – August 21, 2005)

One of the most beautiful moments in the life of synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog was undoubtedly that day in 1990 when musical friends in Paris introduced him to Leon Theremin.

This legendary Russian was then 94 years old. "It was hard to talk to him because he hadn't spoken English in 50 years," Moog said. "But I was just happy to be next to him." A definition of true love.

The theremin is the only musical instrument that can be played without touching it.

It works electronically using two antennas. It is enough to move a hand back and forth between the two antennas to generate alien sounds.

Leon Theremin had invented the device in 1920, and Moog had made a pretty penny as a college student selling DIY Theremin kits in the 1960s. In fact, with interruptions, Moog built theremins throughout his life. He could indeed be grateful to the old Russian.

It was those theremins that gave the young sound engineer the idea of going electronic: to 'give new sounds to the musicians'.

Moog was of Dutch-Polish descent. He was born in 1934 in Flushing Meadow, New York City. His father was an engineer and an enthusiastic radio amateur. His mother insisted that he learn to play the piano.

In his own words, he became interested in everything that had to do with sound and music from the age of eight. In 1954, aged twenty, he founded the RA Moog Company to develop electric musical instruments.

In 1961 he wrote an article about the wonderful theremins and in a few years he sold more than a thousand theremin kits from his student room. In 1965 he graduated from Cornell University as an engineer.

His work towards a synthesizer arose after meeting the composer Herbert Deutsch. Walter (later Wendy) Carlos released a full-length record of 'moog music' with Switched-On Bach in 1968, winning three Grammy Awards.

Moog himself came up with the name synthesizer.

The Beatles became interested, and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones also wanted such a machine. Moog then launched the easier-to-carry minimoogs. And so the great commercial breakthrough came about.

Especially after Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake and Palmer) gave the synthesizer solo Lucky Man on his first album in 1973. That was also the year that Moog's business went bust: the small professional market was saturated, Japanese competition was fierce, and the recession hit.

Major firms such as Arp and Roland turned Moog's prototypes into more refined and less expensive instruments.

Moog was a handsome engineer but not a businessman. "A nice man, but he can't handle money," said his friends.

He continued to work as a consultant, still earned some money with his patents and in 1978 in a garage in Ashville, North Carolina, started making theremins again as a hobby, as in the old days.

From 1994, electronic work became a full-time occupation again under the company name Big Briar Inc. He also taught at the University of North Carolina. In April 2000, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington honored him with a two-day celebration.

Keith Emerson was also present.

Moog in an interview in those days: 'We certainly didn't want to imitate other instruments at the time. Making unique sounds is already closer to our original intention.

We just wanted to give musicians new ways to make sounds.' In 2002 he managed to buy back his surname as a brand name. He also witnessed the French company Arturia, specialized in sound software, converting the analog sounds of Moog synthesizers into digital software.

When he turned 70, he could live with the fact that he had never made the big fortune: 'Together with my wife, a retired professor of philosophy, I am interested in reality. I have only recently understood that the physical world is only one level of that reality.

More and more scientists are convinced that there are other levels of time and space," he told the French daily Le Monde. A few months later, doctors diagnosed him with a brain tumor. He passed away on August 21, 2005.

Robert Moog brought electronic music to every person who wanted to make music. And he himself remained the very skilled sound engineer, the great expert, who loved nothing more than tinkering with new instruments in a garage or a hangar, in order to give the musicians 'new sounds.'