Robert Moog: Encyclopedia II - Robert Moog - Development of the Moog synthesizer

Robert Moog - Development of the Moog synthesizer

The Moog synthesizer was one of the first widely used electronic musical instruments. Early developmental work on the components of the synthesizer occurred at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, now the Computer Music Center. While there Moog developed the voltage controlled oscillators and ADSR envelope generators.

Moog created the first modern, realtime playable and reconfigurable music synthesizer in 1963 and demonstrated it at the AES convention the following year. It sometimes took hours to set up the machine for a new sound.

Robert Moog employed his theremin company (R. A. Moog Co.) to manufacture and market his synthesizers. Unlike the few other 1960s synthesizer manufacturers, Moog shipped a piano-style keyboard as the standard user interface to his synthesizers. Moog also established standards for analog synthesizer control interfacing, with a logarithmic one volt-per-octave pitch control and a separate pulse triggering signal.

The first Moog instruments were modular synthesizers. In 1971 Moog broke into the mass market with the Minimoog Model D, an all-in-one instrument. The Minimoog was a 44-key scaled-down version of Moog's custom modular synths and featured 3 oscillators with six selectable waveshapes, an oscillator mixer, a pitch wheel and a modulation wheel. The third oscillator could also function as an LFO (low frequency oscillator). The Minimoog became the most popular monophonic synthesizer of the 1970s, selling approximately 13,000 units between 1971 and 1982.

Another widely used and extremely popular synth of Moog's was the Taurus bass pedal synthesizer. Released in 1975, its pedals were similar in design to organ pedals and triggered synthetic bass sounds. The Taurus was known for a "fat" bass sound and was used by musicians such as Genesis, Rush, U2, Yes, The Police, Yngwie Malmsteen and many others. Production of the original was discontinued in 1981, when it was replaced by the Taurus II. Moog Music was the first company to commercially release a keytar, the Moog Liberation.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Development of the Moog synthesizer", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki