Moog’s Production History

Dr. Robert Moog, more colloquially known as Bob Moog, was born on May 23rd, 1934 (Rideout 31). His involvement with electronic music began in 1954, when he began building and selling Theremins, another type of electronic instrument, with his father. In 1963, Bob Moog designed and built the first Moog Modular Synthesizer (Rideout).  In the next year, he demonstrated his prototypes at the Audio Engineering Society convention, one of the largest gatherings for audio professionals. After this, he begun to take orders for his product. By 1967, his own company, R.A. Moog, Inc. has introduced three versions of Moog Modular Synthesizers, as a multitude of artists began to use the Moog Synthesizer (Rideout). Rideout cites Bob Moog in describing his role in the industry of music technology, as it appeared in the  “Moog Mania” in May 2003:

Musicians always come up with stuff I couldn’t imagine, using my instruments. I can get a sense of whether something would be a good musical resource, but I don’t do music. I’m a toolmaker. It’s always amazing what someone like Herbie Hancock, Wendy Carlos, or Stevie Wonder can come up with. What they’ll do is, when you put something in front of them that’s new, they’ll turn a couple knobs, and listen, and immediately get a sense of where to go. The muse talks to them (Rideout).

Here, Bob Moog highlights the significance of the Moog synthesizer as a musical resource, able to be adapted to a multitude of different circumstances.

Bob Moog, pictured with Minimoog and modular Moog Synthesizers

Bob Moog continued to develop a series of electronic musical tools throughout the late 1900s  and the 2000s, up until his death of a brain tumor in 2005 (Rideout). He utilized improved technology along the way. For example, the memorymoog polysynth hit the market in 1982. The Ethervox MIDI Theremin was released in 1998, and the Minimoog Voyager prototype was released in 2000. The invention of the Moog synth was not a stand-alone event; it triggered a series technologies that would continue to affect instrumentation and sound-making in genres old and new, including rock, disco, and hip-hop.