Robert Moog: Robert Moog, the electronic engineer who invented the Moog synthesizer, has died of brain cancer aged 71. The synthesizer was to inspire generations of experimental musicians. Though his inventions changed the complexion of the pop and classical music worlds, Moog was known mainly within his industry.
He was an unassuming individual who was just as likely to turn up at a planetarium show in some small city as he was to write testimonials for re-releases of the best- selling album that wouldn't have happened without him, Wendy Carlos's 1968 Switched-On Bach.
Beginning in his teenage years in New York City, where he grew up, Moog (whose name rhymes with "vogue") learned basic electronics from his radio-operator father and became fascinated with the Theremin, custom building and selling the spooky-sounding electronic instrument as a hobby.
At Cornell University he studied physics, but after a fateful meeting with composer Herbert Deutsch, Moog became aware of electronic music studios in Princeton and Toronto, and in 1964 began working on his own synthesizer prototype.
Learning from the mistakes he made in his previous efforts to develop a guitar amplifier that turned out to be prohibitively expensive, Moog realised that success lay in practicality and affordability.
"The most important parameter of any product is price," he told Synthmuseum.com, "because everything is measured against price, just the same way that in music everything is measured against time."
Though his early instruments, with sound generated by voltage-controlled oscillators, sounded like primitive doorbells, early customers were influential; experimental figures such as choreographer Alwin Nikolais and composer John Cage. The breakthrough came from Wendy Carlos, who used the synthesizer to painstakingly build sounds for a series of outrageously colourful transcriptions in the album Switched-On Bach in 1968.
It won three Grammy awards and become the first classical album to be certified platinum. Glenn Gould touted one of Carlos's Brandenburg Concerto transcriptions as "the finest of any of the Brandenburgs - live, canned or intuited - I've ever heard."
Though Moog had a clear vision of what kind of synthesizer the world needed, his strengths didn't lie in running a company.
During an economic downturn in the music industry in the early 1970s, Moog was forced to take on investors, merge with another company, set up shop in a less-than-ideal former gelatine factory in Buffalo, New York State, and gradually give up control of the operation. He left Moog Music in 1977.
Moving to North Carolina, he began Big Briar Inc and was later the vice-president of new research at Kurzweil Music Systems. In later years, he designed various electronic instruments, including an interactive piano that is operated by a touch screen and offers sound sampled from a Steinway grand piano.
His second wife, Ileana, and a son and three daughters by his first wife survive him.
Robert Arthur Moog, born May 23rd, 1934; died August 21st, 2005