As an addendum to yesterday’s teaser of the Evolution multi-touch keyboard, readers send along a couple of other examples. Andrew McPherson has a terrific example of an add-on, multi-touch, capacitive surface that can go on any keyboard (so, basically the same idea).

Description:

This video demonstrates a set of capacitive touch sensing piano key tops which mount on top of any existing piano or MIDI keyboard. The key tops sense up to three touches each by position and contact area, letting the performer continuously and polyphonically shape every note in multiple dimensions. The system connects to a computer by USB and uses OSC for flexible communication with a wide variety of synthesis software.

See also the paper published on the design, and of course, the video. (Thanks, Andrew! Nice work – will we see more?)

From Vol 14, No. 2 Summer 1990 issue of Computer Music Journal, none other than Bob Moog joins Berklee’s Thomas L. Rhea to evaluate keyboard instrument design, and specifically refers to touch overlays on the keys (via resistive, not capacitive sensing).
“Evolution of the Keyboard lnterface: The Bøsendorfer 290 SE Recording Piano and The Moog Multiply-Touch-Sensitive Keyboards.” (A PDF is available, albeit not a … legal one. Thanks for the tip, Dan!)

And as for the Evolution, the release date will be Wednesday, November 23. Simon Kemper explains, “In just 2 days we will answer all your questions. Also there will be some more videos and tutorials. We also offer a software to control and individualize the evo. It is called “COMM” and makes everything between MIDI and OSC possible. So mapping the evos touch sensors to poly-AT, and so on, is also no problem.”

There are definitely some skills to pick up here, but that’s true with any alternative instrument. I’m eager to try one of these out.

It barely seems as though it’s been that long, but synthesis pioneer Robert Moog died six years ago this week. That has brought a whole new wave of remembrances, including a great new EP you can remix. And if you still don’t know what the fuss is about, or want to refer a friend somewhere other than Wikipedia, a guest essay popped into our inbox here at CDM HQ, so I’ll add that, too.

The best news, from where I sit: Tara Busch has donated a three-track EP entitled The Rocket Wife to the cause of bettering the Bob Moog Foundation’s work in history, archiving, and education. You may know Tara as the writer behind AnalogSuicide, or from her synthesist/vocalist career. Regardless, give this EP a listen. It’s a fanciful, dreamily optimistic album, recalling grand pop songwriting traditions. “Motor Crash” channels another Bush (Kate) in a very good way over its all-too-brief yet oddly satisfying minute and a half amuse-bouche. (Amuse-Busch?) “Calendura” is a gliding waltz set to angular, sparse percussion. But “Rocket Wife” is my favorite, a wonderland soundscape that sounds like some sunlight of the two afternoon suns on your foreign planet streamed right into a rack of Moogs in the studio of your dreams.

And, anyway, if you think you can do better with these raw materials, you can try to prove it. 17 tracks of stems are available for purchase, too, also as a benefit. Grab them, give them a remix, and winners will receive prizes like Bob Moog merch and a collaboration with Tara. You’ve got until October 15 to make it happen.

The Rocket Wife EP

The Stems and Contest

SoundCloud-based Contest Submissions [great idea!]

About Tara Busch

What else is new in the world of Bob Moog’s legacy?

Michelle Moog-Koussa (Bob Moog’s daughter) has her own blog, Moogstress. (Does that make us dudes Moogsters? Maestroogs?) See also a great new limited poster for donors.

Here’s a beautifully-shot video about what’s now called Dr. Bob’s Sound School. It’s just this kind of engineering-rich effort I think we need now in the US and worldwide to restart the economy, though that’s perhaps a story for another post.

Finally, writer Jennifer Helfrich sent us an unsolicited bio essay on Bob Moog. I was delighted to see it show up in my inbox, and it has the Bob Moog Foundation’s technical editing applied to it, so here it is – a great introduction to Bob Moog’s life.

Side editorial: I think it’s notable that Dr. Moog was a product of New York public education, beginning his educational journey at Bronx High School of Science and receiving his first BA – in physics, initially, not electrical engineering until later – at Queens College of The City University of New York. (Disclosure: I’m a PhD Candidate at CUNY’s Graduate Center.) It shows the power of public education to help support the people who innovate — just at a time when, in many places int he world, public education can be targeted for cuts.

Here’s Jennifer’s nicely-compact story:

Robert Moog is the godfather of modern electronic music, the man whose genius and passion made synthesizers accessible and put electronic sound generation on the musical map. This past Sunday, the 21st, was the six year anniversary of Bob Moog’s passing. Let us take a moment to remember his life and his legacy.

A New York native, he was born in 1934 to a mother who taught him piano and a father who puttered with house-hold electronics. Moog showed exceptional intelligence from an early age. He built a simple Theremin on his own at 14, and the experience made music his focus. At the tender age of 19 Moog founded R.A. Moog Co. to manufacture and sell Theremin kits. The business, begun at such an early age, exemplifies Moog’s incredible productive capacity and perhaps even a desire to share the joy he found in building his own.

During his bachelor and Ph.D. studies Moog began to develop his version of the synthesizer. Electronic synthesizers commercially available at the time were made of vacuum tubes and magnetic tape – they were huge, difficult to set-up, and often had to be custom made. With the 1964 presentation of his synthesizer Moog ushered in a new era of electronic music. Smaller and easier to use, with multiple modules for modifying voltage controlled oscillations and an organ-keyboard interface, the Moog synthesizer was ready for the music studio. Moog synthesizers hit the big-time with the success of the 1967 Wendy Carlos album Switched-On Bach. It was among the first classical albums to sell half-million copies, it hit the Top 10 and stayed in the Top 40 for 17 weeks.

As Moog synthesizers improved throughout the 60s and 70s they were featured in numerous albums by a wide variety of artists. Moog’s synthesizer helped shape disco; it showed up in the Beatles, the Doors, and the Monkees; both Stevie Wonder and Tangerine Dream loved the Moog synthesizer; it made appearances in genres from country to rock to jazz.

R.A. Moog Co. began to produce the Minimoog (Model D) in 1970 – an extremely popular smaller version of the synthesizer that was better suited to live performances. But the 60s had bankrupt Moog as other producers with larger factories outstripped his namesake firm. Moog sold the company and rights to the Moog name in 1972. Five years later Moog left the company, now Moog Music, frustrated with weak marketing and bad management. For the next 30 years he continued to develop and produce analog and digital tools for synthesizers, but during the time he could not produce under his own name Moog made no new instruments. Until, in 2002, he won back the rights to produce under his own name and returned to Moog Music. He designed and improved instruments at Moog Music until his death three years later in 2005.

The Moog legacy is a powerful inspiration for innovation in electronic music. His life was dedicated to the creation of quality analog and digital sounds composed in beautiful, interesting, and instructive ways. His understanding and appreciation of sound manipulation and the joys it can bring are carried on by the Bob Moog Foundation. His daughter, Michelle Moog-Koussa, as the Director, remembers her father as a quiet, introspective, cool, quirky, funny guy with a rambunctious laugh who loved to teach. The Foundation teaches science through music, has a Grammy recognized archive of the Moog legacy, and plans to build a museum. They recently released Mooged Out Asheville, Volume 2, an album exemplifying the many ways Moog changed music with songs spanning far-flung genres from hip-hop to avant electronica, from dub-step to rock. To learn more about Bob Moog and how his life still touches ours, visit http://www.moogfoundation.org/.

By the way, since this tends to come up – CDM welcomes suggestions for innovators you’d like us to cover. The Bob Moog Foundation archives alone cover lots of early designers, inventors, composers, and musicians, not only Dr. Moog himself. If you’ve got an idea, let us know.

Watch for, at long last, a series remembering the history of Max Mathews shortly — I’ve been editing it. It’s great the assemblage of people who helped build the tools we use.

Moog made the scene, indeed. In this birthday week for Bob Moog, here’s a gallery looking back at the man and in advertisements, the Minimoog, the keyboard that shaped so much of synthesis to this day.

I could say more, but the images already say so much. Indeed, it seems we’re long overdue for a resurrection of this kind of romance with synthesis and electronic music technology. As I’m also editing remembrances of Max Mathews – a digital counterpart to Moog’s analog breakthroughs – I’d love to have someone do an image like the one on top for Max.

These images are also a reminder of how important the Bob Moog Foundation Archives are. Aside from being the source of these images, BMFA are working hard to get an accurate historical record of Moog and his circle. Moog’s legacy can easily be a catalyst for better understanding all early electronic music history, particularly in the US. Their work is essential and deserves our support:

The Bob Moog Foundation

The Foundation this week unearths an essay from 1951, as Moog writes – for college admission purposes – about what had already impacted his interest in science and learning, at age 17. Thank the Bronx High School of Science, for one.

I’ll let the rest of the images speak for themselves:

http://www.moogfoundation.org/
Supporting the Foundation

All photos courtesy the Bob Moog Foundation Archives, without whom so much of this history would simply be lost.

For more birthday wishes:

Synthtopia asks what you would tell Bob Moog if he were still alive.

Moog Music, via engineer Steve Dunnington, plays happy birthday for him on the instruments of his creation:

And here’s the history of the Minimoog I wrote for Keyboard Magazine last year, in which I sung one unsung hero at R.A. Moog, engineer Bill Hemsath.

Keyboard: The Minimoog at 40, and How A Legend Emerged from Spare Parts Bins

The Moog Minimoog has turned 40 years old. I got to write the cover story for this month’s Keyboard Magazine, following the history of the keyboard. I chronicled the details of the original Minimoog’s evolution largely through the accounts of Bill Hemsath, the man who built the first prototype of a synth imagined and developed by Hemsath, Bob Moog, Jim Scott, and Chad Hunt.

Whatever you make – music, hardware, software – the tale of the Minimoog’s birth through accident is especially compelling. Through Hemsath’s eyes, I revisited that genesis for Keyboard.

The future of the synth may have been determined by just which junked and cannibalized parts lay in storage. “There was a five-octave keyboard that [Bob] would steal key caps off of to replace chipped and broken ones,” Hemsath remembers. “Then there was an upper console case—it was four feet long but the end was broken out. So I got to work on the keyboard. The number of remaining keycaps determined its size, which turned out to be three octaves. So I hacksawed that down. There was a smashed keyboard case, and I cut it down to match. Originally, [Bob] had the portamento control on the left cheek. That was missing, so there was a little notch in the left cheek. And I needed something there. Well, how about a slider? That’d fit. So the forerunner of the wheel was that slide pot, just to fill that space.”

The result was the shell of what would become the Model A, the first Minimoog prototype. Hemsath bolted together modules from spare and rejected parts. “I’d sit down at my desk and take an apple out of one drawer and a module out of the other,” he says. By his count, just one model 901A oscillator was fresh stock; everything else was salvaged from Moog’s junk bin.

Actually, to me, it’s partly Hemsath story that badly needed telling – Bob Moog is a household name, but only the biggest synth history gurus know Hemsath. I’m deeply indebted to the Moog Foundation for allowing me to transcribe an interview with him they did just this summer; this is exactly the kind of work the foundation is doing to preserve the history of synthesis in general – Moog and beyond – and another reason why you should support their work.

Michelle Moog-Koussa, without whom I couldn’t have written this story, also has a must-read article from the same issue:
Bob Moog Lives

She details her father’s legacy, and the work the foundation does to reach out to students, their plans for a dream laboratory and museum, and more.

Of course, Moog isn’t just history, so for the we follow the parallel lines: Minimoog, Bob Moog, and the 70s, and then the ability of Dr. Moog to return to his vision with a reborn Moog Music company and the Voyager.

You can read the full story online:
The Minimoog at 40: From the Dawn of the Synth Age to New Voyages [Keyboard Magazine]

– but if you can get the newsstand copy, it’s well worth it for the nearly-pornographic foldout cover of the new Minimoog XL. Yes, we know your rational problems with the price or functionality of this instrument. No, it doesn’t change the visceral emotional reaction it inspires.

Thanks to Steve at Keyboard for the dream assignment, and to Emmy, Chris, and the crew at Moog Music, and Michelle at the Moog Foundation, for helping us put this together.

Moog’s Moogerfoogers, the boutique all-analog hardware effects units, are brilliant piece of sound gear. They’re accessible, terrific sounding, and exquisitely-designed in terms of interface and control. Even as a software person, I just have a lot of respect for the design of these boxes.

I’m sure Moog Music hopes you collect these things (oh, if I had that budget), but if you had to take just one Moogerfooger, the just-announced MF-105M might be your strongest candidate. First, it combines the two previous Moogerfooger MuRFs – that’s the Bob Moog-designed Multiple Resonance Filter Array. The MuRF (rhymes with “Smurf”) is basically eight filters which are sequenced to “animate” the effects in interesting ways. The original MuRF led to a set of bass filters, aimed at bass players or guitar players “looking for a heavier, darker sound.” Previously, you’d have to buy two separate Moogerfoogers to get both; the MF-105M just gives you both in one box.

More importantly, the “M” in the MF-105M stands for MIDI. Modulation is only fun if you have something with which you can modulate. As on the whole Moogerfooger line, you can use Control Voltage, but the MF-105M also uses MIDI, as seen in the demo video below.

• Change from pattern to pattern using MIDI Program Change
• Sync your patterns to tempo with MIDI Clock, so you can play along with a drum machine, Ableton Live, whatever
• Control any front panel with MIDI Control Change messages – for instance, control the envelope with your Mod Wheel
• Play the filters with MIDI notes

It’s still US$479, but you get what would otherwise require two of these units plus a MIDI-to-CV converter. And it’s all set up to use out of the box. It’s definitely a keyboardist and synthesist-friendly Moogerfooger – and for guitarists with MIDI guitars and a lot of imagination.

Moog Moogerfooger MF-105M

Thanks to Ben Hovey over at Moog for sending this our way. (And yes, everyone is free to send us your product news, please – can’t guarantee it won’t get lost in my frightening inbox, but…)

Available in August. Video (silly titles, but about halfway through they have some useful demos):

Craig Anderton is easily the most prolific music technology writer on the planet. We got an exclusive interview with him at Cakewalk at the NAMM show to talk about the technologist who has had the biggest impact on him: Bob Moog.

Craig talked to us about two projects, each a tribute to Moog’s legacy. First, there’s The Minimoog Tribute, an inexpensive expansion pack for Cakewalk’s Rapture and Rapture LE synths. Why another set of Moog samples, given there’s a fake Minimoog patch or thirty in just about every synth? Craig tells us he wanted to do something different: really create patches that “cover” the classics rather than duplicate them, taking advantage of samples of his personal Minimoog but blending them with Rapture’s digital capabilities.

Craig also talks about why he chose Rapture, because “it basically says twist my knobs, man, have a good time.” (I won’t touch that one.) In all seriousness, he describes the relationship with the synth as being a personal one.

And this isn’t just a preset pack. It’s got gear porn in it, too — cue the Moog porn bassline.

Craig Anderton’s MiniMoog Tribute Expansion Pack [Cakewalk]

Liz interviewed Craig for CDM at the Cakewalk booth:

NAMM08: Craig Anderton @ Cakewalk – Moog Tribute for Rapture [cdm@blip.tv]

But the real reason Craig wanted to have this interview wasn’t just to talk about his product — it was to make an impassioned plea for The Moog Foundation, which is working to save the vast archival materials Bob Moog collected through his life. They’re not just the history of Bob, or the history of Moog synthesizers: they’re a chronicle of the history of electronic music. And they now have met a formidable foe: humid southern weather. But you can help:

NAMM08: Craig Anderton @ Cakewalk – Moog Foundation [cdm@blip.tv]

A portion of the proceeds from the Minimoog expansion pack for Rapture will be donated by both Craig and Cakewalk to the fund, but even if you’ve only got $10 or $15, consider giving something directly to the foundation — or volunteer or contribute in other ways.

Moog Foundation Call to Action

Donation form

Have Moog synths influenced the way you use non-Moog synths and software? We’d love to hear how — aside from the obvious ways, of course. I know my approach to sound was deeply affected by using both the Buchla and Moog modular systems, even applying thinking about sound and synthesis to very different digital systems. Let us know in comments.