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 result is a powerful “modular synth without wires.”

Here’s CDM’s Adrian Anders’ take: “I tried out the demo during its beta period. All I have to say is wow. It sounds great, and at $199 it carries alot of bang for the buck when compared to other semi-modulars like Tera and Absynth.”

Or, as BT says: “the new Zebra s*** looks aaaaaamazing!”

Throw out that old synth?

Adrian points out that Urs Heckmann is doing something a bit unorthodox: featuring a gallery of vintage, synth hardware that’s supposedly been retired by Zebra2.

What qualifies as a dinosaur? “Not all synthesizers qualify for the Dinosaur Crossgrade offer. As the name implies, Dinosaur stands for a piece of musical hardware that has a certain vibe to it just when you say its name. It’s easy to imagine that such a piece of synthesizer history must have cost thousands of dollars back in the seventies or eighties. It certainly has a bunch of knobs on the panel and it certainly has a 3-5 octave keyboard. Well, maybe it has no integrated keyboard but a weird bunch of spaghetti hanging in front of it. Or patch cords, as they called it.”

Okay, let’s be honest. This is all supposed to be a marketing gimmick, and sending in a photo of the right kind of synth will earn you a US$50 coupon off of Zebra. Theoretically, the whole thing could be a statement about how software synthesizers allow richer sonic capabilities via a more programmable interface at a far cheaper price than pricey, bulky hardware synths once did — and that would be true.

But what you get, of course, is pages of gear pr0n:

Dinosaur Crossgrade Gallery

Hey, we can be software synth aficionados and still love that old hardware, right? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pull up a beach chair and sip a Cosmo with an old E-MU.

Software Ubersynth Shootout: It’s heating up a bit here, with Native’s just-announced Absynth4 and Massive, VirSyn’s TERA, Zebra2, and synths like Cakewalk’s Rapture. Each has a different take, but each seeks to redefine how synths work in software. Which synths would you want to see duke it out in this category?