Speaker 1: With Technology with tech Stuff from snoog. Hey there, and
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and with me
Speaker 1: today is Joe McCormick, my beloved co host from board
Speaker 1: Thinking for one or two. The other one's also beloved,
Speaker 1: but she's not here. That was a terrible introduction. Hey Joe,
Speaker 1: how you doing? Hey, how are you doing? I'm I'm
Speaker 1: doing fine. How are you? Jona? All right? So we're
Speaker 1: recording this in December, uh, well, in advance of when
Speaker 1: it will publish. It will publish in January. And Joe,
Speaker 1: you and I are kind of like right in the
Speaker 1: crunch for people who do podcasts and videos as holidays
Speaker 1: loom up. So I say that to alert our listeners
Speaker 1: that we might get a little loopy. And that's only
Speaker 1: kind of a pun because we're talking about mog synthesizers
Speaker 1: and sometimes musicians these loops. So yeah, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about mog synthesizers. And when I brought this up, I
Speaker 1: gave Joe a list of potential topics. These were all
Speaker 1: ones that were suggested by by listeners. So thank you
Speaker 1: guys for sending in your suggestions. That's awesome. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. And Mog synthesizers are kind of amazingly cool, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: They are not cool, they are cool. Okay, that's fair. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For the longest time I thought it was Moog. I
Speaker 1: thought it was Moog too. And when I told my
Speaker 1: wife Rachel that I was going to be recording an
Speaker 1: episode with you on on mog, she was like, what's that?
Speaker 1: And she was like, is it not Moog? And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I used to think the same thing.
Speaker 1: But apparently we're just all super ignorant because MOG is
Speaker 1: not an acronym for something. Doesn't stand for massive open
Speaker 1: online gorillas or mogic modular organic oh led garage. I
Speaker 1: don't know. No, it doesn't stand for anything. It's it's
Speaker 1: a person's last name rights the last name of old
Speaker 1: Bob Moog who not Moog Bob move. It's a hard
Speaker 1: habit to break, dude. No. I remember I did a
Speaker 1: podcast with Chris Palette years and years and years ago,
Speaker 1: and I think I said Moog synthesizer and that, and
Speaker 1: I was get some angry, angry letters. I was. I
Speaker 1: was thrashed about the neck and wrists with a with
Speaker 1: a ruler, which Chris kept on him. Chris, Yeah, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: he's a percussionist for one, and you know he's been
Speaker 1: in bands. You know, he opened for he opened for
Speaker 1: for Indigo Girls. I mean he's like, we're talking serious
Speaker 1: musician here, um, And I'm only slightly ripping him because
Speaker 1: that's all true. But no, he he was very kind
Speaker 1: actually to point out my my faux paw. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember many Indigo Girls songs being big on
Speaker 1: the Moges. No, I was just using that as a
Speaker 1: way of establishing Chris is uh musical chops in the
Speaker 1: sense that he was an established musician, not so much
Speaker 1: to specifically put him in a mog camp. I would
Speaker 1: like to attend Mogue camp. I bet it would be fun,
Speaker 1: But we wanted to start off before we get into
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty of Mogue. We wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about electronic music because part of the story
Speaker 1: is how electronic music wasn't always an acceptable musical format
Speaker 1: to the general public, but of course now it's it's
Speaker 1: an incredibly huge, uh genre of music. Well, despite being
Speaker 1: really popular among some people. I mean, there are lots
Speaker 1: of people who love electronic music and that's their favorite
Speaker 1: genre of music. There is still sometimes you'll see a
Speaker 1: kind of I don't know what you call it, a
Speaker 1: kind of acoustic elitism snobbery that isn't so much at
Speaker 1: electronic music itself, though you do encounter that a little bit,
Speaker 1: like like explicitly electronic music, But a lot of times
Speaker 1: I see it at music that is that uses electronically
Speaker 1: generated tones in conjunction with traditional arrangements and instruments, So
Speaker 1: like pop songs that have synthesizers in them, there are
Speaker 1: like snobby, elitist opinions against that, and I wonder why
Speaker 1: that is. I mean, I know there is there's sort
Speaker 1: of a general idea that electronically generated tones are fake,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, they're like it's almost like they're
Speaker 1: not real sound. Yeah, when you get down to it,
Speaker 1: when you really peel away all the layers of this onion,
Speaker 1: you realize how ludicrous an argument that is. Because a
Speaker 1: musical instrument is a construct we used to generate sound. It.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily have any electronic components to it, but
Speaker 1: it's still a tool that we're used to create these
Speaker 1: musical notes. Like there's nothing natural. You don't go to
Speaker 1: the violin tree and pluck a violin off the violin jury, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, these are all tools and well, it's sure,
Speaker 1: but my wardrobe broke down like three years ago, so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go to the old school violin
Speaker 1: maker who makes fake violin. Yeah, exactly, Like you should
Speaker 1: be arguing like, well, you're not singing, so you're just
Speaker 1: doing You're just faking it, like unless you're using the
Speaker 1: human voice and tapping upon your own barrel chest for percussion, you, sir,
Speaker 1: are not a musician. Well, this is a concept we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to revisit throughout the episode today because I
Speaker 1: think it is a central theme of the career of
Speaker 1: Robert mog But I thought it would be good to
Speaker 1: start just by asking you what is some of your
Speaker 1: favorite electronic music. You don't have to be moge centric here,
Speaker 1: because that might be kind of limiting if if I
Speaker 1: just say, played on a mogue with electronically generated tones,
Speaker 1: what do you like? Okay, So I'm just gonna run
Speaker 1: through these pretty quickly, because I mean, obviously we could
Speaker 1: we could have an entire podcast dedicated to music. Effect
Speaker 1: we used to have a music oriented podcast from How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. Haven't done it in ages? It was stuff
Speaker 1: from the B sides. I would love to see that
Speaker 1: come back sometime. But here's some First of all, have
Speaker 1: to mention daft punk, uh obviously, like that's like the
Speaker 1: kind of clear front runner of electronic music as far
Speaker 1: as mainstream awareness is concerned, outside of just the electronica fans,
Speaker 1: who are of course their knowledge runs far more deep
Speaker 1: than mine. Um. I could also just lump in pretty
Speaker 1: much any band that was part of the new wave movement,
Speaker 1: because new wave was very electronic heavy and in certain
Speaker 1: parts of that uh, that movement. Yes, the the the
Speaker 1: post punk new wave movement. I love that that genre
Speaker 1: of music as well. Um, the soundtrack to the original
Speaker 1: Tron movie, I love it. I also like Tron Legacy,
Speaker 1: which again goes back to daft punk. But I love
Speaker 1: the soundtrack to the original Tron movie. You know, we
Speaker 1: both fight for the users. Yes, and that was scored
Speaker 1: by Wendy Carlos, and Wendy Carlos is very important in
Speaker 1: the history of MOG because Wendy Carlos also did an
Speaker 1: album called Switched on Bach, which was an early album
Speaker 1: that really uh pushed MOG into the limelight. Like it
Speaker 1: it was a very popular album. It hit top twenty
Speaker 1: charts and I own this on vinyl. It is at
Speaker 1: my house right now. I have a vinyl copy of
Speaker 1: Switched on Bach. Now did that album actually make an
Speaker 1: appearance in the movie A Clockwork Orange? Or was that
Speaker 1: that was Wendy Carlos scoring? When Carlos scored music and
Speaker 1: that oh wait, that was Beethoven, wasn't it Beethoven was
Speaker 1: the piece? That was the music that was That's right,
Speaker 1: the lindvig Van. But Wendy Carlos scored Clockwork Orange. She
Speaker 1: also scored the Shining Um and then also, I like
Speaker 1: the soundtrack to Lady Hawk. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: You don't know Lady Hawk is. Lady Hawk is a
Speaker 1: fantasy film from the mid eighties and it starred Matthew
Speaker 1: Broderick as a thief. No no, he was a thief
Speaker 1: named mouse. Rutger Howard played a no. Rugger Howard was
Speaker 1: a a like canthrope who was in love with a
Speaker 1: a young lady played by um By Lady Hawk. Well,
Speaker 1: she was the Lady Hawk, but the name suddenly escapes
Speaker 1: me and that's terrible, but anyway, and it will kill me.
Speaker 1: People right in and tell me who was Michelle Pfiffer,
Speaker 1: Michelle Phifer, she was Lady Hawk. Uh. So, the story
Speaker 1: goes that he turns into uh, a wolf at night,
Speaker 1: she turns into Rugger Howard. She turns into a bird
Speaker 1: in the daytime. They are in love with one another,
Speaker 1: but they can never be together because as one is
Speaker 1: transforming into human, the other one's transforming into animal. And
Speaker 1: it's this kind of story of tragedy as they as
Speaker 1: Rugger Howard's character is looking to enact revenge upon the
Speaker 1: the person who has cursed them to this existence. Marger
Speaker 1: Howard has so many time related struggles. He wants more life.
Speaker 1: He needs to be a day wolf. Yep. So the
Speaker 1: The soundtrack is a mixture of orchestral uh and pop
Speaker 1: scynth rock and uh. Some people absolutely detest it. I
Speaker 1: love it. I love it because it is very much
Speaker 1: a thing of its time. It would not fit in
Speaker 1: any other time period. Like if this movie remain in
Speaker 1: the nineties and it had that soundtrack, you would be
Speaker 1: scratching your head wondering why. But in the eighties it
Speaker 1: was right there at the forefront of this pop scynth
Speaker 1: score movement that some people hate but I love also.
Speaker 1: I mean I mentioned switched on Bach. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of the Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade. I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. So it's a
Speaker 1: parade that was very popular at Disney World in Disneyland.
Speaker 1: Don't know if they still do it. Parade and actual parade. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would go oh and and find a spot on
Speaker 1: Main Street and wait and the floats. It was at night,
Speaker 1: and the floats were all lit up with various led lights.
Speaker 1: I think that are originally like incandescent lights when it
Speaker 1: was first going, because that's how old the parade, sure,
Speaker 1: and uh, the the but the music was all electronic
Speaker 1: music and very peppy, and it included motifs from various
Speaker 1: Disney films like Mary Poppins and Pete's Dragon and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And um and I had that on vinyl.
Speaker 1: It's a little uh uh, a little uh tiny um,
Speaker 1: which is great. There was an album called The mog Cookbook.
Speaker 1: Did you ever hear this? So? I didn't hear this
Speaker 1: came out in the mid nineties. The Moge Cookbook is
Speaker 1: a cover album. Uh the cover the songs are all
Speaker 1: like from the mid nineties, but covered with bogus. So
Speaker 1: you've got like, wait, is it not the Moke Coke Boke. No,
Speaker 1: it's not the Mog Coke Boke. It's the mog Cookbook.
Speaker 1: I looked it up. Uh yeah, it included a black
Speaker 1: Hole Sun, Buddy Holly, basket Case, free Fallen smells like
Speaker 1: teen Spirit, and several other songs. Wait, it included the
Speaker 1: artist Buddy Holly or the song Buddy the song Buddy Hollybyewheeler,
Speaker 1: because they were all from that that general era. And
Speaker 1: I also have an un ironic love for the music
Speaker 1: of sticks, in which keyboard solos often play a pivotal role. Well,
Speaker 1: it can't fault you there some of my own favorite
Speaker 1: electronic music, like you. A lot of the electronic music
Speaker 1: that came to mind was from soundtracks. Of course. I
Speaker 1: think of the Doctor Who theme, which is a wonderful
Speaker 1: early electronic masterpiece. It was composed in the BBC Audio
Speaker 1: workshops by somebody named Delia derby Shire, or actually I
Speaker 1: think it was composed originally by somebody else as a
Speaker 1: piece of written music, but realized electronically in a fascinating
Speaker 1: and wonderful way by by Derbyshire. At the BBC then
Speaker 1: so much so that the original composer actually said, at
Speaker 1: this point this music is not really my own anymore.
Speaker 1: It's it's Derby Shire's. And not that that. It wasn't
Speaker 1: wasn't distancing from the music. It wasn't saying like this
Speaker 1: is a bad thing, but this is a remarkable thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also I would have to mention the electronic compositions
Speaker 1: of one John Carpenter. For example, I cannot get enough
Speaker 1: of the soundtrack of Halloween three Season of the Witch,
Speaker 1: a movie with much better music than it deserves. Now
Speaker 1: did they use the same motif as the Michael Myers
Speaker 1: motif and Halloween's one and two? It's been a lontesis.
Speaker 1: It's different, it's got it's got some of some kind
Speaker 1: of similar themes weaving in and out, but but it's
Speaker 1: its own thing. You should dun dunt dun dundu dun
Speaker 1: mean that shows up a little, But you should just
Speaker 1: listen to the Halloween three soundtrack. It's great electronic music.
Speaker 1: I'll have to take a listen. Yeah, I love the
Speaker 1: John Carpenter stuff like I love his stuff from Big Trumble,
Speaker 1: Little China, and and uh, you know, like even some
Speaker 1: of the things that are are He's playing songs that
Speaker 1: are more guitar driven, but you can tell the instead
Speaker 1: of guitar, they're using a synthesizer, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: That's a kind of different thing once you start talking
Speaker 1: about digitally edited together music. But also, earlier today, because
Speaker 1: I knew we were going to do this, I asked
Speaker 1: my co host, one of my co hosts from Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb, about his favorite old
Speaker 1: school SyncE stuff and he recommended a guy named Mort Garson,
Speaker 1: who had never heard of before, but who performs under
Speaker 1: the He did perform under one name, Lucifer was the
Speaker 1: performer artist's name, and there was an album unreleased him
Speaker 1: to the artist name Lucifer. That's just great. I listened
Speaker 1: to it earlier today and I loved it. It's very moogie.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was actually done on a Moog,
Speaker 1: but it it sounds like it's got that old school synthesizers.
Speaker 1: Sounds analog um. But but we should get to the
Speaker 1: origin of the Moog story. Moog the Mogue. We should
Speaker 1: get to the origin of the Moge story. So who
Speaker 1: was Bob Mog? Yeah, and and keep in mind like
Speaker 1: when we talk about the Moge story and we're talking
Speaker 1: about the birth of the analog synthesizer. There were other
Speaker 1: groups also working on synthesizers at the same time as Moge,
Speaker 1: but Mogue's name has sort of become iconic in this
Speaker 1: idea of the analog physical circuitry synthesizer for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: So who was he, Well, he's he was born in Queens,
Speaker 1: New York on May and as a kid he became
Speaker 1: really interested in electronics, just thought it was a fascinating thing,
Speaker 1: and so he really kind of dove into it. And
Speaker 1: he also was really interested in the idea of using
Speaker 1: electronics to make music. I think it's called mosic maybe,
Speaker 1: uh he He however, was not um a musician himself
Speaker 1: or mosician if you prefer. He was not a musician himself,
Speaker 1: but he liked the thought of creating the instruments that
Speaker 1: would be you know, would allow someone else to make music.
Speaker 1: And one of the first things he really became interested
Speaker 1: in was the thereman, which we have covered on tech
Speaker 1: stuff before. The thereman had been invented back in the twenties,
Speaker 1: so he was that had already been around for quite
Speaker 1: some time before Mogue was even born, but Mog got
Speaker 1: interested in it. And in case you don't remember what
Speaker 1: a thereman is, just imagine a box that has a
Speaker 1: pair of antenna. Typically you have one vertical antenna and
Speaker 1: one horizontal antenna poking out of this box, and the
Speaker 1: antenna rely on radio waves around them, and as you
Speaker 1: move your hands closer to in a way from you
Speaker 1: start to interfere with the waves that are around this antenna.
Speaker 1: You never make contact, or you don't you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to make contact with the antenna. You don't have to.
Speaker 1: It's just by bringing your hands closer and moving them
Speaker 1: further apart, you can change a tone that is generated
Speaker 1: by this device. Now sound like Just imagine in your
Speaker 1: head all of the goofy bad horror and sci fi
Speaker 1: movies you saw in the nineteen fifties, especially sci fi
Speaker 1: yeah that was big, like yeah and uh and typically
Speaker 1: like not. Typically, the way it would work is that
Speaker 1: one of the antenna would would change the pitch as
Speaker 1: you moved your hand closer and further away, and the
Speaker 1: other one controlled the volume. So as you're one is
Speaker 1: one is how high the flying saucer is often and
Speaker 1: the other one is how close it's coming towards you, yeah,
Speaker 1: or whether it's moving towards you or away from you.
Speaker 1: All right, so I like, oh, it's getting closer because
Speaker 1: Doppler effect, right, Uh so yeah, it's It was a
Speaker 1: really interesting and odd musical device, and mog was really
Speaker 1: interested in them. He built his first one when he
Speaker 1: was either fourteen or fifteen. I've seen reports that site
Speaker 1: one age or the other. But right in that friend
Speaker 1: that a year I saw. I think it was nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four that he's well, no way, I think that's
Speaker 1: when he said he sold his first one, right, So
Speaker 1: he started building them when he was still a teenager.
Speaker 1: By the age of nineteen, that's when he started a
Speaker 1: business them. Yeah, he actually and he didn't just sell theremans.
Speaker 1: He did do that, but he also sold kits and
Speaker 1: partially constructed ones. So in other words, he was helping
Speaker 1: other d I Y enthusiasts. I assume that if you
Speaker 1: wanted a completed kit, then that would obviously be more
Speaker 1: expensive than just buying the parts from him and then
Speaker 1: the instructions and putting them together yourself. Um, And he
Speaker 1: and his father kind of created a business together and
Speaker 1: it was the r A Mo company. Uh. He then
Speaker 1: would go on to attend college and go on to
Speaker 1: graduate school at Cornell and while he was there he
Speaker 1: was studying physical engineering and in nineteen sixty three he
Speaker 1: met a guy named Walter Sear who was a tuba manufacturer. Manufacturer. No,
Speaker 1: how many times are we going to do this? You're
Speaker 1: not the one who gets the email Joe manacturer? Yes,
Speaker 1: how many will have that job? At least one a right,
Speaker 1: at least one manfacturers operate in the world at the
Speaker 1: same time. You do wonder what the you know, how
Speaker 1: tuba's have to last a long time? Right, there's gotta
Speaker 1: be a major resella expired. I gotta check it out.
Speaker 1: Hading to go buy a new tuba? Uh so yeah,
Speaker 1: he he met Walter Seer and Seer thought that Mog
Speaker 1: was an interesting guy and said that Mog should uh
Speaker 1: go to the New York State School Music Association gathering.
Speaker 1: And while he was there, he met another guy named
Speaker 1: Herb Deutsch, and Deutsch was part of the experimental music
Speaker 1: movement that was starting to really kind of play with
Speaker 1: the idea of what is music and what what can
Speaker 1: be music and what can music do? Like really pushing
Speaker 1: the boundary going beyond just the simple construction of a
Speaker 1: song and and getting really weird stuff. And Mog talks
Speaker 1: about how it was his meeting with deut that sort
Speaker 1: of really got him interested in electronic music and wanting
Speaker 1: to build equipment that would help us create new kinds
Speaker 1: of sounds. Yeah, the two of them kind of agreed
Speaker 1: that this would be a really interesting prospect, the idea
Speaker 1: of building a device specifically to create new sounds for music.
Speaker 1: And so, with Deutsche's urging, that's what most out to do,
Speaker 1: and he created a shop near Ithaca, New York, UH
Speaker 1: and began to experiment using silicon transistors as the basic components.
Speaker 1: Transistors were kind of a game changer at the time, right, absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally changing what you could do with electronic equipment. Well,
Speaker 1: it certainly changed, yes, And the main reason is because
Speaker 1: they took up less space and generated less heat than
Speaker 1: the alternatives, right, because it would be vacuum too, exactly.
Speaker 1: So there were certainly electronics before transistors, but they were
Speaker 1: larger and they generated way more heat. And so if
Speaker 1: you wanted to have and electronic device that was a
Speaker 1: musical instrument. For the invention of the transistor you're looking
Speaker 1: at some pretty unwieldy equipment. It's gonna be bigger and
Speaker 1: hotter than what you would find later on once you
Speaker 1: switched over to transistors. So he began to look at
Speaker 1: transistors to be the basis of the circuitry he would
Speaker 1: use to create a Mogue musical instrument, and uh, he
Speaker 1: found that he could alter the pitch, like as long
Speaker 1: as he created frequencies that were within the range of
Speaker 1: human hearing. He could alter the pitch by changing the
Speaker 1: voltage in various circuits before sending that signal out to
Speaker 1: to allowed speaker. So as long as you keep the
Speaker 1: frequency between say, twenty hurts and twenty thousand hurts, that's
Speaker 1: the range of human hearing, then you can do that.
Speaker 1: If you go beyond that, obviously, then you most people
Speaker 1: are unable to perceive it. And obviously not everyone has
Speaker 1: exactly that range, right. Some people start, especially as you
Speaker 1: get older, you start to lose they to perceive at
Speaker 1: the higher end, which is why I no longer hear children.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I remember those stories about the cell phone
Speaker 1: tones that only kids could hear because they're too high
Speaker 1: pitch for adults to hear. Was that true or was
Speaker 1: that that, I hope, I don't know. I heard a
Speaker 1: similar story about how how like um gas stations were
Speaker 1: employing loudspeaker systems that would play that pitch at a
Speaker 1: high volume because adults couldn't hear it and it discouraged
Speaker 1: kids from loitering. Man, that's that's that's that's another story
Speaker 1: I heard, But I don't know if that's true. If
Speaker 1: you wanted to be a really cool uh synthesizer musician,
Speaker 1: you could create a musical instrument that only plays in
Speaker 1: the frequency range that adults can't hear, and so you
Speaker 1: couldn't have a stodgy adults coming into your concert and
Speaker 1: just well I guess you could have them just they're
Speaker 1: pretending or they would or they just say like I
Speaker 1: don't understand the music these days, uh, or yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: I hear it. Man, you go a step further and
Speaker 1: you just make music for dogs. You know you could
Speaker 1: do that? So? Uh So Moe created a circuit. One
Speaker 1: of the one of the music stores I go to
Speaker 1: here in town called its Decatur c D. If you
Speaker 1: go in there, there's an album they sell they've always
Speaker 1: got in stock that I think is called music for Dogs.
Speaker 1: There might be called like music, dogs love. I've never
Speaker 1: listened to it. Yeah, yeah, just be a bunch of
Speaker 1: cats melling. I don't know what it is, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: a doorbell. Occasionally. Have to ask about it next time. Well,
Speaker 1: Moe created a circuit that produced a pitch and then
Speaker 1: with an increase of one vault, that pitch would go
Speaker 1: up one octave. That's convenient, right, and then the pitch
Speaker 1: would change back and forth using different types of wave forms,
Speaker 1: which I will cover later on in this episode. So
Speaker 1: I'll explain all about the different wave forms because that's
Speaker 1: an important part of what makes a mogue sound the
Speaker 1: way it does, and other analog synthesizers as well. Um,
Speaker 1: and it would create the sort of weird vibratos sound.
Speaker 1: And he gave the instrument his own last name, possibly
Speaker 1: following the lead of Theriman. Therreman was named after the
Speaker 1: guy who invented it. You know that it's not a
Speaker 1: word that was made up for the device. It's actually
Speaker 1: named after the inventor. It sounds like a made up word,
Speaker 1: it does. But it was somebody named like like Jeff Thereman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was exactly that. It was Jeff Thereman. It was not,
Speaker 1: but at any rate. No, it's he decided to name
Speaker 1: it after himself. You know, there are tapes of Mog
Speaker 1: giving early demonstrations of of his synthesizer equipment when he
Speaker 1: when he was very first developing it. And in one
Speaker 1: of those tapes that I heard by listening to the
Speaker 1: documentary Mogue, which which is a documentary that that I
Speaker 1: watched online about Robert Mog. Yeah, and it's available on YouTube,
Speaker 1: so you can actually watch the whole thing, right, it
Speaker 1: might be a bootleg. I don't know. Well, well, it
Speaker 1: definitely is there. If you want to unethically watch the
Speaker 1: whole thing, it's on there. But yeah, so there there
Speaker 1: was a nineteen sixty four demonstration where Mog is talking
Speaker 1: about a prototype modular synthesizer and he calls it the
Speaker 1: Abominatron and I love that. So he obviously has a
Speaker 1: sense of humor about it. But it does kind of
Speaker 1: get to a problem that Mog started noticing when he
Speaker 1: was first making his his synthesizers public. He says that
Speaker 1: people reacted to it by saying it wasn't natural. He
Speaker 1: says that, you know, the first response was that it
Speaker 1: was just not right, something about using this electronic means
Speaker 1: of creating musical pitch was not the way things should
Speaker 1: be in music. And he even tells a story where
Speaker 1: there's an interviewer who was, you know, interviewing him about
Speaker 1: his new technology, and he leans into him and the
Speaker 1: interviewer says, tell me, Mr Mog, don't you feel guilty
Speaker 1: about what you've done? Sick burn? And so MoG's interpretation
Speaker 1: of that is that the the reporter's point of view
Speaker 1: was that by creating the means to generate tones without
Speaker 1: traditional instruments made of wood or brass or plucking strings
Speaker 1: or something like that, he was somehow perverting and destroying music,
Speaker 1: doing something offensive to an ancient tradition from human culture,
Speaker 1: which again to me, is ludicrous on the very face
Speaker 1: of it, because the history of music is one of innovation,
Speaker 1: where people have created instruments that are more capable than
Speaker 1: their predecessors. Right, the piano forte is a lot different
Speaker 1: than the ancestors to the piano. Well, yeah, and I
Speaker 1: hate to break it to these people, but the piano
Speaker 1: has not existed for ten thousand years. The piano is
Speaker 1: only a few hundred years old, right, And before that
Speaker 1: they were, you know, you had the harpsichord, where you
Speaker 1: had the plucking of metal tabs as opposed to the
Speaker 1: percussion of strings. And if you look at the history
Speaker 1: of music again, it is all about innovation, and so
Speaker 1: I think it was just that it sounded so different
Speaker 1: from the stuff that came before it that people's initial
Speaker 1: reaction was one of confusion, and maybe they were a
Speaker 1: little unsettled that this thing that did not have any
Speaker 1: moving parts to it, unlike something like, you know, a
Speaker 1: stringed instrument where you can actually see the action that
Speaker 1: is creating the sound that you hear, or a wind
Speaker 1: instrument where you can see that the musician is breathing
Speaker 1: life into this object and you're getting music out of it.
Speaker 1: This is a monstrosity of a machine of wires and
Speaker 1: transistors that you know when you press a button a
Speaker 1: sound comes out of it. And I think it must
Speaker 1: have just felt like it was too far removed for
Speaker 1: some people to be comfortable with it. Well, one possibility
Speaker 1: that comes up this is also from MoG's comments in
Speaker 1: that documentary, and I think this is really interesting. I've
Speaker 1: always thought of the idea of a synthesizer as Okay,
Speaker 1: it has that name because it creates something synthetic like
Speaker 1: there are natural sounds, and then there are synthetic sounds,
Speaker 1: as in fake sounds created by this fake sound making machine,
Speaker 1: the synthesizer. The idea, the idea being that this this
Speaker 1: device can synthesize the sound of other quote unquote real
Speaker 1: musical instruments. But that's not at all the sense in
Speaker 1: which the name was originally intended. It Originally, Mog says,
Speaker 1: the term synthesizer came from the other main meaning of synthesis,
Speaker 1: like the combination of elements to create a whole. Like
Speaker 1: when you, you you know, you take a bunch of research
Speaker 1: sources and synthesize them into a single coherent vision of something, right,
Speaker 1: like a like a dissertation of some sort. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be synthesis. Uh, and so in that applies to
Speaker 1: his technology because originally what Mog was creating was individual
Speaker 1: modules for modulating sounds. So you'd make a module that
Speaker 1: generates a square way, or a module that does this,
Speaker 1: or module that does that. And if you combine all
Speaker 1: these modules together into a single huge instrument that you
Speaker 1: can manipulate in lots of different ways, you're essentially creating
Speaker 1: an electronic music modulation synthesis. It's a synthesizer. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's a hole that's greater than the sum of its
Speaker 1: parts in many ways, because these modules are arranged in
Speaker 1: such a way so that you can connect them in
Speaker 1: in different ways dynamically, like you can change the connections,
Speaker 1: so it's not like you can plug one into another
Speaker 1: or you can buy Now you've made a new type
Speaker 1: of machine. And that's that's the I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: whole basis of modular electronics and modular inventions. It's this
Speaker 1: idea that by making these combinations you can innovate. We've
Speaker 1: seen that in technology and other areas to the idea,
Speaker 1: like the modular phone where you put a phone together
Speaker 1: with just the elements that you want. And there are
Speaker 1: a couple of different companies that are trying this approach
Speaker 1: out and it you know, we'll have to wait and
Speaker 1: see if that actually becomes successful, but it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting idea where the consumer determines what his or her
Speaker 1: phone has just based on the modules you want to include,
Speaker 1: and you leave out anything you're not interested in. Well,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the same idea behind the synthesizer, except
Speaker 1: of course, the goal was what are the different ways
Speaker 1: we can manipulate electronic frequencies to create different types of sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so eventually Mog did bring a model to market. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He He actually made quite a few different models. One
Speaker 1: of them, one of the ones that was in development
Speaker 1: for a very long time was the Mini Moog. I
Speaker 1: think that was a popular one. Yeah. So the Mogs
Speaker 1: are um like, if you're thinking of just a keyboard,
Speaker 1: your way off mog is buying a Mogue is like
Speaker 1: buying a boat. Yeah. I mean they talked about it
Speaker 1: in in some detail in this documentary where Mog talks
Speaker 1: about how when they sold these things originally it was
Speaker 1: kind of a tricky business because it wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're generating Fender stratocasters and things sell a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: of them a month or something like that. I don't
Speaker 1: know how many stratocasters, but it wasn't a mass market item.
Speaker 1: They were making them one at a time and selling
Speaker 1: them one at a time, and they were very bulky
Speaker 1: and very expensive, and so most of their customers were
Speaker 1: people who had a lot of money and expected to
Speaker 1: get a lot of use out of the machine. So,
Speaker 1: for example, like a music house studio that recorded commercial
Speaker 1: jingles or something like soundtracks to nineteen fifties science fiction films. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the way I tend to describe these early synthesizers, these
Speaker 1: analog synthesizers, is that imagine that you've got a keyboard
Speaker 1: and it's attached to a what looks like a old
Speaker 1: fashioned telephone switchboard, the kind where you would plug cables
Speaker 1: and to make the connections like, uh, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: ring her for you, and you plug the cable in
Speaker 1: and then you make the actual physical connection between two
Speaker 1: lines similar to that, except of course, instead of connecting
Speaker 1: two lines, you are connecting modules together to manipulate an
Speaker 1: electronic signal in some way. When I used to see
Speaker 1: mog synthesizer boards with all of the cables hanging out
Speaker 1: of them, what I honestly thought was that this was
Speaker 1: just people. It was like intentional obscurity. I thought it
Speaker 1: was people just trying to look cool or be funny
Speaker 1: by having all these cables hanging out. No, that's how
Speaker 1: you make the sound of your instrument is by plugging
Speaker 1: like fifty different cables into different places. Right, And it
Speaker 1: all depends on how many modules you have as part
Speaker 1: of your synthesize, Right, that's if you have one of
Speaker 1: the big ones, yeah, because because I mean if you
Speaker 1: have just a few modules, then one your synthesizer is
Speaker 1: going to be more limited. You won't be able to
Speaker 1: do as many variations on that electronic signal as you
Speaker 1: could with one that has a lot more modules, but
Speaker 1: it also be maller like. That was the idea that
Speaker 1: Mini Moge, right, was the idea that let's try and
Speaker 1: get something that is of a manageable size because these
Speaker 1: are big instruments. Um. So, one of the other models
Speaker 1: that became famous with the Moge name, and somewhat controversially
Speaker 1: is the Sonic six, which began its life as a
Speaker 1: different device that was made by someone who had originally
Speaker 1: worked for Mogue left the company ended up joining another company.
Speaker 1: That company ended up buying Mogue because, as you were
Speaker 1: pointing out the business model Mogue was following, it's pretty limited.
Speaker 1: It was it was hard to make a profit, it
Speaker 1: was hard to stay afloat. And so I believe that
Speaker 1: that Moge was sold for something like a quarter of
Speaker 1: a million dollars, which was the amount of debt it
Speaker 1: had accrued. And but they decided to keep the Mogue
Speaker 1: name because it had real brand recognition among musicians, and
Speaker 1: they actually did take this pre existing Prototoel Hype that
Speaker 1: was originally not a Mogue device, changed it around a
Speaker 1: little bit by adding in some components that were found
Speaker 1: in Mogue devices and put that the market. So it's
Speaker 1: the Sonic six is very different from the other Mogue
Speaker 1: instruments of that time. But um and it's one of
Speaker 1: those that that still like like aficionados still really love
Speaker 1: that particular instrument. Uh. Mog himself passed away in two
Speaker 1: thousand five, but the Moge brand name still exists. You
Speaker 1: can still buy products from Mog. It's not it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's not not as bad as Atari, but it
Speaker 1: is kind of different from the original Moge company. But
Speaker 1: but it has a stronger claim to that name than
Speaker 1: say anything that you call Atari these days. That name
Speaker 1: is is long since severed all connection to its origins. Well,
Speaker 1: then what is it you really think of as being
Speaker 1: the essence of the legacy of Moga. I don't know
Speaker 1: to what extent this is true about the products they
Speaker 1: create to a but historically I think of Mog as
Speaker 1: being a company associated with analog electronic music, as opposed
Speaker 1: to digitally digitally created electronic tones. Yeah, and and the
Speaker 1: difference there is important. Although you could argue that our
Speaker 1: our ability to get ever more refined digital music has
Speaker 1: largely erased the gap between the two, there still is
Speaker 1: a fundamental difference in the technology. And UH the best
Speaker 1: way of of explaining this is to imagine that the
Speaker 1: sound you get with analog UH instrumentation and analog recording
Speaker 1: is a continuous wave of sound, right like, just as
Speaker 1: I am creating sound right now to you, Joe, maybe
Speaker 1: not to the listeners because they're listening to a digital file,
Speaker 1: but to you, Joe, I'm creating sound is a continuous
Speaker 1: a wave every time I'm generating that sound, right, But
Speaker 1: you you listeners at home, or it unfortunately just a
Speaker 1: sampling's voice, because that's the digital conversion. So if you
Speaker 1: were to look at analog music in a in a
Speaker 1: form where you're you know, you're trying to visualize it,
Speaker 1: we always use the wave form, right, That's that's how
Speaker 1: we we visually depict a a sound file or a
Speaker 1: sound or rather a sound wave in an analog format. UM.
Speaker 1: And this is because it's continuous. There's no point where
Speaker 1: in one moment it ends in the next moment it begins.
Speaker 1: For for a single sound, it's it's continuous until the
Speaker 1: sound is done. Um. This is different from digital. Digital
Speaker 1: is discreete digital. You have numbers that represent a single
Speaker 1: slice of time at which point there is a sound,
Speaker 1: and the number of slices of time you have within
Speaker 1: say a second, tells you the sample rate that you
Speaker 1: have for your digital sound file. The sample rate is
Speaker 1: how many times you sample that sound within a second
Speaker 1: h to represent it in a digital format. The more
Speaker 1: times you do it, the closer it's going to sound
Speaker 1: to the original analog source. But also the more information
Speaker 1: you are including in your sound file. Your file gets
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger as your sample rate goes up. Right,
Speaker 1: But if your sample rate is really low, then it's
Speaker 1: almost like you are only able to listen to a
Speaker 1: fraction of a second of each moment that you're listening
Speaker 1: to music. It will be a very different experience than
Speaker 1: if it's a continuous experience. You know, a continuous uh
Speaker 1: performance and all that that all applies to playback and
Speaker 1: stuffy like recording a piece of music and then playing
Speaker 1: it back. You could have an analog playback format like
Speaker 1: a vinyl record or digital playback format like an MP
Speaker 1: three or f C thing. Uh. But but here we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about the generation of sounds inside the machine,
Speaker 1: and that happens differently in digital versus analog ways to
Speaker 1: So in the digital version, and the way MOG would
Speaker 1: explain it is, you know, you've got a sound saved
Speaker 1: in memory that's represented digitally a set of values. You
Speaker 1: call that up, you send it to the speakers, and
Speaker 1: the speakers play it, so they create the vibrations there.
Speaker 1: With an analog generated tone, what's coming out of the
Speaker 1: speakers is generated by the natural vibrations of the electronic
Speaker 1: components in the machine, right. And by by vibrations, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the frequency of the the electronic signal, So
Speaker 1: it's the circuitry that's making the sound as opposed to
Speaker 1: just replicating something with one's zeros. It is a bit
Speaker 1: of a fine distinction. There's also there's also another concept
Speaker 1: called sample precision, which tells you how big a gradation
Speaker 1: you have when you're doing a step from one sampled
Speaker 1: moment of a of a piece to the next, um Like,
Speaker 1: are you able to get that so precise that it
Speaker 1: feels like a continuous piece of music. Because one of
Speaker 1: the things about a analog wave is that you have
Speaker 1: an infinite number of values within any analog wave, right,
Speaker 1: because you could just keep getting more and more fine tuned.
Speaker 1: So uh like, if you're looking at a sixty hurts
Speaker 1: uh frequency sound wave where it's going from positive sixty
Speaker 1: to negative sixty hurts any point in there, you could say, like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, here's twenty hurts right here, this is
Speaker 1: the part of a period of a wave where it's
Speaker 1: a twenty hurts. But then you could zoom in and say, okay,
Speaker 1: well here's twenty point five hurts. You can zoom in more,
Speaker 1: is it? Here's twenty point five five hurts, and you
Speaker 1: could keep on doing that. With digital you can't. You
Speaker 1: have a specific value for a specific moment of time,
Speaker 1: and then you have a specific value for the next
Speaker 1: moment of time. But there's nothing in between. You can't
Speaker 1: you can't zoom in any further. You are as far
Speaker 1: in as you can go. So they are discreet. There
Speaker 1: is a finite amount of representation in a digital file.
Speaker 1: There's infinite and analog. Jonathan, are you trying to get
Speaker 1: me to have thoughts about my mortality? You know? I
Speaker 1: got some stuff to sell you after the end of
Speaker 1: this podcast, but I'll save it for when we're off
Speaker 1: the air. So one thing I thought would be really cool, obviously,
Speaker 1: is to talk about these modules, the circuitry that are
Speaker 1: that's in a Mogue synthesizer, and actually explain what the
Speaker 1: heck these things do, because if you know, we're talking
Speaker 1: about generalities and and the principles behind it, but how
Speaker 1: does it actually work? Right? Well, we we mentioned before
Speaker 1: that the the this idea of a synthesizer is made
Speaker 1: out of modules, and that's modules in the sense of
Speaker 1: something being modular right there. There are pieces that you
Speaker 1: can insert and exchange, and the basic ideas that each
Speaker 1: module does something pacific and relatively simple. You get even
Speaker 1: more simple when you look at the components within those modules.
Speaker 1: They are they are like the embodiment of that idea.
Speaker 1: Each circuitry component does a very specific thing and that's
Speaker 1: all it does. And that simplicity is what allows you
Speaker 1: to pair these with other elements to create more complexity.
Speaker 1: So when you break it down to its individual parts,
Speaker 1: it's simple. When you put them all collectively together, that's
Speaker 1: where it gets complex and you start to think you've
Speaker 1: got to have a degree in physics to play this instrument,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's really cool. Well, we know that there
Speaker 1: are going to be a lot of different ways of
Speaker 1: manipulating the sound electronically, but I'm interested in where the
Speaker 1: sound actually comes from. What like, So a sound is
Speaker 1: a vibration in the air, but it's got to originate
Speaker 1: with something oscillating inside the equipment. Where does that come from?
Speaker 1: That comes from? An oscillator actually is uh, which I
Speaker 1: originally thought was a breed of like kind of a
Speaker 1: cat part of the feline family. Where oscillators that's apparently
Speaker 1: awesome lots you know they're called oscillators, right, So oscillators
Speaker 1: are that's what provides the the the oscillation the frequency
Speaker 1: here of an electric electronic signal. So oscillators don't have
Speaker 1: to be electronic, right, Oscillators can be a pendulum? Is
Speaker 1: an oscillator? Is it? Is? It? Pretty much that if
Speaker 1: anything goes back and forth, it's an oscillator pretty much. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's something that it has a a wave and it
Speaker 1: has each you know, it has this periodic behavior to
Speaker 1: it that repeats until some other force causes it to stop.
Speaker 1: In the case of a pendulum friction will eventually cause
Speaker 1: the pendulum to stop swinging. So when Moe slaps Larry
Speaker 1: and curly back and forth rapidly between their two faces,
Speaker 1: his hand isillator. Yeah, it's oscillating and uh yeah. So
Speaker 1: an oscillator swings back and forth a certain number of
Speaker 1: times in a certain number within a certain time period.
Speaker 1: Usually we talked about a second being the time period,
Speaker 1: and the number would be at least in sound. We
Speaker 1: talked about it. It hurts by the length of time
Speaker 1: that a waves period passes through a certain stationary point.
Speaker 1: So a period on a wave, you pick a stationary
Speaker 1: point on a wave. Let's the easiest is either the
Speaker 1: peak or the trough, like the lowest point or the
Speaker 1: highest point on a wave, and you go to the
Speaker 1: next peak or trough, whichever one you picked. So peak
Speaker 1: to peak from mountain to valley, but mountain of mountain,
Speaker 1: and that distance from that same point on those on
Speaker 1: those two sections, that's the period of the wave, and
Speaker 1: the number of times that passes. Uh, that happens within
Speaker 1: a second, that's the frequency. And if it happens twenty
Speaker 1: times in a second, that's twenty hurts. Hurts. As the
Speaker 1: unit we give for frequency, and twenty hurts is again
Speaker 1: at that low level of perception for humans, like, that's
Speaker 1: that's about low as you can go after that. When
Speaker 1: you go lower than twenty hurts, you get into sounds
Speaker 1: that you cannot hear, but you can feel, like if
Speaker 1: you've ever felt the force of something but you're not
Speaker 1: actually hearing anything. That's probably below twenty hurts. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then of course if you get up to twenty thousand hurts,
Speaker 1: that means that the waves are repeating twenty times a second.
Speaker 1: That's set the upper end of human hearing. And also
Speaker 1: the frequency relates to the pitch, right, the lower the
Speaker 1: frequency of the lower the pitch, the higher the frequency,
Speaker 1: the higher the pitch, more vibrations per second, the higher
Speaker 1: its sound exactly. So Uh. The oscillator is the heart
Speaker 1: of the synthesizer. The oscillator is what allows this frequency
Speaker 1: to happen and then be sent to the other modules
Speaker 1: to have it altered in some way. So you could
Speaker 1: just use an oscillator. In fact, you could just use
Speaker 1: an oscillator connected to speakers, but you would just constantly
Speaker 1: be generating noise because there'll be no governing element there
Speaker 1: to stop it from making noise. As long as that
Speaker 1: course it had a signal coming into it, you obviously
Speaker 1: have to feed it with electricity. So a very simple
Speaker 1: oscillator would be pairing a capacitor with an inductor. These
Speaker 1: are two very basic electronic components, and a capacitor is
Speaker 1: essentially a pair of plates and you build up the
Speaker 1: charge on one plate until there's enough charge for it
Speaker 1: to jump across the gap. So capacitors are kind of
Speaker 1: like batteries. They store energy, but they release all their
Speaker 1: energy in a single got batteries, Yeah, So like the
Speaker 1: flash on an old camera, flash that works by capacitor
Speaker 1: because you wanted to release the energy all at once.
Speaker 1: If it were a battery, the light would take too
Speaker 1: long to light up and go down, and it would
Speaker 1: you would never get a good photograph. So they're different
Speaker 1: from batteries and that they release all that energy at
Speaker 1: one time. The inductor is essentially a coil of wire
Speaker 1: and when it encounters electrical charge, it creates a magnetic field.
Speaker 1: So if you pair a capacitor with an inductor, what
Speaker 1: happens is electricity goes from the capacitor discharges into the inductor,
Speaker 1: which creates a magnetic field. That magnetic field begins to
Speaker 1: build up a charge on the capacitor's other plate, so
Speaker 1: you're getting the polar opposite charge. So talk about voltages,
Speaker 1: Actually you get the polar opposite voltage. So you put
Speaker 1: in sixty volts on one side, it's the minus sixty
Speaker 1: volts coming back the other way. Uh. It's the way
Speaker 1: we describe the movement of electricity here. And then it
Speaker 1: discharges again, but now it's the opposite polarity, and then
Speaker 1: it doesn't again. So that's why when you look at
Speaker 1: the the wave depiction of uh sound, you have those
Speaker 1: peaks and those valleys. It's the going from the positive
Speaker 1: end to the negative end of whatever that sound actually
Speaker 1: is um and it's pretty neat stuff. That's a very
Speaker 1: but that's a very basic oscillator. That's and also it
Speaker 1: would just like a pendulum would eventually stop because of friction,
Speaker 1: electron of oscillators would eventually stop if you don't feed
Speaker 1: more energy into them. They'd eventually stop because of resistance.
Speaker 1: You know, you have resistance with electric wires. That means
Speaker 1: you lose some energy to heat and eventually you would
Speaker 1: lose enough where if you didn't pour more energy into it.
Speaker 1: It would just stop. You wouldn't have enough energy to
Speaker 1: discharge the capacitor in the first place. So um a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons why. It's similar to a physical oscillator.
Speaker 1: So that's your very basic component that is important. But
Speaker 1: like I said, if you don't have anything else, like
Speaker 1: if you had a keyboard connected to an oscillator that
Speaker 1: was connected to a speaker, like an amplifier and a speaker,
Speaker 1: then it would always be making noise. You could change
Speaker 1: the pitch by pressing keys on the keyboard, but it
Speaker 1: would never stop like it would you would just be like,
Speaker 1: unplug this thing. It's a monstrosity. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: some kind of gate a gatekeeper for voltage, and that
Speaker 1: would be the voltage controlled amplifier or v c A,
Speaker 1: which can raise or lower the volume of a synthesizer.
Speaker 1: And so it affects the amplitude of a wave. The
Speaker 1: amplitude is how high and low those peaks and troughs
Speaker 1: are right. So the frequency is the number within a
Speaker 1: certain given amount of time. The amplitude is the height
Speaker 1: the volume essentially of this and so with a v
Speaker 1: c A you can lower that volume to nothing and
Speaker 1: you can create a gate where the is a very
Speaker 1: simple logic gate, which essentially says, if there's a signal
Speaker 1: coming in, then allow it to go to the speaker.
Speaker 1: So you would connect that so that when you press
Speaker 1: a key, that's essentially a signal saying I would like
Speaker 1: you to make sound now, and when you stop pressing
Speaker 1: the key its I would like you to stop making
Speaker 1: that horrible noise. And the v C A is what
Speaker 1: allows that to happen. So that's another very basic component. Um.
Speaker 1: They are so abusive to your electronics. Look there there
Speaker 1: for me, all right, I'm not there for them. You've
Speaker 1: got to understand whose boss, otherwise electronics will rule your life. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: this is Jonathan. You've been listening to me and Joe
Speaker 1: talk for a while. This show ended up being way
Speaker 1: longer than what we anticipated. So in the interest of
Speaker 1: preserving sanity and Noel's UH preservation as well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: divide this up into two episodes. So this is the
Speaker 1: conclusion of part one. We will return with part two
Speaker 1: to continue our discussion about electronics and moge synthesizers and
Speaker 1: analog synthesizers and all that goodness UH. In next week's episode.
Speaker 1: So I just want to remind you guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future episodes of Text Stuff, you
Speaker 1: can always let me know. The email address you can
Speaker 1: use is text Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler
Speaker 1: with the handle text stuff hs W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again about more mog really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this thousands of other topics, is a housetop works
Speaker 1: dot com MHM