Speaker 1: Ephemeral is production of I heart three D audio for
Speaker 1: full exposure. Listen with that phones. Human beings have been
Speaker 1: building musical instruments for tens of thousands of years, chasing
Speaker 1: different timbres, textures, and ranges possible in the acoustic world,
Speaker 1: and then in the twentieth century a whole new pallide
Speaker 1: of sounds emerged. This is a MOG synthesizer. MoG's were
Speaker 1: the most popular and innovative synthesizers of the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies, and they were the first synths to be
Speaker 1: widely accessible by musicians across the world. Nowadays, MOG Music
Speaker 1: is a very different company, but they still create new
Speaker 1: keyboards and sounds. If Emeral producer Trevor Young took a
Speaker 1: trip to MOUG headquarters to learn more about these machines
Speaker 1: and the history behind their creation. Let's say I'm walking
Speaker 1: through the mosium in Asheville, North Carolina. I'm surrounded by keyboards, synthesizers,
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other gadgets that I'm not smart
Speaker 1: enough to recognize, but they're letting me play on some
Speaker 1: of the synthesizers here, and I'm getting a personal tour
Speaker 1: from a very special guest. Hi, I'm Michelle moe Kusa.
Speaker 1: I'm the executive director of the Bob Mog Foundation and
Speaker 1: the Mosium. I'm also Bob MoG's third daughter. We walk
Speaker 1: around a corner to find a huge collage taking up
Speaker 1: an entire wall all about Mog Synthesizers founder Bob Mog.
Speaker 1: What we have here is kind of some arises his legacy, innovation, creativity,
Speaker 1: and inspiration. There's a little passage here that says, welcome
Speaker 1: to the Mosium, where Bob mogs life, work and legacy
Speaker 1: come alive to inspire curiosity and creativity and to give
Speaker 1: us insight into one of the electronic music's most important pioneers.
Speaker 1: So kind of the crowning the back of the Moxium,
Speaker 1: we have an immersive half doome that teaches people how
Speaker 1: electricity turns into sound when it's traveling through a circuit board.
Speaker 1: So this is essentially the very heart of Bob's work
Speaker 1: that we wanted to bring forward. So why don't we
Speaker 1: listen to at least the first minute of it. Sound
Speaker 1: is the movement of air perceived by our ears. An
Speaker 1: electric speaker creates sound by vibrating air molecules using a
Speaker 1: moving membrane by changing the rate of current flow through
Speaker 1: the magnetic field. A speaker membrane can be vibrated at
Speaker 1: different frequencies to create any kind of sound. It might
Speaker 1: seem like a lot of science on terminology to take in,
Speaker 1: but we're going to walk you through how synthesizers work.
Speaker 1: Probably the best place to start, because with the history
Speaker 1: of how synthesizers came into being, the mog machine here
Speaker 1: has made a startling contribution to the new bach rage.
Speaker 1: It can do anything but stand up and take a bow.
Speaker 1: It can produce almost any kind of variation on pure sound,
Speaker 1: including some sounds that have never been heard before on
Speaker 1: this Earth at least, and these sounds can then be
Speaker 1: dubbed onto tape in any combination, from interplanetary noises to
Speaker 1: a bach fugue. Synthesis technology first appeared in post World
Speaker 1: War two North America. By the late nineteen forties, engineers
Speaker 1: were starting to play around with manipulating electrical currents and
Speaker 1: the sounds they make. In Canadian engineer he Like developed
Speaker 1: the sack But, a sort of early rudimentary synthesizer, and
Speaker 1: in n a team at R. C. A. Laps created
Speaker 1: the Mark to synthesizer, a massive unit that was essentially
Speaker 1: glued to a laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. But the
Speaker 1: invention of synthesizers as we know them today is almost
Speaker 1: entirely credited to one man, Bob Moog. I asked Michelle
Speaker 1: to tell us about Bob and how we ended up
Speaker 1: creating one of the world's most popular instruments. My dad
Speaker 1: was an only child of George and Shirley Moak. My grandpa, George,
Speaker 1: was an electrical engineer for conn Edison. He was also
Speaker 1: an amateur woodworker. And you'll understand why I'm telling you
Speaker 1: that in a minute. They lived in Flushing, Queens, New York,
Speaker 1: and my grandfather had a very well outfitted basement workshop.
Speaker 1: And MI grandfather was kind of quiet and more reserved
Speaker 1: and introverted. And I would say that my father was
Speaker 1: also more quiet and introverted, and highly intelligent and interested
Speaker 1: in science from a very early age, in all kinds
Speaker 1: of science. At the age of ten years old, he
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to his aunt and his grandmother proclaiming
Speaker 1: his hobbies and in his hobbies included chemistry, electro chemistry, biology, physics.
Speaker 1: He was obviously very influenced by his father. At the
Speaker 1: same time, at the age of six years old, he
Speaker 1: began taking piano lessons. My grandmother had a great desire
Speaker 1: for him to be a concert pianist, and so she
Speaker 1: made sure that he practiced every day. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, he used to tell us stories that she
Speaker 1: would wrap him on the knuckles with a wooden spoon
Speaker 1: when he messed up, so there was no messing up.
Speaker 1: And I think he did enjoy playing the piano, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily under those circumstances. He did become quite profession
Speaker 1: at it and went on to study at the Manhattan
Speaker 1: School the Music and he was offered to pursue a
Speaker 1: professional accompanist track which he declined pretty early. At ten
Speaker 1: years old, he started making small electronic hobbyist projects with
Speaker 1: his father. I think part of it was they would
Speaker 1: both escape down into the basement just to get a break,
Speaker 1: as introverts like to do. That is where my father's
Speaker 1: work in electronics started, and they would make three note organs,
Speaker 1: and my dad actually made Geiger counters. Eventually, by the
Speaker 1: time he was around fourteen fifteen, he found an article
Speaker 1: in I think it was called Radio News about how
Speaker 1: to build your own thereman, and that is when he
Speaker 1: fell in love with the thereman, which is an early
Speaker 1: electronic musical device that was invented by the Russian physicist
Speaker 1: Leon Thereman. If you've never heard or seen a theremin,
Speaker 1: they're incredibly unique instruments. There perhaps the only instrument you
Speaker 1: play without touching them. Instead, you move your hands around
Speaker 1: an antenna and the proximity and movement of the hand
Speaker 1: generates an eerie sound from the theramin. Here's a demonstration
Speaker 1: from Leon Thereman himself. And my dad really was captivated
Speaker 1: by not only this kind of magical interface where you
Speaker 1: produce sound with an instrument that you don't touch, but
Speaker 1: he was captivated by the elegance and simplicity of Leon
Speaker 1: Thereman's circuitry design. And at that time, theremans were no
Speaker 1: longer in production, so he worked at prof in his
Speaker 1: own design. This is when he was about fifteen. By
Speaker 1: the time he was nineteen, he was proficient enough that
Speaker 1: he wrote an article for radio and television news called
Speaker 1: the Theremin, and it was an instructional on how to
Speaker 1: build your own theremin. But what happened is that people
Speaker 1: had a hard time finding the parts. They were somewhat esoteric.
Speaker 1: These were at that time vacuum tube based Theremans with
Speaker 1: big copper coils that were, you know, maybe even a
Speaker 1: foot tall and required hundred and seventy five rounds of copper.
Speaker 1: I can remember my father telling me that's one of
Speaker 1: the things he excelled at, that he would wind the
Speaker 1: copper coils, he would design the circuitry. Grandpa helped him
Speaker 1: some with that. Grandpa built the wooden cabinets for his Theoremans,
Speaker 1: and they both did some of the kind of silk
Speaker 1: screening that went on the front interface. But what happened
Speaker 1: with the article is that people didn't find that they
Speaker 1: excelled at winding copper coils like Bob did or finding
Speaker 1: the parts, and so they wrote him and said, where
Speaker 1: can I get a full built Thereman? And so my
Speaker 1: father started our a Moke co with my grandfather's support,
Speaker 1: to not only self thereman parts, but also fully built thereman's.
Speaker 1: That was the beginning. Bob's Thereman business was booming. He
Speaker 1: was selling his own models left and right, and this
Speaker 1: success is what laid the conceptual groundwork and provided the
Speaker 1: financial means for his work to come. In synthesis. What
Speaker 1: happened is he was at a music educator's conference in
Speaker 1: New York rapping his theoreman's and a young professor from
Speaker 1: Hostra University approached him and said, listen, I have one
Speaker 1: of your melodia theramans. I use it in my ear
Speaker 1: training classes, and I'm an experimental jazz composer as well
Speaker 1: as being a professor of music, and there are all
Speaker 1: these sounds that I've to make in my experimental jazz
Speaker 1: compositions that I just can't make with splicing tape, which
Speaker 1: is the technology that was available then. This gentleman's name
Speaker 1: was Herb Deutsch, and he said to my dad, do
Speaker 1: you think you could help me build something that would
Speaker 1: make these sounds that I'm envisioning for my compositions. And
Speaker 1: so that began a year long conversation that ended in
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen sixty four when Herb, with a
Speaker 1: two d dollar grant from host University, spent three weeks
Speaker 1: during that summer working with my dad on creating the
Speaker 1: first prototype of the more synthesizer. And essentially it was
Speaker 1: this collaboration where Herb would say, listen, as a musician,
Speaker 1: this is what I need, and my dad would build
Speaker 1: it and then her would test him say I need
Speaker 1: more of this or less of this. Okay, well well
Speaker 1: now we have this, say the oscillator tone generating source
Speaker 1: than what, Well then I need to sculpture somehow. So
Speaker 1: they worked together over three weeks, and then they eventually
Speaker 1: brought in other people over the summer, and my dad
Speaker 1: lectured on this voltage controlled synthesis that he had developed
Speaker 1: in October of nine four the Audio Engineering Society. So
Speaker 1: this big board here is where the sound is made.
Speaker 1: Appropriately enough, we call the analog board. A lot of
Speaker 1: parts on you. Each section of this board here corresponds
Speaker 1: to one section of the of the front panel. These
Speaker 1: are cold connectors here bringing the electrical signals that tell
Speaker 1: the analog circuitry what pitch to go at, when to
Speaker 1: start a note and when to stop it and so on.
Speaker 1: And he started selling his modules at that convention, and
Speaker 1: that is when he was offered a booth that someone
Speaker 1: else had vacated. He didn't even plan on exhibiting there.
Speaker 1: So he was there with like a bridge table with
Speaker 1: some kind of bohemian table cloth of my mom's and
Speaker 1: a few little modules. I mean, this has just started.
Speaker 1: And he started getting orders. He got an order her
Speaker 1: from our one Nikolai Wendy Carlos and by hitting a
Speaker 1: note on the keyboard. Now I'm connected up, so I'll
Speaker 1: hear that one sound. It's very low sound, it's very bright.
Speaker 1: If I manually turn this knob, you listen to the
Speaker 1: sound get considerably duller gets very dull down here. Prior
Speaker 1: to Bob Moog, there had been some work in synthesis already.
Speaker 1: We mentioned a few examples at the beginning, like the
Speaker 1: r C A Mark two. There were people working in
Speaker 1: synthesis prior to that. Harold Boda was one of those people,
Speaker 1: and also Vladim r Usachski, who was working at the
Speaker 1: Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Studio. They had the r C
Speaker 1: A Mark synthesizer. The r C A synthesizer was this huge,
Speaker 1: room sized synthesizer that function by punch tape, so it
Speaker 1: was very very different, and it was really run by academics.
Speaker 1: But Bob was a musician, so he wanted to create
Speaker 1: something not to be studied in a lab, but to
Speaker 1: be used for the purposes of musical expression. What Bob
Speaker 1: Mug did is he took the synthesis that had already
Speaker 1: begun to be developed and created a system that was
Speaker 1: accessible to musicians. At the very beginning, that was accessible to,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe some more experimental musicians originally, but eventually
Speaker 1: a few people, a few very talented people who were
Speaker 1: able to understand modular synthesis decided to wrap those instruments.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking right now, Paul Beaver and Bernie Cross on
Speaker 1: the West coast. M Yeah. What they did is they
Speaker 1: tried to sell Moog synthesizers in Los Angeles and they
Speaker 1: had a really hard time. The modulars were big, heavy,
Speaker 1: hard to transport, very expensive. They cost as much as
Speaker 1: a small house at that time, and they were having
Speaker 1: a hard time getting people to embrace them. They talked
Speaker 1: to someone at their record label. They actually had a
Speaker 1: record kind of that was a demonstration of the Mog
Speaker 1: synthesizer on non such records, and they talked to Jack Holsman,
Speaker 1: who was the CEO, and said, you know, we're having
Speaker 1: a hard time getting people to understand these instruments. What
Speaker 1: do you think we should do? He said, why don't
Speaker 1: bring them to the Honorary Pop Festival, which happened in
Speaker 1: the summer of n And they did that at and
Speaker 1: what they didn't expect is that they were absolutely mobbed
Speaker 1: with people. They had a tent with a mug modular
Speaker 1: in it, and they were mobbed with people to the
Speaker 1: extent that they had to have security assist them in
Speaker 1: creating a line. But what came out of that is
Speaker 1: the Monkeys, the Doors, Simon and Garf Uncle and the
Speaker 1: Birds all subsequently bought mog synthesizers. The Doors were the
Speaker 1: first to use it. Later and by the time nine
Speaker 1: rolled around, the Beatles were using it. It should go
Speaker 1: without mentioning that in there Wendy Carlos came out with
Speaker 1: the groundbreaking record Switched sham Bab, which didn't just use
Speaker 1: it as these cool sounds in the background, but it
Speaker 1: used it exclusively. It was an entire album of Bach
Speaker 1: music translated with the mog synthesizer, which is incredibly hard
Speaker 1: to do. Wendy told me that it would take her
Speaker 1: twenty minutes to do nine notes because she was constantly
Speaker 1: having to patch and repatch. And then Keith Emerson of
Speaker 1: Emerson Like and Palmer actually then of the Nice Heard
Speaker 1: switched sham Bach and then he got a huge modular system.
Speaker 1: So it was really these very ambitious musicians, all in
Speaker 1: their own ways, who helped bring the more synthesizer to
Speaker 1: the four of the public consciousness, and it was the
Speaker 1: earliest use of synthesis in that way. Now, Don bouk
Speaker 1: Law also developed a synthesizer at about the same time
Speaker 1: that Bob did, but his approach was very different. They
Speaker 1: were not quite as accessible to most musicians, so they
Speaker 1: were a little bit more what you might call experimental,
Speaker 1: so not as well known the most synthesizers. They were
Speaker 1: the tool of popular musicians, and that is why they
Speaker 1: came into the popular consciousness earlier and in a much
Speaker 1: stronger way than any other synthesizer at that time. As
Speaker 1: mog synthesizers picked up in popularity, you heard them everywhere,
Speaker 1: and so the sound of the mog became a distinct
Speaker 1: cultural statement that an older sister that was a big
Speaker 1: Beatles and a Monkey's fan. So those were two of
Speaker 1: the first pop groups that actually used the synthesizer and
Speaker 1: a recording. And I remember hearing that. I must have been,
Speaker 1: you know, eight or nine years old or whatever, and going,
Speaker 1: you know, well, what's that sound? You know, that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: There's something about that that really kind of pulls you in,
Speaker 1: you know, if you resonate with that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: My name is August Whorlie. I'm an electrical engineer and
Speaker 1: a musician and the former More Music technician, both up
Speaker 1: in Muffalo, New York, the Old Factory and down here
Speaker 1: in Asheville the Newer Factor. I work for Bob and
Speaker 1: developing the Mini More Voyagers synthesizer. I asked August where
Speaker 1: his story with synthesizers began it and his answer surprised me.
Speaker 1: I started working on my own equipment as a bassist,
Speaker 1: you know, amplifiers and designing speaker cabinets, and just started
Speaker 1: tinkering around. He's taking a part of my parents stereo systems,
Speaker 1: and I decided to buy a moke Torus bass pedal synthesizer,
Speaker 1: and so that was my first synthesizer and reading up
Speaker 1: on it and exploring all the sounds it's It was
Speaker 1: a really good, rudimentary, primary sort of synthesizer because it
Speaker 1: didn't have all the bells and whistles. It was pretty
Speaker 1: much straight ahead, you know, didn't have all the modulation
Speaker 1: or noise or any of those other things. It was
Speaker 1: reutilitarian and it was just a lot of fun to
Speaker 1: work with that technology as well as being a bass player.
Speaker 1: People marvel at Getty Lee or whatever because all the
Speaker 1: stuff he had. I never ever heard of Getty Lee
Speaker 1: when I was doing all that. You know, as August
Speaker 1: got more interested, he started thinking about synth technology as
Speaker 1: a future career path, and one day that opportunity fell
Speaker 1: into his lap. I was getting close to graduating. I
Speaker 1: really had no idea what I wanted to do. I
Speaker 1: think it was about two weeks before I graduated when
Speaker 1: my lab partner sat down before class and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got a friend of mine I worked at more Music,
Speaker 1: and he said that they're hiring. I'm gonna go down
Speaker 1: there and put in a job application. You want to
Speaker 1: go And it was like, well, let me think about that. Yes.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing was that I always like to
Speaker 1: tell people that my first job was working on the
Speaker 1: space shuttle. At the time, More Music had a subcontract
Speaker 1: with Fisher Price Toy manufacturing Company to do a little
Speaker 1: space shuttle, the Alpha Pro, the Alfa Rican sled Here,
Speaker 1: the electronic sound system Blast, all communications on redd Alert,
Speaker 1: astroplots here on here, life support cable for space walking
Speaker 1: on docking now for the Crucist No No, the Electronic
Speaker 1: Alpha Probe by Fisher Price. They needed testers audio testers
Speaker 1: for the little circuit boards that went into their Space shuttle.
Speaker 1: I listened to this little Space Shuttle board make, you know,
Speaker 1: sample and hold noises and take off noises and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff for I think about two weeks.
Speaker 1: It was a second shift job. But August wanted to
Speaker 1: do more. He wanted to build his own synthesizers, so
Speaker 1: he found a clever way to do that. I built
Speaker 1: am source from rejected parts from the assembly line. You're
Speaker 1: gonna throw that digital board out, may I haven't. So
Speaker 1: I just started taking parts home and building the unit up.
Speaker 1: And I still haven't. And that was just the big
Speaker 1: inning of a long and storied career in audio engineering.
Speaker 1: I figured August would be the perfect person to help
Speaker 1: us understand how synthesizers actually worked. Probably the first place
Speaker 1: to start with thinking about how a synthesizer works is
Speaker 1: the concept of a an input in an output where
Speaker 1: there's a beginning of middle and an end to the
Speaker 1: signal path until it comes out the other end, which
Speaker 1: can then be amplified and heard. So the first place
Speaker 1: to start was the concept of voltage control, where you
Speaker 1: have a control voltage which doesn't really make a sound
Speaker 1: in and of itself, but it tells things like oscillators
Speaker 1: and filters and envelope generators what to do. So an
Speaker 1: oscillator is a periodic waveform generator. By inputting a control
Speaker 1: voltage into it of a certain level, you can control
Speaker 1: the frequency of it. You can control the pitch. So
Speaker 1: that lends itself to being able to be connected to
Speaker 1: something that has a discrete incremental array, like a keyboard,
Speaker 1: so that when you move left to right, the voltage
Speaker 1: goes up, and therefore the pitch will follow that control voltage,
Speaker 1: And so the keyboard is a good starting point for that.
Speaker 1: But you don't have to use a keyboard to control
Speaker 1: the pitch of the oscillator. You can use anything that
Speaker 1: creates a voltage. Crawford, the guys used to have suit
Speaker 1: jackets that had conductive lapels, or when you touch the
Speaker 1: lapel of their jacket, you could generate a control voltage
Speaker 1: and put it into you know, the synthesizer, So you
Speaker 1: use your clothing as a control voltage source. The more
Speaker 1: oscillators you add, the more textures you can add to
Speaker 1: the sound. And different waveforms that you can create in
Speaker 1: order to thicken the sound and give the oscillator a
Speaker 1: different texture. That's how you can emulate some of the
Speaker 1: real instruments, such as you know saxophone, which is a
Speaker 1: soft wave. O bos are a triangle wave, so you
Speaker 1: can emulate real instruments or just completely derive a texture
Speaker 1: out of your imagination by what you have. One of
Speaker 1: the most popular features of a synthesizer is the sequencer.
Speaker 1: A sequencer basically is just what it says. You're able
Speaker 1: to put an array of elements in a row in
Speaker 1: order to create melodies or austinato patterns that is a
Speaker 1: pattern and repeats. And I remember there was always this
Speaker 1: debate about having sequencers there at all, because it's now
Speaker 1: you're turning it over to robots. But it's like anything
Speaker 1: else with music, depends on how your approaches. Let's demonstrate.
Speaker 1: While I was touring the Maxim and playing around with
Speaker 1: a synthesize, I got to try out a few sequencers.
Speaker 1: Listen for all the different patterns they can create. SEP
Speaker 1: SEP sep SEP sequencers are just one of the many
Speaker 1: innovations Bob mog developed specifically for musicians. As Michelle Moke
Speaker 1: said earlier, Bob was devoted to serving musicians. August agrees
Speaker 1: with that entirely. From the mid sixties to the pretty
Speaker 1: much so. When the minimal came along, sequencers were big,
Speaker 1: expensive and complicated, and we're only available to the very
Speaker 1: wealthy or to large universities or organizations recording studios, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And then by the time the seventies
Speaker 1: came along, there was a certain credibility associated with the synthesizer,
Speaker 1: and it looked like people were actually using these creatively.
Speaker 1: Mogul is exceptional and that we did listen to the
Speaker 1: musicians what the musicians were looking for, always informed the design,
Speaker 1: you know, just trying again make these more available for
Speaker 1: common musicians in order to give them the tools. With
Speaker 1: the success of the first move, the Moke modular business
Speaker 1: was good throughout the mid sixties, but by around nine
Speaker 1: nine it became obvious that people needed something that was
Speaker 1: more affordable, that was more portable. Here's Michelle Moog again.
Speaker 1: At the same time, Arimko was having a hard time
Speaker 1: supporting itself because there was a huge cell of modulars,
Speaker 1: but then it kind of peaked and declined and the
Speaker 1: company was in financial trouble. So while my dad was
Speaker 1: actually out looking for someone to invest in his company
Speaker 1: to help it survive, a couple of his engineers started
Speaker 1: coming up with the idea of building something that was
Speaker 1: much smaller, that was very basic. So they came up
Speaker 1: with what would become the prototypes for the Minimog. In
Speaker 1: an analog synthesizer like this, we start out with an oscillator.
Speaker 1: Oscillator produces a steady pitch sound, and then this synthesizer
Speaker 1: we can control the oscillator sound from either the keyboard,
Speaker 1: from a pitch wheel, or automatically through modulation real Roo Roue.
Speaker 1: The mini Mog would essentially be a smaller, more condensed
Speaker 1: version of the Mog modular. It could almost fit in
Speaker 1: your lap, and it had only a fraction of the features,
Speaker 1: but it was more accessible. Bob initially did not like
Speaker 1: the idea of taking these glorious modulars that had over
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand different sounds and minimizing it
Speaker 1: down to something, you know, much much less than that,
Speaker 1: but his engineers realized that if the company were to survive,
Speaker 1: they had to make something smaller. The result was the
Speaker 1: Mini Mooge, which later became the best selling analog synthesizer
Speaker 1: of all time. Twelve thou two hundred and sixty nine
Speaker 1: units were produced between nineteen seventy and two, and that
Speaker 1: basically set a course for MOG synthesizers after that to
Speaker 1: be accessible. There was a variety of things that happened
Speaker 1: to MOG synthesizers after that. They became smaller and smaller,
Speaker 1: some of them with less capability but still very robust sound.
Speaker 1: Just trying to address different needs in the marketplace, they
Speaker 1: started incorporating things like small ribbon controllers so that there
Speaker 1: was different ways to access to sound. After that, the
Speaker 1: memory Mouge made use of stored presets, which some of
Speaker 1: the instruments did not have before that time, and eventually
Speaker 1: some of the instruments became MITI capable, and that's about
Speaker 1: when that part of mode music ended. The mid eighties
Speaker 1: is when everything changed for synthesis with the invention of MIDI,
Speaker 1: that is, musical instrument digital interface analog. Since such as
Speaker 1: MOG became old news. Digital keyboards like the Yamaha d
Speaker 1: X seven became the music industry standard, much to the
Speaker 1: dismay of engineers like August. It's funny. Everybody at MOG
Speaker 1: just really hated the sound. Who are so used to
Speaker 1: the analog sound and those textures in that warmth at
Speaker 1: hearing these digital keyboards. Really, these things that these guys
Speaker 1: are kicking our ass in the marketplace because we think
Speaker 1: they sound horrible. I'm sure you know the sound stuff
Speaker 1: like aha or alphaville. You heard the same four or
Speaker 1: five sounds on the radio all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: as soon as the latest hit top forty song came
Speaker 1: on and the guy takes a keyboard solo, they go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's preset number twenty three on the d X seven
Speaker 1: because everybody's using that one. You know, problem with those
Speaker 1: keyboards was that they were very difficult to program. You know.
Speaker 1: That was another thing that we just couldn't get our
Speaker 1: heads around. It's like, okay, so you've got this sound
Speaker 1: on your memory mug or whatever, and if you want
Speaker 1: to change it, all you have to do is grab
Speaker 1: a knob, you know, and there it is with these things.
Speaker 1: You know, you had to go into sub menues after
Speaker 1: sub menu after sub menu in order to change a
Speaker 1: parameter and then enter it and then hopefully it's what
Speaker 1: you're after because it was such opinion, he is to
Speaker 1: go back and change it. Some people made entire careers
Speaker 1: out of programming d X seven sounds. August says, that's
Speaker 1: soon enough, digital synthesis expanded to the point where it
Speaker 1: dominated the music recording industry. Synthesizers were always at that
Speaker 1: time were usually found in the context of a traditional band.
Speaker 1: So the synthesizer was added into the guitar based and
Speaker 1: drums and vocals and all that other kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It was like that little chair in the top of
Speaker 1: the cake, and then more and more started to overtake
Speaker 1: the other aspects of the musical composition. So then before
Speaker 1: you knew what you had synthesizers that were the drums,
Speaker 1: synthesizers that were the base, and synthesizers that were emulating
Speaker 1: the guitar, using synthesizers in the vocal parts like the
Speaker 1: vote quarter. So you know, this idea of a purely
Speaker 1: electronic sonic source or modification technology was of the production
Speaker 1: from beginning to end. The microphone is probably about the
Speaker 1: only thing that wasn't an actual digital component of the
Speaker 1: single chain. So why was MOGS so committed to analog
Speaker 1: versus digital? We didn't realize that at the time, but
Speaker 1: as I look back on and now, I think the
Speaker 1: thing that we were so used to hearing, which is
Speaker 1: why analog keyboards came back, was that there's a warmth.
Speaker 1: There's an ephemeral quality to that form of signal generation
Speaker 1: that I think people connect with in a very different way.
Speaker 1: And I think from the esoteric perspective, I think it's
Speaker 1: because we are continuous beings and so we resonate more
Speaker 1: strongly with continue its waveforms. Despite whatever your sample rate
Speaker 1: is on a digital keyboard, you will always have a
Speaker 1: discrete aspect to the way the digital waveform is being
Speaker 1: generated because you've basically got a series of ones and
Speaker 1: zeros that are being read out of memory to create
Speaker 1: a waveform that's always going to be, it's very essence,
Speaker 1: a non continual waveform, whereas analog is a continual waveform.
Speaker 1: But by the time we adopted the the notion of
Speaker 1: doing a digital synthesizer, the company was already in pretty
Speaker 1: bad shape. The taste that changed away from analog, and
Speaker 1: with that, Moog went out of business. The company officially
Speaker 1: declared bankruptcy, but that wasn't the end of music. For
Speaker 1: a while, things were tough for Bob Moge Music closed
Speaker 1: in the late eighties and he lost the rights to
Speaker 1: his name in the Mogan Music trademark. Move Music and
Speaker 1: Buffalo went out of business. It started really slowing down,
Speaker 1: and I was laid off at the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, but the kind of picked up a few
Speaker 1: service things for them here and there until they've just
Speaker 1: completely closed their doors and five. But I was always
Speaker 1: involved with all the different people. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: family working at that company. So I still maintained connections
Speaker 1: with a lot of the people from back in the day.
Speaker 1: An acquaintance that I worked with that Mog Music had
Speaker 1: contacted me because he had got a call from Keith
Speaker 1: Emerson to do some work for I'm just like in
Speaker 1: Palmer because they were going back out on tour again
Speaker 1: and at that time there was no mo Music and
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of people knew about that technology,
Speaker 1: and I happened to be one of them, so that's
Speaker 1: how I sort of slid into that. So I got
Speaker 1: the tour with Emerson, like Palmer, off and on for
Speaker 1: about three years. Meanwhile, Bob Mog was determined to get
Speaker 1: the rights to his name back in two thousand two.
Speaker 1: After a lengthy legal battle, Bob succeeded and he reopened
Speaker 1: Mogan Music in Asheville, North Carolina. August Whorley was one
Speaker 1: of the first to hear that Bob was back in business.
Speaker 1: I saw that Bob Mog was announcing that he was
Speaker 1: going to be doing another synthesizer, like one last synthesizer.
Speaker 1: He had said that, you know, he realized he was
Speaker 1: getting on in years and wanted to take some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that was in his head and dump it
Speaker 1: into younger heads. And I sort of took notice of that.
Speaker 1: Eventually got around it just calling him out of the blue.
Speaker 1: I introduced myself as Bob. I We've never met, but
Speaker 1: I've worked for everybody you've ever hired back at the
Speaker 1: old Mog Music, and I'm three names down from you
Speaker 1: in the special thanks liner notes on the list. There
Speaker 1: were something so that kind of caught his attention. I
Speaker 1: showed him only materials for the work for Keith and
Speaker 1: all the rest of that kind of stuff, and he
Speaker 1: knew all the guys that are worked with. He said, right, okay,
Speaker 1: you're you're in. I like what I see. The next thing,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm helping Bob Do, another synthesizer. August worked
Speaker 1: closely with Bob to develop the Minimog Voyager, a successful
Speaker 1: return to form for the Mog synthesizer. The two thousands
Speaker 1: saw a renewed interest in analog synthesizers, and MUG was
Speaker 1: once again a thriving and innovative business. Here's Michelle Mug.
Speaker 1: The modern day m Music, which is located here in Nashville,
Speaker 1: has a long line of incredible synthesizers, starting with the Voyager,
Speaker 1: and they are constantly innovating and evolving as well, selling
Speaker 1: thousands and tens of thousands of instruments all over the
Speaker 1: world every year. August Worley was a huge part of
Speaker 1: that success. He says getting to work with Bob Moag
Speaker 1: was one of the greatest experiences of his life. I
Speaker 1: had a father that I love very much, but Bob
Speaker 1: was kind of the father that understood me because we
Speaker 1: used to complete each other's sentences, you know, having been
Speaker 1: involved in that professional capacity. I think the biggest thing
Speaker 1: that Bob did for me is that he made me
Speaker 1: be more confident in my ideas, so I wasn't afraid
Speaker 1: to present some of these crazy ideas that kind of
Speaker 1: popped into my head. You know, I remember having a
Speaker 1: conversation once with him, or a sort of outlining, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it worked for this company, and here's what
Speaker 1: we did for a radar simulator or a prepress computer system,
Speaker 1: or interfacing a deck main frame with an Apple too.
Speaker 1: And the thing he said to kind of close out
Speaker 1: the conversation was I really envy you your broadness, of
Speaker 1: your level of expertise in experience, He said, all I've
Speaker 1: ever done his work on synthesizer, and I was kind
Speaker 1: of like, okay, well, you know, you've pretty much invented
Speaker 1: the bloody industry. I mean, I don't think I have
Speaker 1: to really apologize Bob is envious of my experience and professional,
Speaker 1: you know, credentials. It's like, okay, whatever. I asked Michelle
Speaker 1: mug what it was like growing up with Bob for
Speaker 1: a dad. He held his career at arm's length from us,
Speaker 1: just because I think he was a little uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: his celebrity and his fame, and he really just wanted
Speaker 1: a place where he could be Bob or Dad. I
Speaker 1: would say, I knew a very kind of surface level.
Speaker 1: We all knew that Dad had invented the synthesizer. We
Speaker 1: knew that he was famous. We knew that he had
Speaker 1: gotten a Grammy. We knew that he knew and loved
Speaker 1: a lot of very cool musicians, that he was revere,
Speaker 1: heard that he wrote articles in well known magazines. We
Speaker 1: had a solid idea of his stature. What we didn't
Speaker 1: realize is maybe the impact of his work. The only
Speaker 1: access I really ever had to his work in my
Speaker 1: early years was when he did have either a basement
Speaker 1: workshop in our house or a workshop across the driveway.
Speaker 1: I would go at night in my pajamas to give
Speaker 1: him a kiss good night, because his routine was he
Speaker 1: would stop working around six or seven, we'd have dinner
Speaker 1: that my mom always cooked, and then my parents would
Speaker 1: take a little nap, and then my dad would go
Speaker 1: back out to work until eleven o'clock or midnight. So
Speaker 1: by the time it was time for me to go
Speaker 1: to bed around eight thirty or whatever it was, depending
Speaker 1: on how old I was, I would pad out to
Speaker 1: the driveway and I would always kind of stand at
Speaker 1: the threshold of the office before opening the door, just
Speaker 1: to listen to what my dad was doing. I had
Speaker 1: no context for under standing it, but I was interested,
Speaker 1: and then I would, you know, go in and just
Speaker 1: give him a kiss at night. But it was always
Speaker 1: kind of clear when we went in the workshop that
Speaker 1: we weren't there for long. You know, he was busy
Speaker 1: and he was very serious and very focused, and so
Speaker 1: it was just a quick, brief, tender moment and then
Speaker 1: I would I would leave. So he never said, hey,
Speaker 1: come look at this mini mug, or I've gotten the
Speaker 1: mug prototype here, which he did in two I think
Speaker 1: he restored the mug prototype for the Henry Ford Museum,
Speaker 1: and he never showed it to us. He was so humble.
Speaker 1: This humility was kind of legendary, and that extended to
Speaker 1: our household. He just didn't make a big deal out
Speaker 1: of his own work, to the extent that in his
Speaker 1: later years, when he was up for a technical grammy,
Speaker 1: my stepmother said to him, you know, Bob, you've got
Speaker 1: to tell the kids, and he said, why, what's it matter.
Speaker 1: I did have a little bit more awareness as I
Speaker 1: got a little older, and then probably the pinnacle of
Speaker 1: my understanding prior to my father's illness was when I
Speaker 1: was about twenty one, I was a senior in college.
Speaker 1: My dad actually invited me to come to a NAM
Speaker 1: show with him, which is the first time he had
Speaker 1: ever done anything like that. I don't think I had
Speaker 1: spent any time alone with my father like that prior
Speaker 1: to that. So I went to the NAM show with him,
Speaker 1: and it was a very weird experience seeing how revered
Speaker 1: he was, to the extent that there was a guy
Speaker 1: who dropped to his knees in front of my dad
Speaker 1: and just just like, Oh my god, you're Bob Moog,
Speaker 1: You're my hero. He went on and on and made
Speaker 1: my dad so uncomfortable. Nothing against the guy doing that,
Speaker 1: but and I just felt like I was having this
Speaker 1: totally surreal, out of body experience because here I am
Speaker 1: just walking around with my cool, geeky dad and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there's all this adulation going on. But
Speaker 1: there were some other experiences similar to that that helped
Speaker 1: me understand some of the impact he had. But the
Speaker 1: real impact came when he got ill. In the late
Speaker 1: spring of two thousand five, he discovered that he had
Speaker 1: a brain tumor, and unfortunately it was inoperable, and things
Speaker 1: rather quickly declined, and at one point on my brother
Speaker 1: Matthew set up a page on the Carrying Bridge dot
Speaker 1: com for him to be able to journal out how
Speaker 1: he was doing, and it was really he didn't but
Speaker 1: other people in the family did just to keep people apprised.
Speaker 1: And originally it was just meant for forty people, forty
Speaker 1: of his friends around the world, but it quickly became
Speaker 1: public and in the first seven weeks, sixty thousand people
Speaker 1: went on that site. Bob moved passed away on August one,
Speaker 1: two thousand five. On the day he died, twenty thousand
Speaker 1: people logged onto the site, and over four thousand people
Speaker 1: left testimonials on that page speaking to how Bob Loge
Speaker 1: had inspired them, how he had changed their life, how
Speaker 1: he had transformed their life, how because of Bob mog
Speaker 1: they were musicians, How Bob Moge gave them their creative voice,
Speaker 1: how Bob Mogan inspired them to be an engineer, and
Speaker 1: these testimonials just went on and on and on. At
Speaker 1: the time, I owned a small business of my own.
Speaker 1: I had two young children, five and ten years old,
Speaker 1: and I would um go at night and help take
Speaker 1: care of him. And then when I would put my
Speaker 1: kids to bed, I would go down and I would
Speaker 1: read these testimonials, and I would honestly just cry the
Speaker 1: whole time because it was like, for the first time
Speaker 1: someone was introducing me to Bob Mug. I did not
Speaker 1: know Bob Mogan until I was thirty seven and he died.
Speaker 1: And it was those people through Caring Bridge that not
Speaker 1: only you know, knocked down the kind of walls that
Speaker 1: my father put up around his Bob Mog persona to
Speaker 1: kind of protect the family from that celebrity, but enlightened
Speaker 1: the rest of my family to this incredible depth and
Speaker 1: breadth that the impact he made had on people all
Speaker 1: over the world. We had people from sixty seven different
Speaker 1: countries leave testimonials. Michelle says, those testimonials or what inspired
Speaker 1: her to create the Bob Mog Foundation in two thousand six.
Speaker 1: When you have an inspirational force like that, something that
Speaker 1: you can use to change the world in a positive way,
Speaker 1: that it not only deserves to be carried forward, but
Speaker 1: it really demands to be carried forward because you don't
Speaker 1: get opportunities like that very often. So it was the
Speaker 1: family who said, you know, we really, we really need
Speaker 1: to do something important here, and that's when the foundation
Speaker 1: was created. The official mission is to inspire people through
Speaker 1: the intersection of science, music, innovation and technology, which is
Speaker 1: essentially a mirror reflection of Bob MoG's legacy itself through
Speaker 1: our three projects. We have three different projects. Dr Bob
Speaker 1: sold School, which is our hallmark educational project that teaches
Speaker 1: little kids about the science of sound through music and technology.
Speaker 1: We have the Bob Mog Foundation Archives, which is a
Speaker 1: vast collection of over ten thousand pieces of archival material
Speaker 1: that we protect, preserve, and share with other museums and researchers.
Speaker 1: And then we have the Mogsium in downtown Nashville, North
Speaker 1: Carolina that carries that mission forward to inspire both children
Speaker 1: and adults through all these interactive exhibits that bring Bob
Speaker 1: Mug's legacy alive, not just his life story and his
Speaker 1: work story, but the science that really drove his work,
Speaker 1: to science and engineering that he was so passionate about.
Speaker 1: One has to wonder what might Bob Mog have done
Speaker 1: in today's world with today's technology. Well, Michelle has some
Speaker 1: insight into that. At the end of his life, he
Speaker 1: really was more focused not on synthesis itself, but on
Speaker 1: how we were accessing synthesizer interfaces. He told one of
Speaker 1: his engineers at move Music that the keyboard wasn't antiquated interface,
Speaker 1: and that we needed to move on. He told him
Speaker 1: that when he was moving his office, he was already
Speaker 1: walking with a cane because his left side had become
Speaker 1: somewhat debilitated because of his brain, and he knew he
Speaker 1: wasn't going back, and those were his parting words to
Speaker 1: that engineer. And my dad had been working on multi
Speaker 1: touch sensitive interfaces for decades at that point, and he
Speaker 1: had been developing a multi touch sensitive keyboard with an
Speaker 1: avant guarde opera composer named John Eaton. That kind of
Speaker 1: work was actually ahead of its time, and what he
Speaker 1: was aiming for is ubiquitous now. The roly controllers, the
Speaker 1: Hawk and Continuum. The Hawk and Continuum as a newer
Speaker 1: instrument made of foam. It's not unlike a keyboard, but
Speaker 1: you hold it more like a guitar. You can manipulate
Speaker 1: the sounds based on the speed with which you move
Speaker 1: your fingers, the amount of pressure you apply, and all
Speaker 1: sorts of other new parameters, all of that touch sensitivity,
Speaker 1: pressure sensitivity, velocity sensitivity. He was working on all of
Speaker 1: that starting in He actually told my stepmother that the
Speaker 1: multi touch sensitive keyboard he felt was his most important
Speaker 1: contribution to the world of music. He felt like the
Speaker 1: world of synthesis had kind of gone far enough, but
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough human nurance in that world. That's what
Speaker 1: he was really interested in near the end of his life. Now,
Speaker 1: I played the Hackam continuum. That is a really interesting technology.
Speaker 1: The first time I ever checked it out, that foam
Speaker 1: keyboard idea and being able to interface with the sound
Speaker 1: in a tactile way led me to believe that it
Speaker 1: was going to be a winner, because there is always
Speaker 1: going to be that barrier between the musician and the
Speaker 1: musical instrument. The more steamless that is, the more useful
Speaker 1: and expressive it is. Because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, these are all supposed to be a means
Speaker 1: of expression for the musician, and so being able to
Speaker 1: interact with the sound that you're creating is is imperative.
Speaker 1: And even Bob recognized that aspect of the synthesizers, which
Speaker 1: is why you always wanted to incorporate some would into
Speaker 1: the instrument. And we as humans feel connection to that.
Speaker 1: I think it's because it used to be alive. So
Speaker 1: being able to connect with that at some level, I
Speaker 1: think is what makes a musical instrument much more expressive.
Speaker 1: But I kind of think that the actual synthesizer is
Speaker 1: sort of reached full maturity. I mean, the actual sound source.
Speaker 1: You can keep any more stuff onto it. But I
Speaker 1: think any future progress is probably going to be made
Speaker 1: in the domain of how we control and express what
Speaker 1: that sound is. Even still, August says we should continue
Speaker 1: to explore the world of analog synthesis. There's still plenty
Speaker 1: of sounds to be discovered. I like to tell the
Speaker 1: story that some of the best sounds I ever got
Speaker 1: out of a memory mode was back at the factory
Speaker 1: on my test bench just before they died. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd start playing this thing and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, this thing's got a problem. It starts getting
Speaker 1: all kind of crunchy, and like, Trevor, you gotta hear
Speaker 1: this sound, man, This thing sounds like it's just about
Speaker 1: the like the bed part of my French And you know,
Speaker 1: he put the headphones on and go, wow, that is amazing.
Speaker 1: If only we can make it do that all the time.
Speaker 1: You put the headphones on and play like a couple
Speaker 1: of chords, and then it just stops. I was like, oh, correct, now,
Speaker 1: I gotta find out what's wrong with it. But in
Speaker 1: that thirty five seconds, man, it was like audio bliss.
Speaker 1: This episode of Ephemeral was written and assembled by Trevor
Speaker 1: Young and produced with Max and Alex Williams. August Borley
Speaker 1: is a former engineer for mog Music, and Michelle Mokusa
Speaker 1: is the executive director of the Bob Mogue Foundation. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Michelle for the tour of the Mogzium, which
Speaker 1: you can visit any time you're in downtown Asheville, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Links pictures, sounds, and more on our social media at
Speaker 1: Ephemeral Show. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. The player