General Music Chat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYYF36CQxNg

I've only played an actual Moog one time - a Mini-Moog at a small music store on Cape Cod in 1974, tripping my brain away. They were about $900 then.

I always loved the sounds of a Moog programmed up properly for a selection of music. As an example the way it was used on Dark Side of the Moon.

When a studio musician a little ways South of me said he would sell his Polyphonic Memory Moog reasonably I bought it. The thing doesn't have a scratch on it' anywhere as it had only been used in the studio. Everything was pristine, and iI even got the manual.

I played around with it for a while but went back to the guitar. Someday I may dig it out of the closet and play with it again. I spent hours programming the oscillators for really cool sounds. It is an amazing instrument.

I've had a Moog and an Arp monophonic synth. The Arp was the same one Elton John used on "Funeral For A Friend". But I used it mostly for surf or wind noises.

Robert Moog got many basic ideas for his modular synthesizer while working for the mysterious Raymond Scott.

During the 50's Scott invented and built a music synthesizer using vacuum tube based circuits for vco's vca's vcf's etc. and a large spinning wheel with a circular track of photo sensors and potentiometers that worked as a hand cranked voltage sequencer.

In the late 50's he hired the young Robert Moog to translate and modify his tube circuits to be built with the new transistor technology. Scott was very secretive and guarded with his designs and asked Moog to keep them secret. Scott in later years expresses gratitude that Moog was an honorable man who kept his word.

Moog refined some of Scott's concepts and invented many of his own new ones to create his first modular synthesizer and it's offspring, Mini-Moogs, PolyMoogs, etc.

I learned the basics of analog synthesis on a Moog Model 15 and a Mini-Moog.

Didn't Emerson use a Mini-Moog on "Lucky Man"?

Didn't Emerson use a Mini-Moog on "Lucky Man"?

No, he used a custom modular synth with keyboard and ribbon controller. The Mini Moog was used during concerts (he kept one on top of the grand piano).