Posted on 10/13/2014 10:42:38 AM PDT by Squawk 8888
Back in the Olden Dayes, synthesizers were the size of refrigerators. The earliest ones filled entire rooms and, in at least one case, a complete railway car. They were hot, noisy, temperamental and devilishly hard to program. And they couldn’t do much.
Then along came Dr. Bob Moog who figured out how to tame electricity with printed circuits and oscillators. His experiments begat the first commercially viable synthesizers. But they came in pieces called modules that had to be roped together with patch cords.
What you see in the picture is a thousand times less powerful than what you can do with an app on your phone. We’ve come a long, long way.
But these modular synths are still beloved by many musicians. Synthtopia points us to this documentary celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Moog Modular.
“The real pioneers of this, as musicians, were John and Wendy Carlos.”
Also a fellow named Chris Swansen.
I saw a Moog being demonstrated at a noontime concert at the University of Southern California around 1975. That thing was a monstrosity.
Jean Michel Jarre has one. It was used in several of his recordings and it is a fixture of his concerts.
That was an early homebrew one, all voltage controlled, eg; analog. In 1980 in NYC, my partner had John McLaughlin’s larval guitar synthesizer, consisting of 6 minimoog guts in a roadcase.
My daughter and I bought a Sequential Circuits Pro One (think Depeche Mode) a few years back from another musician. Hanging on to it for awhile.
Modulars are in a golden resurgence right now. Lots of one man shops building incredible stuff Check this vid for an idea of where things are at today. The studio tour for “Celldweller...an electronic industrial dude that does a lot of the music for the big Hollywood action flix today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7jD2js8YAc
Makes that Moog look tiny. But oh that Moog makes such a SOUND! I’ll have to stick to my Roland Integra7 and Yamaha TX I guess. The old Moog 55s are house priced today.
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