Robert Moog, a maverick engineer who made electronics sing in the psychedelic era of the 1960s through the pioneering synthesizer that bears his name and caused a revolution in electronic sound, has died. He was 71.
Moog died Sunday from brain cancer at his home in Asheville, N.C., according to his company's website. He had been diagnosed in April with an inoperable brain tumor.
His improved synthesizer, with the addition of a keyboard, did for the instrument what Les Paul and Leo Fender did for the electric guitar, said Trevor Pinch, coauthor of "Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer."
The transformation in electronic sound that Moog started is still unfolding, Pinch said.
The electronic ditty on a cellphone, the thumping base on the iPod "are all part of his legacy -- synthesizers today are chip-size and ubiquitous," Pinch said.
Moog, which rhymes with vogue, didn't invent the instrument that could sound otherworldly as it mimicked string, horn or percussion instruments. RCA did, in 1955, but its primitive version was room-size, and the sounds were controlled by punching holes in tape, Pinch said.
The Moog became the state of the art keyboard when it came along nine years later, partly because the sound-distortion machine's portability enabled musicians to bring it into the concert hall. In addition, the sound was immediate and easier to manipulate.
"Many people would say, 'We need a Moog on this record,' when they meant a synthesizer," said Brian Kehew, who sent up electronic music in the late 1990s as a member of the Moog Cookbook and worked for Moog as a producer and designer.
The first album to use the Moog as its sole instrument was "Switched-On Bach" in 1968, featuring synthesizer interpretations of various Bach pieces played by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos. Carlos then used the Moog to electrify Beethoven for the eerie soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of "A Clockwork Orange" in 1971. The Beatles employed it on "Because" on "Abbey Road" in 1969, and progressive rockers Emerson, Lake and Palmer recorded the first Moog synthesizer solo on their 1970 debut album.
Keith Emerson's 10-foot-tall, 550-pound "Monster Moog" became an indispensable part of the group's concerts, even though the synthesizer could be unreliable and had to be tuned throughout the performance. It sometimes had to be covered in foil to avoid picking up police radio traffic.
