The Sounds of Science

During the past 60 years, the Moog synthesizer has become one of the most influential inventions in 20th-century sound. With the recent sale of the Asheville-based company, a new era begins.

Words by REANNA CRUZ | Photos by GROWL

Robert Moog (pronounced like vogue) was born in Queens, New York, in 1934. Known as Bob to friends and associates, he is described by biographer and composer Albert Glinsky as somebody who had a natural instinct to understand people.

“When you were with him, you felt that he was really connecting directly with you,” said Glinsky, who wrote the 2020 authorized biography Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution. “Somebody once said that Bob made everybody feel, when they were with him, like they were his best friend.” 

Moog-Koussa described her dad as “connected to some higher plane than most people.” When it came to Moog’s work ethos, “in every single level of his being, he was committed to high craftsmanship. If it was barbecuing chicken or making synthesizers, and everything in between, it was done to the highest level.” 

That candor and affability translated to early business success. He was originally fascinated with an instrument of similar quirk: the theremin, which served as a launchpad for Moog. He built his first theremin at age 14 and, five years later, founded R.A. Moog Co. to sell his own design and subsequent theremin kits. 

Moog turned his attention to the construction of the synthesizer in 1964, after spending time as a student at Cornell tinkering with smaller components alongside composer Herb Deutsch. His goal was to transform the synthesizer from a massive, inaccessible behemoth to something that could be used by the average musician. The Moog synthesizer used silicon transistors instead of vacuum tubes to process the oscillating frequency (a.k.a. a note’s pitch), thus creating the analog synthesizer. Glinsky compared Moog to another industry titan: “One good analogy would be Henry Ford. Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile by any means, but he invented the means of mass production that put the automobile in the hands of the average consumer.”

Originally Moog instruments were priced no higher than $6,000 and soon became notable because of their practicality: Previous synthesizers used a punch card system to determine the sonic output, but Moog’s design used a keyboard. By keeping prices low and making his synthesizer tactile, he had created a product that was both user-friendly and accessible, two aspects that were doubled down upon with the creation of the Minimoog in 1970. 

These principles allowed the Moog to proliferate throughout culture, and the otherworldly qualities of the sound let the instrument excel in the late 1960s and 1970s.

“The sheer strangeness of [the synthesizer] fit beautifully into the ’60s zeitgeist. It went along with everything else; the brilliant Technicolor, and the paisley, and the distortion on everything,” Glinsky said. “Albums that were warped and distorted to make you feel like you were tripping on drugs.” 

The instrument took center stage on tracks like the Beatles’ “Because” on Abbey Road, and the Monkees’ “Daily Nightly,” which is considered one of the first rock songs to feature the instrument. But the Moog’s big break came in 1968, with the release of electronic composer Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach, a record composed of Moog arrangements of Johann Sebastian Bach’s classical compositions.

In a 1999 interview, Carlos said she wanted “to use the new technology for appealing music you could really listen to,” and thought the pairing of classical and Moog made “a perfect match.” The process wasn’t perfect — the monophonic nature of the instruments required the songs to be constructed one note at a time — but the album garnered three Grammys, spent four years on top of the Billboard Classical Albums chart, and motivated thousands to contact Robert Moog for their own iteration of the synth. 

Carlos then used the Moog for the scores to Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” and then, later, “The Shining” and “Tron.” Outside of her work, though, the Moog found a formidable place in the world of film scores; the first movie to use the synthesizer was Roger Corman’s 1967 ode to psychedelia, “The Trip.” A decade later, the electronic group Tangerine Dream used the Moog to score the William Friedkin thriller “Sorcerer,” which composer and Boy Harsher producer Augustus Muller described as carrying a “heavy atmosphere,” thanks to the sounds of the synthesizer. 

In the decades after the invention of the Moog and Minimoog, Robert Moog’s instruments frequently found a place in important cultural moments. Giorgio Moroder used a Moog to construct nearly the entirety of “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer, and hip-hop acts like the Beastie Boys used extensive samples of Moog records to give their songs texture.

Future models of the synthesizer included the Satellite, which Glinsky noted Robert Moog “was not really excited about”; the Prodigy, which gave the famed UK big beat group its name; and the Voyager, which essentially was an updated Minimoog. That model in particular caught the eye of Herbie Hancock, who used it as bass on “Axel F.” 

In the latter years of his life, Moog was marked with the unfortunate trait of simply not being good with numbers. He never filed a patent on anything other than the voltage-controlled filter. Despite the success of his instruments, and the everlasting importance of the Minimoog, the business was bought by Norlin Industries in 1973 and Moog left the company shortly after. 

Moog retrieved the rights to the Moog Music name in 2002, three years before he died of a brain tumor.

When it comes to the analog synthesizer, there were other instruments of a similar caliber, of course. Roland’s drum machines the TR-808 and TR-909 shaped the sound of hip-hop and dance music, respectively, and there are still odes to instruments like the KORG M1. Even during its most popular years, the Moog synthesizer was outpaced in sales by similar instruments from companies like ARP Instruments and, later, Yamaha.

But there’s something special about the Moog. 

Nathan Stocker plays guitar for Hippo Campus, in addition to being a vocalist and songwriter for the band. Like Rosenstone, he’s heard Moogs his entire life but admires the synthesizer in particular for its unique accessibility compared with its competitors — “it just bridged a lot of worlds for me,” he said. 

“I always kind of assumed that electronic music was more of a math game than it was an intuitive musical one,” Stocker said. “But with the aesthetic and format of a Moog synthesizer being so accessible and ready to be explored upon first opening, that was really enticing to me.” 

The Moog’s accessibility is something that resonated with others as well. 

Alex Farrar and Adam McDaniel are recording engineers and founders of Drop of Sun studios in Asheville. The studio has been home to critically acclaimed records like Snail Mail’s Valentine, Wednesday’s Rat Saw God, and Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Life on Earth, and has several Moog products, including a Moog One. 

“It’s remarkably versatile, and although it’s really big and kind of intimidating looking, it’s actually quite user-friendly,” Farrar said. 

“It’s quick and it’s approachable,” McDaniel added. “You can make something sound cool instantly, and if you want to deep dive, you can, but you don’t have to.” 

Though many synths have a menu with settings that can be adjusted, Farrar said that Moog’s machines are less confusing than many others. 

“With Moog products, the knobs are all just clearly in front of you, and you could just reach and grab something. Everything has a real-time, immediate feedback,” he said. “I find myself understanding how synths work better when I use instruments like that.” 

Roger Joseph Manning Jr. first found a Moog through his high school jazz band, which “by some miracle” found itself lucky enough to have the Minimoog in the early ’80s. 

“I at least got to see and hear [a Moog] in person after only seeing them in magazines and on television,” Manning said. 

When his piano teacher lent him a different synthesizer, the Micromoog, he was able to play around with a Moog product for the first time. 

“Me and my brothers dicked around with it all the time,” he recalled. “We didn’t even know what the heck we were doing, but I basically learned the program from that because it’s such a straightforward, simple device.” 

Manning made a name for himself alongside Brian Kehew in a duo aptly titled The Moog Cookbook. The moniker was a nod to a cookbook by Robert Moog’s first wife, Shirleigh. As wife to a synth pioneer, Shirleigh wrote Moog’s Musical Eatery: A Cookbook for Carefree Entertaining, featuring meals she had prepared for early R.A. Moog Co. factory guests. 

The Moog Cookbook, sonically, called back to novelty records that followed Carlos’ Switched-On Bach, like New World Electronic Chamber Ensemble’s Switched On Beatles, or Switched-On Rock by the Moog Machine. 

“We loved those records. Not only were they humorous, but they were great lessons in programming and arranging for electronic instruments,” Manning said. “And so our whole concept was, what if we did something like that, only a modern ’90s version, which would’ve covered the hits of the day on alternative rock radio.” 

Those covers included classics by Soundgarden, Weezer, and R.E.M. The group released two records, a self-titled album in 1996, and Ye Olde Space Bande a year later, which featured fellow synth enthusiasts like Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh. Their goal was to reset the perception of the Moog, which in the mid-’90s Manning likened to a “comedy device” with its use in genres like disco and “corporate R&B.” 

“It became goofy and cliche and a genre that nobody wanted to associate with again,” Manning said. “And that meant that the wah-wah pedal for guitar, and a lot of the classic synthesizer sounds from synths like the Moog, got lumped in there as tasteless and goofy and trite.”

In 1978, seven years after he sold Moog Music Inc., Robert Moog moved to Asheville. He founded another company called Big Briar, named after his property in North Carolina. (The name Moog Music was restored to the company after the rights were returned.) 

Moog’s connection to the South was spurred by an invitation from George Kelischek, whose workshop was in Brasstown, about two hours southwest of Asheville. Kelischek had invited Moog to travel down from his then-residence in the Buffalo, New York, area to give a seminar.

“Bob and his first wife, Shirleigh, were great fans of the outdoors,” Glinsky said. “And land was expensive up north but cheaper down in the southern region. So Kelischek said to Bob, ‘Your company’s been bought out, why don’t you come down here?’”

His words resonated, and soon after, the Moogs bought land in Buncombe County.

Asheville is where Moog Music as an entity, and Moog himself, began to flourish. He started giving lectures at the University of North Carolina Asheville, and was hired in 1989 as Visiting Research Professor. Wayne Kirby, the university’s Music Department chair at the time, once said of Moog’s contributions, “It was like being taught by Thomas Edison.” 

Moog died in 2005, and in 2009 UNC Asheville dedicated the on-campus Bob Moog Electronic Music Studio in his honor.

Moog’s memorial celebration was at a locally famous Asheville venue, the Orange Peel. Even after death, he became intrinsically connected to the culture of the city, and in 2006, the independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit Bob Moog Foundation was founded in Asheville. Moog-Koussa is the organization’s executive director. 

“The purpose of the Bob Moog Memorial Foundation is to inspire people of all ages through the intersection of science, music, technology, and innovation,” Moog-Koussa said.

The foundation also runs the Moogseum, described as both “educational and based in archive preservation,” and Dr. Bob’s Sound School, which the foundation’s website describes as “an innovative, experiential, 10-week curriculum teaching second-graders the science of sound.” These projects are run through the foundation, which is a totally separate entity from Moog Music Inc. 

Moog Music created Moogfest in 2004, elusively described on its website as “the synthesis of music, art, and technology.” The festival started in New York before eventually moving to Asheville, and then from Asheville to Durham in 2016; the ethos essentially was to highlight Bob Moog and his legacy through speakers, exhibitions, and performances of everyone from Keith Emerson to M.I.A. Despite this, Moogfest, in its later years, has been mired in controversy, with the festival being sued over contract breaches. It was last held in 2019.

Moog Music Inc.’s relationship with the city of Asheville is reciprocal; each benefits from the other. According to Moog Music Inc., every Moog product, outside of Moog’s DIY synthesizer kits, has been created and assembled by somebody in Asheville, giving the company a homegrown, familial image. 

In turn, the Moogseum brings music tourists to the city in search of an education in all things synth, and the factory conducts tours where you can see the inner workings of the instruments that have shaped modern music. Visitors can even play the machines, many of which have price points in the upper thousands and would otherwise be inaccessible. 

Despite the sale to inMusic, the company assures that the factory will stay in Buncombe County. In a press release, Joe Richardson, president of Moog Music, stated that the company is “proud to keep engineering, designing, and building instruments in our hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, USA.” 

McDaniel, one of the engineers at the studio Drop of Sun, underscores that symbiotic relationship between Moog and Asheville. “I would say that Asheville being the new music hub has a lot to do with Moog bringing a global awareness to the music scene here. If artists are visiting from out of town and doing a demo at Moog, of course they integrate themselves into the musical community that Asheville has curated.”

Employees’ relationship with Moog Music, though, is slightly more fraught.

One of the more public grievances with the company concerns employee wages. According to the Asheville Citizen Times, as of March 2023, the living wage for Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, is $20.10 per hour; several former production employees for Moog Music cited wages well below that, with the highest mentioned being $16.46 an hour.

The wage scale could not be confirmed with Moog Music, despite numerous attempts to do so. 

In 2022, the employees of Moog attempted to start a union, seeking to join the Local 238 chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. In their statement released on June 1 of last year, the Moog Music Workers cite a desire to “address unlivable low wages, achieve a voice in the company, and gain just-cause employment protections.”

In that statement, production team leader Aubrey Young stated that while he “has worked on the production floor for close to two years and leads two lines,” he has “yet to make above $16.46/hr. My lines have made thousands of instruments.” Young left Moog in October 2022. 

Jared Hooker worked with Moog for nearly 10 years in various departments, from the production line to technical support and sales, and he left the company this past April because of the issues highlighted by both Young and the union statement.

“Historically, Moog has been able to pay a pretty low wage — even by Asheville’s standards — because of the fact that it is a cool product, right?” Hooker said. “If you’re a musician, anywhere near or adjacent to synthesizers, you know who Bob Moog is and what it means. But then you start to look at your paycheck and say, ‘Wait a minute, I’m working pretty hard here. And these are premium products that are sold at a premium price.’” 

Though union organizers have not had public communication with the company since September 2022, Hooker and Young both noted that attempts to form a union were still ongoing as of May 2023.

The employee stock ownership program, started in 2015, ended with the purchase by inMusic, according to a company statement, and employees who participated were to receive a payout.

What was important to Moog was “building the tools that creatives needed to succeed,” Michelle Tremblay, a spokesperson for Moog Music, said when asked about the impact of Robert Moog. Contacted by email after the company’s sale, she said she was unable to answer additional questions.

In a press statement about the sale, Moog Music president Richardson stated that inMusic is “devoted to maintaining the sound, quality, and manufacturing philosophy that Moog is known for,” adding that becoming part of inMusic will support “the areas that have been ongoing challenges … as a small manufacturing business.”

Though the legacy of Moog Music is ever evolving, it’s hard to argue against the impact of the instruments themselves. Over the past few years, there’s been what Manning calls a Moog “renaissance” coinciding with a desire to return to analog production. 

And it’s not hard to see why — everybody has something different yet profound to say about the sound of the instruments. Manning called it “beefy,” McDaniel called it “big and classic.” 

Stocker highlighted the Moog One and how heavily it’s been used in the writing sessions for the next Hippo Campus record. 

“I don’t know if you’ve ever played a Moog One, but it’s like a fucking spaceship,” he said. “But not an Earth-made spaceship, it’s-from-another-planet type spaceship. It’s crazy. 

“It’s got this Mellotron, sort of tactile effect,” he added, referring to the lo-fi magnetic tape keyboard. “I think every Moog kind of has that. It makes you hold your breath when you’re playing it.” 

For others, the bass models are the real beauty. Rosenstone, the touring pianist for Hippo Campus, spoke of them fondly. “I feel like with synthesizers you can often misassociate them with dweebles and beeps and boops and not-real-sounding things,” he said. “But the beautiful thing about the [Moog] Sub Phatty or just the warm low-end stuff is that it’s gritty, it’s rounded, it’s bold, but it’s still comforting, too. 

“There’s something so organically wholesome, but also still has that synthesis aspect and that kind of grittiness to it that they just absolutely nail,” he added. 

Stocker agreed: “It’s like biting into an apple that was grown on another planet. It’s like ripping flesh from a fruit, but you’ve never tasted this fruit before in your fucking life, but you just have this sort of innate, inherent instinct to just tear it apart. I love the ripping low-end.”

Reanna Cruz is a music journalist and the producer of the Vulture podcast “Switched on Pop,” a show about the making and meaning of popular music.

GROWL is the photo duo of Justin Weaver and Chris McClure. They focus on human-centric storytelling and are all about covering culture, sport, music, and outdoor adventuring.

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