Transcripts

JON GORDON: The father of electronic music, dies. This is Future Tense from American Public Media, I'm Jon Gordon. Robert Moog whose self-named synthesizers turned electric currents into sound, died this week at age 71 from a brain tumor. A childhood interest in this spooky sounding theremin led Moog to create a career and business that tied the name Moog to synthesizers.

The Moog first captured the public imagination on Wendy Carlos compositions Switched-On Bach and has been used by countless artists, including Stevie Wonder, Devo, Funkadelic, New Order, and Gary Newman.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Concert promoter Charles Carlini says Moog was a little bit musician, but mostly engineer.

CHARLES CARLINI: Bob certainly had an engineering background, yet he had a great affinity for music and dabbled with it a bit. I don't think he was an accomplished musician. But he did play the theremin and he did have a love and passion for it, but his abiding interest of course was circuitry.

JON GORDON: What are his most important contributions to music?

CHARLES CARLINI: I think, Bob really brought electronic music to the masses. What was once the province of academia, he actually brought to a wider audience. And with the help of the Rolling Stones, and The Beatles, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and such groups like that, and of course, Wendy Carlos Switched-On Bach, he brought those sounds to a wider audience and to a great degree accepted.

And those sounds were so strange and foreign, when they first came out, that you either shunned it or you actually embraced it. And fortunately, more people embraced those sounds. And today it's so prevalent that-- it actually permeates what we hear on the radio today and we take it for granted.

JON GORDON: You organize the Moogfest concerts the last couple of years.

CHARLES CARLINI: Yes, I did.

JON GORDON: What do musicians generally have to say about how he influenced them?

CHARLES CARLINI: Just as Les Paul fathered the electric guitar. Robert Moog fathered the synthesizer. And as one musician describes it he actually invented an instrument that could finally compete with the guitar as a lead instrument.

The guitar of course is driven by powerful amplifiers and it cuts and it pierces, and no instrument on the stage could do the same job, until Robert Moog came along. And he invented an instrument as Rick Wakeman of Yes stated, that can cut through concrete.

This instrument actually made a lot of new keyboard players because they were able to actually perform on an equal playing field as a guitarist. And the sounds are just beautiful. Beautiful, they enhance the music. It's just a great instrument that he invented, and everyone's very grateful for that innovation.

JON GORDON: Concert promoter Charles Carlini, he staged the Moogfest concerts in 2004 and again this past May.

[INSTRUMENT PLAYING]

This is Future Tense, I'm Jon Gordon.