THE HISTORY OF THE MOOG SYNTHESISER 1962 – 1976

Each month we get our muso nerd hat on and look at the story of a couple of instruments that played a key part in the history of rock

Robert Moog was already making Theremins in the early Sixties when he began developing the technologies that would become the Moog synthesiser.

Meanwhile, a composer and music teacher at Hofstra University in Long Island called Herbert Deutsch was fiddling around with Theremins – he built his own from Moog’s design in 1962 – as he strove for newer, weirder sounds. The pair met at a conference in 1963 and agreed to collaborate.

Prior to Moog, it had been possible to manipulate the pitch of sounds but it was a maddeningly labour-intensive process involving cutting out and stretching bits of tape.

But the invention and wider availability of transistors enabled Moog to make his breakthrough. The transistor allowed quite small electric signals to be greatly amplified and outputted much more effectively and precisely than with the old valve tubes. Also, they were smaller and cheaper.

The key component of Moog’s new machine would be the voltage controlled oscillator which, as the name suggests, could oscillate faster, and hence produce a higher noise, the more voltage was put through it. 

Moog wasn’t the only developer to cotton on to this, but he was the only one to have Herbert Deutsch on board, and the latter was able to add on a keyboard, whose pitch was controlled with one volt per octave increments.

They exhibited in 1964, and began producing in 1965. The Moog keyboard synthesizer was born.

But what did it mean for popular music?

Bernie Krause, who had been in The Weavers, was working as a producer at Elektra Records where he met Paul Beaver, a jazz musician who had worked on a 1965 record called Psychedelic Percussion. Together, they saw the possibilities offered by Moog’s creation and set up at the Monterey Pop Festival to showcase their new toy.

Soon, artists including The Doors and The Byrds were interested in using these new sounds. Krause gave George Harrison one and the result was the accurately named Electronic Music album. The only release on the Apple spin-off label, ‘Zapple’ incidentally.

Beaver and Krause went on to virtually invent what we would call new age music today on a trio of early 70s albums. 1971’s Gandharva is a magnificent timeless piece of work.

But it was classical, experimental and academic musicians who first woke the public up to the possibilities of the Moog. Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach was the Platinum-selling record that really captured the imagination.

Rock was also catching on to the potential throughout 1967 and 1968. Among the first recordings to use the new instrument were Strange Days by The Doors; The Notorious Byrd Brothers by The Byrds and Cosmic Sounds by The Zodiac. Mickey Dolenz was also an early Moog owner and used one on The Monkees’ Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Ltd. Simon and Garfunkel, on 1968’s Bookends, and The Beatles on Abbey Road also used the new instrument.

Soon a fad grew up for pretty forgettable novelty records with Moog covers of hits, but we won’t dwell too much on them, because they were all pretty much rubbish and did the Moog the disservice of treating it like a novelty instrument such as the Stylophone.

Terry Manning, a producer and composer at Stax who worked with Booker T, Al Green, Otis, Isaac Hayes, and pretty much everyone else had a stab at a Moogified record with Home Sweet Home (1970), and and emerged with a strange and inventive album of covers. It contains one absolute gem, a magnificently warped and mangled version of The Beatles’ Savoy Truffle that begins with a brilliant Moog solo. Manning was also a great photographer too, so presumably took some loving shots of his Moog.

In 1972, Stevie Wonder began the period of astonishing, consistent brilliance that would see him release Music Of My Mind and Talking Book in 1972, Innervisions in 1974 and Fulfillingness' First Finale in 1975, culminating in the crowning glory of 1976’s Songs In The Key Of Life.

This period saw him collaborate with Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff in the guise of their TONTO's Expanding Head Band project, which was a complicated, vast arrangement of analogue synthesizers that used Moog-constructed parts. The result: Stevie, and Moog’s classical period.

TONTO’s 1971 album Zero Time is a must-have record for fans of early Moog work.

By 1972, Robert Moog had created a smaller, more practical and cheaper version called the Minimoog. The Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Jan Hammer on the ground-breaking Inner Mounting Flame album and Keith Emerson were early enthusiasts – with the latter’s work on ELP’s Lucky Man remaining one of the Moog’s finest hours.

German electronic music pioneers Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk then took the sound further, putting it front and centre of two terrific records, Phaedra and Autobahn, both of which are enduringly influential classic electronic soundscapes which found favour with both art school types who saw it as ultra modern and hairy stoners who like the taste of the colours they saw when they put the albums on.

By 1976, the Moog was being used in disco, thanks to Georgio Moroder with two Donna Summer records – Love To Love You Baby and, especially, I Feel Love – setting the new template for the Moog’s strange, alluring sound in dance music for decades to come. Georgio had first put the Moog into a pop context in 1972 on Chicory Tip’s number one hit, Son Of My Father. It was long time top notch rock engineer and producer Chris Thomas who played on that hit for the Maidstone band’s only number one. The Tip also has the honour of having a record banned by the BBC for its reference to cigarettes on its flop single Cigarettes, Women and Wine. Wild stuff I’m sure you’ll agree.

Robert Moog, who died in 2005, was a pioneer who gave a brilliant, liberating tool to music and facilitated great crossovers from the jazz, classical and experimental scenes into rock. His instruments lead to some of the era’s most inventive work and a legacy that can be seen in pretty much any electronic record you care to name. Thanks, Dr Moog. Oh, and “Moog” is pronounced to rhyme with “vogue”!

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THE GIBSON FIREBIRD

With its distinctive, almost wilfully strange shape, narrow-angled headstock, clear sustain and long list of heroic devotees, the Gibson Firebird remains one of rock’s most coveted and iconic guitars. We’re going to have a bit of a look at the history of the instrument and pay tribute to some of the legends who have wielded it.

The 1950s had seen Gibson fall behind their Fender rivals. The Les Paul’s popularity had been eclipsed by the Stratocaster and Telecaster, whose brighter colours and multiple pick-ups seemed hipper and more exciting, while Gibson’s Flying V and other radical design, the Explorer, had enjoyed only limited success.

Gibson Big Kahuna Ted McCarty engaged a Detroit car designer, Ray Dietrich, to work on an exciting new shape. Borrowing the visual concept of the tailfins of Fifties cars, Ray adapted the Explorer and rounded it out, giving the distinctive shape. Because the treble-side horn or point of the guitar was longer than the bass-side one, uniquely, early Firebirds were referred to as “a reverse”.

The headstock was also reversed, with the tuning pegs on the treble side, and – a fist for Gibson – the neck extended all the way down into the body. The headstock was set at 14 degrees rather than the standard 17, meaning more pressure on the strings and less lost vibration between the nuts and the stings. All of this added up to clearer, more intense sustain, which the humbucker pick-ups were well placed to utilise.

The Firebird went on sale in 1963, but initial sa les were not brilliant as the unusual “reverse” set-up proved hard to market. From 1965 to 1969, Gibson dabbled with non-reverse models but this experiment was also abandoned and the company returned to the controversial reserve design by the end of the decade. The Firebird also begat a similarly-designed bass, the Thunderbird. 

Public reception may have been modest, but professional guitarists were quick to seize on the new guitars. Eric Clapton played a Firebird during his days with Blind Faith, and also with Cream – he used a Firebird I during the farewell concerts. Steve Stills was also a big fan, as were Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Ronnie Wood. Neil Young’s ‘Old Black’ guitar, although a 1953 Les Paul, uses a mini-humbucker from a Firebird at the bridge. Allen Collins of Lynyrd Skynyrd used it on the albums Pronounced… through to Gimme Back My Bullets and on the live album On More For The Road, before switching to the Explorer in 1977, with which he is probably more closely associated. 

Tom Petty, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top and Mick Ralphs of Mott The Hoople were other devotees. Steve Van Zandt says he has moved away from the Fender Strat on occasion in favour of the Firebird because “it gives me a little more sustain without sounding too thick or distorted. It almost sounds like an acoustic-electric guitar.” 

But it is probably Johnny Winter who is the most iconic of all Firebird players. The legendary bluesman has been wringing beauty out of his ‘bird for nearly fifty years, from performances at Woodstock to inspiring John Lennon and The Stones, producing Muddy Waters and having a tribute made in his honour by the Smashing Pumpkins, it has been a glorious career for the man known as the “greatest white bluesman”, and most of it has been done on the Firebird.