The Bob Moog Foundation is excited to announce Exploring the Moog Liberation virtual event exploring a lesser known facet of Moog history, and the now legendary keytar synthesizer originally released by the company in 1980. Hosted by August Worley, an engineer at Moog Music, Inc. at the time of production of the Liberation, the event will take attendees on a deep dive into the historical, technical, and musical aspects of this unusual synthesizer. Join us Saturday, December 11th at 3:00 pm EST on the Foundation’s YouTube channel. Tickets are offered on a pay-what-you-can basis and are available for purchase through Eventbrite at https://bit.ly/exploringliberation2021
Exploring the Moog Liberation is the first in a planned series of events to examine vintage synthesizers and components from the Bob Moog Foundation Archives. The Liberation featured in this event was donated to the Archives by Brad Kaenel earlier this year, at which point August Worley performed the formal technical assessment, as well as provided recommendations for its future restoration.
Worley worked for Moog Music from 1980-1985, contributing to the production of many Moog synthesizers including the Minimoog, Prodigy, Liberation, Source, Taurus I and Taurus II, Rogue, Concermate MG-1, Opus-3, and Memorymoog, and served as a design engineer for Big Briar/Moog Music on the MiniMoog Voyager. He is also a technical advisor to the Bob Moog Foundation.
“The Moog Liberation was innovative not only because it was the first mass-produced keytar synthesizer, but also because it had a very unusual combination of capabilities, which drew their provenance from a variety of other Moog synthesizers,” noted Worley. “It has a rich history and technical background that will be the focus of our discussion during this virtual event.”
Worley will lend unique insights from his time working at the Moog Music factory when it was located in Cheektowaga, New York, and will be sharing historical materials from the Bob Moog Foundation Archives. The event will conclude with questions from the audience.
Exploring the Liberation is one of many virtual events that the Bob Moog Foundation has created since the rise of the pandemic. Past events have included tours of the Moogseum, focusing on different historical themes, an examination of the Moog modular prototype with Herb Deutsch, an exploration of the Big Briar years with Dale Ong and Felix Visser, and a listening party of the Abominatron Tape with Seva Ball. Many of the tours are available through the Foundation’s membership program. https://moogfoundation.org/membership/