The Bob Moog Foundation is an independent 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization. Our projects include our hallmark educational program, Dr. Bob’s SoundSchool, through which we teach the science of sound through music and technology, and the preservation of the extensive Bob Moog Foundation Archives.

Our funding to deliver these projects comes from donors like you.

There are many ways that you can support the Foundation and help strengthen our efforts. Some of them are free, or involve in-kind participation.

Check them out here:

Donate

Donations of all sizes provide the resources for us to accomplish our work.

• • Donate here. No amount is too small, and every dollar powers our work.
  • Become a sustaining member by making a recurring donation which repeats each month, each quarter, or each year.
  • Donate appreciated stocks or mutual funds. In less than 10 minutes, you can make a tremendous impact on the growth and sustainability of the Bob Moog Foundation. Click here for more information and instructions.
  • Matching gifts: Does your company  participate in matching donations? This often doubles the amount of your donation. Please contact us at info@moogfoundation.org if we can sign up for your company’s matching gift program.
  • Memberships. Becoming a member of the Bob Moog Foundation and the Moogseum allows you access to tangible, members-only benefits as you advocate in support of Bob’s legacy. Pick the membership package that best suits you here.

 

Shop BMF

• • • Bob Moog Foundation online store: Check out all of our cool Bob Moog legacy-related merchandise here including Bob Moog Foundation t-shirts, art, educational posters, and more.
    • eBay Giving Works: Do you sell on eBay? Consider donating a portion of your sales to the Bob Moog Foundation. We are part of eBay’s Giving Works program. Read more here.

Awesome sound libraries

• • • Spectrasonics’ Bob Moog Tribute Library Are you a musician? Do you use Omnisphere? Be sure to purchase the Bob Moog Tribute Library, (or update to v2. if you already have it) which was created by Spectrasonics and over 45 renowned musicians specifically to support the Foundation’s important work at the intersection of science, music, and technology.
    • MOTU’s Encore Soundbank. MOTU, along with a multitude of legendary and renowned musicians, created a unique sound bank in honor of Bob, to benefit the Bob Moog Foundation. Learn more about and purchase the soundbank here.
    •  Dr. Bob’s Modular. Renowned sound designers Drew Neumann and Kevin Lamb worked tirelessly to create a unique sound library from a vintage Moog Modular System 15 synthesizer. These sounds are inspired by the works of pioneering synthesists like Isao Tomita, Wendy Carlos, Larry Fast, and Jean-Michel Jarre.  Get the details here.

Music and video

• • • Bandcamp. Some very cool artists have donated songs and even entire albums to the Bob Moog Foundation. Check them out here. Your entire purchase benefits our work.
    • Legacy and Innovation: A Tribute to Edgar Froese. This album, created by various ambient electronica artists from all over the world, and produced by RadHaus, with all proceeds being donated to the Bob Moog Foundation to support our projects. Read more about this special offering here. 
    • Moogmentum by Lisa Bella Donna. Internationally acclaimed recording artist, composer, modular synthesist, sound designer, educator, and clinician Lisa Bella Donna pays homage to Bob Moog on the stunning synthesizer-based album Moogmentum. Download it here or purchase it on CD from our online store here.
    • Foundation of Synthesis Tutorials. You can find over seven hours of educational videos created by the Bob Moog Foundation on the fundamentals of synthesis through macProVideo and Ask.Audio Academy. 

In-kind donations

• • Donate like-new gear to the Official Moogseum Reverb Shop. Our Moogseum teams up with Reverb, the largest online marketplace dedicated to buying and selling new, used, and vintage musical instruments: Donate a synthesizer in mint or excellent condition, as well as select accessories designed for use with synths, to this online shop –  sale proceeds go to the one-of-a-kind immersive, interactive museum where the science of sound comes alive. More about the Official Moogseum Reverb Shop here. Details on how to donate are here. 
  • Donate archival materials to Bob Moog Foundation Archives. The Bob Moog Foundation maintains an expansive archive of materials related to the Bob Moog legacy, including schematics, instruments, prototypes, vintage catalogs, notes, photos, and much more. If you would like to donate items to the archive, please contact us at info@moogfoundation.org
  • Donation of items for silent auctions.  We raise funds for our projects through silent auctions: If you would like to donate an item for that purpose, such as a synthesizer or other musical instrument, audio gear, art, travel, etc., please email us at info@moogfoundation.org

My Unforgettable Experience as Bob’s Synth Tech in the Early Big Briar Years

By Dale Ong

[Editor’s Note: Big Briar, Inc. was the company that Bob founded in 1978 after he left Moog Music (Buffalo) and moved to western North Carolina. His new company focused on creating custom instruments for its customers, as well as on the creation of alternative musical interfaces. The company was run from a dedicated building on Bob’s property, located in an area geographically designated as Big Briar Cove (hence the name of the company). Dale Ong was the company’s first employee, other than Bob himself.]

It was February 1982. My career as a synthesizer technician at Big Briar was still in its first month. I had not yet learned what a ‘normal’ day in the shop would be like, but I knew that today would be anything but normal …

Excitement was in the air because we were expecting a very important visitor to arrive that day. I was nervous with anticipation. Bob was looking forward to seeing an old friend. Who was our special guest? The original prototype modular synthesizer that Bob built for Herb Deutsch! It was coming for restoration before heading to its new home at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

Any synthesizer technician would have been thrilled to work on this synthesizer, so I was pleased to learn that Bob planned to hand the restoration work over to me. I was proud that Bob trusted me enough to let me handle the project, but at the same time, I was apprehensive about servicing such an important synthesizer. My heart sank when I learned that as part of the process, Bob wanted me to reverse engineer a set of schematics for the system. I had never done any reverse engineering before and was not sure that I was up to the challenge. I wondered why Bob didn’t already have a set of schematics … Then it hit me – they must have gone with everything else when he sold Moog Music.

The instrument itself was comprised of three units. A small vertical cabinet housed two voltage controlled oscillators, two voltage controlled amplifiers, and a power supply. These were the oldest of the modules and had a distinctly handmade look to them. Controls were identified with labels printed on heavy card stock which were glued to the metal panels. Next was a small horizontal cabinet which held a low-pass filter, a band-pass filter, a noise generator, a trigger extractor, an ADSR envelope generator, and a second power supply. These were newer and sported the form which would later become so familiar to users of the 900 series modules. The third unit was a dual keyboard with built in envelope generators. All in all, it was not particularly impressive looking – If you were not aware of its history, you would never know how important this synthesizer was.

Overall, the prototype Moog was in pretty good shape. Upon testing the system, I was happy to find that everything worked except for one of the envelope generators. A new transistor later it was as good as new. Much of the remaining restoration work involved minor cosmetic issues. A few knobs had to be replaced. There were a couple of labels on the oldest panels that needed to be reproduced and replaced. In my excitement I made a new label that said “Ampifier”. When Bob caught my mistake he wasn’t upset – he seemed more amused that this particular synthesizer had me a little bit frazzled.

When I finished the schematics, I made a set of blueprints for Bob. It felt like being back in school as I stood in his office and watched him make corrections to the blueprints with his red pen. I was impressed that Bob didn’t even need to look at the modules which were on my work bench – he made his revisions from memory! It was as if he had never forgotten a single detail of his original designs. 

After revising the schematics and finishing the restoration work came the best part – a little time spent just playing this revolutionary synthesizer. As a synth geek, I was in heaven!

There is one question about the project which I have had for many years: If Bob could quickly recreate the schematics from memory, why did he have me go through the process of reverse engineering? It could be that he wanted me to show him that I could do it … Or maybe he wanted to show me.

I felt honored to have had the opportunity to work on an instrument of such historical significance.

___________________________

Dale Ong has donated the pictured schematics and the rest in the series, to the Bob Moog Foundation Archives. We are thrilled to add this piece of history to our vast collection. If you have an item that you would like to donate to the Bob Moog Foundation Archives, please write us at info@www.moogfoundation.org.

Moog: A History in Recordings – by Thom Holmes

On the Road: Early “Live” Moog Modular Artists, part 2

The earliest and boldest use of the Moog in improvisational music was the work of Richard Teitelbaum (b. 1939), an American composer and co-founder of the free improvisation ensemble Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV). A New Yorker, Teitelbaum received a Master’s degree in music from Yale in 1964 and headed for Italy on a Fulbright scholarship. He had grown interested in electronic music during the early 1960s, being influenced by the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and the Italian composer Luigi Nono, with whom he studied.

MEV was begun in Rome in 1966 and originally included Alan Bryant (electronics), Alvin Curran (piano, trumpet, voice), Frederic Rzewski (electronics), Ivan Vandor (saxophone), and Teitelbaum (Moog Modular and electronics). MEV occupied a place in music that was between experimental classical and jazz improvisation, members having had some experience in one or the other. On the jazz side, for example, Ivan Vandor had studied with Dexter Gordon. Saxophonist Steve Lacy, who worked with MEV in 1968 and then again in 1976-77, had also worked with Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor among others. (1) Lacy, incidentally, experimented with tape loops of his saxophone and other sounds on his 1971 album Lapis, released in France by Saravah.

Shuttling back and forth between the United States and Europe, Teitelbaum befriended Robert Moog in 1966 and engaged the inventor’s help in finding a way to amplify sub-audio brainwaves (alpha waves, around 8-12 Hz) to use as control voltages with the voltage- controlled Moog. Moog made for him a “low cost, high-gain differential amplifier” at the front-end of the system and also “built a very good low pass filter at the end of the high-gain amplifier to further emphasize the alpha waves being amplified live from the brain.” (2) In the Fall of 1967, Teitelbaum “made the down payment on a used Moog Synthesizer” and returned to Europe with this equipment to rejoin MEV. (3) He was the first person to bring a Moog Modular to Europe and was a pioneer in the use of amplified brainwaves for musical purposes. There, MEV performed dozens of concerts over a three-year period, often using the Moog-Teitelbaum biofeedback circuitry to process amplified brainwaves and other signals using the Moog Modular. Doing this in real-time was startling at the time, introducing biofeedback in the form of brainwaves, heart rates, EMGs, skin conductivity, and other signals into musical performances. Members of the audience frequently participated in the performances.

Three MEV albums were released during the tenure of the original group:

• Live Electronic Music Improvised (Mainstream MS/5002, US, 1968).
• Friday (Polydor 583 769, UK, 1969)
• The Sound Pool (Byg Actuel 26, 529.326, France, 1969)

The tracks found on these three albums capture, in part, the biofeedback performances. The result was music that explored remarkable textures, noise, and interaction between acoustic and electronic instruments.

For the MEV piece Spacecraft, Teitelbaum used biofeedback signals of his own body and those of other members of MEV as live (real-time) musical materials. (4) Their heartbeats, chest cavities and throats were connected to contact microphones, which he used as amplified audio. Electrodes were attached to their EEG and ECG, the signals for which were converted into control voltages of the Moog synthesizer using the black box that Robert Moog had created for him. The result was a combination of mindful musical actions by members of the group integrated with Teitelbaum’s signals from his own body. Teitelbaum could capture and repeat the biofeedback signals as a loop, then manually or automatically make adjustments to the output on the Moog.

Spacecraft from Live Electronic Music Improvised

 

 1ere Partie, from The Sound Pool

 

In addition to Spacecraft, several other pieces were specific to the brain waves and other organic signals:

• In Tune (1967) for brainwaves, heart beats, breath and Moog synthesizer.
• Organ Music (1968) with Steve Lacy and his wife Irene Aebi performed at the Le Petit Pharmaceutical Co. in Turin, Italy
• Alpha Bean Lima Brain (1971), with brainwaves sent by telephone from California to make a pot of beans jump at Charlotte Moorman’s Avant Garde Festival in New York City
• Tai Chi Alpha Tala (1974), with sound and video synthesis controlled by alpha waves from live Tai Chi performer Barbara Mayfield, and an ARP 2500 sequencer accompanied by South Indian drum master Trichy Sankaran on mridangam. (5)

 

Richard is currently a composer, performer, and Professor of Music at Bard College. Teitelbaum has received numerous awards, included a Guggenheim (2002) to create his opera Z’vi, two Fulbrights, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, and many commissions over the years. He has recently revived MEV with original members Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski. Look for one of their performances.

 

1. Teitelbaum, Richard. Personal communication, March 4, 2016.

2. Teitelbaum, Richard. Personal communication, March 4, 2016.

3. Teitelbaum, Richard. “In Tune: Some Early Experiments in Biofeedback Music.” Biofeedback and the Arts: Some

Results of Early Experiments, David Rosenboom, editor: Aesthetic Research Center,. Vancouver, British Columbia, MIT Press, 1976, pp. 35-56.

4. Falkner, Michael. From Biological Signals to Music. Online paper: http://www.michaelfalkner.de/heartmusicinfo.html

5. Teitelbaum, Richard. Personal communication, March 4, 2016.

 

Thom Holmes is a music historian and composer specializing in the history of electronic music and recordings. He is the author of the textbook, Electronic and Experimental Music (fourth edition, Routledge 2012) and writes the blog, Noise and Notations. For his ongoing project, The Sound of Moog, he is archiving every known early recording of the Moog Modular Synthesizer.

Twitter: @Thom_Holmes

blog: Noise and Notations

http://www.thomholmes.com/

 

If you want to read more from Thom Holmes, please see his many fascinating historical blogs here: http://moogfoundation.org/search/Thom+Holmes