via the
Bob Moog Foundation newsletter:
"Keyboard Magazine Presents: Synth Gods, edited by former Keyboard editor Ernie Rideout, includes interviews from the last 40 years with some, but not all, synthesizer legends from the 70s and 80s -- both musicians and designers. Included in the group are Wendy Carlos, Brian Eno, Rick Wakeman, Dave Smith, Richard Barbeiri, Jan Hammer, Edgar Winter, Prince, Bernie Worrell, Joe Zawinul, Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream and Bob Moog.
Synth Gods was dedicated to Bob by the author.
You can read a review of Synth Gods
here.
In honor of Bob's recent birthday and in honor of his 50 year career, we are offering Keyboard Presents: Synth Gods, signed by our Executive Director and Bob's daughter Michelle Moog-Koussa, as your gift with a donation of $50.00. This offer runs through May 31, 2011.
Support our programs and honor Bob by making your donation
here.
Below is an excerpt from Bob's interview in Synth Gods:
"But musicians always come up with stuff I couldn’t imagine, using my instruments. I can get a sense of whether something would be a good musical resource, but I don’t do music. I’m a toolmaker. It’s always amazing what someone like Herbie Hancock, Wendy Carlos, or Stevie Wonder can come up with. What they’ll do when you put something new in front of them is they’ll turn a couple knobs and listen, and immediately get a sense of where to go. The muse talks to them.”
The “muse” plays a big part in Bob Moog’s own work, though he maintains that he’s anything but a musician. “I call it the Cosmic Network, the source of creativity. It’s really out there. It’s not just for music, it’s for writing, and for designing hardware. I think different people experience it in different ways. Sometimes an idea will come to me as I’m waking up. Sometimes it will come to me here in the office, with the phones ringing all around.
“There’s no way to do this just by opening up an engineering book and finding the formula,” he says. “It’s a matter of judgment and intuition. That’s what I’ve been doing all my life.” He smiles, “I’m pretty good at it now.”
From Keyboard Presents: Synth Gods, edited by Ernie Rideout, (c) 2011 by New Bay Media LLC. Published by Backbeat Books, an imprint of Hal Leonard. ISBN: 978-0-87930-999-2. Reprinted with permission.
www.backbeatbooks.com.
Make a donation honoring Bob's birthday and his legacy
here."
Book image via
Amazon
Update: Not to be confused with the film Synth God previously posted
here in 2007 and
here in 2006 when that project first started.
via this auction
However, true to their quirky nature, this latter feature is precisely what makes the VSS-200 so unique. You can capture any of the 100 (awful) onboard FM tones into the unit's sampler, and then run the resulting tone through the 9 DSP effects: loop, u-turn, reverse, FM, AM, fuzz, echo, level and pitch; many in combination. You may then layer as many additional sounds into the built-in microphone for some real fun grime cheez. Plus, there's a real ADSR that's fully adjustable.
See three videos by Retrosound.de previously posted here, here and here.
