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Thursday, 1 September 2005
Moog remembrances ::
Following Bob Moog’s passing, there was a thread on synthsights about the best all-synth albums. Echoes put up a Moog top-ten list of albums featuring Moog synthesizers. It included Like a Duck to Water by Mother Mallard—of which I was a member from 1998-2000. It also included the first Emerson Lake & Palmer album—Keith Emerson had performed with us at one concert in 2000. Colin knew this and nudged me, at which point I said “huh?”, and wrote some stuff about Moog I’d been keeping to myself.
My mom forwarded me a really nice article from the Cornell Chronicle on Moog. (Eventually I think it’ll be converted to HTML but for now you’ll need to download the whole August 25 issue as a PDF).
My favorite David Borden (Father Mallard ;-) / Moog story is about how David would go into the shop/studio at night, misconnect the modules and fry them. He’d apologize profusely to Moog, who’d insist, no, that’s the kind of thing we want you to do! David is quoted as saying that when Moog was trying to idiot-proof his invention, he (David) was the chief idiot. See: Mother Mallard - History.
Moog came to Ithaca for Mother Mallard’s 30th anniversary concert in 1999, and he and David did a 30-minute Q&A beforehand. Unfortunately I was backstage and couldn’t hear. After the concert, Moog joined the group for bows. It was one of probably two dozen times (trade shows...) I stood or sat right next to him and for one reason or another didn’t have a conversation.
I recently got a Minimoog Voyager which arrived on the 12th, 9 days before its inventor left us. It went to quick use, recording a set of melodies on the song we were 90% done with when time was up at the studio.
Last week I got the urge to practice David’s Continuing Story of Counterpoint Part 9, and MIDI-ed up the Voyager to double the left hand part with that fat Moog bass sound.
I suddenly realized that his years of working with monophonic Moogs explained a lot about why David’s pieces consist mostly of multiple monophonic lines. He’s told me he never thinks in terms of “chords” at all. (except maybe when playing jazz) I also realized that one can get away with an easier technique on a part being played with a monosynth as opposed to the piano/electric piano—with a bit of amp env release, you don’t have to hold the notes as long and have more time to get to the next one. Damn, wish I’d realized that 7 years ago, I would have tweaked my patches!
Emerson ... Great guy ... let me play the solo brass opening to Fanfare for the Common Man, and tolerated my doubling the melodies and comping under his solo :-) Here are some pictures from our April 15, 2000 concert at the Smithsonian, including one of Moog, Emerson and David, a couple of me, and one that proves I was wrong when I thought there hadn’t been any Moog synthesizers on stage at that concert.
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