The first digital synthesizer, the Synclavier, had come along in 1975. Digital sound synthesis, invented in the 1950s, became an affordable and popular technology in the 1980s. Soon digital sampling, computers and MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) standardization swept through electronic music, transforming the landscape. While the 1960s and 1970s were the heyday of analog synthesis, a sound many musicians still prefer, computer-synthesized sound now had the technological edge.

Moog largely eschewed the digital music revolution, though he had played a part in it. In 1978 he moved to North Carolina to launch Big Briar Productions and began making effects modules and control devices for electronic instruments. One of the first projects was an attempt to create a keyboard instrument that could be played as expressively as a violin. At the International Computer Music Conference in 1982, he introduced the multiple-touch-sensitive keyboard, developed with John Eaton of Indiana University. In addition to responding to the downward motion of a key, the keyboard also sensed the horizontal position of the finger playing it, opening up new dynamic possibilities.

Later, at the behest of artists, he made a flat touch-plate interface. "Artist feedback drove all my development work," he recalls, listing examples dating from the beginning of his career: "The first synthesizers I made were in response to what [composer] Herb Deutsch wanted. The now-famous Moog filter was suggested by several musicians. The so-called ADSR envelope, which is now a basic element in all contemporary synthesizers and programmable keyboard isntruments, was originally specified in 1965 by Vladimir Ussachevsky, then head of the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center. The point is that I don't design stuff for myself. I'm a toolmaker. I design things that other people want to use."

While Moog's Big Briar inventions have not had the sensational impact of the first Moog synths, they are creative, futuristic visions of alternative methods for playing electronic instruments. "Unfortunately, the trend is toward user interfaces that are simpler, not more complex. Most people don't care enough about the increased possibilities for expression to sacrifice years of their lives mastering an instrument," says Keislar. "They want to press a button and hear music come out. As a result, such systems are probably destined to remain experimental, even if elegant."

Big Briar also makes effects modules such as the "moogerfooger," which mimics analog synthesizer timbres, one of which (Big Briar Moogerfooger Model MF101 Lowpass Filter) is based on the Moog filter. In 1997 Moog came out with a theremin (the Ethervox) based on the electronic instrument from the 1920s but featuring both a MIDI interface and a sound module that can re-create a theremin performance from MIDI data.

Reflecting on the waves of synthesizers and musical innovation that followed in the Moog's wake, the inventor says the instrument "has introduced a vast array of new timbres and textures to the available palette of musical sound" and fostered what he calls "sound design." Much of contemporary music, Moog points out, "has as much to do with sculpting complex, slowly evolving sounds as it does with 'playing' fixed-timbre musical sounds." Moog's quotation marks underscore the plasticity of the concept.

While some have credited Moog with helping to foment a "democratization of music," he will hear none of it. That societal shift came about thanks to "cheesy Casio and Yamaha keyboards that sold for $100 to $500" and were "small and portable and battery-powered, so you could take them to a party or to the beach," he says. "I see these devices as being on a branch of music technology that is completely separate from the analog synthesizers of the 1970s."

His newest project is an "interactive piano" that manages to be both newfangled and old-fashioned. Designed with David Van Koevering, who helped to market the first Moogs, it is housed in the fine finished wood of a concert piano, but instead of strings under the lid, there is only a speaker. A touch screen the size of a laptop's takes the place of sheet music. The piano has 128 sounds, including a digitally sampled Steinway grand, and 256 tracks for recording. It will transcribe any composition onto the screen as fast as you can play it. Connect to the Web and download MIDI files to play along with in a kind of instrumental karaoke. Hook up a CD burner and make copies of your symphony, or print it on sheet music for that authentic touch. Its educational software is far more forgiving than was Moog's mother.

Institutions as varied as the University of Miami and the New York Islanders use the $8,000 (and up) piano. But unlike Moog's synthesizers, the instrument is aimed more at musical tradition than musical innovation. "Before the radio and the phonograph, people made their own music, for themselves and for each other," Moog says. "People regularly got together to sing, play [music] and dance with each other. Now, most of the music is recorded, and a lot of that is listened to by solitary people, isolated from their surroundings by headphones." Moog hopes that in the near future, "people will get tired of being in their own little boxes, and they'll come to understand that they would be a lot happier if there were more social music making in their lives."

These days, Moog is accorded the respect and admiration of a great American inventor. In the fall of 1994, when the excellent documentary "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey" had its debut at the New York Film Festival, Moog was greeted by warm applause when he was recognized in the audience by the film's director, Steven Martin, during a post-screening Q&A. If most musically inclined people have some familiarity with the Moog, that's because Moog became a de facto leader when it came to introducing electronic music technology into the public consciousness.

Moog also helped forever alter the creative process of music making. It's easy to forget that music was once an elite art, the province of those who could liberate the scrawl of notes on a page through specialized and sometimes highly technical mechanical expertise. Today, Danny Elfman, who composed the scores for the "Batman" movies, "The Simpsons" and countless other productions, has an advantage Beethoven and Mozart probably never dreamed possible: creating full orchestration with technology instead of sheet music.

For Moog, it all goes back to his initial, sustaining fascination with the theremin: "Leon Theremin's original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It's like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level." The statement equally applies to Moog's own marvel of engineering.

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