When I woke this morning to find a funky-looking 24-key Moogsynthesizer staring at me from just above Google's homepagesearch box, I knew exactly what I'd be writing about.I've played the piano since I was four, growing up in the1970s noodling with funky-sounding analog synthesizers stackedaround my house. Robert Moog (his last name actually rhymes with"vogue") is one of those guys every synthesizer wonkknows about. His last name is synonymous with electronic synthesistechnology, doubling as an adjective you might use to describe a"fat" synthesizer sound. If you flip over to Google's search page , you'll see what I'm talking about: a fully functionalMinimoog-like synthesizer (Moog's earliest versions, as largeas church organs, would have overwhelmed the page). Moog died in2005 and would have been 78 today, thus Google's birthdayDoodle celebration. We can thank Google Doodlers Ryan Germick andJoey Hurst for selecting Moog and building a browser-friendlyversion of one of his synthesizers: Germick told Mashable that selecting Moog was about "[paying] tribute to someonewho was like a patron saint of the nerdy arts." ( MORE: What s the Frequency Heinrich? Google Doodle Celebrates Father of Hertz ) I'd add that Moog actually lived — to paraphrase Steve Jobs — at the intersection of "nerdy" and"artful." Moog was a nerd, it's true, but in awonderfully musical sense. Born in 1934 in New York City , he spent his childhood studying the piano and tinkering withelectronics, twin passions that dovetailed in his teenage yearsinto a hobby building electronic music instruments ("homebrewsynthesis," if you will). In 1949, Moog used instructions hefound in a magazine to build his very own theremin, an unearthlysounding electronic instrument played by moving your hands near— but not touching — two metal antennas to controlpitch and volume (check out this video of the theremin's inventor , Leon Theremin, playing his own instrument, which Thereminpatented in 1928). While pursuing degrees in physics and electrical engineering, Moogcontinued to tinker with electronic instrument design, founding hisown part-time business and selling theremin kits out of hisapartment. By the mid-1960s, he was building instruments of his owndesign, including the Moog synthesizer, a device you can hear onalbums by early rockers like The Beatles and The Doors as well asThe Monkees, The Rolling Stones and Simon & Garfunkel. Thealbum that really got the ball rolling for Moog, however, was WendyCarlos' Switched-On Bach , in which Carlos performed various Bach compositions on a Moogsynthesizer (you can hear samples of it here ). It charted in March 1969, climbing into the Top 10 and remainingon the charts for 17 weeks, eventually nabbing three Grammy Awards,including "Best Classical Album." When you're tinkering with the Minimoog-styled Google Doodle,don't just hammer on the keys — fiddle with the knobsup top. (The ones cleverly arranged to form the G-O-O-G inGoogle's logo. Get it? "Mini- Goog "?) Known as "envelope generators," they'llchange the sound you produce when depressing thesynthesizer's keys by modifying parameters like the corewaveform (square, triangle, etc.), volume and frequency. You canalso noodle with settings like "attack" (how soon thesound plays after you hit the key) and "decay" (howlong the sound plays after you let up on the key). AndGoogle's even tossed in a faux reel-to-reel that'll letyou record your performances, then broadcast them through a shortlink. Here's a clip demonstrating the many sound possibilities ofthe Minimoog. And here's another, from a 1980s BBC video, with footage ofDr. Moog himself demonstrating the Minimoog's features. MORE: Search and Strum: Play a Tune on Google s Les Paul Doodle. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as China Steel Billet Casting , Billet CCM for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Continuous Casting Machine.
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