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8 ARTURIA – MOOG MODULAR V 2.6 – USER’S MANUAL
2 INTRODUCTION
2.1 T
HE BIRTH OF MODULAR MOOG SYSTEMS
Robert A. Moog was born in May 1934 in New York. A passionate for music (he took piano
lessons for 12 years), he was introduced to electronics by his father, an engineer in this
domain. During his adolescence, he discovered the Thereminvox plan, invented during the 30’s
by a Russian engineer, Leon Theremin (or more exactly Lev Sergeivitch Termen). Seduced by
this instrument with its never before heard sounds, he began to produce his own models and
founded his own company in 1954.
Frequenting musical professionals, and in particular electronic and concrete music, R. Moog
realized that there was a real demand for electronic instruments of a higher quality.
One of the first clients to come to Robert Moog, the professor of music Herbert A. Deutsch,
asks him to listen to a song he had composed. Moog is immediately convinced and they decide
to associate their work. Their co-operation produced the first VCO.
In 1964, the first prototype of a Moog synthesizer was produced. It was a modular system with
a voltage controlled filter (VCF), an envelope generator, a white noise generator, a trigger and
two keyboards each with a generator module (sawtooth, triangle and impulsion) as well as a
voltage controlled amplifier module (VCA).
The first modular Moog system (1964) (Courtesy of Roger Luther, MoogArchives.com)
Then other musicians helped Robert Moog in creating different modules:
Walter Carlos (who later became Wendy) helped for elaboration of a sequencer. He also
pushed Bob Moog to lend his name to his machines.
Vladimir Ussachevsky, who was one of the professors of de W. Carlos, specified the 4 parts of
the envelope generator (ADSR), allowing the accomplishment of the VCA and gave him the
idea for the envelope follower.
Gustave Ciamaga helped with the creation of the first tension controlled low-pass filter.