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Interview with Robert Moog

1985; The MIT Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3679623

1531-5169

Henning Lohner, Robert Moog,

History of Computing Technologies

This interview took place 11 February 1985 at Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. Dr. Moog was in Germany to attend the Frankfurt Music Fair on behalf of Kurzweil Music Systems, Inc. Lohner: Although you've probably had to tell the story many times by now, could you tell me how you started working with Kurzweil? Was the fact that your own company ceased making synthesizers the main reason you looked for another company to work with? Moog: No. I left Moog Music in 1977; that was about when my employment contract came to an end. I felt at that time that I wasn't going anywhere and that Moog Music, or rather, the company that owned Moog Music at the time, Norlin Industries, didn't seem to know exactly what I should be doing for them. So I thought I would do some consulting and some custom instrument building. I did consult over the years from 1977 until 1983. But I always thought it would be good if I could find a company with a management team that I respected, where the head of the company understood what my contribution could be. And finally it happened! In the summer of 1983 I visited the very first Kurzweil exhibit at the Music Merchants Convention. At that time there wasn't even a commercial product, there was just a demonstration of a computer program that you could play at the keyboard. I met Ray Kurzweil and several of the other people who were with the company at the time. In the beginning of 1984 I was hired as a consultant for one project, completed that project, and then I was hired as an ongoing consultant. The more I worked for them, the more I enjoyed it. Apparently they saw what benefit I could be to the company and finally, at the end of last summer, they made me an offer that I found very attractive. Part of the offer of course was to be in a position to work with all these great people, and the other part was, needless to say, more tangible than that. So, in the fall of 1984 my family and I decided that it was really in all of our interest for me to join the company full time and move to Boston.