Remembering Bob Moog

Reid_Welch · July 27, 2011, 12:52pm

I never met a kinder man than Bob Moog, did you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPjI7O2bD9s
Bob with friends…about…1975?

unfiltered37 · July 27, 2011, 4:10pm

sick video. Clara Rockmore has an imposing stage presence.

EricK · July 27, 2011, 5:28pm

Thats from the Clara Rockmore Theremin DVD that Moog sells with their Theremins.

The poster of the video should have given more props to Tom Rhea also.

Reid_Welch · July 30, 2011, 11:00am

Hi all, hi EricK

I would love to learn more about Tom Rhea. Can you instruct or give pointers?

Folks, I only met Clara (was her last new friend) because of Bob Moog’s herculean efforts
to preserve and present the evidences of Clara’s life.

She loved Bob, but also, she was pretty demanding, exacting!

Bob was the most gentle, patient and loving guy.

I can tell a few little anecdotes here, in time, if you like

They are not all that much, but I do miss Bob Moog,
and am sorry I did not work to be closer to him while he was with us.

Reid

Reid_Welch · July 30, 2011, 11:10am

A little story…incomplete, a draft,

Clara was busy, busy! excluding everyone she ever knew, from her life, but for Betty,
her housekeeper, and XXX, her pal, and…me! Clara was in love with me by wire,
and I was in love with Clara. She wanted to meet me in person, and Ernie, too,
so, we were invited to the December, 1994 New York/World premier of Martin’s film,
Electronic Odyssey. "You will come, Reid, and you and Ernie will be my guests!’

“And on Sunday at four, you will come to my apartment, and we will have a nice tea.”

“Will Bob Moog and others be coming, too, Clara?”

“No! I see enough of Bob Moog. I only want to see you, Reid, and you can bring Ernie.”

So it was. Bob, her savior, was -excluded- from the “high tea” by the “high priestess” of the theremin,
day after the film premier. He understood Clara was getting…to be an isolationist.

The night before, though, we all met at the film premier, and Clara and Bob, and Bob Sherman,
on the stage at Avery Fisher Hall, gave a Q and A session for the attendees. Bob was charming, as always.
So was Clara.

More later.

EricK · July 30, 2011, 6:26pm

Thom Rhea wrote some of the old Moog manuals (I know at least the MicroMoog and I believe the Mini as well) and whatever synth you are on, they area wealth of knowledge. I learn something new everytime I open it up.

He with Moog and Jim Scott designed the Crumar Spirit which is a very rare and valuable synth. Id love to own one.

Im sure there is much more that can be said about him.

Eric

Kevin_Lightner · July 30, 2011, 9:18pm

Perhaps one of the more important things about Bob is that he belongs to history.
Few, if any of us will be remembered in 100 years, but Bob will.

That’s why it’s important that history be correct.
He was gifted and very generous, but he was human like any of us.
I’ve seen him happy, even dancing, but I’ve also seen him angry.
Not all of his life was filled with joyous discovery and good fortune.
He suffered businesses failing, a divorce, watched his ideas and even his own name taken with no consideration provided back to him.

So it’s a good measure of a man’s character that he can suffer and lose sometimes, but still embrace a kind spirit afterward.
That’s how I’ll remember Bob: Not a faultless god, but someone that persevered at what he loved to do and by doing so, left the world a better place.

Reid_Welch · August 13, 2011, 7:50pm

Thank you, Kevin.

http://www.cyclingforums.com/forum/thread/486672/i-am-missing-a-thread-i-have-no-copy-of-the-data/30#post_4010042

Bob is a great man. I use the present tense, for he is “immortal”, as you noted.

I first heard of Bob Moog when I was a lad, in the late sixties. I thought, “here is an angel on earth”.

Little did I expect to ever meet him. Bob was as gracious as anyone, ever.

I want to tender thanks to Bob Moog today and always.

I’ll put up a story or two, later, yes, we know he was human,

Bob was perfectly persistent in his visions and goals, generous and kind,

abused so many times by people of no talent. Bob was as near to a pure artist as a businessman can be.

Bob and I had nearly parallel relationship to Clara, or rather, when Clara disowned Bob, she “adopted” me.

The dynamics of the friendship I had with Clara, would make a small essay. Bob understood that I was no rival,

only a last-of-life lifeline for Clara, whose mental powers, but not her soul, were crumbling to death.

She rejected Bob, and almost everyone, in her last, few years. Senile dementia.

Clara adopted me as a platonic lover. I spent much time with her. I restored her piano, too.

“Why do you have me in your life now, Clara?”

"Because you are not like the others. You are sensitive."

Bob, shut out from her life, loved Clara as truly as did I. What could he do, though?

http://www.cyclingforums.com/forum/thread/486672/i-am-missing-a-thread-i-have-no-copy-of-the-data/30#post_4010042
Just found, just seeing this for the first time, what an amazing, great development. I hope it can be played to good effect,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stobfk1Mfjk
Clara would say, “Very good. Now make it sound like a musical instrument?”

((she was truth, and could cause pain at times))

EricK · August 22, 2011, 2:44am

Thank you, Good Doctor.

museslave · September 2, 2011, 6:21pm

If you’re interested in remembering Bob Moog, experiencing his life and accomplishments, and supporting his legacy, please contribute to The Bob Moog Foundation. The more support, volunteers, and contributions the Foundation receives, the sooner it will be able to bring the Moogseum into existence… and trust me, that is an event you want to have happen as soon as possible.

As for Bob Moog as a god… well, we all appreciate what he has done for us and the amazingly musical and innovative tools he has given us… and in that way, it’s understandable to give him god-like status. However, he was a humble guy who did not share that portrayal… and was, at times, offended by it.

Reid_Welch · September 24, 2011, 6:32am

You’re certainly correct that matching a speaker to a tube amplifier is very important to the final sound. I wonder if any Theremins were made with speakers that use a field-coil rather than a permanent magnet.
southerner66 5 months ago

This theremin (and Clara Rockmore’s) sounds very cello-like. On the web I yet heard others with timbre more or less like slide trombone, tuba, female opera voice, flute, oboe or saxophone.

Reid Welch says here, making theremins is like making violins. Is it true that the mechanical placement of coils etc. (not just the numerical values) is most important for the generated timbre due to RF interference? Would it make sense to construct one with user-moveable coils (levers) to change timbres?
AerialTheShamen 1 year ago

is your dog on that china cabenet?wtf
joshbobak2 1 year ago

Thanks for the explanation!
ortew1 1 year ago

Dog on the top of the cabinet? loll just curious why it would be up there haha…he definitely didnt jump up like a cat
alexktard 1 year ago

well i must thank peter as well ^ ^
EvangelionFan 1 year ago

Credit goes to Peter Pringle, ever so much more than myself. He should have been Clara’s best friend, and would have been had he been there a year or two earlier on the scene. She would have adored him, and did, because I extolled to about the talents and generosity and aid to myself, of Peter. But, by that time, her life was nearly solitary. She was letting go from life. He did as much for me as Clara; am so grateful for Peter, and his works and persistence of vision. He is a great man.
ReidWelch 1 year ago

Reid, without you, we’d have nothing of this at all.
AR1264 1 year ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpMLYI0XG0A&feature=player_embedded

PS, you all will understand that Bob Moog and your corporation worked very hard
to get “Claratone” from transistorized theremins, and that goal has been, essentially, obtained.

Yet, as Clara, herself, told me, and I must paraphrase from memory,
“That is my invention, that tone. Professor Termin worked for me for months,
re-doing the tone of the instrument, over and over until at last he got it right.
There is only one good tone for the theremin.”

Of the Stout, she heard it over the phone, a few months before her death.
Even over the telephone, the “quality” could be discerned by a dying woman, Clara,
and she teared and said, “Oh, Reid, you have done it.”

Reid_Welch · September 24, 2011, 7:02am

Again, I never met a kinder man than Bob Moog.
I met his work when I was fourteen, excited to obtain Switched On Bach.

Decades later I was honored by his kind helps.
He was so far above me and always will be my idol of human kindness.

And if he had a temper, well, so do I.
And if he was royally screwed by life,
well, so was I and so am I happy to fail
in such great company, as to be able to say,
“I love you, Bob.”

Reid

Let’s fail happily
netskyIam

What we have, we gained by trying.
1
What we know, we learned by failing.
2

What to expect? To fail again.
3

What we earn
4
by turns at night
5
may buy a gain next day.
6

Again we dare to do it different.
7
Again, we’ll get
8
by striving thoughts.
9

Good begins in dreamings,
10
for dreams worked for
11
do lead to gains
12

again and again,
13
reiterate:
14

Gain by failing;
15
it’s quite all right,
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it is all good.
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And that is all.
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