Moog Music Forum

Pretend are describing what a moog sounds like to someone that has never heard one before. What songs would you reccomend that they listen to so that they can get the best idea of what a moog sounds like?

I thinka popular suggestion would be "use the search function"

here's my list: ELP - Hoedown; Yes - Excerpts from Six Wives of Henry VIII; Larry Fast - Synergy Album; Rick Wakeman - Six Wives of Henry VIII; ELP - Aqua Tarkus; Wendy Carlos - Switched-on Bach

probably left quite a few out...it should do though

to add to my above list, the beatles - here comes the sun. all those beautiful background noises....

Hello,
here's some favorites of mine who could represent THAT sound to someone.
(that's very rare now! -I bet there's no person in our age who hasn't never heard a Moog!)
ELP's "Lucky Man", Heart's "Magic Man", Pink Floyd's "wish you were here",
(that MINI almost cries in the intro), the "Birds of fire" LP by 'Mahavisnu Orchestra' (-Hammer time!!), the first 'Tontos Expanding Head Band's album "Zero Time". (-it features two expanded Moog 3C's, before the conversion they did, to make the real monster TONTO)
One of the Minimoog's big heroes is also Chick Corea, and everything from 70's is really essential for listening -he plays really fast and burning those MINI's!
Also the UK group 'Gong' and the album ''You" would be an essential listening. (By the way, sad to read the story about Tim Blake - he's one of my all-time Moog heroes)
Anyway, that's about now! I know I could tell many more namesand tracks,
but that means that I could list the 3/4 of the 70's early 80's music!
nick.

p.s:Tracks by Wendy Carlos and Parliament also would represent the big range of the usage of the Moogs!

...and by the way, yes, it's really hard to describe THAT SOUND!
You have to listen to it!!

How about the recurring main riff of "Celebration" by PFM?

The soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange by Wendy Carlos, especially Time Steps.

I find it really strange that nobody mention the huge impact the moog and synthesizers had in black music. listen to any stevie wonder albums, herbie, george duke, george clinton ... its as much an earthy funky instrument as it is painfully white and sterile in the hands of the likes of rick wakeman and keith emerson ... i would agree with the mahavishnu suggestion, jan hammer is the finest mini player of all time. his aggresion and feel is incredible, just listen to him trading licks with tommy bolin on billy cobhams solo album ... this message board seems to be the last stand of prog rockers, i thought we killed them all off with punk !

I'll second "Timesteps" by Wendy Carlos. It was meant as a sort of grand introduction to an album of made up of orchestrated Moog sounds and it does a great job without sounding like a gimick or a demo.

Tomita's "Planets" is a fantastic showcase of advanced but very "musical" sounds though he does use a fair amount of Melotron also. All his 1970s albums are full of Moog sounds.

An incredible modern album using the Minimoog for 95% of all synth sounds on it, the remaining 5% is Andromeda, is called "MILES_GURTU". My favorite 'new music' album for the last 2 years! Robert Miles and Trilok Gurtu are the names implied, but there are many other amazing artists on there like:
Toshinori Kondo
Nitin Sawhney
Dave Patton
And a bunch of others I can't recall right now...but its a highly sophisticated album terribly slept on.

Check out stuff by Leon Ware, Herbie Hancock, Jan Hammer...Tomita, Kitaro, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis...

I always list this one but the keyboard solo by Don Preston on "Lonesome Electric Turkey" from Frank Zappa's Fillmore East, June 1971 is great.

Tomita's "Snowflakes Are Dancing" is a terrific synth album, very quiet and nuanced. BTW, there is a fascinating discussion on Wendy Carlos's "Secrets of Synthesis" about analog vs digital and how she went from the former to the latter. I wish I understood more than I do about harmonics and the structures of sound...

Agreed, Tomita's Snowflakes Are Dancing is one of the most amazing pieces of synthesiser music ever recorded, and yes, there is some mellotron in there and I think some electric piano as well, but the Moog programming on that is just awesome. Such a range of very musical sounds, clear, precise, and well played. And no computers.

Tangerine Dream's Rubycon is another good, but very different example.

Autobahn by Kraftwerk perhaps?

Musashidan wrote:An incredible modern album using the Minimoog for 95% of all synth sounds on it, the remaining 5% is Andromeda, is called "MILES_GURTU".

Check out stuff by Leon Ware, Herbie Hancock, Jan Hammer...Tomita, Kitaro, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis...

Cool, I'd like to check that out. I wonder why 5% is Andromeda, I guess someone had to play a chord and didn't have a Memorymoog

BTW - while Kitaro has played a Moog, you hear very little on his albums. The majority of his leads are played on a Korg 800DV.

Vangelis seems to have bought a MiniMoog sometime in the late 70s but I don't think anyone has identified any appearances on any of his albums. From 1977 until the early 90s his main instrument was Yamaha CS-80 which he still plays but not quite as much.