In my lit­tle cor­ner of the world, we’re eager­ly antic­i­pat­ing the arrival of Moogfest this May, just moved down the moun­tains from Asheville—where it has con­vened since 2004—to the scrap­py town of Durham, NC. Like SXSW for elec­tron­ic music, the four-day event fea­tures dozens of per­for­mances, work­shops, talks, films, and art instal­la­tions. Why North Car­oli­na? Because that’s where New York City-born engi­neer Robert Moog (rhymes with “vogue”)—inventor of one of the first, and cer­tain­ly the most famous, ana­log synthesizer—moved in 1978 and set up shop for his hand­made line of mod­u­lar synths, “Minimoog”s, and oth­er unique cre­ations. “One doesn’t hear much talk of syn­the­siz­ers here in west­ern North Car­oli­na,” Moog said at the time, “From this van­tage point, it’s easy to get a good per­spec­tive on the elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ment scene.”

The per­spec­tive char­ac­ter­izes Moog’s influ­ence on mod­ern music since the late-sixties—as a non-musi­cian out­sider whose musi­cal tech­nol­o­gy stands miles above the com­pe­ti­tion, its unmis­tak­able sound sought after by near­ly every­one in pop­u­lar music since it debuted on a num­ber of com­mer­cial record­ings in 1967. A curi­ous devel­op­ment indeed, since Moog nev­er intend­ed the syn­the­siz­er to be used as a stand­alone instru­ment but as a spe­cial­ized piece of stu­dio equip­ment. How­ev­er, in the mid-six­ties, a for­ward-look­ing jazz musi­cian named Paul Beaver hap­pened to get his hands on a mod­u­lar Moog syn­the­siz­er, and began to use it on odd, psy­che­del­ic albums like Mort Garson’s The Zodi­ac Cos­mic Sounds and famed Wreck­ing Crew drum­mer Hal Blaine’s Psy­che­del­ic Per­cus­sion (hear “Love-In (Decem­ber)” above).

Short­ly after these releas­es, Mike Bloomfield’s psych-rock out­fit The Elec­tric Flag made heavy use of the Moog in their sound­track for Roger Corman’s six­ties­ploita­tion film The Trip (hear “Fine Jung Thing” above), and the ana­log syn­the­siz­er was on its way to becom­ing a sta­ple of pop­u­lar music. In late ’67, The Doors called Beaver into the stu­dio dur­ing the record­ing of Strange Days, and he used the Moog through­out the album to alter Jim Morrison’s voice and pro­vide oth­er effects (hear “Strange Days” at the top). Con­trary to pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tions, Bri­an Wil­son did not use a Moog syn­the­siz­er for the record­ing of “Good Vibra­tions” the year pri­or, but an “elec­tro-theremin” built and played by Paul Tan­ner. He did, how­ev­er, have Bob Moog build a repli­ca of that instru­ment to play the song live. (The Moog theremin is still in pro­duc­tion today.)

Then, in 1968 Wendy Car­los used a Moog Syn­the­siz­er to rein­ter­pret sev­er­al Bach com­po­si­tions, and Switched-On Bach became a nov­el­ty hit that led to many more clas­si­cal Moog record­ings from Car­los, as well as to her orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions to Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, few of Car­los’ record­ings are avail­able online, but you can hear The Shin­ing’s main theme above.) Switched-On Bach took the Moog syn­the­siz­er mainstream—it was the first clas­si­cal album to go plat­inum. (Glenn Gould called it “one of the most star­tling achieve­ments of the record­ing indus­try in this gen­er­a­tion and cer­tain­ly one of the great feats in the his­to­ry of key­board per­for­mance.”) And after the release of Car­los’ futur­is­tic clas­si­cal albums, and an evo­lu­tion of Moog’s instru­ments into more musi­cian-friend­ly forms, ana­log synths began to appear every­where.

Artists like Car­los explored the syn­the­siz­er’s use as not only a gen­er­a­tor of weird, spaced-out sounds and effects, but as an instru­ment in its own right, capa­ble of all of the nuance required to play the finest clas­si­cal music. The mod­u­lar syn­the­siz­er, how­ev­er, was still an awk­ward­ly bulky instru­ment, suit­ed for the stu­dio, not the road. That changed in 1971 when the “Min­i­moog Mod­el D” was born. You can see a short his­to­ry of that rev­o­lu­tion­ary instru­ment above. The Min­i­moog and its sib­lings drove prog rock, dis­co, jazz fusion, the ambi­ent work of Bri­an Eno, Teu­ton­ic elec­tro-pop of Kraftwerk, and sooth­ing Gal­lic new age sound­scapes of Jean-Michel Jarre. Bob Mar­ley incor­po­rat­ed the Min­i­moog into his roots reg­gae, and Gary Numan chart­ed the path of the New Wave future with the portable syn­the­siz­er.

And as any­one who’s heard Daft Punk’s now-ubiq­ui­tous Ran­dom Access Mem­o­ries knows, the fore­fa­ther of their sound was Ital­ian super­pro­duc­er Gior­gio Moroder, who brought us near­ly all of Don­na Sum­mer’s dis­co hits, includ­ing the futur­is­tic “I Feel Love,” above, in 1977. Although noth­ing real­ly sound­ed like this at the time—nor for many years afterward—we can hear in this pio­neer­ing track that it’s only a short hop from Moroder’s puls­ing, flang­ing, synth arpeg­gios to most of the mod­ern dance music we hear today.

Though we cer­tain­ly cred­it all of the com­posers, pro­duc­ers, and musi­cians who embraced ana­log syn­the­siz­ers and pushed their devel­op­ment for­ward, all of their musi­cal inno­va­tion would have meant lit­tle with­out the inven­tive­ness of the man who, from his moun­tain­top retreat in Asheville, North Car­oli­na, per­son­al­ly over­saw the tech­nol­o­gy of a musi­cal rev­o­lu­tion. For more on the genius of Bob Moog, watch Hans Fjellestad’s doc­u­men­tary Moog, or lis­ten to the Sound Opin­ions pod­cast above, fea­tur­ing one­time offi­cial Moog Foun­da­tion his­to­ri­an Bri­an Kehew.

A quick fyi: You now stream for a lim­it­ed time Sum­mer­time: Willie Nel­son Sings Gersh­win. The new album fea­tures Nel­son cov­er­ing 11 clas­sic songs writ­ten by George and Ira Gersh­win. And it includes duets with Cyn­di Lau­per and Sheryl Crow. You can stream the album (due to be offi­cial­ly released on Feb­ru­ary 26th) right below, or hear it over on NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Enjoy.

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Willie Nel­son Shows You a Delight­ful Card Trick

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

Bob Dylan & The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987: Hear 74 Tracks

“Elec­tric gui­tars are an abom­i­na­tion,” the great Span­ish clas­si­cal gui­tarist Andrés Segovia report­ed­ly said, “Who­ev­er heard of an elec­tric vio­lin, elec­tric cel­lo or, for that mat­ter, an elec­tric singer?” We’ve now heard all those things, more or less, and civ­i­liza­tion has not yet col­lapsed around our ears. Segovia, it’s said (by his most accom­plished stu­dent, no less) was a bit of a snob. Or put anoth­er way, he was a purist. And while that qual­i­ty may have made him a dif­fi­cult per­son at times, and a very exact­ing teacher, it also gave him such devo­tion to his instru­ment, and the clas­si­cal music he inter­pret­ed with it, that we will always think of the name Segovia when we think of clas­si­cal gui­tar.

Segovia’s “mere name,” writes Joseph Steven­son, “was enough to sell out hous­es world­wide.” A prodi­gy whose tech­nique was “supe­ri­or to that which was being taught at the time,” Segovia made his debut at the age of 15. Just a few years lat­er, he played Madrid, the Paris Con­ser­va­to­ry, and Barcelona, then, in 1919 made a “wild­ly suc­cess­ful” tour of South Amer­i­ca. When he returned, the com­pos­er Albert Rous­sel wrote a piece specif­i­cal­ly for him, which he per­formed in Paris, “the first of many works,” Steven­son writes, “writ­ten for him by dis­tin­guished com­posers…. There were clas­si­cal gui­tarists before him, and dis­tin­guished ones even when he appeared, but it was not an instru­ment that was regard­ed as a seri­ous vehi­cle for clas­si­cal music. Segovia per­son­al­ly changed that.”

Being a pio­neer­ing instru­men­tal­ist in the clas­si­cal world, Segovia was oblig­ed to tran­scribe the music of his favorite com­posers for the gui­tar, includ­ing works by Haydn, Mozart, Chopin, Han­del, and, as we fea­ture here today, J.S. Bach. At the top of the post, see him play the Pre­lude to Bach’s Suite in G Major, writ­ten for the cel­lo. Below it, he plays Bach’s Gavotte, also writ­ten for cel­lo. Just above, hear the Suite in E Minor, writ­ten for the lute, and below, the Par­ti­ta in E Major, penned for the vio­lin.

Segovia’s con­tri­bu­tion to clas­si­cal music is ines­timable, and though he may have looked down on pop­u­lar musi­cians with elec­tric gui­tars, many have adored him. Ringo Starr is a big fan (Segovia inspired him to pick up clas­si­cal gui­tar). Punk front­man Ian Drury namechecked the clas­si­cal mas­ter in a song. And Segovia has more in com­mon with pop musi­cians than he would have ever liked to admit—taking up gui­tar against both his par­ents’ strong objec­tions and becom­ing a self-taught super­star at an ear­ly age. He may be firm­ly ensconced in the clas­si­cal world musi­cal­ly, but as far as his fame and rep­u­ta­tion goes, Segovia was a rock star.

You can lis­ten to Segovi­a’s com­plete Bach record­ings over at Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach is Putting Bach’s Com­plete Works Online: 100 Done, 980 to Come

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness