The Bob Moog Foundation has created a calendar celebrating the rich history of the Moog Legacy through vintage photos, memorabilia, quotes and information taken directly from Bob’s archive.

The photos trace pivotal moments in Bob’s early career and highlight musicians and pioneers who inspired his work.

The calendar is $20 in the Foundation shop.

The calendar is comprised of five photos of Moog himself, taken from 1958-1974.

The remaining photos are of:

• Leon Theremin
• Vladimir Ussachevsky
• Herb Deutsch
• Keith Emerson
• Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause
• Isao Tomita
• Joel Chadabe
• Roger Powell

Throughout the calendar, Bob’s thoughts and philosophies about his work are shared.

The calendar was designed by graphics artist Rose Hecht in collaboration with the Bob Moog Foundaton.  Through her designs, Rose pays hommage to the original Moog modular synthesizer as the instrument that spawned an industry and radically changed the face of popular music. The background of every page touts panels of knobs and patchbays — images taken from photos of an early modular that was used in Moog’s shop in the 60s.

The Bob Moog Foundation

We Need Your Input!

As you know from following our progress, protecting and preserving Bob’s archives has been our focus for over a year. Our goal is to share these archives with the you. As a result, the Bob Moog Foundation recently embarked on a thoughtful and ambitious planning process to chart the future direction of the organization, strategically defining who we are and how we can make a serious impact. We have committed to taking the initial steps to begin planning for a Bob Moog Museum in Asheville, NC.

What would a Bob Moog Museum look like? Here’s what we envision: a highly interactive, innovative place to connect with Bob’s life and work; the official residence of Bob’s extensive technological archives; a hub for an interdisciplinary community musicians, engineers, scientists and historians; an eye-opener and inspiration for students and adults alike.

We need to hear from you, the Moog community. We have created a survey that will help give us some important preliminary information regarding visitation to the Bob Moog Museum. Please take just a couple of minutes to fill out this short but important survey! Click here for the survey.

Thanks very much for your participation and support!

The Bob Moog Foundation

Take a moment to fill out the survey – it’s only 8 questions long, and it takes about 30 seconds to fill out.

The Bob Moog Foundation is celebrating its second anniversary and is highlighting their recent accomplishments:

• The Bob Moog Foundation hosted the first ever Moogfest Symposium with a panel of pioneering synthesists.
• The Foundation now has music available for download on its MySpace page. Many of the tracks come from the Mooged-Out: Asheville CD. The Mooged-Out CD is available as a gift with a $25.00 donation made here.
• They’ve also updated their MySpace page with an original all-Moog composition by Erik Norlander. Erik’s track The Princely Hours is a tribute to the Moog sound. Erik used five Moog instruments in the making of this piece: his massive 1967 modular Moog, Minimoog Model D, Taurus pedals, Moog Rogue and Minmoog Voyager. Note: Erik Norlander’s synth is bigger than yours.
• The Caring Bridge site that Bob’s family established for him in the summer of 2005 has now topped 300,000 visitors.
• The Foundation held its first fundraising event, Enter the Mind of Moog. Almost 500 people packed the Orange Peel and immersed themselves in Moog instruments and Moog history and a live “Mooged-out” recording session .
• The Bob Moog Foundation celebrated Bob’s birthday with the release of Amin Bhatia’s Bolero Electronica, which is a celebration of synthesizer evolution. Amin dedicated the album to Bob and released it on Bob’s birthday.
• The Foundation launched its YouTube channel. The channel features friends, family, colleagues, musicians and music-lovers reflecting on the impact Bob had on their lives, and on the world of music.

Industry pro’s (and Reason experts), Craig Anderton, Mark Vail and Gordon Reid, donated their best Moog-style patches, built using Reason’s Thor polysonic synthesizer, with the aim to shed some light onto the world of music synthesis that Bob Moog pioneered. Those patches have been assembled into a single Reason ReFill and are available free to registered Reason users on Propellerhead’s website.

“Our hearts and souls are rooted in music synthesis,” says Ernst Nathorst-Boos, Propellerhead Software CEO. “Bob Moog blazed the trail of electronic music synthesis and revolutionized music with his instruments. We urge the Reason community, in fact anyone who has ever used a sawtooth waveform, to reach out and helpsafeguard Bob’s legacy for future generations by donating to the organization.”

Propellerhead also announced a donation to the Bob Moog Foundation. The Foundation’s overall mission is to document, celebrate and teach innovative thinking and to support and honor the legacy of synthesizer pioneer Moog.

The Moog Foundation has added more video memorials to Bob Moog to its YouTube site. , including this tribute from Roger Powell.

The Bob Moog Foundation today announced that it was honoring what would have been the 74th birthday of synth pioneer Bob Moog with the release of a new synth CD, Amin Bhatia’s Virtuality.

The first half of Virtuality is comprised of ten tracks which transport the listener through an orchestral and electronic voyage through the modern day computer with such tracks as “Hymn to the Users”, “Need for Speed”, “Virus Attack” and “In Search of Lost Identities”.

The second half of the album is “Bolero Electronica“, a work based on Maurice Ravel’s 1928 orchestral masterpiece “Bolero”, in which instruments of the orchestra are featured one after the other in growing layers and dynamics over 18 stanzas. In place of orchestral instruments, Amin uses over 75 synthesizers and electronic instruments (which span a 75 year time period) and introduces them chronologically with the shift in each stanza.

The piece begins with a Moog Modular, ARP 2600, Buchla 100 Modular and and EMS Synthi 100 and concludes with Arturia’s Moog Modular V, Spectrasonics Distorted Reality, the Alesis Andromeda A6, the Studer 820 and the Minimoog Model D

You can preview the Bolero Electronica below.

To see a “Timeline of Technology Used”, click here.

“Ever since my first Minimoog and a 4-track I’ve witnessed – and been part of – many revolutionary changes in electronic music. From tubes to transistors, tape to MIDI and now to computers and virtual synthesis each change has brought about new and exciting combinations of music and sound,” says Bhatia.

“Bob Moog was going to help on a narration track for “Bolero Electronica“. Sadly that never happened, so I’ve dedicated the album to him and to the Bob Moog Foundation. It’s my way of saying thank you for my very first Minimoog that started it all.”

Amin is donating part of the proceeds from the sale of each CD to the Bob Moog Foundation.

These tapes include seminal works in synthesis from the mid-60s to the late 70s, such as works from Herb Deutsch, Wendy Carlos, Larry Fast, Isao Tomita, Keith Emerson, Roger Powell, Chris Swansen, John Weiss, David Borden, Joel Chadabe, John Eaton and many, many more.

The $8,000.00 grant provides for the assessment of the tape’s condition by a team of experts including an archivist, a preservationist (responsible for digital transfer), a historian and a copyright expert. The assessment team includes archivist Steve Weiss, Sound and Image Librarian for UNC-CH, preservationist Seva David Ball, recording engineer/mastering engineer, Soundcurrent Mastering, historian Douglas Babb, Curator for the Bob Moog Foundation, and intellectual property attorney Steven Schnedler. Michelle Moog-Koussa will be coordinating the project.

Once the assessment is completed, the foundation will have the opportunity to apply for a $20,000-$40,000 preservation grant to set about preserving the tapes in a digital format, so that they can be shared through the Foundation website, traveling exhibits and eventual Bob Moog Museum.

Image: Bob Moog’s analog tape machine