Robert Moog Quotations

Back in the '40s and early '50s, building simple electronic projects was a popular hobby of many people. Back then, you could buy, you know, a few parts and - with tubes and build something on your kitchen table, and it would actually work.

There are confirmed stories of people who can break instruments and cause them to fail by walking in a room. I'm the opposite - I can walk into a room and something will work better than it is supposed to.

I'm finishing building a house and setting up a shop to build custom electronical musical instruments.

By the time I got to building synthesizers, I had perhaps 20 years' experience building electronic musical instruments.

The point is that I don't design stuff for myself. I'm a toolmaker. I design things that other people want to use.

The mini-Moog was conceived originally as a session musician's axe, something a guy could carry to the studio, do a gig and walk out.

Leon Theremin's original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It's like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level.

My training as an engineer has enabled me to design the stuff, but the reason I do it is not to make music but for the opportunity to work with musicians.

I happen to think that computers are the most important thing to happen to musicians since the invention of cat-gut which was a long time ago.

What inspires me is not so much the music as the opportunity to interact with composers. I think that has driven everything I've done.