SYNTHESIZER PIONEER PUSHES THE LIMITS WITH LATEST CREATION

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 12, 1992                   TAG: 9202120241
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By MICHAEL GOUGIS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium
SYNTHESIZER PIONEER PUSHES THE LIMITS WITH LATEST CREATION
Synthesizer inventor Robert Moog's creations have had the same impact on music that the telescope had on astronomy: Both opened the doors to worlds no one knew existed before.
Now Moog has teamed up with Chicago composer John Eaton to build a keyboard that will expose musicians to still more new worlds, by letting them alter sounds by moving a single key.
"What we envisioned was a keyboard on which each key had the variability of a violin note," the father of the Moog Synthesizer said Friday as he demonstrated his latest creation in a University of Chicago recital hall.
The result is "the world's most sensitive musical instrument next to the human voice," said Eaton, a University of Chicago music professor. "Playing it is a kind of combination of playing a very sensitive stringed instrument and playing a keyboard instrument."
Moog's early synthesizers were featured on the Beach Boys' 1966 hit single "Good Vibrations," the Beatles' 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and the 1968 hit recording "Switched-On Bach" by Walter Carlos, who became known as Wendy Carlos after his sex-change operation.
The Moog synthesizer opened new muscial worlds by using a computer to electronically create new sounds or duplicate the sounds of other instruments - even entire orchestras - that bands could use in their performances.
Moog, 57, was among the first group of rock 'n' roll musicians, inventors and technicians enshrined on the "Rock Walk," which opened in Los Angeles in 1985.
His newest invention, the Multiple-Touch-Sensitive Keyboard, one of three to be built and housed in the school's Computer Music Studio, lets a musician alter sounds on each key by the placement and movement of the fingers.
Touch-sensitive electronic grids, similar to those on automatic teller machines, are placed on top of each key.
Rolling the finger forward can create one sound; rolling to the side can make another one. The sound also is modified by the extent of the musician's finger surface on the key.
Eaton said the keyboard will let a musician imbue the often cold, mechanical sounds of synthesized instruments with more human feelings. "You will hear the human nuances," he said.
Moog, who says his interest lies in technological innovations, has no particular market for the keyboard. He said it wasn't designed for mass production.
"Today, the times are fairly conservative," he said. "Music is becoming more and more predictable, and the formulas for making successful records are becoming more understood.
"At this point, we don't know if it all will be useful," he said. "To some musicians, that many choices would be frightening. But I don't think so."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB