Switched On Bach Mog Analysis

There are other precursors like the Novachord and the Ondes Martenot, which used a sliding metal piece in addition to a keyboard to create pitches, but it wasn’t until 1964 that Robert Moog released the first voltage controlled synthesizer. Moog said in his documentary: Synthesizer Documentary ~ Moog by Hans Fjellestad:
‘In retrospective it looks like it was meant to happen. I was building and selling Theremin kits, because of that I met Herbert Deutsch who was a musician, using them in his music classes; because we met he invited me to his concert; because I went to his concert I learned about electronic music; because Herbert and I talked about making electronic music I got ideas about the synthesizer; because I got some ideas for the synthesizer we built the equipment; we showed it to one person who then told an official of the audio engineering society about it and then was invited to display the equipment… My favorite way of

saying it is that I got into the electronic musical instrument business like slipping backwards a banana peel, one easy thing after another and there I was; it looks like a logical progression today but back then you know… it was like “If I do this, let’s see what happens”’
There were two major compositions that launched the Moog synthesizer into the public consciousness, ‘Switched-On Bach’ and the 1971 film Clockwork Orange’s Theme, both composed by Wendy Carlos.

The album ‘Switched-On Bach’ was one of the first successful albums to introduce a full electronic sound to the public and was a big success, Clockwork Orange’s theme in the other hand utilized synthesizers for its sounds, sounds that people were not used to yet, that would go in hand with the strange setting of the movie. John Foxx says in his ‘Man Machine: The Influence of the Synthesizer on Popular Music 1971-1983‘ essay: ‘While Wendy had garnered great success for her 1968 album Switched on Bach, an album that explored similarly electronic reimagining’s of classical music, The Clockwork Orange soundtrack was the first to truly realize the scope of the instrument. … This new brand of musical invention tied into the zeitgeist at the time, whetting the public’s appetite for new futuristic sounds unlike anything that had been witnessed

before’.
This early Moog Synthesizer were modular and also were very expensive because they were hand made by a small team and sold to particular clients instead of mass produced which again, increased the prices. ‘Moog’s first synthesizers were cumbersome machines that required a great deal of technological knowhow to control. They featured dozens of knobs that could be used to manipulate the subtlest of frequencies within an oscillating sound.’ (Foxx, 1979). At first they were used by experimental musicians, advertisement studios or audio laboratories. Moog soon realized his instrument was just too complex and expensive for the average consumer so he changed his approach to the synthesizer, he made all the connection internal and fixed with many knobs and switch in the panel to manipulate the sound, and this also decreased the cost in a significant way. Portability wasn’t an issue anymore either. This model was called the Minimoog D and it was released in 1970, it introduced the Synthesizer to a whole new range of customers, usually home studios and live musicians.