Robert Moog quotes

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.

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.

When a pianist sits down and does a virtuoso performance he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than any other human activity involving machinery allows.

I was never worried that synthesizers would replace musicians. First of all, you have to be a musician in order to make music with a synthesizer.

I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers... They use my tools.

One always has to remember these days where the garbage pail is, because it's so easy to make sounds, and to put sounds together into something that appears to be music, but it's just as hard as it always was to make good music.

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.

The more you get into material and matter, all you realize is in matter, there is energy. There is a blur between energy and consciousness. All material is conscious to some extent or another. All material can respond to some extent or another to vibrations of energy that is different to energy you learn about in physics. There are all sorts of reliable information now on people and animal being able to be able to effect the operations of machines—even of computers—and I think that has great implications for what goes on between a musician and his instrument. There is a level of reality where there is no time, and there is no space, there is just energy. And we have contact with that through the intermediate layers, so, if the right channels—if the right connections are established, I don’t see why a piece of matter, a piece of broken glass or and old record can’t make contact through this very high level of reality that has access to everything past and future. I suppose my instruments do retain some sort of memory of me. I know that when I’m working on them I feel (not explicitly, I don’t hear voices in my head or anything) that I’m making a connection with it. The circuit diagram, that is then converted into a circuit board, which then becomes a part of an instrument is something that is a record that I made. So I guess in that sense it is something that is certainly a memory.

To those of you who are wearing ties, I think my dad would appreciate it if you took them off.