Analog Days – The Invention & Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (S) - Hardcover

Pinch, Trevor; Trocco, Frank; Moog, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674008898 ISBN 13: 9780674008892

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2002

Synopsis

Though ubiquitous today, available as a single microchip and found in any electronic device requiring sound, the synthesizer when it first appeared was truly revolutionary. Something radically new - an extraordinary rarity in musical culture - it was an instrument that used a genuinely new source of sound: electronics. How this came to be - how an engineering student at Cornell and an avant-garde musician working out of a storefront in California set this revolution in motion - is the story told for the first time in "Analog Days", a book that explores the invention of the synthesizer and its impact on popular culture. The authors take us back to the heady days of the 1960s and early 1970s, when the technology was analog, the synthesizer was an experimental instrument, and synthesizer concerts could and did turn into happenings. Interviews with the pioneers who determined what the synthesizer would be and how it would be used - from inventors Robert Moog and Don Buchla to musicians like Brian Eno, Pete Townshend, and Keith Emerson - recapture their visions of the future of electronic music and a new world of sound. Tracing the development of the Moog synthesizer from its initial conception to its ascension to stardom in "Switched-On Bach", from its contribution to the San Francisco psychedelic sound, to its wholesale adoption by the worlds of film and advertising, "Analog Days" conveys the excitement, uncertainties and unexpected consequences of a new technology that would provide the soundtrack for a critical chapter of our cultural history.

About this title

Review

Analog Days is more than a chronicle of an encounter between old arts and new technology: it illuminates a defining technology of our culture. -- New Scientist 11 January 2003

...has relevance for all those interested in contemporary music, although it will appeal most to anyone interested in the music and social and technological history of the 1960s and 1970s. -- Times Higher Education Supplement 7 February 2003

About the Author

Trevor Pinch is Professor and Chairperson of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University. Frank Trocco is Assistant Professor of Adult Baccalaureate Studies, Lesley University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674008898
• ISBN 13: 9780674008892
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352