The following is excerpted from recent interviews with Moog Guitar inventor, Paul Vo and Moog Music president, Mike Adams:
Moog is known for its analog synthesizers. What made the company decide to venture into the guitar market?
[Paul Vo] I’ll have to defer to Mike Adams on this question. From my perspective, I’m just very glad they did. The people at Moog have been wonderful to work with. Moog’s culture is very receptive to innovation, yet also quite down to earth and realistic - just the right environment to develop the Moog Guitar.
[Mike Adams] We have been in the guitar market for years with our Moogerfooger line of analog stomp boxes. Introducing a guitar with innovations this guitar brings to the player is really the culture here at Moog. We have a criterion for any product that Moog introduces and this guitar met every element.
To which styles of music is the Moog Guitar best suited--i.e., rock, jazz, country, etc.--and why?
[Paul Vo] My personal hope is that the Moog Guitar will be best suited to music that has yet to be written and styles yet to be defined. The more innovative the music, the more the guitarist should benefit from the new sonic perspectives made possible by the Moog electronics. However, underneath the unique electronics it is a boutique-quality standard two-pickup electric guitar; you can play all kinds of music on it all night long. And it also has a really fine authentic acoustic sound - probably better than any other piezo-equipped electric because gentle use of electronic muting can make it actually feel more like an acoustic.
[Mike Adams] Every player in every genre who has had a chance to play the Moog Guitar has pulled something musical from it and that something has been different for every single one of them. It's one of the most gratifying aspects of introducing a new product and our Marketing Manager, Chris Stack, did a wonderful job capturing some of this raw emotion on video - the 'a ha' moment. That's been a ton of fun!
Is the guitar more suited to lead or rhythm players? If both, which features might be more appealing to which type of player and why?
[Paul Vo] It’s definitely both. The “Mute” modality is going to be perfect for rhythm work; the sounds are short and punchy. It also brings out the rhythmic character of finger-picking, something that often comes out blurred on a standard kind of electric guitar. The sustaining modes are going to be great for all kinds of lead work and also for slide guitar.
Which famous guitarists do you see as ideal candidates for switching from their current guitars to Moog's new model?
[Paul Vo] Guitarists love to grow their guitar collection and will often use more than one instrument, so I don't know that they would switch completely away from the instrument they like to play. I do hope that, over time, some players will make their Moog Guitar their favorite instrument, but I’d have no idea who’d be more likely to. You can never tell what a great musician will discover when they have a new instrument to play.
In lay terms, what are the advantages of the guitar's capacity to sustain and mute notes at the same time?
[Paul Vo] Imagine trying to play a clean single-note line on one string when all the other strings start to vibrate loudly all by themselves. You've got to spend more care keeping the strings quiet than playing your melody.
In Controlled Sustain Mode, the internal circuit is able to distinguish between un-played strings and played strings: how is it possible?
[Paul Vo] Several tests are applied to bias a string either towards being muted or being driven. Deliberately played strings cross an amplitude threshold that varies according to a proprietary algorithm. Please understand: The strings are not either "on" or "off"; it does not work like that. Everything is gradual. A tendency towards sounding louder is "rewarded" with more energy; a tendency towards being muted is encouraged with active muting, etc.
The muting is not absolute; we still allow sympathetic vibrations when they are strongly related to the basic pitch of the played string or strings. With 'Controlled Sustain', the player finds it about as easy to govern the strings in the presence of strong sustain as it is to play an ordinary guitar that doesn't have sustain.
Sonically, what is different or unique for listeners when they hear guitarists simultaneously employ this mute and sustain?
[Paul Vo] Listeners will hear a cleaner, more musical performance, and maybe of material that wouldn‘t often be attempted on the guitar - perhaps some challenging music written for the cello or transposed from the violin, or something entirely new.
Once again, using terms that a layperson can understand, how does the guitar's harmonic blend control work and what does it mean, in terms of sonics, for listeners?
[Paul Vo] The harmonic blend is a way of favoring some harmonics over others in a note. It changes the color, the tone or timbre of the instrument. This is a difficult question to answer in words. Listeners are going to hear some sounds they have not heard before.
[Mike Adams] In laymen terms, the harmonic blend works by using the foot pedal to shift the sustain and mute power (we call it Vo Power) between the neck and bridge pickups.
What makes the Moog Guitar different from other guitars?
[Mike Adams} Only a very few guitars have the capability of sustaining notes indefinitely and none at all have the ability to electronically mute the strings. The Moog Guitar is completely unique: It makes new sounds by acting on the strings themselves, changing the way they vibrate or stopping vibration altogether. It's not some subtle difference; it's beyond obvious, when you play it.
How is the technology adopted in The Moog Guitar different from other guitar sustain technologies?
[Mike Adams] Our technology differs in several important ways. First, the energy applied to the strings is "coherent" energy. Coherent energy is energy that is applied in an intelligent way. When applied positively, the string sustain is very powerful and very responsive. When applied negatively (reverse power - which is not possible with existing technology), the string stops very quickly giving a staccato effect to guitar (similar to a banjo or koto). Additionally, the guitar has circuitry which senses which string the player is playing and sustains those strings while actively muting the strings that are not being played.
Can you tell me something about the Moog Guitar Strings? Why are they special?
[Mike Adams] The Moog guitar technology works using the physics of electro-magnetic energy. The Moog Guitar strings have a higher metallic content than most strings and is more responsive to the elector-magnetism than most other strings. In an emergency situation, most metallic guitar strings will still work they just will not be as responsive.
Is the Moog Filter used into the Moog Guitar the classic 24dB/LowPass?
[Mike Adams] The Moog ladder filter is a vintage 24dB/oct filter built with individual transistors in the classic way.
Is Moog planning to develop any other guitars?
[Paul Vo] That’s up to Mike Adams - but I hope so!
[Mike Adams] This technology has a lot of legs. I see the introduction of the Paul Vo Collector Edition as the very beginning. History will judge, but I have been told it is a historical innovation.
Is there anything that either of you would care to add?
[Paul Vo] I’d like to add two points: In this day of digital everything, the Moog Guitar is an entirely analog instrument - and yet it is cutting edge technology. That might be worth noting.
Today, just about any sound imaginable can be produced or reproduced on just about any instrument. Although the Moog Guitar will create some sounds never before heard, making new sounds wasn’t really our main goal. After all, as soon as those new sounds emerge, they can be sampled and reproduced without the guitar; that’s the reality today.
What can’t be sampled and reproduced is the experience of playing the Moog Guitar. The really unique thing is that the instrument feels different according to the different sounds it produces. With a MIDI guitar for example, you pluck a string, “plink” and MIDI gives you a piano. Change the preset and - you get a violin sound. Yet all the while a MIDI guitar feels exactly the same; it’s just “plink” each time. That’s what is different here: The Moog Guitar feels the way it sounds. How do you really get that across in words? To really understand it you‘ve just got to play it.
[Mike Adams] Paul's explanation encapsulates one of the criteria for the development of a Moog product - it must be an inspiration to the musician's creative process. The Moog Guitar is incredibly inspirational.
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