Synthesizers
John Eaton spent the latter part of the 1960s composing for electronic musical instruments such as early synthesizers developed by Robert Moog and Paul Ketoff. His microtonal music included several works for live performances such as “Song for R. P. B” in 1964 in which John played the Syn-Ket and “...
Brian Kehew played a big role in the NAMM Foundation’s Museum of Making Music’s 2009-2010 Waves of Inspiration: The Legacy of Bob Moog exhibit, which provided the NAMM Resource Center a chance to interview him for this Oral History program. Brian discussed his personal background in music and the...
Ralph Grierson’s father was a sawmill operator who loved playing music after work and on the weekends. As Ralph grew up, his father encouraged him to develop a career in music. After college, while playing in several bands in the Los Angeles area, Ralph was asked to record a film score. Over the...
Steve Oppenheimer grew up playing music, as did his younger brother, known as Larry The O. Steve was seven when he made his TV debut singing “Big Rock Candy Mountain” on a children’s show. After high school he toured with several bands before attending Berklee College of Music in Boston. His...
Takuya Nakata is the Director and Executive Officer for Yamaha in Japan. During his NAMM Oral History interview he provided details about the development of Yamaha’s electronic musical products beginning with the D-1 organ in 1959. Mr. Nakata also related the stories of the GS-1 digital keyboard in...
Money Mark grew up fascinated with music and musical instruments. He read all he could about the latest keyboards and synthesizers, which were becoming popular during his childhood. In his 20s he played in several Los Angeles-area bands, wrote his own music and began recording. All of this was the...
Larry Fast is best known as the innovative keyboardist and synthesizer composer who helped bring electronic musical instruments into pop music, beginning in the 1970s. His Synergy series of synthesizer music albums beginning in 1975 brought great popularity to the instruments, which were being...
Erik Norlander is the perfect musician to have come into his own as a performer as the synthesizer and other electronic musical instruments were being developed in the 1980s. In addition to touring and recording, Erik also worked within the industry at Alesis Electronics where he was the...
Keith Emerson was the British rocker who in the early 1970s helped define live performances on electronic musical instruments such as the modular Moog. He gained fame as a musical composer and clever keyboardist for The Nice before forming Emerson, Lake & Palmer and recording a string of hits...
Michelle Moog-Koussa is the keeper of her father’s flame! As director of the Bob Moog Foundation she has worked closely with those who seek as she does to promote the work of her father, who was considered by many to be the premier pioneer of electronic music with the invention of his synthesizer,...