Quotes by Robert Moog

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.

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.

It's certainly more than a technological activity, although we instrument designers certainly use electronic technology as a design tool. But I wouldn't call it an artistic activity. We're toolmakers. Making tools is a craft, maybe even a high craft. I'd say that we are craftsmen rather than artists.

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.

To me the synthesizer was always a source of new sounds that musicians could use to expand the range of possibilities for making music.

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.

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

The point is that I don't design stuff for myself. I'm a toolmaker. I design things that other people want to use.

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.

Leon Theremin's original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It's like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level.