IDEAS & TRENDS; It May Look Like a Musical Instrument, but It's Really an Edsel
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Published: September 4, 2005
ROBERT MOOG, whose electronic synthesizers changed popular music in the 1960's and 70's, shares a distinction with other instrument inventors like Adolphe Sax and Leo Fender. His creations, like theirs, caught on.
But for every Moog synthesizer, saxophone or Fender guitar there are dozens of instruments that never found a market. ''The field of musical instrument innovation is amazingly conservative,'' said Trevor Pinch, a professor of science and technology studies at Cornell and co-author of ''Analog Days,'' a book about Mr. Moog.
The galaxy of failed instruments includes the sarrusophone, a 19th-century competitor of the sax, and the Guitorgan, an electric guitar wired to produce organ sounds. In Mr. Moog's field there were many failures, including the Novachord, an early synthesizer made by the Hammond Instrument Company around 1940. It contained 169 vacuum tubes; needless to say, it was difficult to keep in good working order.
The synthesizers made by Mr. Moog, who died last month at age 71, were far more reliable, and were able to produce a range of tones that soon became staples of rock and funk music. Another key to Mr. Moog's success, Mr. Pinch said, was that he always included a keyboard, to increase musicians' comfort with an instrument that otherwise was all vacuum tubes, patch cords and knobs.
With a new instrument, timing can be everything. For a long time after it was invented in 1841, for example, the sax was only a niche instrument, used in military bands. ''The big saxophone craze really only started with the development of the jazz idiom and the big band,'' said Andr?. Larson, director of the National Music Museum in Vermillion, S.D.
Mr. Moog's synthesizers found a ready audience in the youth-oriented psychedelic movement of the 1960's. ''The culture was ready for spacey, weird sounds,'' Mr. Pinch said.
Here, from the National Music Museum's collection, are some other instruments that, for whatever reason, never found an audience. HENRY FOUNTAIN
Photos/Chart (Photographs by Bill Willroth Sr. for The New York Times)
A stringless instrument, similar to the theremin, from 1939. Tones were made by touching the finger board.
A trumpet-like instrument from the 1920's. A valve switched between the two bells, one of which
had a built-in wa-wa mute.
Made in Brooklyn around 1890. Strings on one side corresponded to the white keys on a piano; on the other side they corresponded to the black keys. This made it nearly impossible to play glissandos.
An early electronic keyboard made by Hammond in the 1940's. It was designed as a solo instrument to be played along with a piano, but it had a limited number of tones.