Herbert Deutsch, who helped develop the Moog synthesizer, a groundbreaking instrument that opened up new frontiers in electronic music and brought a futuristic shine to countless artists’ historic recordings, died Dec. 9 at his home in Massapequa Park, NY, at Long Island. He was 90.
The cause was heart failure, said his wife, Nancy Deutsch.
Mr. Deutsch, music professor at Hofstra University and experimental composer, joined forces with Robert Moog, an engineer and inventor, to introduce a modular voltage-controlled synthesizer in 1964.
With its otherworldly sounds, reminiscent of a Gothic cathedral pipe organ as well as an alien mothership, the Moog (the name rhymes with ‘vogue’) was the first synthesizer to have a major influence on popular music. The debut marked the beginning of the synthesizer era.
“There were connected instruments before the Moog synthesizer, but none hit the spot with such awe-inspiring potential,” Ted Gioia, the music writer and author of the 2019 book “Music: A Subversive History,” wrote in an email. . “The first recordings of Moog music from the 1960s felt like messages from the future, telling us all the rules would change.”
Many of those recordings turned out to define their eras. George Harrison bought an oversized early Moog, which the Beatles used to colorize several songs on their 1969 album ‘Abbey Road’, including ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ and Harrison’s composition ‘Here Comes the Sun’.
The Moog reached a wider market in 1971 with the introduction of the compact Minimoog Model D, the first widely used portable synthesizer.
“Within months of the first commercial Moog synthesizers appearing in stores, commercial recordings started to sound different,” said Mr. Gioia. The futuristic synthesizer squeaked and boomed in 1972 with Hot Butter’s “Popcorn” and became a driving force behind such landmark tracks as Kraftwerk’s artsy “Autobahn,” Donna Summer’s disco classic “I Feel Love” (1977), Parliament’s epic funk freak- out “Flashlight” (1977) and Herbie Hancock’s jazz-funk crossover hit “Rockit” (1983).
Even when not the featured instrument, the Moog provided moody textures for timeless songs like Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up” (1973) and Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” (1975). It also provided throbbing bass tracks on Michael Jackson’s mega-selling 1982 album, “Thriller.”
While Mr. Moog focused on the technical side of his eponymous invention, Mr. Deutsch took the perspective of a practicing musician during its creation, which was crucial in transforming it from an electronic gadget into a viable instrument.
“Herb Deutsch was the catalyst for the invention of the synthesizer,” said Michelle Moog-Koussa, the daughter of Mr. Moog and Executive Director of the Bob Moog Foundation, in a telephone interview. “That’s not an exaggeration.”
“Herb would say, ‘This is what I need,’” she added, “and Dad would build the circuit. It was a real partnership between a designer and a musician.”
Despite his impact on music of all genres, Mr. Deutsch the last person to trumpet his achievements.
“I’m not ready to go, ‘Look at me, I’m part of music history,'” he said in a video interview with the company Moog Music in February. “But I do understand that Bob and I are an important part of music history because that idea has been used in every direction music can take.”
Herbert Arnold Deutsch was born on February 9, 1932, in Hempstead, NY, the youngest of three children of Barnet and Miriam (Myersburg) Deutsch. His father was an administrative assistant for the Veterans Health Administration, his mother a bookkeeper. Because money was tight, his parents also ran a small chicken farm on their property.
In a detached garage next to the largest pen on the farm, Mr. Deutsch had his first musical epiphany at the age of 3.
“For some reason I picked up a long, straight stick and, holding it in my right hand, tapped it on the sand floor,” he recalled in a 2018 interview with Parma Recordings, a music production company. “At one point in this senseless action, I heard a note when I tapped the ground.”
“It was a C,” he continued. “Then I tapped the floor a few inches to the right and heard a D.”
Soon he “started tapping some melodies of music I recognized and also music that was new to me,” he said. “Suddenly I stopped in fear. Of course I couldn’t hear those real pitches, or was the earthen floor really magical?
A year later he started taking piano lessons and at the age of 11, inspired by the likes of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, set his sights on the trumpet. He played in bands throughout high school and during his years at the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
One of his best-known compositions was the haunting multimedia track “A Christmas Carol, 1963,” an aural collage interspersed with recorded news clips and medieval chants, composed in honor of the four black girls who were murdered during the infamous Ku Klux Klan bombings of a church in Birmingham, Ala., that year.
His performance of another modernist composition in the New York studio of the sculptor Jason Seley in January 1964 received a positive review in The New Yorker. More important, however, was the fact that Mr. Moog was in the audience.
Mr. Moog, that Mr. Deutsch at a music fair, was working on his Ph.D. in engineering physics from Cornell University while running the small RA Moog Company, based in Trumansburg NY, which manufactured its versions of the theremin, the electronic instrument whose eerie space age sound was a staple of 1950s science fiction film soundtracks.
After the performance, the men and their wives went out to dinner, where Mr. Deutsch and Mr. Moog discussed new possibilities for electronic music. Mr. Deutsch eventually commissioned a new electronic instrument designed by Mr. Moog in conjunction with Mr. Deutsch.
With advice from Mr. Deutsch designed Mr. Moog an instrument consisting of modules linked together by patch cords that allowed musicians to create their own vast array of previously unheard sounds from scratch, whether mimicking acoustic instruments or creating their own distinctly electronic sonic palette.
That same year, Mr. Deutsch “Jazz Images, a Worksong and Blues”, the first composition for the Moog. Soon he was giving groundbreaking performances at Town Hall and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1968, Wendy Carlos released “Switched-On Bach,” a watershed moment for the Moog, bringing the baroque musical into the Apollo era and bringing the Moog into the bedrooms and dormitories of baby boomers. Ms. Carlos also used the Moog to evoke the ominous sound of a dystopian future on the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, “A Clockwork Orange.”
After his work with Mr. Moog, Mr. Deutsch turned his attention back to teaching at Hofstra. In 1976 he published his first of three books, “Synthesis: An Introduction to the History, Theory & Practice of Electronic Music.”
But in the late 1970s, he joined the Moog Company as a director of marketing, advising on new synthesizer designs.
At this point, sales of the American-made Moogs began to decline as cheaper Japanese synthesizers from companies such as Roland and Yamaha began to dominate the market.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Deutsch is survived by two children, Lisbeth Mitchell and Edmund Deutsch, from his marriage to Margaret Deutsch, who died in 1996; three stepchildren, Cheryl Sterling, Adam Blau, and Daniel Rogge; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
The Moog synthesizer enjoyed a renaissance beginning in the 1990s, thanks to bands like the Beastie Boys, Wilco, and Portishead. But by then Mr. Deutsch was done helping design synthesizers. After all, he was a musician at heart, not an inventor.
“A year ago I texted him to discuss something, and he said, ‘I can’t talk tonight because I have band practice,'” Ms Moog-Koussa said. “He lived to be 89 years old.”
