As evidenced by the art installations and special workshops around Asheville over Halloween weekend, Moogfest is more than just a series of concerts and an excuse to party, and the festival’s homage to Bob Moog is taken seriously. Whereas other festivals or events might pay tribute to a person, technology, or idea in name only, the appreciation fans, artists, and music industry experts have for Moog and his instruments was prominent throughout the weekend.
The Moogaplex was one such example of this serious Moog-love. Housed in a storefront on Haywood Street, the Moogaplex hosted a number of workshops and panels over the weekend, highlighting the history of Moog instruments. Here, festival-goers also had a hands-on, interactive experience with the instruments and an opportunity to create the kind of music that Bob Moog made possible over the years.
Perhaps one of the coolest things on display at the Moogaplex for the hardcore Moog-a-philes was the handwritten notes from Bob Moog’s journals with detailed drawings, thoughts, and ideas about circuitry and voltage. Moog left behind thousands of such schematics in his journals, and one of the goals of the non-profit Bob Moog Foundation (led by Michelle Moog-Koussa, Moog’s daughter) is to restore and share these notes, offering an incredible peek into the brain of the legendary inventor.
Music lovers were also treated to a vintage Memorymoog on display--the last synthesizer to be produced by Moog Music in the ‘80s. This six-voice polyphonic synthesizer contains a 24/dB/octave lowpass filter and extensive modulation facilities.
Paying homage to the innovative Moog spirit, Moogaplex also hosted the 2nd Annual Moog Circuit Bending Challenge, where three finalists had two days to use the same bag of tools (which includes a soldering iron, wire, switches, potentiometers of varying degrees, resistors, capacitors, heat shrink, bread boards, and diodes) to produce the most creative circuit-bending outcome.
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