Bob Moog was a living legend.  If it wasn’t for him, bands like Pink Floyd, The Doors, any early disco/R&B, and a lot of music since then would never have been created.  For Bob Moog, the man behind Moog synthesizers, creating the worlds best synthesizers was something more than making money and a business, but a life long passion which he held dear until his death.  You can hear Moog synthesizers or some varation/copy of it in at least half of the music released today.  Bob would have turned 78 today, and in remembrance of him, Google Doodle offers you a badass synthesizer as part of its homepage that you can not only make sounds, but record them and use envelopes, oscillators, filters, and the likes   Fucking amazing.

Now Bob did leave the company in the late 70′s, but he was always behind the scenes pushing the envelope (hah) for new sounds and creative ways to bring music to the world.  Unfortunately though, he passed away in 2005 of a brain tumor.  Today his equipment goes for thousands of dollars, with some of the more rare synthesizers easily fetching 30 grand and more.  Musicians like Erasure, Depeche Mode, Yaz, and Moby are said to own hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gadgets each, which gives you an idea of their value on the market… especially for producers looking for sounds that you can’t always find in software based VST’s (which is where most of the electronic sounds in music come from these days given their much cheaper prices).

If you’re interested in Moog products, they have a few cool iPhone and iPad products in the app store that you can play around with.  Happy bday Bob!  For now (since most of us reading this are in the States), you can check out http://www.google.com.au to play with it until it turns midnight hurrr.