Moog Resynthesizes The Grateful Dead

Article Contributed by dead.net | Published on Tuesday, February 19, 2013

You've never heard the Grateful Dead's 2/14/68 Carousel Ballroom quite like this! Animoog, Moog's TEC-Award nominated synthesizer for the iPad and iPhone, is creating cosmic harmonies with their Grateful Dead Expansion Pack. This exclusive pack features 82 Presets and 45 Timbres that were carefully extracted from the live recording and optimized so you can create your very own dynamic Dead soundscape.Mike Adams, Moog Music President and CEO said, “Two very important legacies left by Bob Moog and his life's work were the idea of looking at new technology and crafting new tools to enable musicians to make music in new and inspiring ways, and also the importance of collaborating with musicians to help shape those tools. This innovative integration of textures from the Grateful Dead’s live recordings into Animoog’s timbre library is a true manifestation of this legacy.”The Grateful Dead Expansion Pack is broken into three categories: ensemble, percussion and vocal sounds. In each case the timbres were extracted from individual vocal performances, percussion hits or instrument riffs performed during the Grateful Dead’s concert at the Carousel Ballroom 44 years ago. The pack allows musicians today to create dynamic soundscapes from the Dead’s rare and complex source harmonic content originally performed decades ago.Cyril Lance, Moog Music’s Chief Engineer explains, “We’re not simply providing samples from the Grateful Dead's body of work, rather we’ve distilled the essence of notes and phrases in a different way to transform these performances into new instruments -- new voices. Now we’ve made these unique voices available to artists in a way that enables them to create their own music and voices based on this fundamental essence.”The Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart, who visited the Moog Factory on April 19, 2012 to test the development of the Grateful Dead Expansion Pack exclaimed, "Holy transmogrification, Batman… Amazing!" after hearing the Grateful Dead’s 44-year-old recordings transformed into sound design tools for artists.