Robert Moog Honored With Google Doodle

Robert Moog, the man who revolutionized music by introducing electronic synthesizers, is being honored with a Google Doodle today, which would have been his 78th birthday–and, if you’re prone to getting distracted at work, it’s a Doodle that just might be a productivity killer.

To honor Moog, Google slapped a fully functional synthesizer–complete with all sorts of knobs to fiddle around with that alter the sound–directly above the search bar that can be controlled with the mouse or the keyboard. And if you happen to be any good at playing the synthesizer, you can also save your work by clicking on the record button to the right of it.

Moog, born May 23, 1934, took interest in musical instruments at a very young age. At age 14, he had already built his own theremin, which later led to him starting his own company. After that, Moog created his self-named synthesizer, which you can see on today’s Google Doodle.

Moog wasn’t the first person to create a synthesizer, but his synthesizer caught on in a way that others didn’t due to its small size, light weight and versatility. In fact, The Beatles took notice of Moog’s synthesizer, and used the machine on the album “Abbey Road.”

“We wanted to make completely new sounds,” Moog said in an interview (via National Post) before his death in 2005, “sounds that nobody had ever heard before.”

For an idea of what you can do with the Robert Moog Google Doodle, check out the video below.