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Moog synthesizers were one of the first widely used electronic musical instruments. Robert Moog created the first subtractive synthesizer to utilize a keyboard as a controller in 1964 and demonstrated it in October of that year at the AES convention.[1] It sometimes took hours to set up the machine for a new sound.

Robert Arthur Moog employed his theremin company (R. A. Moog Co., which would later become Moog Music) to manufacture and market his synthesizers. They were shipped with an organ-style keyboard as the standard user interface. The Moog was not necessarily considered a performance instrument, but rather a sophisticated, studio-oriented professional audio system which could be used as a musical instrument; the keyboard was simply a convenient and familiar way to control it. Particularly because of the pitch instability of its oscillators as well as the atonal nature of electronic music of the time, the original Moog synthesizer was designed for creating recorded electronic music.[2] Later modular Moogs would have much-improved oscillators and were better suited to real-time musical performance.

Minimoog Model DThe first Moog instruments were modular synthesizers. In 1971 Moog Music began production of the Minimoog Model D which was among the first widely available, portable and relatively affordable synthesizers. Unlike the modular synthesizer, the Minimoog was specifically designed as a self-contained musical instrument for keyboard players (besides the extremely user-friendly physical design, it also stayed in tune reasonably well) and was the first to really solidify the synthesizer's popular image as a "keyboard" instrument. The Minimoog became the most popular monophonic synthesizer of the 1970s, selling approximately 13,000 units between 1971 and 1982.

The last Moog synthesizers were manufactured in 1985 before the original Moog Music declared bankruptcy in 1986. By the mid-1990s, analog synthesizers were again highly sought after and prized for their classic sound. In 2001, Robert Moog's company Big Briar was able to acquire the rights to the Moog name and officially became Moog Music. Moog Music has been producing the Minimoog Voyager modeled after the original Minimoog since 2002. As of 2006, more than 15 companies are making Moog-style synthesizer modules.

Today a number of Moog products can still be purchased, such as Moogerfoogers and Minimoogs. The Minimoog is so popular, in fact, that they regularly sell for over US$3000 on online auction sites like eBay.