Switched-On Rock

Switched-On Rock
Studio album by the Moog Machine
Released	1969
Genre	Electronic rock
Length	29:47
Label	Columbia Records
Producer	Norman Dolph

Switched-On Rock is an album of instrumental cover songs, popular songs from the mid-to-late-1960s, performed on the Moog modular synthesizer in an exaggerated electronic style. It was one of a spate of albums which capitalized on the success of 1968's Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos. Switched-On Rock was produced by Norman Dolph who also wrote the liner notes. Dolph worked in the studio with colleagues Kenny Ascher and Alan Foust; they billed themselves as the Moog Machine for this and one more project. The album reached number 170 on the Billboard Top 200.

Norman Dolph joined Columbia Records in 1964. As a marketing executive, he focused on recording projects aimed at the youth market. In 1967 he paid for the recording session of the album The Velvet Underground & Nico, and he helped engineer it.

After the 1968 album Switched-On Bach was seen to sell 500,000 copies, a number of albums were made to satisfy this new demand for synthesizer music. Wendy Carlos followed up Switched-On Bach with The Well-Tempered Synthesizer in the classical music category. Popular albums such as Switched On Bacharach, Switched-On Country, Switched-On Santa, Switched-On Gershwin, Moog Power and Music to Moog By were produced by others.

The idea for Switched-On Rock was conceived by Columbia Records marketing executive Russell "Russ" Barnard. Barnard assigned the project to three men: Dolph supervised the album and he tuned the Moog modular synthesizer, and his associates jazz pianist Kenneth "Kenny" Ascher and arranger Alan Foust played the keyboards and wrote the song arrangements, respectively. An attempt was made to synthesize drum sounds for the songs, but Dolph felt that the results sounded "kind of mechanical and ricky-tick." Instead, a rock drum kit was played by session drummer Leon Rix.

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