As you’ve probably heard if you live around here, Moogfest is coming to Durham next May. The festival schedule was announced yesterday — we’ll have an amazing array of speakers and musicians jamming within a five minute walk of Racery HQ on Main Street. 

Started in NYC in 2004, Moogfest is billed as “a platform for conversation and experimentation,” by day attracting “creative and technology enthusiasts” with night-time performances by “early pioneers in electronic music, alongside pop and avant garde experimentalists.” Gonna be seriously fun!

But hey, Durham hipsters — you may not know how to pronounce Moog. A cow’s moo + g, right? No, no, no! Tech cognoscenti and synthesizer aficionados will be happy to explain that you say Moog with a long o… as in vogue and rogue. O as in NO! O as in Larry, Coily and Mo. Help make the Bull City proud and do what you gotta do to remember that. Please.

Here’s Mr. Mogue (RIP) himself explaining:

It’s kinda funny and perhaps fitting that Moog, the company that invented an infinity of beautiful and sometimes weird sounds, enforces a rigidly eccentric utteration of its own name.

Studies from places like MIT and Google have shown that creativity is 41.7% laughter. So to get warmed up for Moogfest, I’m going to try moog the Moog, doing a daily smidgen of sonic hacking. Which is to say: I’ll try to say Moog differently every time I feel the word preparing to mosey from my mouth.

Do you want to be an avant garde experimentalist too? Hungarian — the native language of Racery’s programming team in Budapest and itself a virtual keyboard of Moog-worthy sounds — makes a ideal starting place for Moogillination. First, some “O” options…

And Hungarian has a slew of “U” variations to Moog with too…

I’m partial to MŐŐg. Try saying THAT and not giggling! There are lots of Moogs to mine. Tune up and join me, if you feel life’s getting a little too serious. (You might even practice saying Moog with tongue firmly in cheek.)