Rick Carl ’19 (audio and music engineering), ’20 (MS, electrical and computer engineering) knows that designing synthesizers is a delicate balance of art and engineering. As a hardware engineer at Moog Music Inc., Carl is deeply involved in the product design for new instruments. He draws inspiration from the company’s founder, Robert Moog, handling everything from system architecture to circuit design, coding, and prototype debugging. Collaborating frequently with musicians in Asheville, North Carolina; Nashville; and Los Angeles, Carl’s designs strike a balance between honoring Moog’s legacy and pushing technology in innovative directions. This approach has earned his designs, including the Moog Labyrinth and the Moog Muse synthesizers, critical acclaim.
Carl attributes his success to the education he received at the University of Rochester, which he says prepared both the creative and technical sides of his brain for the challenge of synth design. “Electrical engineers often fall into the trap of trying to create synthesizers by designing perfect circuits that perform optimally and tick every single metric but end up sounding boring,” says Carl. “You have to be open and have an ear to bend the rules to get something that sounds nice. Rochester’s AME program gave me the tools to develop that ear without skimping on the hard skills.”
Carl’s journey into the world of synthesizers began in middle school when he picked up a synthesizer and fell in love with the instrument. Growing up about two hours from Moog Music’s factory in Asheville, he made several pilgrimages there throughout high school and knew it was the place he wanted to work someday. He found out about URochester’s audio music and engineering (AME) degree program and saw a path to his dream job. “The AME program was tailor made to exactly what I wanted to do,” says Carl. “The really valuable thing to me about it was the balancing of the creative and subjective side with the hard skills in circuit design, digital signal processing, and all of that, because both sides are equally important.”
While he was a student at URochester, Carl cold-called the receptionists at Moog Music several times about internship opportunities and was initially rebuffed. But his persistence paid off, and he interned there in 2019, affirming that it was the place he knew he belonged. Carl returned to his studies after his internship with a foot in the door and a refined focus on what he had yet to learn. Carl had entered URochester on an accelerated path to earn his master’s degree in five years through the Graduate Engineering at Rochester (GEAR) program and says the fifth year provided him crucial skills for his career. “It gave me context for some of the problems I run into now as I’m learning how to design higher and higher speed boards,” says Carl. “All of the converter knowledge I got from that fifth year plugged perfectly in with the research I ended up doing here at Moog. When I got here, I told them ‘I learned all this stuff in grad school and I can probably design a way that we can do this cheaper and better,’ and they said, ‘let’s do it.’”
Since joining Moog Music in November 2020, Carl has been heavily involved in internal research. One of his earliest projects was a Eurorack case for housing modular synths. “It was not very glamorous, but it taught me quite a bit about power supply design because it had to be able to power anything you throw at it and tolerate some pretty poor circuit designs,” says Carl. “In the modular space you have everyone from actual electrical engineers to amateur hobbyists using them, so it had to be very resilient and clean.” He led research efforts before getting his first chance to spearhead a major project he called the Labyrinth, released in July 2024. As the system architect and lead hardware engineer, Carl set out to create a drum synthesizer with generative aspects, meaning it will create rhythms and melodies using random chance. “We ended up designing something that gives people a very different sound from a traditional Moog synthesizer while still maintaining the quality that everyone associates with Moog,” says Carl. “We created a new and fun sequencer interface for generating melodies and rhythms that can be driven by random chance but are still very much controlled. You can set up a starting place and explore from there, hence the name ‘Labyrinth’ because you can go in so many different directions.”
Musician and YouTube personality Andrew Huang called it Moog’s “best release in years” and used it to create a 2024 collaborative album with fellow artist Undulae titled Labyrinth. “This is my favorite instrument to come out in ages because it just constantly gives you these delightful surprises,” says Huang. “You have to always be recording when you’re using it because you’re
