Google Doodle Moog Synthesizer: Play And Record Today Before Robert Moog's Birthday

The Google Doodle for Wednesday is an awesome playable Moog synthesizer, but you can play with it today by visiting Google Japan's homepage here.

Google Doodles have offered a wide range of fun opportunities over the years, from an interactive Pac Man game to a playable 'guitar', but the search website may have outdone itself this time with what is one of the coolest features we've ever seen on the search giant's homepage.

For Wednesday, May 23, 2012, Google will honor famed American electrical engineer Robert Bob Moog on his 78th birthday with a fully customizable and playable (and even recordable!) online version of the game-changing Moog synthesizer.

Popularized by musicians like Stevie Wonder, the Moog was one of the most important advances in music during the latter half of the 20th century, and Google will honor that legacy by allowing all of its users to try out some of the instrument's most-beloved features -- including the mixer, oscillator, filter and envelope.

And, as is the company's wont, Google took a liberty in the name of humor, changing the name Moog to Goog on the unique Google Doodle, which shows an old-school, likely wood-panelled Moog synthesizer hooked into a reel-to-reel machine.

Most web users won't be using it until they wake up tomorrow morning (or, for the nocturnal among us, after midnight), but you can actually go ahead and start recording some funky tunes right now by visiting Google Japan's homepage here.

So if you're sitting in your office tomorrow and you hear the unmistakable whine of old-fashioned -- yet still fun and effective -- Moog tracks being laid down like in the studio of Parliament or Sly and the Family Stone, don't be surprised. It's just another fun day in the world of Internet nerd-dom, and rather than complaining or turning up your headphones to distract yourself from the interruption, maybe you should get in on the fun and have a funkified jam sesh with all your cubicle-mates. It's what Bob Moog would want.