By 1976, the first true music synthesizers to offer polyphony had begun to appear, most notably in the form of the Yamaha GX1, CS-50, CS-60 and Yamaha CS-80 and the Oberheim Four-Voice. These early instruments were very complex, heavy, and costly. Another feature that began to appear was the recording of knob settings in a digital memory, allowing the changing of sounds quickly. When microprocessors first appeared on the scene in the early 1970s, they were expensive and difficult to apply.

The first practical polyphonic synth, and the first to use a microprocessor as a controller, was the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 introduced in late 1977.^[14] For the first time, musicians had a practical polyphonic synthesizer that allowed all knob settings to be saved in computer memory and recalled by pushing a button. The Prophet-5 was also physically compact and lightweight, unlike its predecessors. This basic design paradigm became a standard among synthesizer manufacturers, slowly pushing out the more complex and recondite modular design. One of the first real-time polyphonic digital music synthesizers was the Coupland Digital Music Synthesizer. It was much more portable than a piano but never reached commercial production.

A Fairlight CMI keyboard, featuring signatures from 43 celebrity musicians, composers and producers.

The Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) was the first polyphonic digital sampling synthesizer.^[15] It was designed in 1978 by the founders of Fairlight, Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, and based on a dual microprocessor computer designed by Tony Furse in Sydney, Australia. The Fairlight CMI gave musicians the ability to modify volume, attack, decay, and special effects like vibrato. Waveforms could also be modified on a computer monitor using a light pen.^[16] It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed in the market with the Synclavier from New England Digital. The first buyers of the new system were Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel, Richard James Burgess, Todd Rundgren, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, producer Rhett Lawrence, Stevie Wonder and Ned "EBN" Liben of Ebn Ozn, who acted as Fairlight's New York expert liaison to the American musician community.^[17]

The Kurzweil K250, first produced in 1983, was also a successful polyphonic digital music synthesizer.^[18] It was noted for its ability to reproduce several instruments synchronously; the Kurzweil K250 also had a velocity-sensitive keyboard. It was priced at US$ 10,000.^[19]

Since the early 1980s, most new synthesizers have been digital. Japanese manufacturers Yamaha and Casio both played a large part as manufacturers of digital synthesizers during the 1980s and 1990s. John Chowning, a professor at Stanford University, exclusively licensed his patent covering FM synthesis to Yamaha in 1975.^[20] Yamaha subsequently released their first FM synthesizers, the GS-1 and GS-2, both of which were costly and heavy. Yamaha soon followed with the GS series, which used a pair of smaller, preset versions - the CE20 and CE25 Combo Ensembles. These were targeted primarily at the home organ market and featured four-octave keyboards.^[21] Yamaha's third generation of digital synthesizers became their most popular. These consisted of the DX7 and DX9 (1983). Both models were compact, reasonably priced, and dependant on custom digital integrated circuits to produce FM tonalities. The DX7 was the first mass market all-digital synthesizer.^[22] It became indispensable to many music artists of the 1980s, and demand soon exceeded supply.^[23] The DX7 sold over 200,000 units within three years.^[24]

After the introduction of the DX series, Bo Tomlyn, original DX7 project manager Mike Malizola, and Chuck Monte founded Key Clique, Inc, which sold thousands of ROM cartridges with new FM/DX7 sounds to DX7 owners. This led to the demise of the heavy, electro-mechanical Rhodes piano during the 1980s, until its comeback in the 1990s. Yamaha later licensed its FM technology to other manufacturers. By the time the Stanford patent expired, almost every personal computer in the world contained an audio input-output system with a built-in 4-operator FM digital synthesizer.

Following the success of Yamaha's licensing of Stanford's FM synthesis patent, Yamaha signed a contract with Stanford University in 1989 to develop jointly digital waveguide synthesis. As such, most patents related to the technology are owned by Stanford or Yamaha. The first commercial physical modeling synthesizer was Yamaha's VL-1 in 1994.^[25] Analog synthesizers have also revived in popularity since the 1980s. In recent years, the two trends have sometimes been combined as analog modeling synthesizers, or digital synthesizers that model analog synthesis using digital signal processing techniques. New analog instruments now also accompany the large number from the digital world.

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MIDI control

Main article: Musical Instrument Digital Interface

Synthesizers became easier to integrate and synchronize with other electronic instruments and controllers with the introduction in 1983 of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface).^[26] First proposed in 1981 by Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits, the MIDI standard was developed by a consortium now known as the MIDI Manufacturers Association.^[27] MIDI is an opto-isolated serial interface and communication protocol.^[27] It provides for the transmission from one device or instrument to another of real-time performance data. This data includes note events, commands for the selection of instrument presets (i.e. sounds, or programs or patches, previously stored in the instrument's memory), the control of performance-related parameters such as volume, effects levels and the like, as well as synchronization, transport control and other types of data. MIDI interfaces are now almost ubiquitous on music equipment and are commonly available on personal computers (PCs).^[27]

The General MIDI (GM) software standard was devised in 1991 to serve as a consistent way of describing a set of over 200 tones (including percussion) available to a PC for playback of musical scores.^[28] For the first time, a given MIDI preset would consistently produce an instrumental sound on any GM-conforming device. The Standard MIDI File (SMF) format (extension .mid) combined MIDI events with delta times - a form of time-stamping - and became a popular standard for exchange of music scores between computers. In the case of SMF playback using integrated synthesizers (as in computers and cell phones), the hardware component of the MIDI interface design is often unneeded.

OSC, OpenSound Control, is a proposed replacement for MIDI which was designed for networking. In contrast with MIDI, OSC is fast enough to allow thousands of synthesizers or computers to share music performance data over the internet in realtime.

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Impact on the music industry and culture

Both the Roland Jupiter-4 and Jupiter-8 synthesizers were used by New Wave band Duran Duran during the early 1980s.

The synthesizer has had a large impact on modern music over the past forty years.^[29] The most significant influence of the instrument came during the 1970s and 1980s. Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach (1968), recorded using Moog synthesizers, influenced numerous musicians of that era. Switched-On Bach is one of the most popular classical music recordings ever made, and the first to go Platinum.^[30] During the late 1960s, hundreds of other popular recordings used Moog synthesizers. The Moog synthesizer even spawned a subculture of record producers who made novelty "Moog" recordings, depending on the odd new sounds made by their synthesizers (which were not always Moog units) to draw attention and sales.

Wendy Carlos - Switched-On Bach

First Movement (Allegro) of Brandenburg Concerto Number 3.

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

The synthesizer's notable influence during the late 1970s and 1980s lead to mainstream popularity amongst renowned music artists. Among the first major artists to fully use the synthesizer were Wendy Carlos,^[30] Stevie Wonder, Peter Gabriel, Kraftwerk, Ultravox and Yellow Magic Orchestra. English musician Gary Numan was influenced by Kraftwerk, Ultravox and David Bowie. Numan's 1979 hit Are 'Friends' Electric? used synthesizers heavily.^[31] Numan continued to use synthesizers throughout most of his career, including the 1980 hit Cars.^[32]

The influences of synthesizers on the New Romantic movement in the United Kingdom during the 1980s were evident from its usage by Nick Rhodes, keyboardist of Duran Duran. At the time, the band used the Roland Jupiter-4 and Jupiter-8 synthesizers.^[33] The emergence of Synthpop, a subgenre of New Wave, can be largely credited to the synthesizer. It lasted from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. The influences of synthesizer technology and Germanic ambience of Kraftwerk and of David Bowie during his Berlin period (1976-77) were both crucial in the development of the synthpop genre.^[34] By 1981, many artists had adopted the synthpop sound and experienced chart success, such as Depeche Mode, Visage, OMD and Ultravox.^[34] At this time, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet were classed as leaders of the genre. Many other acts followed, including Soft Cell, Culture Club, Eurythmics and Blancmange.^[34] At this time, synthesizers were one of the most important instruments within the music industry.

The synthesizer introduced many recognizable sounds in the 1980s. OMD's Enola Gay (1980) used a distinctive electronic percussion and synthesized melody. Soft Cell used a fast tempo (150 bpm) and synthesized melody in their 1981 hit Tainted Love.^[35] Other chart hits include Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough (1981),^[35] and The Human League's Don't You Want Me.^[36] Typically, the sounds varied between artists and songs, but all were distinctively produced using synthesizers.^[37]

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See also

• Computer music
• Electronic keyboards
• Guitar/synthesizer
• Keytar
• List of synthesizer manufacturers
• List of classic synthesizers
• Modular synthesizer
• Musical instrument
• Software synthesizer

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Notes

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References

• Gorges, Peter (2005). Programming Synthesizers, ISBN 978-3-934903-48-7.

• Schmitz, Reinhard (2005). Analog Synthesis, ISBN 978-3-934903-01-2.

• Shapiro, Peter (2000). Modulations: A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound, ISBN 1-891024-06-X.

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External links

• Vintagesynth — Vintage Synth Explorer
• Progsounds — Online Synthesizer Resource
• Synth Museum — Vintage Synth Resource
• 120 years of Electronic Music — Machines used from 1870-1990
• Principles of Sound Synthesis at Salford University