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Harry E. Pistore 2021
Introduction
Music production may sound like a modern word for music composition but it has been around since the dawn of time as a means to express and objectify our emotions. We have now come to a point in our history where we are able to generate new and unpredictable sounds by controlling a pure sine wave, made possible with the invention of the synthesizer, an instrument that, by programming it, can generate the most unpredictable sounds. The following research is a journey into the evolution of synthesizers, the way they impacted music production and consequently the whole music scene.
Development of early Synthesisers
The first official attempt to use electricity to produce music with an instrument, appeared in Paris in 1761 by J. B. Delaborde, a french physicist, in the form of an electric harpsichord (Britannica,*). In those years many were attempting to incorporate electromagnetic elements into experimental musical devices but the most important one was the Singing Arc, invented by William Duddell in 1899, it was showcased for the first time in London and attached it had a keyboard that was able to control the pulse of the electric arcs and produce a distinct sound per key (Chery, R. 2014).
With a more thorough understanding of the electricity, as time went on, great improvements were made in the technology of the time and between the 19th and 20th century new inventions began to appear such as the first electric light, the electromagnet and the electric dynamo (Bellis, 2019). Big changes as a consequence happened in music technology too and in 1906 Thaddeus Cahill built the Telharmonium, a bulky, heavy, expensive electric organ that had several problems including a high energy demand. It is known to be one of the first examples of electronic musical instruments where the melody was created by its big rotary generators that produced alternating electric waves. The ‘Telharmonium’ 1897 (Picture above).
Cahill wanted to make concerts with it by sending music through the telephone wire system to reach public places and private homes, this was going to be available for a fee which Cahill had to organise with some investors that believed in his new invention. It was one of the earliest attempts to create a subscription service like we have today with live streaming services or Spotify but unfortunately it didn’t take off after discovering that the music signal was interfering with the telephone system and the instrument in the end had to be dismantled (Morton, 2015). Cahill’s idea of playing live music and sending it around the city by cable, gives an idea of how the perception of popular music was at the time, most of it in fact was played at home usually on a piano and from music sheets bought from the local music shops, since recorded music was still a novelty and very expensive, having a reasonably priced streaming service would have benefited a lot of people that otherwise couldn’t play or afford expensive musical instruments (Encyclopedia.com).
A pivotal invention that marked a breakthrough in electronic engineering was the arrival of the Triode Vacuum Tube, in 1906 by Lee De Forest, this device planted the seed for more improvements to the way circuits work and made it easier for engineers to build electronic musical instruments (Martin, 2006). This was the period that saw inventions and workforce coming together at an efficiency and speed never seen before, mostly due to the past industrial revolution that paved the way for further developments in engineering and urban organisation but also due to the higher education and improved quality of life which saw a steep rise of skilled workers. More people had access to a better education at all ages, women also began to take part in jobs that were otherwise a strong monopoly of men, society in this period was experiencing a real social levelling. (Britannica, ***).
Unfortunately, due to the great war, progress in Europe slowed down for a few years but soon after the conflict, it picked up again at an even faster pace, an example of post war invention is the Theremin, invented in 1919 by scientist Leon Theremin, it had a more instrument-like shape and it could be played without being touched (Eyck, 2013), a truly iconic music device still in production today by Moog. The Theremin though isn’t easy to play, due to the lack of physical control a correct pitch is very hard to achieve but it was used in the past for some of those emblematic sci-fi movies that show the gliding nature of the instrument sound and in a Beach Boys track, “Good Vibration” (It’s History, 2015).
In 1934, Laurens Hammond patented the Hammond, an electronic organ with two keyboards and a set of pedals, it made a huge impact in the music scene of the time and it can still be found today with a hefty price tag on. Its uniqueness was the sheer amount of tones, timbres and harmonics that it could produce, making it a very primitive synthesizer. Its versatility gathered a lot of interest among popular musicians such as Deep Purple, Lake and Palmer, Booker T & The M.G.’s and Keith Emerson (Britannica, **). It also helped Jon Lord of Deep Purple to create his distinctive sound, which is now known as the “Jon Lord sound” a very unique sound of the 70s rock and roll (Hammond For Hire, 2019).
A very good example of the Hammond organ in action is by Keith Emerson who was often playing it in his live concerts sometimes in a very “rock and roll” way, he would in fact hit it, drag it and smash it in a rebellious attempt to produce even more eclectic sounds, sounds that were very metallic, electrical and in a sense futuristic at the time. One concert in particular filmed in Belgium in 1971, shows Emerson literally stabbing and kicking the organ as the band members kept playing along (PlanX, 2008).
The Birth of Electronic Music
The 60s were a very important decade for synthesizers, this was a time where the youth did not experience either the severity of the Great Depression or the conflicts of the second World War and where the parochial conservative values owned by the older generation were getting replaced by a more liberal and hedonistic crowd. Popular music became heavier and angrier and this laid the ground for the rise of popular rock bands of the 70s like Black Sabbath, David Bowie and Led Zeppelin (Mullen, 2017). Electronic music instead was little known before the 70s, it was mainly experimental and according to Robert Moog people were suspicious of sounds coming out of an electronic device, in fact anything that wasn’t produced by a string, brass or wood was considered suspicious and even potentially harmful (Fjellestad, 2004, 5:20). It was in this period that Moog began his synthesizer production and in 1964 he released the Moog Modular that was without doubt the first synthesizers highly recognised by musicians as a proper fully electronic instrument. it was big and difficult to operate and usually required an engineer to be able to use it and record it, in fact it was initially only intended to be used in a professional recording studio according to Bob Moog (Snowden, 2012).
Only after Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos in 1968 electronic music started to be seen as a true musical style that had the potential to become as popular as music created by more conservative instruments. This concept album is considered to be the first to incorporate the sound of a synthesizer showcased in a mainstream musical work. The fact that the album was a tribute to classical music which was very well appreciated at the time, was somewhat a confirmation that those strange sounds could be actually manipulated to be used in a more appropriate and musical way, pushing people to better familiarise with such new sound textures (Gersten, 2017). Moog and his team gathered a lot of experience from the creation of the Moog Modular, they understood how musicians were actually using it, what features they would more likely use and the ones that were otherwise less important. This device was the first commercial analog synthesizer, it would in fact be hired by musicians for studio recordings (Fjellestad, 2004, 8:00).
Bands of the time that implemented this instrument into their work were The Doors in the album “Strange Days”, mainly to produce an effect on Morrison’s vocals with the help of Moog programmer Paul Beaver in 1967, The Monkees for their album Pisces on the same year and the album Music To Moog By created by Gershon Kingsley (Holmes, 2012).
(The Moog Modular Synthesizer with Robert Moog)
The very first portable synth arrived in 1969, the EMS vcs3 but due to its bulkyness and complexity (Factmag.com) it was quickly overshadowed by the tidier Minimoog, which was in fact all a musician would need for music production and live performance, it had the most common parameters that we have nowadays on modern synthesizers such a filter cut off, resonance, envelope controls, LFOs and all those essential ones that facilitate sound design. This little but powerful device was the one that set in motion the entire synthesizer era of the 70s, which saw the birth of iconic synthesizers such as the Oberheim SEM, the Roland System 700 and the ARP, all still in use to this very day (Retrowaste.com).
The Minimoog legacy has inspired musicians all over the world, a few examples are the band Parliament that used it to achieve their fat bass sound that accompanied the whole 70s and 80s music scene, hip hop musician Dr Dre for his sound that became a staple in the hip hop genre and can be also heard in Gary Numan “Cars”. The Moog Voyager, the evolution of the Minimoog, was also a great source of inspiration for many, including popular producer J. Dilla (Thatcher, T. 2017). Dj-Producer Deadmau5 still uses the Voyager for his EDM and progressive house music (Deadmau5, 2013) but a £15,000 golden 10th anniversary edition.
Another remarkable synth created in 1969 was the ARP by engineer Alan Perlman, it was an adaptation of the larger ARP 2500 and had a lot of faders so that the settings could be seen at a glance, it was even introduced in some schools in America for its ease of use. Apart from its unique character, the machine actually eliminated the heating problems of the Minimoog which was later solved in a newer version. The ARP is still in use today for its user friendly interface and its powerful sound and it has even been recently cloned by instrument manufacturer Behringer at a reasonable price retaining all the beautiful characteristics of the original (Reverb, 2020).
In the ’70s electronic elements started to appear in recorded music and in the live scene, Keith Emerson’s gig in New york in 1971, was the first where the Minimoog was played in front of thousands of people showing its great potential as an instrument but a band that defined a new music era came from Germany (Fjellestad, 2004).
The Rise of the Synthesizer
Kraftwerk grew up in an awkward post war situation where the damage of WW2 was still very much felt with the result of a compromised national identity among german people. At the time radios and television were broadcasting programs in English, French and Italian, and as a consequence an essential cultural identity was somehow missing but It wasn’t actually a German identity that they were looking for but a more defined and cosmopolitan one that would bring them together as Europeans. Kraftwerk then began to add german lyrics on their music, which was audacious at the time from a commercial perspective and they started to implement more technology into their sound (Schütte, 2020). They used not only commercial synthesizers but also custom made ones commissioned for their musical needs, some of their key custom made synthesizers were a drum pad machine and a step sequencer.
By the time Kraftwerk released their 4th and most significant album, Autobahn, in 1974, they experimented a lot with popular synthesizers, mostly the Minimoog and rather than playing normal melodies with it, they instead reinvented the way it was used by producing pulsating, futuristic and abstract sounds, in a relatively catchy style. They were reinventing music with synthesizers, as a result their sound became a staple in the electronic avant-garde music scene and consequently turned them into a band to look up to by aspiring musicians (Scott, W.)
Several sounds in Autobahn were the synthesised sounds of a real motorway such as trucks, cars and passing bridges which they heard while driving through Germany. The album became a precursor of the electronic music era and Kraftwerk led to the birth of synth pop that later dominated the 80s music movement (Finamore, 2018).
In the mid 70s synths and pop music really came together and led British musicians to pioneer the synth pop wave of the 80s that saw its early birth mainly in Germany. Bands like Kraftwerk playing only electronic instruments and american synth pioneer Wendy Carlos, who composed the score for Clockwork Orange, became the new inspirations for these young songwriters. This was the time when Britain saw a lot of development in the urban sector and in the entertainment industry, it seemed that the whole country was looking to the future in excitement.
Those futuristic sounds mainly by Kraftwerk made such an impression on “wannabe” artists that they embraced the synthesizer as the next big thing. The Human League, formed in 1977, which played mainly synths, owned a Korg 700s that was one of their first “domestically viable” synths both affordable and easy to program, it cost only £350 which was a good deal back then for something so new, the instrument was so appealing in price that one of the members of the band bought it instead of getting a second hand car (BBC 4, 2019, 13:50).
The affordability and portability of synthesizers became more common after the Minimoog, manufacturers embraced the concept of size and price and consequently cheaper and smaller synthesizers started to slowly appear in music shops. Vince Clarke of Depeche Mode, praises his first ever synth, the Kawai 100F, mainly for its portability, even though it would be still quite heavy for today’s standard, he remembers how him and his band simply hopped on a train from Leeds to London each carrying their own synthesizer on the way to attend their first show at Top of the Pops (Ottewill, 2020).
Small synthesizers can also be programmed by anyone not proficient in playing a particular instrument, Human League Philip Oakey recalls how he tried to learn to play guitar but his hands were hurting and when he switched to synthesizers all he needed to do is press a button and sound would keep playing for ten minutes (BBC 4, 2019, 13:55).
Conventional instruments such as strings, brass and wood all retain a reference point being their characteristic sound used in the past by musicians to compose music but with synthesizers, each sound can be totally different from the next one and that reference point no longer exists, consequently musicians when playing a synthesizer find themselves in uncharted territory and unpredictable music can arise from it. On a closer look the synthesizer still has a reference point being its keyboard that was already used in the past for music writing, Moog and his colleague engineer argue that the first synthesizer could have been given a different tool to shape the sound pitch rather than a keyboard but in the end it seemed the most logical and cheapest method at the time, even though Vladimir Alexeevich a composer that worked with Moog warned about the danger of using such a common pitch shaper, because the musical possibility of using a synth would be limited by the use of a standard keyboard (Fjellestad, 2004, 44:40).
An important producer that contributed to the evolution of electronic music is Giorgio Moroder, after meeting german composer Eberhard Schoener, one of a few people to own a Moog synthesizer, he borrowed his instrument along with his sound engineer and he recalls having to deviate from his usual composition style process to instead focus entirely on the Moog, using note sequencing and white noise. In 1977 the track with Donna Summers “I Feel Love” earned him top 10 in several countries and made popular musicians including David Bowie very jealous of that sound that no one was able to easily recreate. It was said to be the sound of the future (Bein, 2017). The Human League were highly influenced by Moroder’s concept album made with Donna Summer because of its electronic production that at the time was unheard of and as one of the members put it “you were never really sure what the next set of sounds was going to be” (BBC 4, 2019, 15:30).
In 1977, the arrival of the Prophet 5 marked a new era of synths, which was the first to have a comprehensive preset recall, a luxury for anyone needing to switch sound quickly in studio or on stage, it was a game changer. We can only imagine how frustrating and slow it would be now, to recall patches from a photograph or parameters sheet either in a studio or in a live performance (Ball, 2018).
In this period, the popular culture began to shift, the recent rise of the Punk subculture was an indication of a growing demand for political change and detachment from the older lifestyle of the 60s and early 70s, it seemed that a line had to be drawn to separate the modern society with the old one, Punk was in fact the outburst of a new society that began to express their feelings about a more radical political and socio-economic awareness, raising important issues mainly about racism and unemployment (Worley, 2013).
Gary Numan, one of the foremost examples of synth pop acts, played in a punk band himself before committing to synthesizers, he recalls how he felt a sense of purpose that didn’t get with any other instruments before. Synthesizers in the late 70s were not seen much in the shops yet and were still very much part of the underground scene, it was only in the 80s that they really took off and started to make a heavier impact on the music scene that eventually resulted in the birth of Synth-Pop. Unfortunately this genre was also very much hated by the older generation and by punk and rock & roll fans for their excessive glamour, as a result synth pop suffered from being portrayed as fake for the lack of “real instruments” used (Machine Music, 2011).
Although synth pop or New Wave, a term with which critics describe new musical genres of the time, was more accessible and less harsh than punk but shared some of its concerns about the social situation of those years like commodification and consumerism. DJs also used to refer to this new wave as modern music, portrayed as positive and looking towards the future, according to music historian Theo Cateforis. This new genre was played mainly with synthesizers that saw bands like Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, A-Ha, Erasure and New Order suddenly rise to stardom thanks to primarily MTV, a tv program entirely dedicated to music launched in 1981 (Robbins, 2017, p. 21-22).
Some of the most popular synthesizers that literally made the 80s synth-pop are the Jupiter-8 an analog beast found on Michael Jackson Thriller, the all digital Yamaha DX7 which became popular for its use of FM synthesis, a bit harsh sounding but used by countless of popular artists of the 80’s like Phil Collins, U2 and George Michael, the Korg MS-20 used by Erasure and OMD, The Juno 106 used by Pet Shop Boys, A-Ha and Depeche Mode, the Arp Odyssey by Ultravox, Gary Numan and Vangelis and the iconic Prophet 5 2nd edition which is considered the king of synths for its stunning sound and ease of use (Jones, 2018).
Analogue and Digital
Synth pop began to fade in the late 80s where bands like Nirvana, Oasis, Blur and Radiohead began to emerge without playing synthesizers or samplers, although synthesizers were never forgotten, they survived in nightclubs and in the rave music scene where electronic music was still very much alive.
Grunge and brit pop were the new trend in pop music which took over the synth pop of the 80s, synthesizers went forgotten for a few years at least by commercial music charts but one of the most popular bands that were still very much into electronic gear was Prodigy whose sound was totally influenced by synthesizers, so much that their name was chosen after the Moog Prodigy, the one that Liam Hollett used to write songs with at the beginning of his career, “Smack My Bitch Up” being one of them.
Liam was highly influenced by the sound of The Normal, The Human League and OMD which made him switch to synthesizers, that he felt sounded much more interesting than other instruments (Musictech.net, 2015). An interesting fact is how The Prodigy used a preset of the Korg Prophecy, a fully digital synthesizer, to write their single Firestarter. This tells a lot about how music writing definitely shifted from the usual synth programming to just picking or tweaking a preset (Theprodigy.info).
The Moog Prodigy was also the very first synth used by NIN’s Trent Reznor along with the Moog voyager, the former he describes being a very musical instrument and not just a “collection of circuitry in a box”. Having taken piano lessons as a child, he saw synthesizers as the obvious step forward and in his early 20s after finding a job in a recording studio as an assistant he taught himself how to program synthesizers. He felt that three in particular covered all the basis for his song writing, the PPG 2.3, the Minimoog and the Oberheim Xpander (Moog Music Inc., 2015). He although needed something completely different, The Swarmatron, to write the score for the film The Social Network that earned him a golden globe in 2011. This is an unique analog synth created by Dewanatron (Nagle, 2011), he explains how he wanted to get an electronic feel for the movie but with an organic vibe to it, looking for more imperfections than quantisation and this strange synth was exactly design for that purpose, it has in fact a totally different user interface and some of the standard parameters are missing.
Imperfection is precisely what a synthesizer can achieve, an endless variety of tones and timbres with the possibility of modulating them to obtain totally unheard melodies (FelipeNIN, 2011).
Sadly nowadays it’s all pretty much done in terms of analogue synthesis hardware, manufacturers seem to have reached a peak of what can be done differently, Dave Smith, talking about his Prophet 12, admitted that the analog architecture has great limitations and in order to achieve more complexity for new sounds some parameters have to be digital. At NAMM ‘13 he describes how he needed digital oscillators to produce a more complex FM synthesis crossover (Sonic state, 2013).
Modern synthesizers are also cheaper and full of features because of better and cheaper components available on the market, to the point where a fully analogue synth can be purchased for a couple of a hundred pounds. The analogue hardware market is in fact still very much alive and new machines are being produced every year mostly because of their user interface, one knob per function and the analogue sound imperfections, all things that are still very much sought after by musicians and sound engineers when buying new synthesizers.
Nowadays real innovation can be found instead in software emulation where manufacturers seemed to have gone into aggressively (Sound On Sound, 2014).
In the music production environment software synths are now the normal, not only are they cheaper than hardware devices but being non physical they are more practical, long gone are the days where music could only be done with expensive synthesizers and in big studios, now everyone with a laptop can get a professional sounding digital synthesizer for just around £100 and with the power of midi, invented back in the 80s by Dave Smith, they can control the synth with any midi controllers.
Music production technology is obviously starting to reach a point of saturation where we have all sorts of hybrid analog digital synths, simple and complex types of synthesis, new granular synthesizers taking the power of sampling to the next level, hundreds of VSTs doing pretty much the same thing only in different ways and as a consequence music producers are looking elsewhere for new inspirations. Modular synthesis for example is very much back in vogue for its flexibility, in fact if programmed well, a modular synthesizer can achieve mind blowing results in terms of unpredictability and originality (McQuaid, 2018).
Sampling instead gathered momentum in the late 80s and 90s thanks to more affordable samplers like the Akai MPC notoriously used by producer J Dilla. Previous samplers instead were absurdly expensive such as the Synclavier and the Fairlight CMI made in the 70s, out of reach for most people but still sought after today for their imperfections (Abbey Road Studios, 2020).
In recent years the use of samples has definitely gone massive and online libraries like Splice.com are the go to for most young producers looking for new inspirations with thousands of quality sounds at their fingertips. Music producer Tim Exile is a great example of sampling technology taken to the next level, he uses granular synthesis, samplers and loopers to create the most surreal melodies in real-time, he then manipulates these sounds with ulterior effects to achieve different melodies through his performances and the result is always unpredictable and very inspiring (TEDx Talks, 2014).
In future we may probably put digital to rest for a while like what happened in the 90s with synthesizers, that after their domination were relegated back to the underground scene, Calvin Harris has been doing exactly this recently as he embraced vintage synthesizers that he used in the 90s to create something new by re-contextualising the sounds made with those old machines into a more modern take (Rogerson, 2019).
What artists seem to be always looking for is unpredictability as a source of new inspirations, something out of context and with no reference point to rely upon, like what happened in the 60s and 70s with the first synthesizers that created sounds no one heard before. It is also important to be aware that socio-cultural changes can bring a breeze of fresh air to an otherwise stagnating music scene, like with Punk or Brit Pop where musicians, inspired by the popular culture of the time, managed to create something new out of relatively old and well known musical instruments, so the two, culture and technology, seem to be very much interdependent in music history and when one changes the other one follows.
Music Technology is inherent to human evolution as it keeps bringing us new tools with which to express our own feelings and visions, today the speed in which artists are presented with new tools and gadgets seems to have accelerated to the point where there is only little time to experiment with them. The recent Google Nsynth for instance is a neural synthesizer that combines the raw sound of instruments connected to a network, into an entirely new sound (Deahl, 2018) that not many yet know about, we also have AIVA, which is one of those new deep learning machines or most commonly known as A.I. composers, that creates new music out of algorithms which analyse music that already exists to create something entirely new. Machines such as these are currently being used to help artists in their musical endeavour but their power is still limited in terms of musical composition.
This new uncharted territory of music prototypes is giving us plenty to experiment with and things may become more and more interesting in the near future, as human beings, we are in fact constantly striving to create something new but we seem to forget that what we really need goes beyond technology and it is simply what we always needed since the dawn of time, which is just notes put together in a logical order that express our feelings as a means of communication, music technology therefore such as synthesizers is just an ornament that we like to use to embellish the core of our deepest feelings, the music.
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