{"id":417006,"date":"2020-04-08T18:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/?p=417006"},"modified":"2020-05-12T12:55:15","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T10:55:15","slug":"history-of-the-synthesizer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/gear\/history-of-the-synthesizer\/","title":{"rendered":"History of the Synthesizer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reducing the history of synthesizers to a few paragraphs is a rather complex operation: like a puzzle, this story is made up of numerous intuitions and inventions developed by brilliant minds over the past two centuries.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Beginnings<\/span><\/h2>\n

Who came up with the idea of this musical instrument<\/strong>? To answer the question we could turn our eyes to the first experiments that connected electricity and sound, like those that Alfred<\/strong> Graham<\/strong> made in 1895<\/strong> and that led to the genesis of a pioneering voltage-controlled device: the Electric<\/strong> Musical<\/strong> Tones<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Fatalities and… ‘illumination’ also made a great contribution: when called by London’s<\/strong> administration to solve the problem of the buzz created by the voltaic arc lamps that illuminated the streets of the city,\u00a0 William Du Bois<\/strong> Duddell<\/strong> sensed that the audible frequencies emitted by lamps could be controlled by changing the voltage applied to the electrodes. This was 1899<\/strong>. Just let that sink in.<\/p>\n

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singing arc<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thus was born the Singing<\/strong> Arc<\/strong>, an electric instrument whose concept was not very far from what will be used in the keyboards of voltage-controlled synthesizers<\/strong>, where the electric voltage is increased or decreased with a ratio of 1 Volt per octave. But to get this far, some Nobel prize winners’ juice was needed…<\/p>\n

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Synthesizers<\/strong> belong to the family of electronic<\/strong> instruments<\/strong>; to be defined as such, a musical instrument must produce<\/strong> sounds<\/strong> from one or more electronic<\/strong> generators<\/strong> such as valves or oscillators<\/strong> – i.e. devices capable of providing a sinusoidal, rectangular or triangular signal at the output without any specific signal being applied to the input, exploiting the only supply voltage – without the aid of any vibration of an acoustic or mechanical nature<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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The annus mirabilis<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0of electronic sound is 1906<\/strong>, the year in which the triode<\/strong> was discovered which, precisely because of its properties of oscillator in audio band, was initially known by the name Audion<\/strong> or thermionic<\/strong> valve. Invented by Lee<\/strong> de<\/strong> Forest<\/strong>, the triode was born from another brilliant idea, namely from the diode of John<\/strong> Ambrose<\/strong> Fleming<\/strong> who had patented it in 1904: if the diode allowed to control current flows, the triode could amplify<\/strong> the electrical<\/strong> signals<\/strong> in entry or generate persistent oscillations.<\/p>\n

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Development<\/span><\/h2>\n

An intricate path of musical innovations – such as Theremin<\/strong><\/a><\/span>, Ondes<\/strong> Martenot<\/strong> and Trautonium<\/strong> – leads us to the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer<\/strong>, a device purchased by Columbia University in New York in 1957 and built starting from 1951<\/strong> by engineers Herbert<\/strong> Belar<\/strong> and Harry Olson of the Bell Laboratories.<\/p>\n

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RCA Mark II<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Considered the first electronic sound<\/strong> production<\/strong> system that automated oscillators<\/strong> and modules connected to it, it made possible to control the height, intensity and timbre of the sound through a protocol<\/strong> imprinted<\/strong> by the composer on a roll of perforated paper; the sound was generated by twelve sinusoidal oscillators and the waveform could be modulated and processed through the filters. The Mark<\/strong> II<\/strong> was far from being an easy-to-use tool and occupied an entire room with its size: its monstrous size owes its nickname, Victor (from Frankenstein, of course!).<\/p>\n

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The most summarised texts dedicated to the realm of synthesizers often leave out some important examples that preceded the development of the Mark<\/strong> II<\/strong>, such as the optical<\/strong> synthesizers<\/strong> developed in Russia<\/strong> since the 1920s – see Yevgeny Murzin’s ANS<\/strong> conceived since 1937 – or the Electronic Sackbut<\/strong> (1945 – 1948) by the Canadian<\/strong> Hugh<\/strong> Le<\/strong> Caine<\/strong>, considered by many to be the progenitor of the voltage-controlled synthesizers.<\/p>\n\n\t\t