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In the beginning, there was the knob…
And the knob was good. Great, in fact.
You could just reach out and grab it. Turn it left. And turn it right.
Interact with it in realtime.
And there were knobs of all kinds. Knobs for changing the attack
and release times of a sound. Knobs for setting the cutoff filter and
resonance. And knobs for controlling many other aspects of analog
synthesizer sounds.
By twisting a knob one way and another, a vast, practically endless
variety of electronic sounds could be called forth. Fat sounds. Strange
sounds. Beautiful sounds. Magical sounds.
It was the 1960s, and such was the power of the knob that music
was changed forever.
And the term synthesizer became a household word.
But the knob was not perfect…
From the start the knob was brilliant and easy to grasp. It put the
musician in complete control of the sound. And opened up a whole
new world of sonic exploration.
It was the 1970s, and some of the greatest recordings in music history
were being made. Analog "synths" were finding their way into the stages,
studios and professional composing suites of the world.
But as simple, straightforward and powerful as analog synths were,
they were also for the most part priced out of reach of the struggling
musician. Plus they tended to be sensitive to slight fluctuations in electric
current which frequently wreaked havoc with pitch, thus making tuning
inherently unstable.
And there was no reliable way to save panel settings and original
sounds except for tediously scrawling lists and notes with pencil and
paper.
Surely there must be a better way.
Engineers the world over went to work searching for a better way,
and great strides were made in the development of more stable, lower
cost, and more convenient technologies.
A breakthrough in electronic sound synthesis was imminent.
Then came the miracle of digital…
The beginning of the 1980s saw breakthroughs in digital synthesizer
technology which was to once again revolutionize modern music.
Musicians everywhere embraced affordable new technologies like
FM, which could accurately reproduce the sound characteristics of
acoustic and other instruments, and AWM (PCM), which relied on
"samples" of actual instrument sounds to produce an amazing wealth
of musical textures and sonic options.
The new spate of digital synthesizers were—on the outside—much
more streamlined than analog synths, sporting a minimal array of buttons
and a display screen which provided information about each feature.
Overnight the knob was rendered virtually obsolete.
Unstable tunings were a thing of the past. Memory was the future.
Digital synths were—on the inside—more loaded than ever, as
hundreds of amazing acoustic and electronic sounds, or voices, could
be stored and recalled at the touch of a button. Scores of new and exciting
features were available. Entire panel settings and configurations could
also be stored for instant recall.
It was the digital revolution that made MIDI, GM, XG, sequencing,
sampling, looping, multitimbral play, DSP effects and many other
breakthroughs in electronic music technology possible.
Developments that have changed forever the way we teach, compose,
Introduction
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