Synthesizers & Electronica History

The Real Deal

It was in the 1960's that synthesizers really took off. One Robert Moog (pronounced Mogue) created the first configurable music synthesizers playable by anyone. Moog had studied under Peter Mauzey, one of the engineers who designed the circuits for the RCA Mark II. Displayed a the Audio Engineering Society convention in 1964, the Moog synthesizer was a hit. It attached a keyboard to the electronics portion of the device, and was very modular. It did still require hours to set up the machine, but the machine itself was smaller and more flexible. It became a sensation when Micky Dolenz of the Monkees bought one of the first Moog synthesizers and used it on The Monkee's fourth album, Pisces Aquarius Capricorn & Jones Ltd., in 1967.

The sounds created by the synthesizers created a wave of experimentation as musicians and the untrained alike experimented with them. The MiniMoog came out in 1970, and had the shape most commonly associated with synthesizers. The attached keyboard created a portable dream, and soon synthesizers could be taken everywhere. Over 12,000 MiniMoogs were sold, influencing the design of every synthesizer to follow.

The Next Step

In 1984 Raymond Kurzweil created a synthesizer that could imitate and duplicate the sounds of orchestral instruments, based on sampling the actual devices. The idea was given to him by Stevie Wonder, and his invention worked so well that even trained musicians and conductors could not distinguish between real instruments and the Kurzweil synthesizers.

Synthesizers Today

Synthesizers survived the disdain by many musicians when they became so popular real music was threatened with extinction caused by its electronic counterpart. Today synthesizers are used in harmonious conjunction with real instruments, and have been responsible for entirely new forms of music often found in nightclubs and raves, sometimes called "Electronica."

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