|
Keyboard 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. 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. The Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) was the first polyphonic digital sampling synthesizer. 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. 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. The Kurzweil K250, first produced in 1983, was also a successful polyphonic digital music synthesizer. 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. 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. 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. 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. It became indispensable to many music artists of the 1980s, and demand soon exceeded supply. The DX7 sold over 200,000 units within three years. 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. 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. Synthesizer Machine that electronically generates and modifies sounds, frequently with the use of a digital computer, for use in the composition of electronic music and in live performance. The synthesizer generates wave forms and then subjects them to alteration in intensity, duration, frequency, and timbre. It may use subtractive synthesis (removing unwanted components from a signal containing a fundamental and all related overtones), additive synthesis (building tones from signals for pure sine-wave tones), or other techniques, most importantly whole-sound sampling (digital recording of sounds, usually from acoustic instruments). The first synthesizer was developed c. 1955 by RCA. Compact, commercially viable synthesizers, generally with pianolike keyboards, were produced in the 1960s by Robert Moog (born 1934), Donald Buchla (born 1937), and others. With transistor technology, these soon became portable and cheap enough for practical performance use, and such instruments became fixtures in rock bands, often displacing electric pianos and organs. This is copied from encyclopedia free diectionary and the full article can be found here. MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) A standard protocol for the interchange of musical information between musical instruments, synthesizers and computers. MIDI was developed to allow the keyboard of one synthesizer to play notes generated by another. It defines codes for musical notes as well as button, dial and pedal adjustments, and MIDI control messages can orchestrate a series of synthesizers, each playing a part of the musical score. MIDI Version 1.0 was introduced in 1983. Not Sound, The Notes MIDI does not record analog sound waves like a tape recorder. MIDI encodes keyboard functions, which includes the start of a note, its pitch, length, volume and musical attributes, such as vibrato. As a result, MIDI files take up considerably less space than digitized sound files. Since the advent of the General MIDI standard for musical instruments, MIDI has been widely used for music backgrounds in multimedia applications due to its space-saving feature. It is MIDI technology you might be hearing as the latest mobile ring tone or on a thrill ride or attraction at a theme park. However, MIDI is only for music, not voice. See General MIDI. MIDI recordings are edited in an entirely different manner than conventional recording; for example, the rhythm can be changed by editing the timing codes in the MIDI messages. In addition, the computer can easily transpose a performance from B major into D major. Such editing would be virtually impossible with recorded sound waves. For more information, visit www.midi.org. See MIDI sequencer, MIDI patch, MIDI voices, MPU-401, wavetable synthesis, FM synthesis and sound card. This article is copied from FreeDictionary. The full artile with links on key words can be found here. Hammond organ Hammond L-100 The Hammond organ is an electric organ which was invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the pipe organ, it became the de facto standard for jazz, blues, and rock music (in the 1960s and 1970s) and gospel music. Although the last electromechanical Hammond organ came off the assembly line in the mid-1970s, thousands are still in daily use. History American engineer and inventor Laurens Hammond filed U.S. Patent 1,956,350 for a new type of "electrical musical instrument" that could recreate a pipe organ–type sound. The invention was unveiled to the public in April 1935 and the first model, the Model A, was made available in June of that year. The organ was first used for popular music by Milt Herth, who played it live on WIND (AM) soon after it was invented. The Hammond organ was widely used in United States military chapels and post theatres during the Second World War, and returning soldiers' familiarity with the instrument may have helped contribute to its popularity in the post-war period. Hammond had intended his invention to be an affordable substitute for pipe organs, as a replacement for the piano in middle-class homes, and as an instrument for radio broadcasting. However, by the 1950s, jazz musicians such as Jimmy Smith began to use the organ's distinctive sound. By the 1960s, the Hammond became popular with pop groups and was used on the British pirate station Radio 390. In Britain the organ became associated with elevator music and ice rinks music. However, the overdriven sound of the Hammond gained a new image when it became part of 1960s and 1970s rock with artists like Dave "Baby" Cortez, Booker T. Jones, Al Kooper, Jon Lord, Rick Wright, Billy Preston, Steve Winwood, Ian McLagan, Keith Emerson, and Rick Wakeman. Hammond tonewheel organs are preferred among most enthusiasts, the most popular models also having tube amplifiers. Some of the later Hammond models combine tonewheel generation with solid-state amplifiers, with the latest models of that era being fully solid state. Hammond is now owned by Suzuki Company. Hammond-Suzuki makes digital organs that very closely replicate the tonewheel organ sound. Additive synthesis The original Hammond organ imitated the function of a pipe organ's ranks of pipes in multiple registers by using additive synthesis of waveforms from harmonic series to generate its sounds. The Hammond organ's individual waveforms are made by mechanical tonewheels which rotate in front of electromagnetic pickups. Although they are generally included in the category of electronic organs, original Hammond organs are, strictly speaking, electric or electromechanical rather than electronic organs because the waveforms are produced by mechanical tonewheels rather than electronic oscillators. Hammond organs use 96 tonewheels. Five of these are blanks, only present in order to balance out the rotating mechanical sub-assemblies. Thus the tonewheel assembly generates 91 frequencies, which are all that are required for the entire organ. The appropriate frequency outputs, nine per key, are routed to the key contacts for each note on the keyboards. Drawbars The component waveform ratios are mixed by sliding drawbars mounted above the two keyboards, which operate like the faders on an audio mixing board. When a drawbar is incrementally pulled out, it increases the volume of its component waveform. When pushed all the way in, the specified component wave form becomes absent from the mix. The labelling of the drawbar is derived from the stop system in pipe organs where the physical length of the pipe corresponds to the pitch produced. The above article on the Hammond B-3 is copied from the FreeDictionary. The full article with links on key words can be found here. |
