Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Why People Love Vintage Synthesizers

By Michael Clakson

Synthesizers are electronic instruments, which has the ability to produce different range of sounds. Synthesizers are of many types. Synthesizers have a varied look with time. Old age synthesizers had different features than new age synthesizers. Synthesizers of olden times were big and did not have features like new age synthesizers.

Elisa Gray made the first synthesizer in 1876. It was known as the music telegraph during that time. The making of this instrument happened by accident. Elisa Gray is also known for making the telephone. He used the knowledge of telephones to make this instrument. By chance he found out that sound can be kept in control from an own-shaking electromagnetic circuit. From this he invented one note called the oscillator. After this few synthesizers were also made. The old age synthesizers developed their working from the early musical instruments. Voice based computer and few laboratory test instrument.

Ivor Darreg introduced a single microtonal electronic keyboard oboe in 1937, which was followed shortly thereafter by Evgeny Murzin's ANS synthesizer. The Columbia Princeton Electronic Music center in New York invented the Mark 2 Music Synthesizer in 1958. This synthesizer, which featured a vacuum tube system, could only be played after being manually programmed.

In 1958 Daphne Oram also invented a synthesizer. It was invented at BBC radiophonic Workshop. She used a method called Oramics method to invent this instrument. BBC used this synthesizer for many years. In the late 1940s and early 50s many automated music controllers were made. Raymond Scott, John Hanert, Hugh el Caine and few others invented these kinds of controllers.

By 1960, modified synthesizers that could be played in real time were invented. They were so large that they had to be confined in the sound studio. Modern synthesizers have many more features than did vintage synthesizers, which were made simply of modular devices and normally had the piano tone. A few other tones were available but there was not much to choose from.

We can try many tones on old age synthesizers. Actually they were devices made in a unique way. The mechanics had to be supported on the meaning of modularity. Robert Moog made a synthesizer which was very famous at that time. The synthesizer helped a lot of pop musicians. The attraction about this instrument was that it was compact than the previous instruments and it looked different from a machine.

Micky Dolenz of the band the Monkees was the first one to purchase this synthesizer. They made use if the synthesizer in their fourth album, which was named as Piscus, Aquarius, Capricon and Jones Ltd. This album was sold in 1967. This was their first album in which they used the synthesizer. The instrument became very famous after their album was sold.

As time went on, synthesizers were experimented on and modified and new models were made. These upgraded versions are much more advanced than the older ones, but we will always remember the vintage synthesizers which gave way to the new ones.

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