Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The History Of Digital Synthesizers

By Charlie Michaels

The creation of the musical synthesizer transformed the sound enjoyment all around the world. An entertainer who wished to reproduce a certain type of sound before a live audience had to depend on conventional recordings. Nowadays, that can be done and produced live giving the performer a choice of thousands of sounds, notes and frequencies at his fingertips.

A synthesizer is an electronic device that can simulate various sounds by creating and mixing a combination of different frequencies. By this method, it can create thousands of unique mixes of sounds.

It has the capability to manipulate various parameters of the built-in sounds. It is not that these are used only for techno sounds, these instruments contain many melody and percussion sounds as well. Thus it can produce multiple sounds at a time.

Elisha Gray developed the first known synthesizer in the late 1800s. However, he is probably more well known for his other inventions such as the telegraph and an early telephone. He was an electronics pioneer who was well ahead of his time and paved the way for a variety of modern inventions.

Robert Moog, the father of the modern synthesizer, developed his ideas for an electronic instrument by starting out in 1961 and his synthesizer became publicized during 1990s. The Moog synthesizer is still widely perceived as a novel form of electronic keyboard.

Earlier versions of the synthesizers used buttons, dials, and levers, but Moog's invention was the first to be controlled with a piano keyboard. This technology would be developed further to create not only the electric pianos and keyboards found in stores today, but also guitar synthesizers.

Some of the first synthesizers were big and bulky and not very easy to move around. The design Moog came up with, along with ever-changing technology, paved the course for tinier and easy to carry devices. These tinier products make more sense for entertaining, especially if they have to be moved around. The synthesizers made today are extremely complicated units. They are made using computer chips and mother boards and use computer technology. The units are small and mostly self-sufficient, somewhat like computers now mad, and are moved about with ease.

A keyboard synthesizer is a piano alternative that creates sound through electrical currents which is still common among musicians. A software synthesizer, common among musicians, also known as a softsynth or virtual instrument is a computer program for digit audio generation. Saxophone-style synthesizer is also being used.

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