Synthesizers (part 1)

Eurovision is over.  And as usual we saw a blistering array of pop music, again heavily infiltrated with a particular instrument.  The synthesizer.

This instrument is such a part of modern music, that if we were to take it away, most pop songs would be literally empty.  From its early beginnings of generating simple tones, the synth has gone on to recreate full orchestras, drums, guitars, bass, piano, well just about any instrument.  So where did they come from?  Who invented them?  Bob Moog is probably the best known synth inventor, but his first instrument is part of a long line of similar inventions, all trying to make a new sound using a machine rather than a traditional instrument.

There are just too many inventions to list, so I've picked out just a few to give you an idea of the evolution of the synth.

We could go back thousands of years when the Greeks used pipes and water pressure to make sounds, but lets start with electric stuff.  That happened in the 1800's.  Check out this picture.  It's called The Musical Telegraph", invented by Elisha Gray.

Now unfortunately for Elisha, he was a little slow in getting to the patent office. Alexander Bell beat him by one hour and therefore goes down in history as the inventor of the telephone, but Elisha did develop one of the very first electronic instruments.  This instrument had a two octave range and a tiny speaker, plus it transmitted your playing over the telegraph lines.

And so we jump to Russia in 1917.  Lev Sergeivitch Termen invented the Theremin.  Radio engineers had found a strange effect when combining radio waves using vaccum tubes.  It was called heterodyning.  It produced these lovely tones but was influenced by your bodies capatcitance when you came near, which altered the sounds frequency.  Lev decided this was a great way to release the musician from a keyboard.

Lev's design was quite lovely.  It had an antenna which you changed the sounds frequency with, and a loop to alter the volume.  No need to touch anything!  Sci-Fi movies of the 1940's and 1950's would be at a loss without this instrument in their soundtracks.  And it's most famous pop music usage would have to be "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys.

So what did Australia have to offer in the synth history?  Well our own Percy Grainger was at it as well.  With co-inventor Burnett Cross he invented the Free Music machine.  This machine was controlled by four rolls of paper which combined to change parameters of eight oscillators.

As you can see by Percy's drawing, it's a very simple machine, not!  However, his ideas were to create music that was not bound by the rules of Classical music.  He had been experimenting with Theremins and vary speed phonographs for years creating random music compositions.  Ahead of his time, 30 years ahead of John Cage.  He went on create other musical instruments using all manner of household items including vacuum cleaners, drills and mops!

Now to the 1950's.  Simple machines for simple times I say!  Check this out.  That's about 1.7metres tall.

The Siemens synth. Here was a machine developed to create music for their promotional films.  Sure it cost the equivalent of an orchestra's salary for ten years to develop, but think of the savings in the future!!  Developed in Germany, this machine had twenty oscillators, white noise generator and a few other add-ons.  It also used a slide scanner to use the slides as a source for controlling oscillators.  German painter Gunter Mass, used this technique to create musical equivalents of some of his artwork. 

Not only could this instrument be played, but it actually recorded the performance on four paper rolls.  What a beast.  It was used up until the end of the 1960's.

Part 2 of this look at synths will continue next month.