Synthesizer

Overview

The synthesizer is an electronic-music device that produces audio through one or more oscillators and shapes them through filters, amplifiers, envelopes, and modulation systems controlled by a keyboard, sequencer, or other input. Wikidata calls it concisely an electronic instrument able to produce a wide range of sounds, filed under the wider electronic-instrument category.

In the 60 years since the first commercial Moog modular synthesizers of 1964-65, the instrument has moved from specialist studio equipment to the most widely-used musical instrument family in popular music — most chart records, most film and television scores, most video-game soundtracks, and most dance and electronic music are partly or entirely synthesizer-driven.

Origin & History

Electronic sound generation predates the synthesizer proper by half a century. The Telharmonium (Thaddeus Cahill, 1897-1907), the Theremin (1920), the Ondes Martenot (1928), the Trautonium (1929), and the Hammond organ (1935) all generated sound electrically through dedicated circuits. The synthesizer’s distinctive contribution, beginning in the 1950s, was modularity: the idea that the building blocks of sound (oscillator, filter, envelope, amplifier) should be separately housed and freely interconnectable, so that the player could design any sound from primitives.

The decisive instruments were the Moog modular synthesizer (Robert Moog, Trumansburg NY, first commercial sale 1964) and the Buchla 100 series (Don Buchla, San Francisco, 1965). Moog’s keyboard-controlled voltage-control system became the dominant commercial paradigm; Buchla’s touch-plate-and-sequencer approach defined a more avant-garde tradition. Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach (1968) — the first synthesizer record to win a Grammy and the first to sell a million copies — established the Moog as a viable concert instrument.

The Minimoog (1970) packaged the modular concept into a portable monophonic keyboard instrument and effectively created the synthesizer as a stage instrument. The ARP 2600 (1971), Yamaha CS-80 (1977), and Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 (1978, the first widely-distributed polyphonic analogue synthesizer with patch memory) extended the family.

The 1980s shifted the instrument from analogue to digital. The Yamaha DX7 (1983, frequency-modulation synthesis) was the best-selling synthesizer of all time and defined the sound of mid-1980s pop. The Korg M1 (1988) introduced PCM-sampled-waveform-plus-effects “workstation” architecture. The Roland D-50 and Korg Wavestation extended this into the 1990s.

Software synthesizers — running entirely on personal computers — emerged in the late 1990s and have largely displaced hardware synthesis in studio work, though hardware synthesizers remain dominant in stage performance. The contemporary instrument is a mix of vintage analogue reissues (Moog, Sequential, Behringer), modern analogue synthesisers (Korg, Roland, Arturia), virtual-analogue digital instruments (Access Virus, Roland System-8), modular Eurorack systems (Make Noise, Mutable Instruments), and software (Native Instruments, Arturia, U-He).

Construction & Materials

A typical analogue subtractive synthesizer — the architecture descended directly from the Moog tradition — consists of one to three oscillators (generating sawtooth, square, triangle, or pulse waveforms), a low-pass filter (sweepable in cutoff frequency and resonance), one or two amplitude envelopes (typically four-stage attack-decay-sustain-release), one or two low-frequency oscillators (for modulation), an amplifier, and a keyboard or other controller.

Digital synthesizers can implement essentially any sound-synthesis algorithm: subtractive (as above), frequency modulation (Yamaha DX7), additive (Kawai K5), wavetable (PPG, Waldorf), physical-modelling (Yamaha VL1), granular (modern software instruments), or hybrid combinations. The contemporary distinction between hardware and software is now mostly a matter of physical interface rather than synthesis architecture.

The MET catalogue does not maintain a deep contemporary-electronic collection but does include early electronic and proto-electronic specimens such as the Zukra (object 500969, a 19th-century North African bagpipe included for its acoustic free-reed character), illustrating the long pre-electronic history of free-reed and lip-vibrated sound generation that synthesizer designers have repeatedly imitated.

How It’s Played

Standard performance interface is a piano-style velocity-sensitive keyboard, often with aftertouch (pressure sensitivity after key-down). Most synthesizers also expose a wide range of real-time controllers — modulation wheel, pitch-bend wheel, expression pedal, ribbon controllers, breath controllers, MIDI control surface — that the player uses to shape the sound while playing. Increasingly, modular and Eurorack systems are played without a keyboard at all, using sequencers and modulation patterns triggered by the system itself.

The synthesizer is unusual among instruments in that the player typically also designs the sound. Patch programming — selecting waveforms, setting filter frequencies, drawing envelopes, routing modulation — is treated as part of the playing technique. A synthesizer “performance” therefore often combines real-time keyboard playing with real-time sound design.

Cultural Significance

The synthesizer is the dominant instrument of essentially every popular-music genre that emerged after about 1975. Disco, electronic dance music, hip-hop, synth-pop, new wave, industrial, ambient, techno, house, drum and bass, dubstep, and modern mainstream pop are all centrally synthesizer-based. Film scoring (John Carpenter, Vangelis’s Blade Runner, Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy, Hans Zimmer’s Inception) and video-game audio are similarly dominated by synthesizers.

In serious concert music the synthesizer has a smaller but distinguished presence: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Sirius (1975), Luc Ferrari’s Tautologos, Wendy Carlos’s Beauty in the Beast (1986), Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, and the contemporary modular synthesis composer-performers Suzanne Ciani and Caterina Barbieri define different facets of this practice.

Notable Examples & Recordings

• Wendy Carlos, Switched-On Bach (1968) — the synthesizer’s commercial breakthrough.
• Kraftwerk, Autobahn (1974) and Trans-Europe Express (1977) — early electronic-pop reference.
• Tangerine Dream, Phaedra (1974) — sequencer-based ambient reference.
• Vangelis, Blade Runner score (1982/1994) — synthesizer film-score reference.
• New Order, Blue Monday (1983) — synth-pop reference.
• Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 — modern electronic reference.
• Daft Punk, Discovery (2001) — modern dance-music reference.
• Caterina Barbieri, Ecstatic Computation (2019) — contemporary modular reference.

Related Instruments

• Theremin — the 1920 electronic ancestor.
• Ondes Martenot — the 1928 French electronic ancestor.
• Hammond organ — the 1935 electromechanical keyboard.
• Sampler — the related electronic-instrument family that records and replays audio.
• Drum machine — the rhythmic-electronic relative.
• Vocoder — the vocal-processing electronic instrument.
• Mellotron — the 1960s tape-based polyphonic predecessor.

Where to Hear It

Everywhere in modern recorded music. Specialist live-performance contexts include the synth-festival circuit (Superbooth in Berlin, Knobcon in Chicago, the Moogfest legacy events), modular-synthesis clubs and labs, and the contemporary classical-electronic festival scene (Mutek in Montreal, Sónar in Barcelona, CTM in Berlin). Recording catalogues across essentially every label.

• Wikipedia: Synthesizer
• Wikidata: Synthesizer (Q163829)
• DBpedia: Synthesizer
• Wikimedia Commons: Synthesizers

Learning Resources

A starter analogue synthesizer (Behringer Model D, Korg Volca series, Arturia MicroFreak) costs 100 to 350 USD; an intermediate professional instrument (Moog Subsequent 37, Korg Minilogue XD, Sequential Take 5) runs 1,000 to 1,500 USD; vintage and high-end modern instruments (Moog One, Sequential Prophet-10, vintage Minimoog) run 4,000 USD upward. Software equivalents (Arturia V Collection, Native Instruments Komplete, U-He Diva) cost 200 to 600 USD. Pedagogy: Mark Vail’s The Synthesizer, Allen Strange’s Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls, the Sound on Sound Synth Secrets article series, and the Loopop YouTube channel are the standard contemporary references.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who invented the synthesizer?
Robert Moog (Trumansburg, NY) and Don Buchla (San Francisco) developed the first commercial modular synthesizers in 1964-65 on opposite American coasts. Earlier electronic instruments (Theremin 1920, Ondes Martenot 1928) preceded the synthesizer proper.

Is a synthesizer the same as a keyboard?
A synthesizer often has a keyboard but does not have to. The defining feature is the synthesis circuitry — the ability to generate sound from oscillators and shape it through filters and envelopes — not the input interface.

What is the difference between analogue and digital synthesizers?
Analogue synthesizers generate and shape sound using continuous-voltage electronic circuits. Digital synthesizers use computational algorithms running on processors. The two produce subtly different results; some musical contexts prefer analogue’s perceived warmth, others prefer digital’s precision and flexibility.

Are software synthesizers as good as hardware?
For studio recording, contemporary software synthesizers are functionally indistinguishable from hardware in most blind tests. Hardware retains advantages in physical interface, stage reliability, and (for some musicians) an aesthetic preference for dedicated single-purpose machines.

What is subtractive synthesis?
The most common synthesis architecture: start with a harmonically-rich waveform (sawtooth or square), then “subtract” frequencies using a filter to shape the timbre. The Moog and most analogue synthesizers use this approach.