History of Synthesisers and Samplers
‘EMS VCS3’ (1969)
The VCS3 is one of the first
synths created in England. An analog monosynth with a wooden case. The original
price was £330 and an additional £150 for the keyboard. This synth is so
significant as it was the first one that the public could purchase. Before the
VCS3 synths were not portable or easily accessible.
At first musicians struggled
with creating melodies with the VCS3 because the sounds created were so different
to what they were used to.
This instrument was used in
the ‘Doctor Who’ theme song as its quirky sounds were very suitable for the
sci-fi genre. Bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd also started to use it in
their music after its release.
Moog Minimoog (1971)
This was the first fully
integrated synthesiser and sold for £1495. It was easily portable and
affordable and was much easier to use as opposed to it previous model.
It was Monophonic meaning you
could only play one note at a time, had three oscillators, a 4 pole low-pass
filter and had a thick and bassy sound.
‘ARP Odyssey’ (1972)
This was the first duo-phonic
synthesiser meaning it could play two notes at once. It had a brassy lead
sound. This has been used by artists such as ABBA, Elton John and Gary Numan.
‘Yamaha CS-80’ (1976)
The original price was $6900.
This was one of the first polysynths so you could play chords on it however it
was so difficult to tune. It also had a velocity sensitive keyboard making it
feel like an authentic instrument.
‘Fairlight CMI’ (1979)
Developed down under by Peter
Vogel and Kim Ryrie the original price for this masterpiece was $27,500.
Although pricy studios and the stars of the era still bought the CMI. The
reason why people were able to look past the price tag was that this was the
first ever sampling synthesiser meaning it could take recorded sound and map it
across the keyboard. You could make it sound like anything you wanted from a
full church choir to the animals of the rainforest. The CMI even allowed you to
draw in waveforms, save them then edit them whenever you wanted which was
ground breaking.
The likes of Stevie Wonder,
John Hammer, Elton John and even the show ‘Sesame Street’ used this legendary
synth
‘Yamaha DX7’ (1983)
This is one of the most
popular digital synths ever made. It was very affordable also making it one of
the best selling synths of all time. It
was the first to use FM (Frequency Modulation).
It had 32 patches (presets).
It was used by Queen, Phil
Collins, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Babyface to name a few.
‘Korg Triton’ (1999)
This is one of the newer
synths on the list obviously with a staggering
62 voices and oscillators. This is a beautiful polysynth with warm and
clear sounds.
Samplers
Akai MPC 60 (1988)
The MPC has:
32 Drum Sounds
16 voices
40kHz sampling rate.
This sampler is very easy to
as it allows artists to create loops and add in real time drum patterns.
The MPC 60 was used by DJ
Shadow, Jimmy Edgar, Jermaine Dupri etc.
E-Mu Systems SP-12 and SP-1200
(1985–1998)
(1985–1998)
The SP-12 has:
24 drum presets.
27.5 kHz sampling rate giving it a ‘crunchy sound’.
Helped to shape the sound of New York rap during
that time period which was basically all of hip-hop.
The legendary producer used the SP-12 for the drums
for the Beastie Boys in their debut album.
The SP-1200 had:
No presets and used RAM meaning they could store
much more data onto floppy disks.
A reduced sampling rate of 26.04kHz because the
memory storage was higher.
SSM2044 filter chips to get rid of the crunching.
This machine allowed producers to create full
tracks.
The legendary producer J Dilla used the SP-1200 in
songs he produced for ‘A Tribe Called Quest’ and ‘Pharcyde’.
Ensoniq EPS and ASR–10
(1988–1998)
(1988–1998)
The EPS has:
A 13-bit
sampler with multiple samples from 6.25-52kHz.
This meant that the sample time was slower as a
result. You would usually just play one instrument at a time but could still manage
to get all 8 instruments on the keyboard at the same time.
This was used by Wutang’s RZA.
The ASR-10 sampled:
In stereo to 2MB of RAM for its max of 20 secs.
This was enough for short sounds. It had a built-in synthesiser giving it real
instrument sounds. However the sequencer was the main attraction. This allowed
instruments to be played in step and real time and these patterns to be shown.
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