17 Electronic Instruments that Shaped Modern Music

Berlin’s Musikinstrumenten-Museum (Musical Instrument Museum) is home to thousands of historically significant instruments dating back to the 16th century. Synthesizer enthusiasts will find some stunning electronic artefacts among all the violins, harpsichords, and flutes of the permanent exhibition. But for the "Good Vibrations" special exhibit, the museum expanded the collection far and wide to fully represent the diversity of electronic musical instruments.

Here, we explore some highlights from this exhibition, and uncover the vital role that they played in the history of electronic music.

Fairlight CMI
Digital sound creation, editing, and sound storage were first explored in early computers, but the first purpose-built digital sampling instrument was the Fairlight Computer Music Instrument, created in 1979. Using microprocessors, the Fairlight was better able to shift the pitch of sounds than anything that came before. The Fairlight came with a 6-octave keyboard, but could also be controlled with a special light pen that enabled musicians to draw waveforms directly on its monitor.

Moog Modular
Comprised of a series of – components that produce or process sound in various ways, connected by  cables to create different configurations – the Moog (rhymes with vogue) Modular was the first synthesizer to make a serious impact on pop music in the 1960s. The ability to connect and rearrange a full complement of waveform oscillators, filters, and modulators paved the way for modular synthesis as we know it today.

Moog Minomoog
First released in 1971, the Minimoog packed all the punch of classic Moog circuit designs – which until then had been trapped in behemoth studio instruments – into a reasonably portable design with a shortened 44-note keyboard. Projected sales were low, but the Minimoog soon became many a keyboardist’s best friend, enabling them to play thick bass lines, create psychedelic sound effects, and perform soaring leads too.

Its characteristically rich tone was the result of a slight detuning that inherent to the oscillator design, while the low-pass resonant filter quickly became renowned for its “fat” and “juicy” sound.

Buchla Music Easel
In contrast to Moog’s approach, which successfully aimed to make synthesis accessible to ordinary musicians, Don Buchla sought to to liberate synthesized sound from the constraints of conventional musical rules.

His Music Easel is a great example of this philosophy. Controlled by metal plates, optical sensors, and randomizable sequencers, it could generate dynamic melodies without a musician playing notes at all.

EMS VCS 3
One of the first synthesizers priced within reach of normal musicians, EMS released the VCS 3 in 1969. With unstable tuning and no keyboard included, it was initially relegated to creating bizarre and psychedelic sound effects rather than explicitly melodic contributions. Nevertheless, it was embraced by prog rock luminaries such as King Crimson, Hawkwind, and The Alan Parsons Project.

EMS Synthi AKS
The company went on to release the Synthi AKS in 1972, which included a sequencer and keyboard for enhanced playability. Its unique signal-chain editing via patch-pin matrix was famously used by Brian Eno to create expressive tones of his own – and process Robert Fripp’s guitar in previously unheard ways.

Lyricon
Produced by Computone in 1972, the Lyricon was the world’s first electronic wind instrument. Using a clarinet mouthpiece and a clever array of sensors, it was able to translate a musician’s breath into notes via a process known as additive synthesis. While it never truly caught on, the Lyricon influenced subsequent generations of electronic wind instruments, including Yamaha’s WX-series which, with the advent of MIDI, allowed players to expressively control nearly any type of sound.

Casio VL-1
Highly portable and priced for the mass market, Casio’s VL-1 combined a monophonic (one-note-at-a-time) synthesizer, a sequencer, a built-in speaker, and even a calculator. Using a rudimentary implementation of pulse waves at varying widths, it became known for its characteristic lo-fi sound. A basic LCD and 29 note-entry buttons allowed for very basic programming, while the VL-1’s built-in drum module came with 10 preset rhythms constructed from only three sounds.

Synclavier
Originally released in 1977, The Synclavier was the first synthesizer to make additive and FM synthesis available outside of a research laboratory. Uniquely, for the time, it required a program loaded from floppy disk to function. What initially appeared to be a limitation, actually proved useful – by connecting a computer instead of the default disk, synthesists could program all manner of unique sounds themselves with just a few lines of code.

Prophet-10
Sequential founder Dave Smith remains a titan of synthesizer design to this day, and the Prophet-10 was one of his masterworks. With the earlier Prophet-5, he successfully created the first polyphonic synthesizer with the ability to store user presets; based on that design, the Prophet-10 expanded the polyphony to 10 voices and a whopping 20 oscillators, along with a dual-keyboard design.

Several other synths of the era boasted similar sonic potential, but their lack of a preset-saving system meant sounds could only be recalled by laboriously returning all the knobs and sliders to the exact position they were in before.

LinnDrum
It may seem foolish today to think that drum machines could render human drummers extinct, but Roger Linn’s eponymous drum machine sparked no small amount of controversy upon its release in the early 1980s. Compared to the primitive, artificial-sounding drum machines that preceded it, the sample-based LinnDrum produced eerily convincing approximations of a flesh-and-blood percussionist.

Roland 303, 808, and 909
With poor initial sales, these analog bassist and drummer replacements from Japan’s Roland Corporation were regarded by the company as a near-complete bust. Today, however, it’s clear that few instruments have had a greater impact on the sound of popular music.

Yamaha DX7
Previously the domain of academic researchers (or those rare few who could afford a Synclavier), digital FM synthesis finally became available to the masses with the launch of Yamaha’s DX7 in 1983 – which went on to become one of the best selling synthesizers of all time. Notoriously difficult to program, the DX7 rewarded those dedicated enough to try with inharmonic, otherworldly, and glassy tones that analog synthesizers simply couldn’t replicate.

E-mu Emulator
Released in 1981, the Emulator was one of the first sampler instruments to save sounds onto a floppy disk for future re-use. This allowed producers, artists, and studios to share sounds with each other, and created a market for sample libraries. The Emulator II was released to widespread acclaim in 1984, with improved sound quality, more flexible editing, distinctively “creamy” 4-pole filters, and enhanced real-time control that made it a more expressive musical instrument.

E-mu SP-1200
Later in the 1980s, E-Mu released the SP-1200, which packed sampling and sequencing capabilities into a portable package with a distinctively gritty sound. It gave home-producers the ability to produce an entire track using sampled material, freeing them from the financial constraints of commercial studios. Despite limited sampling time, the SP-1200 featured separate outputs, robust MIDI, and an onboard sequencer capable of storing 100 patterns, 100 songs, and up to 5000 notes.