Sound Worlds: Legendary Instruments of Electronic Music

Here It Is was the phrase used by Moog to announce their affordable mini synthesizer on January 24, 1970 which revolutionized the music market: the Minimoog.

While synthesizers in the 1960s were made up of huge, bulky components that were both difficult to use and difficult to understand, connected with cables in different inlets and outlets, the Minimoog sparked a new era in electronic music. For a lot of musicians, the Minimoog aimed to be as accessible as possible as a great-value, portable, and simple instrument which had all the components of the current cumbersome synthesizer together in one device.

The downside of a lot of previous synthesizers, besides their size (such as the Moog IIIp here which is also part of the Deutsches Museum), was their sensitivity to temperature and naturally also their price. Most equipment cost tens of thousands of dollars, and most synthesizers at the time were owned by record companies.

It was Bill Hemsath, one of the engineers at Moog, who constructed a prototype of a handheld miniature synthesizer, the MinA. However, it was never suitable for series production. An increasing number of Moog employees crafted and tinkered with smaller devices that were compatible with a mass audience, and for one simple reason.

In 1976, the Yamaha CS-80—one of the earliest multi-voice synthesizers that could even be used to play eight polyphonic voices simultaneously—was released in Japan. The key feature of the CS-80…

…is its miniature control panel which could even be used to precisely program sounds with controls and save them to four different memory buttons.

Another legendary synthesizer model belonging to the Deutsches Museum is the Yamaha DX7, which was commercially released for the first time in 1983 and ultimately defined a whole era. Without the DX7, the synth pop of the eighties would have been unimaginable, or maybe had a different sound altogether.

The age of the digital synthesizer began with the release of the DX7. In contrast to the CS-80, the DX7 was a best seller. This was also because of its affordable price of 2,000 dollars. Around 160,000 units were sold in total worldwide.

The Casio VL1 was more a toy than a serious musical instrument.

Calculator and watch manufacturer Casio developed the VL1 as a mini synthesizer, touted as the new musical prodigy and a musical instrument for everybody. In fact, the VL1 was easy to use in its simplicity…

One of the most popular 1980s samplers—a device that could record and save sounds and reproduce them in combination with other sounds—was the Emulator II. Even if it cost more than a VW Golf and was too expensive for most musicians, the Emulator II soon became the standard in recording and movie studios.

The total recording time was only 17 seconds, and the quality of the digitization was rather poor. However, thanks to the MIDI interface, the Emu II could also be connected to a computer and controlled via software.

The Korg M1, together with the Yamaha DX7, was the synthesizer manufactured in the largest numbers and the first of a new kind of synthesizer: the workstation. This concept included all elements required for easy music production in one single device. This example has a synthesizer, effects device, drum computer, and eight-channel sequencer. So-called AI synthesis is used to produce the sound. This provides a selection of 144 synthetic and sampled waveforms (4 MB).