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46-521: The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium , were built with a variety of vacuum-tube (thermionic valve) and electro-mechanical technologies. After the 1960s, analog synthesizers were built using operational amplifier (op-amp) integrated circuits , and used potentiometers (pots, or variable resistors ) to adjust the sound parameters. Analog synthesizers also use low-pass filters and high-pass filters to modify

92-550: A keyboard , its manual is made of a resistor wire over a metal plate, which is pressed to create a sound. Expressive playing was possible with this wire by gliding on it, creating vibrato with small movements. Volume was controlled by the pressure of the finger on the wire and board. The first Trautoniums were marketed by Telefunken from 1933 until 1935 (200 were made). The sounds were at first produced by neon-tube relaxation oscillators (later, thyratrons , then transistors), which produced sawtooth-like waveforms . The pitch

138-426: A Mixtur Trautonium. Minimoog The Minimoog is an analog synthesizer first manufactured by Moog Music between 1970 and 1981. Designed as a more affordable, portable version of the modular Moog synthesizer , it was the first synthesizer sold in retail stores. It was first popular with progressive rock and jazz musicians and found wide use in disco , pop , rock and electronic music . Production of

184-606: A Munich musician and artist, had heard the sound of the Trautonium when he was a young man and was fascinated by its emotional impact and dynamic range. Pichler found he could not forget the unique sound; he searched obsessively for anyone who could help him understand the instrument and he finally tracked down Sala. In 1996 the two met in Sala's studio in Berlin, and the result was the preservation of much of Sala's knowledge. Pichler

230-584: A high level of sophistication, such as the Trautonium of Oskar Sala , the Electronium of Raymond Scott , and the ANS synthesizer of Evgeny Murzin . Another notable early instrument is the Hammond Novachord , first produced in 1938. Early analog synthesizers used technology from electronic analog computers and laboratory test equipment. They were generally "modular" synthesizers, consisting of

276-639: A modular design, normalization made the instrument more portable and easier to use. This first pre-patched synthesizer, the Minimoog , became highly popular, with over 12,000 units sold. The Minimoog also influenced the design of nearly all subsequent synthesizers, with integrated keyboard, pitch wheel and modulation wheel, and a VCO -> VCF -> VCA signal flow. In the 1970s, miniaturized solid-state components let manufacturers produce self-contained, portable instruments, which musicians soon began to use in live performances. Electronic synthesizers quickly become

322-859: A number of independent electronic modules connected by patch cables into a patchbay that resembled the jackfields used by 1940s-era telephone operators. Synthesizer modules in early analog synthesizers included voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs), voltage-controlled filters (VCFs), and voltage-controlled amplifiers (VCAs). The control voltage varied frequency in VCOs and VCFs, and attenuation (gain) in VCAs. Additionally, they used envelope generators , low-frequency oscillators , and ring modulators . Some synthesizers also had effects devices, such as reverb units, or tools such as sequencers or sound mixers . Because many of these modules took input sound signals and processed them, an analog synthesizer could be used both as

368-667: A public performance at the Berliner Musikhochschule Hall called "Neue Musik Berlin 1930" to introduce the Trautonium. Later, Oskar Sala toured Germany with the Trautonium; in 1931 he was the soloist in a performance of Hindemith's Concerto for Trautonium with String Quartet. He also soloed in the debut of Hindemith's student Harald Genzmer 's Concerto for Trautonium and Orchestra. Paul Hindemith wrote several short trios for three Trautoniums with three different tunings: bass, middle, and high voice. His student Harald Genzmer wrote two concertos with orchestra, one for

414-413: A run for his money... A guitarist would say, 'Oh shoot, he's got a Minimoog,' so they're looking for eleven on their volume control - it's the only way they can compete." Wakeman said the instrument "absolutely changed the face of music". The Minimoog took a place in mainstream black music , most notably in the work of Stevie Wonder . Its use for basslines became particularly popular in funk , as in

460-516: A smaller, more reliable synthesizer, Moog engineer Bill Hemsath created a prototype by sawing a keyboard in half and wiring several components into a small cabinet. Moog president Robert Moog felt the prototype was fun, but did not initially see a market for it. Moog and the engineers created several more prototypes, adding features such as the suitcase design to aid portability. In early 1970, Moog Co began losing money as interest in its modular synthesizers fell. Fearing they would lose their jobs if

506-433: A sound-generating and sound-processing system. Famous modular synthesizer manufacturers included Moog Music , ARP Instruments, Inc. , Serge Modular Music Systems , and Electronic Music Studios . Moog established standards recognized worldwide for control interfacing on analog synthesizers, using an exponential 1-volt-per-octave pitch control and a separate pulse triggering signal. These control signals were routed using

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552-459: A spring-loaded pitch-bend wheel and updates to the previous unit's MIDI specs. According to TJ Pinch, author of Analog Days , the Minimoog was the first synthesizer to become a "classic". Wired described it as "the most famous synthesizer in music history ... a ubiquitous analog keyboard that can be heard in countless pop, rock, hip-hop, and techno tracks from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s". It

598-466: A standard part of the popular-music repertoire. The first movie to use music made with a (Moog) synthesizer was the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969. After the release of the film, composers produced a large number of movie soundtracks that featured synthesizers. Notable makers of all-in-one analog synthesizers included Moog, ARP, Roland , Korg and Yamaha . Because of

644-477: Is extremely challenging for even an experienced musician to play. Pichler is one of the very few musicians in the world who has mastered this instrument and is also composing for it. Daniel Matz plays trautonium on the Agnes Obel albums, Citizen of Glass and Late Night Tales . The Dutch performer LudoWic [Thijs Lodewijk] also plays the Trautonium and is one of the few people that owns and plays

690-484: The Kawai K5 (waveforms constructed via additive synthesis). With the falling cost of microprocessors, this architecture became the standard architecture for high-end analog synthesizers. During the middle to late 1980s, digital synthesizers and samplers largely replaced analog synthesizers. By the early 1990s, however, musicians from the techno , rave and DJ scenes who wanted to produce electronic music but lacked

736-700: The Minimoog Voyager , an updated version of the Minimoog that sold more than 14,000 units, more than the original Minimoog. Although the Welsh incarnation of Moog Music went into administration shortly afterwards, Winter retained the rights to the Moog name in the UK, with the result that the Minimoog Voyager was launched there as the Voyager by Bob Moog . In 2016, Moog Music began manufacturing an updated version of

782-569: The Moog synthesizer transistor ladder filter, has spurred a return of DIY and kit synthesizer modules, as well as an increase in the number of commercial companies selling analog modules. Reverse engineering has also revealed the secrets of some synthesizer components, such as those from ARP Instruments, Inc. In addition, despite the widespread availability during the 2000s of relatively inexpensive digital synthesizers that offered complex synthesis algorithms and envelopes, some musicians are attracted to

828-518: The Parliament track " Flash Light ". It was also popular in jazz , and Sun Ra became perhaps the first musician to perform and record with the instrument (on his 1970 album My Brother the Wind ). Herbie Hancock , Dick Hyman and Chick Corea were other early adopters. The Minimoog became a staple of progressive rock . In the early 1970s, Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake & Palmer added

874-626: The "hands-on", practical controls of analog synths – potentiometer knobs, faders, and other features – offering a strong appeal. Trautonium The Trautonium is an electronic synthesizer invented in 1930 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschule 's music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. Soon afterwards Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's death in 2002. Instead of

920-646: The 1980s, the rights to use the Moog Music name in the United Kingdom were purchased by Alex Winter of Caerphilly, Wales, who commenced limited production of an updated Minimoog in 1998 as the Moog Minimoog 204E . The 204E added pulse width modulation and MIDI to the Model D specification. In 2002, Robert Moog reacquired the rights to the Moog name and bought the company. In 2002, Moog Co released

966-864: The Minimoog stopped in the early 1980s after the sale of Moog Music. In 2002, founder Robert Moog regained the rights to the Moog brand, bought the company, and released an updated version of the Minimoog, the Minimoog Voyager . In 2016 and in 2022, Moog Music released another new version of the original Minimoog. In the 1960s, RA Moog Co manufactured Moog synthesizers , which helped bring electronic sounds to music but remained inaccessible to ordinary people. These modular synthesizers were difficult to use and required users to connect components manually with patch cables to create sounds. They were also sensitive to temperature and humidity, and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Most were owned by universities or record labels, and used to create soundtracks or jingles ; by 1970, only 28 were owned by musicians. Hoping to create

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1012-408: The Minimoog to his modular 'Monster Moog' as an occasional part of his performances. Wakeman used five Minimoogs on stage so he could play different sounds without having to reconfigure them. It was also used by electronic artists such as Kraftwerk , who used it on their albums Autobahn (1974) and The Man-Machine (1978) , and later by Tangerine Dream , Klaus Schulze , and Gary Numan . In

1058-496: The Model D, with an independent LFO and MIDI, and an aftertouch and velocity-sensitive keyboard. Production ended around August 2017, after a little under a year. In 2018, Moog Music released the Minimoog Model D app for iOS . In 2022, after being out of production for over five years, the Model D was reissued a third time. The basic architecture remained the same as the previous version, but also included new features like

1104-458: The Moogs oozed character. Their sound could be quirky, kitsch and cute, or pulverising, but it was always identifiable as Moog." The Minimoog changed the dynamics of rock bands. For the first time, keyboardists could play solos in the style of lead guitarists, or play synthesized basslines . Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman said: "For the first time you could go on [stage] and give the guitarist

1150-558: The Scottish physicist James Robert Milne FRSE (d.1961). The earliest synthesizers used a variety of thermionic-valve ( vacuum tube ) and electro-mechanical technologies. While some electric instruments were produced in bulk, such as Georges Jenny 's Ondioline , the Hammond organ , and the Trautonium , many of these would not be considered synthesizers by the standards of later instruments. However, some of these synthesizers achieved

1196-669: The budget for large digital systems created a market for the then cheap second hand analog equipment. This increased demand for analog synthesizers towards the mid-1990s, as larger numbers of musicians gradually rediscovered the analog qualities. As a result, sounds associated with analog synths became popular again. Over time, this increased demand for used units (such as the 1980 Roland TR-808 drum machine and Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer). Late 1970s-era drum machines used tuned resonance voice circuits for pitched drum sounds and shaped white noise for others. The TR-808 improves on these designs, by using detuned square wave oscillators (for

1242-474: The company closed, the engineers developed a version of Hemsath's miniature synthesizer, the Minimoog Model D , while Moog was away. Moog chastised them, but came to see the potential in the Model D and authorized its production. As the engineers could not properly stabilize the power supply , the Minimoog's three oscillators were never completely synchronized. Although unintentional, this created

1288-406: The complexity of generating even a single note using analog synthesis, most synthesizers remained monophonic . Polyphonic analog synthesizers featured limited polyphony, typically supporting four voices. Oberheim was a notable manufacturer of analog polyphonic synthesizers. The Polymoog was an attempt to create a truly polyphonic analog synthesizer, with sound generation circuitry for every key on

1334-576: The cow bell and cymbal sounds) and analogue reverberation (for the handclap sound). The demand for the analog synth sound led to development of a variety of analog modeling synthesizers —which emulate analog VCOs and VCFs using samples, software, or specialized digital circuitry, and the construction of new analog keyboard synths such as the Alesis Andromeda , Prophet '08 , and Moog's Little Phatty , as well as semi-modular and modular units. The lapse of patents in recent years, such as for

1380-595: The fundamental tone, but fractions of it. For either of the (now two) manuals, four of these waves can be mixed and the player can switch through these predefined settings. Thus, it was called the Mixtur-Trautonium. Oskar Sala composed music for industrial films , but the most famous was the bird noises for Alfred Hitchcock 's The Birds . The Trautonium was also used in the Dresden première of Richard Strauss 's Japanese Festival Music in 1942 for emulating

1426-624: The gongs- and bells-parts and in the 1950s in Bayreuth for the Monsalvat bells in Wagner's Parsifal . The German manufacturer Doepfer sells some devices for the commercial market to allow for Trautonium-like synthesizer control. The German manufacturer Trautoniks sells custom made Trautoniums. Oskar Sala developed the Trautonium further and worked with at least one pupil, music therapy pioneer Maria Schüppel . However, Peter Pichler ,

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1472-611: The instrument), one of which was bought by the German Museum later for its permanent collection. Pichler is still cooperating closely with the German Museum in Munich that is administering Sala's estate. Since then, Pichler has been making regular appearances with the Mixturtrautonium in various musical genres. The classical music composed for this instrument by Paul Hindemith, Harald Genzmer and Oskar Sala for instance

1518-520: The keyboard. However, its architecture resembled an electronic organ more than a traditional analog synthesizer, and the Polymoog was not widely imitated. In 1978, the first microprocessor -controlled analog synthesizers were created by Sequential Circuits . These used microprocessors for system control and control voltage generation, including envelope trigger generation, but the main sound generating path remained analog. The MIDI interface standard

1564-431: The monophonic Trautonium and, later, one for Oskar Sala's Mixtur-Trautonium . One of the first additions of Sala was to add a switch for changing the static tuning. Later he added a noise generator and an envelope generator (so called 'Schlagwerk'), formant filter (several bandpass filters ) and the subharmonic oscillators . These oscillators generate a main pitch and several subharmonics, which are not multiples of

1610-417: The pitch wheel. Moog Co released the first Minimoog in 1970. Moog said it was conceived as a portable tool for session musicians, and the team expected to sell "maybe 100 of them". Moog became acquainted with former evangelist and musician David Van Koevering, who was so impressed with the Minimoog that he began demonstrating it to musicians and music stores. Van Koevering's friend Glen Bell , founder of

1656-534: The restaurant chain Taco Bell , allowed him to use a building on a private island Bell owned in Florida. There, Van Koevering hosted an event he billed as Island of Electronicus, a "pseudo-psychedelic experience that brought counterculture (minus the drugs) to straight families and connected it with the sound of the Minimoog". The Minimoog was in continuous production for 13 years and over 12,000 were made. It

1702-436: The same building blocks, but integrated them into single units, eliminating patch cords in favour of integrated signal routing systems. The most popular of these was the Minimoog . In 1970, Moog designed an innovative synthesizer with a built-in keyboard and without modular design—the analog circuits were retained, but made interconnectable with switches in a simplified arrangement called "normalization". Though less flexible than

1748-500: The same types of connectors and cables that were used for routing the synthesized sound signals. A specialized form of analog synthesizer is the analog vocoder , based on equipment developed for speech synthesis. Vocoders are often used to make a sound that resembles a musical instrument talking or singing. Patch cords could be damaged by use (creating hard-to-find intermittent faults) and made complex patches difficult and time-consuming to recreate. Thus, later analog synthesizers used

1794-401: The sound. While 1960s-era analog synthesizers such as the Moog used a number of independent electronic modules connected by patch cables , later analog synthesizers such as the Minimoog integrated them into single units, eliminating patch cords in favour of integrated signal routing systems. The earliest mention of a "synthetic harmoniser" using electricity appears to be in 1906, created by

1840-442: The sounds of monophonic and polyphonic analog synths. While some musicians embrace analog synthesizers as preferable, others counter that analog and digital synthesis simply represent different sonic generation processes that both reproduce characteristics the other misses. Another factor considered to have increased use of analog synths since the 1990s is weariness with the complex screen-based navigation systems of digital synths, with

1886-486: The synthesizer's "warm, rich" sound. Its voltage-controlled filter was unique, allowing users to shape sounds to create "everything from blistering, funky bass blurps ... to spacey whistle lead tones". The Minimoog also was the first synthesizer to feature a pitch wheel , which allows players to bend notes as a guitarist or saxophonist does, allowing for more expressive playing. Moog's associate David Borden felt that Moog would have become extremely wealthy had he patented

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1932-471: Was also important for its portability. David Borden , an associate of Moog, said that the Minimoog "took the synthesizer out of the studio and put it into the concert hall". According to the Guardian , "Tweaked now so that the synthesizer could reliably perform as either a melodic lead or propulsive bass instrument (rather than just as a complex sound-generating machine), the Minimoog changed everything ...

1978-472: Was determined by the position at which the performer pressed the resistive wire into contact with the plate beneath it which effectively changed its length, with suitable technique allowing vibrato, quarter tones , and portamento . The oscillator output was fed into two parallel resonant filter circuits. A footpedal controlled the volume ratio of the output of the two filters, which was sent to an amplifier. On 20 June 1930 Oskar Sala and Paul Hindemith gave

2024-466: Was developed for these systems. This generation of synthesizers often featured six or eight voice polyphony. Also during this period, a number of analog/digital hybrid synthesizers were introduced, which replaced certain sound-producing functions with digital equivalents, for example the digital oscillators in synthesizers like the Korg DW-8000 (which played back PCM samples of various waveforms) and

2070-412: Was the first synthesizer sold in retail stores. Despite the success, Moog Co could not afford to meet demand, nor had credit for a loan, and Moog sold the company to Bill Waytena, a venture capitalist, in 1971. Van Koevering was hired as head of sales and marketing, expanding the sales of the Minimoog worldwide. Production of the Minimoog stopped in 1981 and Moog Co ceased all production in 1993. In

2116-504: Was transformed by the experience but he had to wait fifteen years before he could afford to commission his own Mixturtrautonium from the company Trautoniks. He wrote a musical theater piece about the fathers of the Trautonium, "Wiedersehen in Trautonien", which was performed at the German Museum in Munich, for the 100th birthday of Oskar Sala in 2010. For this theater piece Pichler commissioned three "Volkstrautonien" (a smaller version of

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