Electronic music - some history
Some historical analog synths
When we say analog synth, we usually mean "sound that is generated electronically, but without doing it entirely digitally".
What exactly you mean with digital is still a little fuzzy. We could skip over semantics and point that what people mainly point at, especially today, are things that are a little imperfect, in a way that leads to more interesting sounds, more experimentation, in part because you had to.
At first, that's all we had anyway. In fact, early synths were hard to keep in tune, even the few that were digital. This in part because the early days of electronic music were made of experimentation, abusing the electronics we already had.
For a small sampling of things some very early (pre-transistor) things, and some barely practical, look at things like the
ANS Synthesizer[1] (~1930s)
or Variophone (~1930s),
or even the Telharmonium (of which there are no recordings from the time because it was made around 1906 and retired around 1920 - though note the Hammond organ[2] is a direct descendant).
For synthesis in a wider sense, there's also e.g. the Voder (around 1939), seemingly using the source-filter model (noise+triangle, plus filters to imitate formants) that speech synthesis would keep using for a good while.
Also of note, as early electronic instruments that thought about expression, are the theremin[3][4], the Ondes martenot[5][6], and the trautonium [7][8] (all 1920s, 1930s)
This history is frankly fascinating, and you can read a pile of books better than these paragraphs.
We're going to skip that,
to roughly the time at which we started to sell synth products to musicians - roughly in the mid-sixties.
A modular synth looks like lab equipment.
Because some initial forms of it literally was, and 'separate functions connected together' is also roughly how it's set up. That's why it's called modular.
Say,
- there's one thing that makes beeps
- without ever stopping
- there's one thing that takes audio, and a parameter of 'how much to dampen its volume'
- you can now have beeps at varied volume.
- there's a third thing that tells that dampener how much to actually dampen over time
- ...maybe based on how recently you hit a note on a keyboard
- ...maybe based on something else, actually - some regular metronome-like thing that creates a beat. Or perhaps an irregular thing you made somehow.
- there's a fourth thing that filters in just the lower frequencies
...and so on
What it ends up doing for you
is defined largely by the interconnections you make, so very little is fixed.
That said,
what we just described is not more interesting than a basic keyboard synth (with extra steps and wires),
it'll also do nothing very interesting unless you've got more modules than that.
The more complex, the more that what you do with it becomes an inherently creative endeavour.
At the same time, especially earlier modular made it harder to use for more than beeps, drones, sound design, and minimal techno.
Modular synths were large and expensive, and still are.
Modular synths were mostly analog.
These days, we pack more functions into a bunch of modules,
more designs involve digital parts,
and while it's still too expensive as a side hobby,
having a purpose can get you decently far for not too crazy amounts of money.
Examples: The more classical Moog modular and Buchla modular,
and the more modern take of Eurorack modular - and actually a handful of others like it.
A normalized synth refers to a synth where interactions might be possible but are mostly hardwired internally, if probably with a few interesting parameters exposed to knobs and dials - so offering variation, but not really change in function as with modular (though sometimes there are switches that reroute or bypass specific parts).
Examples: Mini-Moog, ARP Oddysey
Hybrids, also called things like 'normalized patch-cord hybrid' or 'semi-modular' or other names, are somewhere inbetween.
- patching is optional, in that it does do something useful out of the box - more like normalized
- but adding wires will let you do much more varied things - more like modular
Often, a socket is a decision point between
- not plugged in: some internal circuit or connection
- plugged in: whatever you are connecting it to
Hybrids can fit your purposes if you want more flexibility than a completely fixed or normalized synth, but much smaller (and cheaper) than a full modular system.
Examples: ARP 2600
While there have been decent digital alternatives for a long while now, many people still like analog, for a few different reasons.
Yes, one is gearheadery, but for frequently good reason.
For example, there's a lot of and parameter abuse that leads to slight misbehaviour that just makes for more variation than comes out of many digital synths. Even if it's a narrow zone between 'as well behaved as a simulation' and 'non-musical nonsense', it's there to be played with, and that's fun.
Or where the analog's poor implementations actually led to nicer sounds.
Say, a digital sawtooth is often perfectly triangular.
For example, an analog sawtooth is often capacitor-based so a charge curve and probably non-instant jump down, often leading to the harmonics being a little bit softer and lower-frequency, and the digital ones being harsher. Can you model the imperfections to make digital sound analog? Yes, but it's sometimes hard to do.
And harder to model misbehaving interactions. You can probably still do it, but it's not always worth the effort.
You might simulate analog at surface level, but at some point emulating analog internals is harder than just making it in analog again.
Also, many of the synths were more tweakable and made it easy to discover sounds through experimenting, something harder in simpler-to-use products. (This isn't so much because of analog/digital, than that it was rarely a design choice in later years)
Some classical and/or better known hardware
Bassline
303
Roland TB-303 (from ~1981) is an analog monophonic bass synth.
It seems marketed as relatively cheap device to practice for when your actual bass player was indisposed.
It does not sound a lot like a real bass guitar, and also did not have a friendly interface. This made initial reception not great.
And yet, specific use and abuse meant it found its way into house music, rave, idm and minimal techno.
It was probably primarily acid house, which also habitually distorted by overdriving the mixer, that drove the 303 to be a recognizable sound.
It is a subtractive-style synth in that it has a VCO, lowpass VCF, and VCA.
In fact that, describes most of the main board - the rest is buttons, sequencer, and IO.
The VCF had some tweaks that strayed from a straightforward construction, with additional interactions (e.g. from accented notes) that were in part intentional expressiveness, and in part allowed some rough edges that ended up being an interesting part of its sound.
Some parts of that are also exposed on the knobs, and due to the interesting additions, some affect multiple parts.
This and some other details also makes it
- nontrivial to to copy its precise analog behaviour in hardware (though projects like x0xb0x do so, with newer components), and
- nontrivial to emulate in accurately in software (though Roland themselves did so digitally for their TB-3 (and TB-03?(verify)), and presumably the Behringer TD-3 does too)
Later versions, derivations
The TB-303 (from ~1981) was the all-analog original, the MC-303 was a later (~1996) follow-up, using samples from the 303, 808, 909, Jupiter, and Juno(verify) - it's a rompler.
Clones and imitations worth mentioning include
- DinSync RE-303
- MAM MB33
- Behringer TD-3
- adds optional distortion unit
- Roland TB-3 [9]
- touch interface instead of the classic/difficult sequencer
- Roland TB-03 [10]
- more original interface
- x0xb0x [11]
- some flavours have optional distortion and other mods
And, in modular, some efforts to get close include
- Acidlab M303
- x0x-heart [12]
Drum
Oberheim DMX
1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberheim_DMX
LinnDrum
1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinnDrum
808
1980
Roland TR-808, drum machine, one of the earliest programmable ones, and uses an analog synth.
While not resembling real percussion and not being able to sample, and there soon being other devices capable of more, the 808 was affordable, bassy, adopted in hip hop and its recognizable sound a distinctive part of its sound at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_TR-808
909
1983
Similar to the 808, though it also used samples for a few sounds,
HR-16
1988?
Alesis HR-16
SP-12
E-mu SP-12 (1984) and SP-1200 (1987) (and the predecessor, E-mu Drumulator (1983))
added user sampling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu_Drumulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu_SP-12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu_SP-1200
Minipops
Korg Mini Pops
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korg_Mini_Pops
Arduino clone: https://github.com/Krustpunkhippy/Minipops-
CR-78
Roland CR-78