
The Father of the Digital Synthesizer - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/the-father-of-the-digital-synthesizer/
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danso
I really loved this bit, a great summation of the classic conflict between man
and mechanization:

> _At the time, Stanford was far from the risk-taking institution it is lauded
> as today — and its music program was especially traditional and rigid. As
> Chowning had experienced in France, most of his college colleagues scoffed
> at the unfamiliar, foreign concepts of computer music._

 _“It was against what the department said music was; they said I was
dehumanizing music!” laughs Chowning. “My response was, ‘Perhaps it’s the
humanization of computers.’”_

After all that disenfranchisement from his own program, that Chowning
gracefully took up Stanford's belated offer of tenure instead of a massively
more profitable industry career says a lot about his patience and ego.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I guess he was at home at CCMRA in a way he wouldn't have been elsewhere. He
seems like a research guy, and although Yamaha had an external R&D stream for
a while, it was never going to compete with what was possible at CCMRA and
IRCAM.

Not to take away from Chowning, who is certainly up there with Moog for making
a difference, but the real father of digital synthesizers is Max Matthews.

FM wouldn't have been possible without the Music-N series, and modern plug-ins
are more or less direct descendants of those original card decks.

What Chowning did was classic innovation - taking an obscure and academic
piece of code that had maybe ten or twenty users worldwide, putting together a
killer practical application for a subset of it, and helping to commercialise
it so it was used and heard by millions.

It's cool to realise how experimental it all was back then. Now it's
completely mainstream, but that's only because Matthews and Chowning made it
so.

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dharma1
Love it how he didn't know anything about electronics, computers or math, but
ended up learning at the age of 30 and inventing FM synthesizers.

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acomjean
I have a Yamaha DX7. Haven't played it in a while, interesting to hear its
origin. Its a really heavy beast of a keyboard. Its impressively constructed
(I got mine in the early 90s)

The sounds are good, but honestly its an 80s keyboard, so although it has a
bunch of sounds, none really sound like they're supposed to (horns and
pianos..) The stings and bells where the best sounds. Its fun though and has
the all important midi. You can make your own sounds with the dx7. I actually
modded it with a chip from a company called "gray matter". I could double the
sounds and add some detune to make sounds "fatter".

The manual has made it online (thank you internet) and has some interesting
reading on Fm systhesis including making your own sounds or "voices". They
have a lot of diagrams on the top of the instrument to help you allong your
way. Programming it was awkward with just a 2 line display a slider and a few
buttons. The interesting FM stuff starts on page 9.

[http://www2.yamaha.co.jp/manual/pdf/emi/english/synth/DX7E1....](http://www2.yamaha.co.jp/manual/pdf/emi/english/synth/DX7E1.pdf)

Computer music is really interesing now. I've been poking around a litte in my
free time. "pure data" and other software let you make sounds programatically.

~~~
raphaelss
For those unaware of "pure data and other software", these are programming
languages and/or coding environments for the synthesis of music:

Pure data: [http://puredata.info/](http://puredata.info/)

Csound: [https://csound.github.io/](https://csound.github.io/)

Supercollider:
[http://supercollider.github.io/](http://supercollider.github.io/)

Chuck: [http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/](http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/)

Overtone (Clojure using the Supercollider synthesis server):
[https://overtone.github.io/](https://overtone.github.io/)

~~~
w4
No Max/MSP?!

[https://cycling74.com/products/max/](https://cycling74.com/products/max/)

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subnaught
Here's a great video where Chowning describes his discovery of FM:
[http://www.aes.org/historical/oral/?ID=85](http://www.aes.org/historical/oral/?ID=85)

~~~
initself
He says after he discovered FM brass sounds that there was "some importance"
of his discovery beyond his interest in composition. What an understatement!
He clearly was not interested in seeing where that discovery was going to go!

I admire his focus on doing what he felt called to do with his life and to
leave the rest aside for others.

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Intermernet
I owned a DX-7. I bought it for $200, loved it for years, then stupidly lent
it to a friend of a friend. They went on to form a moderately successful band
[1]. I now can't replace it for much less than $2000.

The claim that you can recreate "any sound" is a probably true (I had some
crazy patches), but you have to realise that most "sounds" are completely
horrible and unappealing. This synth, unlike most (even analog) synths, had
very few limitations on parameters. It was ridiculously easy to make horrible
sounds on this thing!

For this reason, it will remain a classic. It's a true hacker's synth. The
vast majority of it's output will be trash, but every now-and-then you hit
gold.

You just need to remember to save it (and do a sysex dump) when you get
something good!

[1]:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PVT_(band)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PVT_\(band\))

~~~
coldtea
> _The claim that you can recreate "any sound" is a probably true (I had some
> crazy patches), but you have to realise that most "sounds" are completely
> horrible and unappealing._

That is, if you don't like electronic music (EDM et al).

~~~
Intermernet
Nope, I love electronic music. Most of what you can create with a DX-7 is
a-musical, and distinctly nasty. It's the edges of this realm that contains
diamonds of sonic realisation :-)

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fit2rule
Chowning was the beginning of an interesting cultural phenomenon that
continues to this day: inventors of technology-based instruments. From him,
you can path the distance to people like Christoph Kemper of Access Music,
developer of one of the most popular DSP hardware-synths in the late 90's, to
Paul Maddox of Modal Electronics, current developer of the new "New British
Synth" the Modulus 002 which is a more hybrid approach. The inspiration is in
the form of the mad genius musician who applies their technology background to
music-making in ways that inspire others to do the same, follow their path ..
or in some cases, go off the path entirely and discover new things.

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cubano
I played with several keyboardists back during my cover band days in the 80's,
and they all extolled the virtues of the venerable DX7...it was pretty much
the only keyboard allowed onstage that added a decent layer to our hair metal
shenanigans and allowed us to play Whitesnake at the bars.

Well, maybe that isn't something to highlight too much :)

Saftware-only VSTi's like sylenth and Massive are popular modern day
equivalents to the DX7 that take sound design to new levels, so thanks to all
the pioneers that allow us today to explore such wonderfully deep musical
frontiers in electronica.

[edits for being a dufus]

~~~
w4
> VSTi's like sylenth and Massive are direct descendants of the DX7 and take
> FM modulation to incredible levels

Not to be that guy, but neither of those are FM synthesizers. Sylenth is a
basic subtractive synthesizer, and Massive is a wavetable synthesizer.

If you want a modern FM VST, you want to look towards the likes of Native
Instruments' FM8 or Ableton's Operator.

~~~
cubano
Thank you for being that guy.

My misinformation on the subject was in great need of your help, and I
sincerely thank you for the facts.

No wonder I had to keep ignoring the nagging feeling that I should double-
check my info about those synths.

~~~
sramsay
The confusion is somewhat reasonable given that many synthesizers (including
straightforwardly subtractive ones) have an FM knob somewhere. It can produce
some really great metallic and/or bell-like sounds.

A synthesizer in which FM is the main way of making sounds, though, is
extremely difficult to work with, since you're basically just modulating sine
waves with one another. Even some very famous electronic musicians will admit
to not quite understanding how to work with them in a predictable manner. The
DX7, certainly, left plenty of musicians totally flummoxed.

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Stratoscope
Oh my, I have a DX7 in the garage that I've been trying to figure out what to
do with. Anyone in the Palo Alto area want it? You'll probably put it to
better use than I have!

~~~
roberto
I'm interested! I've been playing with music production this year and trying
to get started with hardware synths.

~~~
Stratoscope
Cool! Got your email and will follow up tomorrow! It would be great to see the
DX7 put to good use.

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eleumik
FM synth stays to analog synth as vinyl stays to cd ;-)

