Synthesizers are electronic instruments that create and combine waveforms using stored acoustic instrumental samples, called wavetable synthesis, or electronically, using FM synthesis. They are often associated with the electronic music movement.
Nowadays, a distinction is sometimes made between early electronic instrument developments that, while bearing the name synthesizer, did not produce sound in real time and synthesizers that do. Early products such as the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer® and the Siemens Synthesizer®, both produced in the 1950s, have been dubbed composition machines.
Sound-generating devices with remote operation via voltage control were developed after precursors designed Harald Bode and Hugh Le Caine, among others, in the late 1940s. In 1964, commercial synthesizers were introduced, including Donald Buchla’s “Buchla®” synthesizer, which he developed with composer Morton Subotnick, Robert A. Moog’s modular synthesizer, which he developed with composer Herbert Deutsch, and Paolo Ketoff’s Synket. Buchla has chosen not to refer to his instruments as synthesizers.
In 1971, digital synthesis made its debut, allowing users to program patches in the synthesizer’s software rather than using filters or circuitry to create sound. In the mid-1970s, polyphonic synthesizers were introduced. By the 1980s, additional timbres on storage media had been added to the mix.
In 1983, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface standard, abbreviated as MIDI, was introduced as a better alternative to voltage control. Yamaha used MIDI to create the DX7, a digital synthesizer that included it in the same year. The development of microcomputers that could connect to MIDI synthesizers in the mid-1980s greatly expanded the possibilities for timbre programming.
By the mid-1980s, when digital recording of external sounds, known as “sampling,” became both available and affordable, it had become the primary source of timbres for all electronic instruments. Non-musical sounds, as well as world instruments, animals, and other noises, have been added to the timbre options.