The birth of the synthesizer brought with it an era of musical alchemy still considered among the best in the last 60 years โ the โ80s.
The dance and pop scene of the โ80s was rife with the adoption of a myriad of synthesizers by prominent artists of the time. Through a retrospective lens, itโs apparent that nearly every major hit of the decade bore the stamp of synth magic that had so suddenly been made available to the public.
So ubiquitous was the technology at the time, that youโd be hard-pressed to find a recognizable tune from the era that failed to feature it. You might even say synths made the โ80s altogether.
What Synthesizers Sre and Where They Came From
Synthesizers generate sound signals electronically.
The earliest versions accomplished this and little more. In fact, the electronic signals they generated werenโt even audible and had to be amplified with other specialized equipment. Think electric guitar, but without the guitar or any reasonable means of making music with it at all.
Walls of machinery rarely scream โcome and get meโ to the musically inclined, thus understandably, there were very few musicians itching to poke around on RCAโs Mark 2 sound synthesizer.
You needed an amplifier to get them to โsingโ and enough abstract subjectivity to listen to their โsingingโ for more than a minute without ripping out your eardrums. On top of being lame sound-wise, early synthesizers were also ridiculously complex. Walls of machinery rarely scream โcome and get meโ to the musically inclined, thus understandably, there were very few musicians itching to poke around on RCAโs Mark 2 sound synthesizer.
Cue the entrance of keyboard controllers.
With a controller made in the familiar form of a pianoโs keys, artists could finally push scientists out of the way and get on with dredging listenable tunes from these strange electronic devices. Of course, only artists with access to big money studios had this opportunity; synths didnโt grow on trees and their price tags were made them more than a tad exclusive.
Add to that the fact that early synths were basically glorified organs and it becomes obvious why the technology had just barely altered the disco scene in the โ70s. Unless your lifelong aspiration was to play โIn-A-Gadda-Da-Vidaโ on endless repeat (thatโs the radio version, right?) you were bound to get bored quick.
Unless your lifelong aspiration was to play โIn-A-Gadda-Da-Vidaโ on endless repeat (thatโs the radio version, right?) you were bound to get bored quick.
It was the epoch of the โ80s that first saw complex, powerful, multi-faceted synthesizer technology emerge, half-naked like a robotic Schwarzenegger, into the light of day. Much like the Terminator, it took the world, particularly that of music, by surprise.
The Fairlight CMI
โฆthe second version captured everyoneโs attention with its revolutionary โpage R;โ a graphical composing interface that formed the basis of all composing software to follow it.
One salient synth of the many that emerged from the late โ70s to late โ80s was the CMI by Fairlight; particularly, the second version.
This composing behemoth was a full sound production system outfitted with a piano keyboard, qwerty keyboard, screen and accompanying light pen.
Where the first in the series failed to appeal to musicians thanks to its obtuse musical programming language, the second version captured everyoneโs attention with its revolutionary โpage R;โ a graphical composing interface that formed the basis of all composing software to follow it. With loads of analog sound samples to work with, musicians could suddenly create music graphically without even needing to play it.
Although this device was much more than a synth in its own right, itโs synthesizer capabilities were at the core of its functionality from the start and itโs credited with having been used on almost every album of the early โ80s. Along with all the other synths that were available at the time, itโs safe to say few tracks escaped the era unscathed by such technology.
Synths Meet the โ80s
Suddenly, bold and bouncy beats were knocking unsuspecting listeners silly, hazy padded tones were washing over their senses and musicians everywhere were drooling over the latest synth developments that would give them a creative edge on which to crank out their next single. It was at this very moment that the โ80s were born.
Aside from listing big names to have taken fondly to the technology like Stevie Wonder, Kate Bush, Michael Jackson and so on, we can only wonder just how deeply emerging synthesizer technology may have influenced the โ80s.
Inspired by futuristic sounds, film directors may have conjured up such classics as Star Wars, Ghostbusters and Back to the Future; totally unaware of the influence electronically-produced sounds had wrought on their imaginations.
Thomas Dolby was blinded by science in the โ80s. Perhaps everyone else was too. How else could the charts have been repeatedly dominated by the synth-pop creations of bands like Duran Duran, Soft Cell, A-Ha and Alphaville?
Could it be that electronically-produced sounds are simply more appealing than their analog counterparts? Weโll save that question for the trance crowd.
