Early synthesizer in rock

Would like to talk about early uses of synthesizer in rock. Question Inspired by Silver Apples and the SIMEON.

United States of America
the Byrds
Simon and Garfunkel
the Monkees

... this stuff was adopted pretty quickly

Del Shannon!

sorry, I guess that isn't really "talking about"

What tracks by these bands?

S&G = Save the Life of My Child
USA's whole first album is very synth-heavy, they really loved their ring modulators
Byrds = "Space Oddyssey", some other tracks on Notorious Byrd Brothers
Monkees = "Star Collector" has some epic moog solo

Del Shannon 's Ginny in the Mirror uses a Farfisa, that was back in '62. Anything earlier?

Farfisa is not a synthesizer!

Look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clavioline. I had no idea the thing was around in 1953.

...much less invented in 1947 obviously

well if you wanna go WAY back

Ok confused because Farfisa has made electronic organs AND synthesizers.

synths weren't til way later tho

So is there always a clear delineation between a synth and an electronic keyboard/organ?

solid-state components seem to be the main differentiator afaik

No, an organ is an implementation of additive synthesis, if a very specialized one. Most Farfisas are all solid-state afaik.

Not "rock" as such but parts of Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan's "Moon Maid" (1962, http://youtu.be/NuY0KlvStrQ) were uh "borrowed" on one-hit wonder "The Martian Hop" by the Ran-Dells (1963, http://youtu.be/XRqg3M4ZJg8, #16 on the Billboard Hot 100)

(assembled from sine wave tone generators AFAIK but then so were the Silver Apples' electronic noises)

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2009/09/09/the-beatles-play-the-moog-synthesizer/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAyrmm7vv0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

2000 light years from home by the stones features brian jones on a moog

you can also hear the beatles playing the moog on 'black hole sun' iirc

FFS guys; the Del Shannon I was referring to is "Runaway" which uses a clavioline.

Easy citations are the Theremin on "Good Vibrations" and the ARP 2600 on "Frankenstein" --- but i don't know if many did it better than Tony Banks in those early Genesis days. Banks was a true innovator, both in his technique and his equipment. I have little patience for much of the synths included increasingly in the late 70s and 80's, but Thomas Dolby's Flat Earth is still a great touchstone from the later era.

Isolation by Joy Division?

solid-state components seem to be the main differentiator afaik

I think this is pretty otm. I would not consider early instruments that basically sample sounds and let you play them on a keyboard with different pitches are synths -- they don't synthesize anything. The thing itself has to produce sound via electronic components only.

There's also the differentiation between a keyboard with a "set" timbre/voice what have you, and something which can be manipulated beyond common organ things like pull stops and pedals.

So I would say most early combo organs like Ace Tones and stuff aren't TRUE SYNTHESIZERS.

Isolation by Joy Division?

yeah tangerine dream totally ripped these guys off iirc

Do androids dream of electric sheep? by Gary Numan?

That "Zodiac" album on Elektra is often cited as one of the first albums to use a Moog. All the other early uses have been noted already, though it is also all over "Daily nightly" by the Monkees. Micky Dolenz bought the second ever Moog after seeing it demonstrated at the Monterey Festival in 67. Did you know that Bob Moog programmed the bass sound on "Save the life of my child" as he knew it would get a lot of attention on an S&G LP so wanted it to demonstrate his synth to the best of its ability? Another early use is by Gary Usher all over Sagittarius' second album "The blue marble", which I've always had a soft spot for. Soft pop sike with synths.

What I find interesting about early uses of the Moog is how limited they are. There seemed to be two default sounds that artists used - either burbling modulation / sample and hold or filter wide open square waves on full (such as the solo at the end of "Lucky Man" by ELP). Fair enough a Moog modular wouldn't be easy to program, but these cliches seemed to remain even when the Minimoog and ARP Odyssey came along - it's like the general public wouldn't recognise synths unless they sounded that way. I am being a bit harsh and there were plenty of people who took the time to know their Moogs and get more interesting sounds from them, and certainly the Germans knew what to do with them, but the majority of the time in the late 60s and early 70s it wasn't that way. Or am I being unfair?

There's stuff like Tonto's Expanding Headband whose synth players went onto playing with Stevie Wonder.
& Beaver & krause whose Gandharva was pretty tasty.
Also the usage of synth & other electronics in the Sextant/Mwandishi band

But those are all early 70s so maybe already later than you wanted to go, though I think all of them were regarded as pioneering at the time.

Maxwell's Silver Hammer has some OTT Moog use.

Also, Wonderwall.

This thread's been done before but good luck finding it

Another early use is by Gary Usher all over Sagittarius' second album "The blue marble", which I've always had a soft spot for. Soft pop sike with synths.

In a similar vein, also on "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas" by Harpers Bizarre AND "London Bridge" by Bread

grateful dead, kool aid acid test era with don buchla's machines. do any recordings of those events exist?

Lothar & the Hand People!

Does this count as a synth?

http://m.matrixsynth.com/2011/02/ultra-rare-vox-jennings-univox-1954.html

Used on Telstar and (allegedly) by the Beatles in their Cavern days

Although that might be some sort of confusion over a McCartney using a Univox bass to be fair.

Track on Performance soundtrack is a great piece of early Moog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwEmdPlG4U

comes in at 02:30.

i really don't consider combo organs to be synths but whether or not that is splitting hairs i don't mind all that much

something like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_310U i def consider a synth. ~protip~ the logan string melody series are still affordable and they sound better (to my ears) than the eminent and even the arp string ensemble

I think this is pretty otm. I would not consider early instruments that basically sample sounds and let you play them on a keyboard with different pitches are synths -- they don't synthesize anything. The thing itself has to produce sound via electronic components only.

an electric organ doesn't sample anything. it generates the sounds electronically or electromechanically through a tone wheel. the main difference as pointed out is that organs use a primitive form of additive synthesis which you can control through drawbars or through preset sounds, and early analog synthesizers like moogs use subtractive synthesis, which uses more complex waveforms (from multiple oscillators mixed together) and then runs them through a filter. Synthesizers generally give you more control over manually setting the filter, the envelope, pitches of the different oscillators, and modulating those things with lfos and envelopes, while electric organs often allow similar effects as preset tremolo settings or different preset envelope settings like flute or percussion.

the other big difference is that early analog synths were monophonic and if you wanted to set up a polyphonic system you had to use an individual vco->vcf->vca architecture for each voice. electric organs on the other hand used a top octave divide technique where there were 12 oscillators for the top 12 notes and those were divided down to create the lower octaves. the line became blurrier with later poly synths like the arp omni that used a top octave divide, organ type of setup but with control over a vcf and ADSR.

another way to look at it is that early modular synths like the moog were capable of multiple synthesis techniques like additive, subtractive, or FM, or any combination or hybrid of those techniques.

Sagittarius' second album "The blue marble", which I've always had a soft spot for. Soft pop sike with synths.

did not even know this album existed! thx for the tip

The Hollies "Try It" has a little bit of synth.

Fifty Foot Hose and Intersystems are a couple other early synth bands worth mentioning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gle-xiGGxZA

an electric organ doesn't sample anything. it generates the sounds electronically or electromechanically through a tone wheel. the main difference as pointed out is that organs use a primitive form of additive synthesis which you can control through drawbars or through preset sounds,

This should still count as a synthesizer, then, I would think?

another way to look at it is that early modular synths like the moog were capable of multiple synthesis techniques like additive, subtractive, or FM, or any combination or hybrid of those techniques.

Didn't think early Moogs would have been capable of FM synthesis? The exact dates seem to vary depending on the source but Oxford Music Online gives 1967-1971 as the period when John Chowning was researching the technique at Stanford and this site gives 1973 as the date when Chowning introduced it: http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/fmtut.html . In any case, Yamaha was the company he licensed it to and they really used it for the DX/TX synthesizers in the 80s (OMO again).

This should still count as a synthesizer, then, I would think?

This should totally count as a synthesizer, in the literal sense of the word. The principle isn't so different from what an OSCar does, it's just that it is restricted to mostly static sounds (on/off gates instead of variable envelopes, pre-defined pitch relations etc.). Add to that that string synthesizers are derived from transistor organs rather than the usual oscillator/filter/envelope chain, and things get muddled.

FM synthesis was possible with a modular system, even actual FM synthesis. You would control one oscillator's pitch by another audio range oscillator to create a carrier/modulator architecture. (The Yamaha DX models used phase distortion iirc.)

No, phase distortion was Casio's take on FM. Yamaha's DX line implemented true sine wave FM, as invented by Chowning.

The Doors on "Strange Days"

Is a Thermamin a synth?

no

didn't think so (and that should be Theremin, sry)

mention upthread about Lothar & the Hand People made me ask that question, but apparently they used Moogs too. Will have to go back and listen more carefully.

FM synthesis was possible with a modular system, even actual FM synthesis. You would control one oscillator's pitch by another audio range oscillator to create a carrier/modulator architecture.

Wait, is there truth to this that people were doing FM synthesis pre-Chowning? I've never heard that before.

Love this Lothar song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1ilplwxd8E

duh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1ilplwxd8E

Wait, is there truth to this that people were doing FM synthesis pre-Chowning?

Sure, in principle FM synthesis is nothing but a very fast vibrato. Every analogue synth that offers cross-modulation between VCOs has it. A suitably fast LFO whose pitch can be controlled via keyboard also works. I believe Chowning's achievement is mainly the digital implementation that allows for stable frequency and phase relations over the whole keyboard. So, inharmonic bells and other "dirty" sounds on an analogue yes, Whitney piano tinkling no. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about and that's also possible on an analogue? Never had the occasion to play with an actual analogue modular.

Sure, in principle FM synthesis is nothing but a very fast vibrato. Every analogue synth that offers cross-modulation between VCOs has it. A suitably fast LFO whose pitch can be controlled via keyboard also works. I believe Chowning's achievement is mainly the digital implementation that allows for stable frequency and phase relations over the whole keyboard.

That makes sense.

Yeah, exactly. In its simplest form FM just means modulating the frequency of an oscillator into the audio rate. Which on an analog modular means plugging the audio output of one vco into the CV input of another vco, which can give you all sorts of weird dissonant sounds or bell like sounds if you tune them up right. There's also a difference between vcos that allow exponential FM vs. linear FM, though I always forget which is which. some allow both.

In its more complex form, it involves multiple oscillators tuned to represent different partials, each with their own amplitude envelope, etc. which is difficult to impossible to really pull off reliably on an analog synth (plus expensive) so wasn't really widely possible until digital synths came around. The DX7 technically uses phase modulation which is I think essentially the same thing but iirc, yamaha did it that way so that they could patent it or something.

the same thing is basically true with additive synthesis. you could simply add together a few sine waves tuned to represent different harmonics and call that additive synthesis. but complex additive synthesis involves hundreds of sine waves, each changing amplitude over time in order to synthesize an acoustic sound. that obviously only became possible with digital as well.

technically there are a lot of similarities between electric organs and analog synths, but I wouldn't call organs synths because they both have perfectly good names already. everyone knows what you mean with if you talk about a synth vs. an organ. sonically I think the difference comes down to filter modulation. when you think about the classic stereotypical analog synth sounds that everyone thinks of, they mostly involve a vcf either being tweaked by hand, or modulated by an envelope, lfo, or sample & hold. an analog synth can be programmed to make a lot of sounds that are basically indistinguishable from some electric organ sounds as well, so I think early users gravitated toward those unique, gimmicky sounds that were new at the time.

Seastones by Ned Lagin, Phil Lesh etc came out in 1975 and similar synth based improvisations had become a loarge feature in the Grateful Dead live set throughout the preceding year, but I think ceased on their temporary retirement and didn't return.
Might be a bit late if you're looking solely for very early usage.

I found the synths on Birds of Fire utterly cheesy and marring my appreciation of the lp.

Illuminations by Buffy Sainte Marie has a very eerie electronic backing, it is a really great lp.

Someone upthread mentions "Strange days". It does use a Moog but as a processor for Jim's vocal, according to this article.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec03/articles/classictracks.html

XP Some basic FM was possible on Moogs, the bell tones at the start of "Rubycon pt 1" by Tangerine Dream are evidence enough, as are some of the tuned percussion sounds on "Brain salad surgery". Somewhere on the web there's a transcript of a 1975 TD tour programme where they talk about their synthesis techniques on the first two Virgin albums and I'm sure Froese mentions the bell tones use frequency modulation.

Let's try that SOS link again...

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec03/articles/classictracks.htm

(xxxp) Yeah, never been able to hear any synth work on "Strange Days"

Mentioned this upthread but in case anyone hadn't heard it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt46Lvi1XeQ

not rock but love this song & the analog synth breakdown near the end of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh4o9MBUrfw

omg this thread, <3 you all. so much music! so much math!! the soundtrack from Performance!!!

buchla system 100 or 200, one of them, has a routing option for frequency modulation/amplitude modulation, he was doing that mid 1960s but nobody cares about don :'(

Judy Henske & Jerry Yester, 'Farewell Aldebaran'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZsfRZovsJc

About time a decent version of that Farewell ALderbaraan was released. One actually from masters not bad needledrop. So I think somebody needs to hound Sunbeam and Esoteric until they rel;ease it, or possibly one of the Runt labels Water or something.

Awesomeness:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61H16POug5L._SS500_.jpg

(xp) It was on the Straight label so it might be caught up in some Zappa/Herb Cohen/Warner Bros legal shenanigans

Not strictly rock but has anyone mentioned Reflections by the Supremes?

swedish maverick making synth-based croonish pop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0ysb9dq6rQ

Giorgio Moroder's Son of My Father album (1972) is pretty unique in using synthesizer as a major part of the arrangements in pop rock music.

Giorgio in 1969, with synth breakdown at 1:24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6OMfUleLFM