Imagined futures 3: Music

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

I recently visited the Science Gallery in Dublin where they had several exhibits dedicated to sonic science - the science (and art) of making sounds. The exhibition is there until September 24th, so if you're in the neighbourhood, you really should check it out.

I was particularly fascinated with the room full of vintage synthesisers, and spent quite some time tinkering with them, programming them and playing them. There was a Moog synth which was very recognisable with its banks of switches, buttons, patch cables and knobs, similar to the one Keith Emerson used to play. There were others too - old Korgs, Oberheims and ARPs to play with. It was quite fabulous seeing them all in one place, and being able to play them.

I still have a vintage synthesiser in my collection of instruments from the past. It's a Yamaha DX7, and is still fully functional, in spite of being stored for more than 20 years in a flight case in my garden shed. Yamaha keyboards were of robust design.

The DX7 was one of the first digital commercially available (affordable) polyphonic synthesisers to be equipped with MIDI - or Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It was a 61 note keyboard, and it had touch sensitivity. It was incredibly complex to program, with up to 32 separate algorithms that could be brought into play, and many of the sounds generated could be a little hit or miss. However, it did come complete with a couple of cartridges that housed several dozen preprogrammed voices. The percussive sounds of the DX7 were particularly impressive, and the grand piano, pipe organ and bell voices were very realistic. I used it on stage on many occasions in place of a conventional grand piano, but for organ and string sounds, it was a bit of a washout. For sustained sounds such as strings I turned to other synthesisers such as the Roland Juno 106. The beauty of these synthesisers was that you could rack them up, 'daisy chain' connect them and they would play on their own, triggered by a drum machine such as the Yamaha RX11 (I also have one of those!). They may sound quite primitive compared to what is available now, but back in the 1980s, these instruments provided the background sounds for many commercial hits. They broke new ground and were the force behind Synth Pop.

Today, looking back on these retro musical instruments, it's easy to see how they laid the ground work for future digital music. The synths I describe above created the soundscape for the synth pop genre that was to emerge that decade. Bands such as OMD, Depeche Mode, Human League, Yazoo, Thompson Twins, and artists such as Howard Jones and Gary Numan all made their mark using similar instruments. You can express yourself with any musical instrument, but for me, one of the most personalisable instruments just has to be the synthesiser - You can make it your own by creating your very own voices, sequences, riffs and melodies.


Imagined futures 3: Music by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.