The Father of the Digital Synthesizer

http://priceonomics.com/the-father-of-the-digital-synthesizer/

78 31 11 years ago

danso• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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.

ArkyBeagle• 11 years ago

Sounds like he did okay. Besides, being asked to work with/for Boulez is pretty tall cotton. I'd say from the piece his primary identification will always be as a composer. Composing and technology will always be cousins, IMO. Software is especially a compositional discipline.

This being said, I still have nightmares about the DX-7 :) It's utterly amazing how fast things changed after that.

Turing_Machine• 11 years ago

Getting screwed over for tenure because you're doing stuff your colleagues don't like/understand is an unfortunately common story (I could name several people just among professors I've known personally). The novel thing here is that Stanford actually admitted its mistake and asked him back. I can't think of another instance of that (though there are plenty of cases where the rejected prof went on to find fame at another institution).

dharma1• 11 years ago

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.

subnaught• 11 years ago

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

initself• 11 years ago

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.

acomjean• 11 years ago

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....

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• 11 years ago

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/

Csound: https://csound.github.io/

Supercollider: http://supercollider.github.io/

Chuck: http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/

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

w42• 11 years ago

No Max/MSP?!

https://cycling74.com/products/max/

locusm• 11 years ago

Thanks for the links, there goes the rest of my day !

cubano3• 11 years ago

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]

w42• 11 years ago

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.

cubano3• 11 years ago

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.

texel• 11 years ago

Not to be that guy, but Massive does FM via the modulation oscillator, though it's only 2 operator FM. Also to continue being that guy, it doesn't actually do FM at all, but Phase Modulation, which is what the DX7 (and later emulations like FM8) also use.

bane• 11 years ago

The portable app Caustic has a great FM Synth in it. There's a free version for Windows and OS X.

cubano3• 11 years ago

Wow...very cool...thanks for the info!

I can't believe I didn't know about this suite...

Stratoscope2• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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

Stratoscope2• 11 years ago

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

SwellJoe• 11 years ago

Original DX7s in working condition are rather sought after by collectors/musicians. You'll have no trouble finding someone to take it off your hands. If you wanted to be a few hundred dollars richer in exchange, you could be.

Intermernet3• 11 years ago

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)

throwawayaway2• 11 years ago

DX7s can still be purchased on ebay for 100 to 200 dollars if you are patient.

Intermernet3• 11 years ago

Yes, I still occasionally check Ebay when I have some disposable cash. The planets haven't yet aligned.

coldtea• 11 years ago

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).

Intermernet3• 11 years ago

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 :-)

fit2rule• 11 years ago

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.

eleumik• 11 years ago

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

The Father of the Digital Synthesizer

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