130 years from a 200-ton music machine in New York to synthesizers that live inside a laptop.
People first learned to make musical tones with electricity at the end of the 1800s, using spinning dynamos, radio valves and oscillators. In the 1960s engineers found how to control sound with voltages, and the synthesizer became an instrument anyone could patch, play and tour with. Then microchips, sampling, MIDI and software carried its sound from New York and Tokyo to Sydney, Kingston, Bombay and Chennai, and into almost every song we hear.
Music made by electricity and sent down phone lines
Thaddeus Cahill's Telharmonium, USA
1920
Instrument played without touching it
Leon Theremin, Russia
1939
Commercial polyphonic synthesizer (often called)
Hammond Novachord, USA
1957
Programmable synthesizer
RCA Mark II, Columbia University, USA
1964
Voltage-controlled modular synthesizer shown to the public
Robert Moog, USA
1968 album, certified 1986
Classical album certified platinum
Wendy Carlos, Switched-On Bach, USA
1978
Polyphonic synth with full sound memory
Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, USA
1979
Sampling instrument
Fairlight CMI, Australia
January 1983
Public MIDI link between two makers
Sequential and Roland, USA and Japan
1983
Commercially successful digital synthesizer
Yamaha DX7, Japan
1996 to 1999
Plug-in instruments on a computer (VST)
Steinberg, Germany
Patent 1897; hall opened 26 September 1906Music from electricity
1897 – 1945
Music from electricity
Inventors make tones with dynamos, radio valves and tonewheels. The Telharmonium, the theremin, the ondes Martenot and the Hammond organ show that electricity can sing.
1906
Patent 1897; hall opened 26 September 1906
A 200-ton music machine
Thaddeus CahillHolyoke, Massachusetts and New York City, USA
Cahill patented a way to make music with electricity in 1897. His Telharmonium used spinning dynamos to make pure tones, then added them together to build richer sounds. In 1906 the machine, weighing about 200 tons, opened in Telharmonic Hall in New York and sent music down telephone lines to hotels and restaurants.
Why it mattered. It was the first big machine to build musical sounds from electricity, by adding simple tones together, an idea every synthesizer still uses.
Leon Theremin (Lev Termen)Petrograd (today St Petersburg), Russia
While researching electronic sensors, Theremin built an instrument you play by waving your hands in the air. One hand moves near an antenna to change the pitch, and the other moves near a loop to change the volume. The violinist Clara Rockmore later became its greatest player and proved it could perform serious classical music.
Why it mattered. It showed that an electronic oscillator could be a real, expressive musical voice.
Martenot had noticed the pure tones made when military radio oscillators overlapped. He built an instrument played by sliding a ring along a wire, and later a keyboard that wobbles sideways for vibrato. It was first heard at the Paris Opera, and the composer Olivier Messiaen later made it a star of his Turangalîla-Symphonie.
Why it mattered. It gave composers an electronic voice they could shape with the same care as a violin.
The Hammond organ made its sound with spinning metal tonewheels next to magnetic pickups. Sliding drawbars let the player mix in different harmonics, a little like mixing colours of paint. More than 1,750 churches bought one in its first three years.
Why it mattered. Drawbars are additive synthesis you can touch: you build a sound by stacking pure tones.
At the 1939 New York World's Fair, four Novachords played every day at the Ford stand. Inside, 163 vacuum tubes made bright tones, and filters shaped them into softer sounds, with every key able to play at once. Only 1,069 were built before wartime shortages stopped production.
Why it mattered. It is often called the first commercial polyphonic synthesizer, and it already used the start-bright-then-filter recipe of later synths.
Room-sized machines and radio studios. Composers program sound with punched paper, film and cut-up tape, long before synthesizers are sold in shops.
1957
1957 (centre founded 1959)
A synthesizer the size of a room
Harry Olson and Herbert Belar (RCA); Milton BabbittColumbia University, New York, USA
Engineers at RCA built the Mark II Sound Synthesizer, and in 1957 it was delivered to Columbia University. Composers programmed it by punching holes in a long roll of paper, like a player piano. The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center grew around it from 1959, and composer Milton Babbitt used it for years.
Why it mattered. It was the first programmable synthesizer: music written as data that a machine plays back, the idea behind every sequencer.
Oram helped create the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1958 and was its first studio manager. She soon left to build her own studio at home, the first independent electronic studio run by a woman. From 1962 she designed the Oramics machine, where you drew shapes on strips of 35mm film and light sensors turned the drawings into sound.
Why it mattered. Drawing the shape of a sound to hear it is the same idea as choosing a waveform on a synth.
Delia Derbyshire (BBC Radiophonic Workshop), from a score by Ron GrainerLondon, England
Ron Grainer wrote the tune for a new TV series called Doctor Who, and Derbyshire turned it into sound. With no synthesizer, she built every note from test oscillators and noise, shaping each swell and fade and splicing the tape by hand. It was one of the first TV themes made entirely with electronics, yet she got no screen credit for 50 years.
Why it mattered. It showed millions of viewers what electronic sound could do, years before synthesizers were in shops.
Moog and Buchla build modules that control each other with voltages. Patch cords, filters and envelopes arrive, and the synth moves from the lab to the stage and around the world.
1963
1963 to 1965
The Buchla 100
Don Buchla, with Morton Subotnick and Ramon SenderSan Francisco, USA
In 1963 two composers at the San Francisco Tape Music Center advertised for an engineer to build a new electronic instrument, and Don Buchla answered. He designed modules that made and shaped sound, joined by patch cords and played from touch plates instead of a piano keyboard. A Rockefeller Foundation grant helped pay for it, and the system was installed at the center by 1965.
Why it mattered. Buchla in the West and Moog in the East invented the modular synthesizer at almost the same time.
Robert Moog, with composer Herb DeutschTrumansburg and New York City, USA
Moog built modules whose pitch and loudness were set by a voltage, using one volt for each octave. Composer Herb Deutsch asked for a way to make each note swell and fade, and Moog built the envelope, first triggered by a doorbell button. Moog showed his system at the Audio Engineering Society convention in New York and, to his surprise, took orders.
Why it mattered. Voltage control let every module steer every other one, the core idea of the analog synthesizer.
Chowning, a music student at Stanford, found that wobbling the pitch of one tone very fast with another creates a rich new sound. He published the idea in 1973, and a US patent (4,018,121) was granted in 1977. Stanford licensed it to Yamaha in Japan.
Why it mattered. FM builds bright, bell-like sounds from just two simple waves, cheaply enough to fit on a computer chip.
Wendy Carlos, with producer Rachel ElkindNew York City, USA
Carlos recorded music by Johann Sebastian Bach on a Moog synthesizer, layering the parts one line at a time on tape. The album reached the top 10 of the US Billboard chart and won three Grammy Awards in 1970. It sold more than a million copies and became the first classical album certified platinum.
Why it mattered. It convinced the world that a synthesizer could be a serious, beautiful instrument, not just a noise box.
Gita Sarabhai and the National Institute of DesignAhmedabad, India
A Moog modular synthesizer arrived at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad for its new electronic music studio. The musician Gita Sarabhai, who had studied with John Cage in the US, used her New York connections to bring it to India. The American composer David Tudor guided the new studio.
Why it mattered. It was one of the earliest synthesizers in India, a sign that the new sound was spreading around the world.
Bill Hemsath, Robert Moog and the Moog teamTrumansburg, New York, USA
Engineer Bill Hemsath sawed a keyboard in half and wired a few spare modules into a small box. That became the Minimoog: three oscillators, a filter and envelopes, already connected so there were no cables to patch. It was one of the first synthesizers sold in ordinary music shops, and more than 12,000 were made.
Why it mattered. It took the synthesizer out of the studio and onto the stage, and its layout is still the classic synth.
Alan R. Pearlman and Dennis Colin (ARP Instruments)Massachusetts, USA
The ARP 2600 came with its parts already wired together, but you could reroute them with patch cords. That made it a favourite for teaching in schools and colleges. Sound designer Ben Burtt used one, mixed with his own voice, to make the beeps and whistles of R2-D2 in Star Wars.
Why it mattered. Semi-modular design let beginners hear a sound first, then learn by rewiring it.
Kersi Lord, with composer R.D. BurmanBombay (today Mumbai), India
Kersi Lord, a leading Bombay session musician, heard Switched-On Bach and fell for the Moog sound. In 1973 he got a Minimoog, reported to be the first in India, and used it through the 1970s on songs for composer R.D. Burman. Its sweeps and effects became part of the sound of Hindi film music.
Why it mattered. Film songs carried synthesizer sounds to millions of listeners across India.
Inspired by Wendy Carlos, Tomita bought a large Moog modular synthesizer and set up a studio at home. He turned piano pieces by Claude Debussy into shimmering, orchestra-like electronic sounds. Snowflakes Are Dancing became a worldwide success and earned four Grammy nominations.
Why it mattered. It showed how carefully programmed synths could paint delicate colours, and it taught players worldwide new programming tricks.
Dave Smith and John Bowen (Sequential Circuits)California, USA
Dave Smith put a microprocessor inside an analog synthesizer. The Prophet-5 could play five notes at once and was the first polyphonic synth to save every knob setting in memory. Before, players had to write settings down and turn all the knobs again by hand.
Why it mattered. Sound memory made synths practical on stage, and it made presets part of music.
Microprocessors give synths memory, sampling turns any sound into an instrument, FM chips make synths cheap, and MIDI lets every instrument talk to every other.
1979
The Fairlight and the birth of sampling
Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie (Fairlight)Sydney, Australia
Two young Australians built a computer music system with a screen and a light pen. When they recorded a real piano note and played it back at different pitches, it sounded far more real than any synth. They called it sampling, and Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Wonder and many others used the Fairlight CMI through the 1980s.
Why it mattered. Sampling turned any recorded sound, even a dog's bark, into an instrument, and it changed pop music.
Casio, famous for calculators, launched the Casiotone 201, a keyboard with a built-in speaker and the sounds of 29 instruments. It was sold as a keyboard with full-size keys that anyone could afford. Cheap Casio keyboards spread around the world, including India, where Casio now sells keyboards with Indian tones and rhythms.
Why it mattered. Low-cost keyboards put electronic sound into ordinary homes, schools and bands.
Roland's TR-808 Rhythm Composer made drum sounds with analog circuits instead of recordings, so they did not sound like real drums. It flopped at first, and only about 12,000 were made. Cheap second-hand 808s then shaped hip hop, electro and dance music, and its booming bass drum is still everywhere.
Why it mattered. It proved a machine could invent new sounds people love, not just copy old ones.
Ciani made sounds with a Buchla synthesizer for TV adverts and pinball games, including a famous bottle pop-and-pour sound for Coca-Cola. In 1981 she scored the Hollywood film The Incredible Shrinking Woman. She is credited as the first woman to score a major Hollywood film on her own.
Why it mattered. She showed that synthesizer sound design could be a career, and opened doors for women in film music.
Roland (designer Tadao Kikumoto); later PhutureJapan and Chicago, USA
Roland made the TB-303 to play bass lines, but it sounded nothing like a bass guitar and sold poorly, so it was dropped in 1984. In 1987 the Chicago group Phuture twisted its filter knobs while it played. The squelchy sound of their track Acid Tracks helped start acid house.
Why it mattered. Sweeping a filter's cutoff and resonance while a note plays became one of dance music's signature sounds.
Session musician Charanjit Singh, who often played synthesizer for R.D. Burman, bought a new TB-303 and TR-808 and set Indian ragas to a disco beat, with a Roland Jupiter-8 playing melodies. The album Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat sold poorly and was forgotten. When it was rediscovered and reissued in 2010, listeners heard squelchy 303 lines years before acid house.
Why it mattered. It is now seen as an early forerunner of acid house, made in Bombay.
Dave Smith (Sequential Circuits) and Ikutaro Kakehashi (Roland)NAMM show, Anaheim, California, USA
Rival companies agreed on one simple cable and code so any keyboard could play any other. At the NAMM show in January 1983, a Sequential Prophet-600 and a Roland Jupiter-6 talked to each other in public for the first time. In 2013 Smith and Kakehashi shared a Technical Grammy Award for creating MIDI.
Why it mattered. MIDI sends notes, not sounds, so keyboards, drum machines and computers can all play together.
Yamaha, using John Chowning's FM synthesisHamamatsu, Japan
Yamaha turned Chowning's FM idea into chips and built the DX7, with six operators, 16 notes at once and a memory for 32 sounds. Its glassy electric piano and bell sounds filled 1980s pop. Yamaha had hoped to sell about 20,000, but it sold about 200,000 in three years.
Why it mattered. It was the first digital synthesizer to be a huge commercial success.
Wayne Smith, Noel Davey and King JammyKingston, Jamaica
Singer Wayne Smith and his friend Noel Davey built a song on a rock rhythm preset from a small Casio MT-40 keyboard, a pattern programmed in Japan by Casio engineer Hiroko Okuda. Producer King Jammy finished the track, Under Mi Sleng Teng. It was Jamaica's first fully digital hit, and its riddim has backed hundreds of songs.
Why it mattered. A cheap home keyboard changed a whole country's music almost overnight.
The M1 mixed short recorded samples of real instruments with synth filters, effects and a built-in sequencer. This kind of all-in-one keyboard became known as a workstation. About 250,000 were sold, and its piano and organ sounds were all over 1990s house music.
Why it mattered. It is often called the best-selling synthesizer ever, and it put a small studio inside one keyboard.
A.R. Rahman loved the synthesizer as the ideal mix of music and technology, and made advertising jingles in a small studio behind his home in Chennai. Director Mani Ratnam asked him to score the Tamil film Roja. Rahman blended electronic sounds with Indian and Western instruments, and Time magazine later listed Roja among the 10 best soundtracks of all time.
Why it mattered. It showed a new generation in India that a home studio full of electronics could make music for millions.
Computers become fast enough to be synthesizers. Plug-ins put whole studios on a laptop, while the classic analog designs are loved and rebuilt.
1996
1996 (instruments from 1999)
Synths become software
SteinbergHamburg, Germany
Steinberg's Virtual Studio Technology, or VST, let audio effects run as plug-ins inside music software on an ordinary computer. In 1999 an update let plug-ins be instruments too, so a whole synthesizer could live on a laptop. VST became a standard used across the music industry.
Why it mattered. Software made synthesizers cheap enough for anyone with a computer.
Cahill's Telharmonium weighed about 200 tons and needed more than a dozen railway boxcars to move it to New York.
Delia Derbyshire made the Doctor Who theme without a synthesizer: every sound came from oscillators, noise and tape cut by hand.
The voice of R2-D2 in Star Wars came from an ARP 2600 synthesizer mixed with sound designer Ben Burtt's own voice.
Stanford's FM synthesis patent earned about 20 million dollars in royalties before it ran out, and in January 2026 John Chowning won a Technical Grammy for discovering FM.
Yamaha hoped to sell about 20,000 DX7s. It sold about 200,000 in three years, and Yamaha says the whole DX series sold around 420,000.
The people
Who figured it out
TC
Thaddeus Cahill
1867 – 1934 · Inventor · USA
Built the 200-ton Telharmonium, which added pure tones together and sent music down telephone lines.
LT
Leon Theremin
1896 – 1993 · Physicist and inventor · Russia
Invented the theremin, played by moving your hands in the air.
CR
Clara Rockmore
1911 – 1998 · Thereminist · Vilnius (then Russian Empire), later USA
A violin prodigy who became the first great theremin virtuoso.
MM
Maurice Martenot
1898 – 1980 · Cellist, radio operator and inventor · France
Created the ondes Martenot after hearing radio oscillators sing.
DO
Daphne Oram
1925 – 2003 · Composer and inventor · England
Co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and built the Oramics machine, which turned drawings into sound.
DD
Delia Derbyshire
1937 – 2001 · Composer · England
Made the electronic Doctor Who theme by hand, from oscillators and tape.
RM
Robert Moog
1934 – 2005 · Engineer and instrument maker · USA
Made voltage-controlled modules and the Minimoog, and patented the ladder filter.
DB
Don Buchla
1937 – 2016 · Engineer and instrument maker · USA
Built the Buchla 100 modular system for the San Francisco Tape Music Center.
WC
Wendy Carlos
born 1939 · Composer and performer · USA
Her Switched-On Bach made the Moog famous and won three Grammy Awards.
IT
Isao Tomita
1932 – 2016 · Composer · Japan
Turned Debussy into shimmering Moog music on Snowflakes Are Dancing.
JC
John Chowning
born 1934 · Composer and researcher · USA
Discovered FM synthesis at Stanford, the sound engine of the Yamaha DX7.
SC
Suzanne Ciani
born 1946 · Composer and sound designer · USA
Buchla pioneer and the first woman to score a major Hollywood film on her own.
IK
Ikutaro Kakehashi
1930 – 2017 · Founder of Roland · Japan
Backed the TR-808 and co-created MIDI.
DS
Dave Smith
1950 – 2022 · Engineer, Sequential Circuits · USA
Designed the Prophet-5 and co-created MIDI.
KL
Kersi Lord
1935 – 2016 · Arranger and session musician · India
Brought a Minimoog to Bombay in 1973 and used it on R.D. Burman's film songs.
CS
Charanjit Singh
1940 – 2015 · Session musician · India
Recorded Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat with a TB-303 and TR-808 in 1982.
AR
A.R. Rahman
born 1967 · Composer · India
Built his sound in a home studio in Chennai, starting with Roja in 1992.