Studio 101 – Audio Terminology: Synthesizers

Keeping with this month’s keyboard and synth theme, we’ll explore a few key terms from the world of electronic sound, from hardware synthesizers and Virtual Instruments (VIs) to the MIDI protocol that connects them all.

A synthesizer, or synth, is an electronic musical instrument that generates sound electronically. This differs from earlier electro-mechanical keyboards, which produce an electrical signal but create their sounds through mechanical means, such as the spinning tonewheels of the Hammond organ or the amplified metal tines of the Fender Rhodes electric piano.

The earliest synthesizers were analog devices. Early electronic sound generation often relied on laboratory oscillators and other test equipment to create and shape tones, while the first commercially available self-contained synthesizer, the Hammond Novachord, was introduced in 1939. In the mid-1960s, Robert Moog and Don Buchla pioneered modular synthesizer designs, which were soon followed by the standalone keyboard synthesizers familiar today. By the 1980s, digital synthesizers had expanded the range of available sounds even further.