Oberheim OB-1
The Oberheim OB-1 was a monophonic, analog synthesizer introduced by Oberheim Electronics in 1978. It sold for $1,895 and was the first analog synthesizer capable of storing patches; the design was a replacement for the previous generation of Oberheim SEM based instruments and intended to be used for live performance. The OB-1 is monophonic version of the Oberheim OB-X, with a Low Pass filter, it contained an envelope control for both the filter and amplitude. Notable users of the OB-1 were the composer and musician Vince Clarke and the bands Tangerine Dream and The Grid. A 2014 feature on the French radio station France Inter claimed that the OB-1 had been used by the Star Wars sound engineer Ben Burtt to create the voice of R2-D2 and that the name of another Star Wars character, Obi-Wan Kenobi, derives from a transliteration of "OB-1". However, Star Wars was first released in 1977, a year before the OB-1, most sources credit the ARP 2600 synthesizer as being used to record R2-D2's voice
Oberheim Matrix synthesizers
Oberheim Matrix synthesizers are a historic product line of subtractive analog synthesizers from Oberheim featuring a system of modulation which Oberheim called "Matrix Modulation" as a method of selecting and routing elements that dynamically shape various aspects of the sounds it produces. While the Matrix-12 are based on CEM 3374 Oscillators and CEM 3372 filters, the two models Matrix-6 and Matrix-1000 are notable for their implementation of CEM 3396 DCOs, which maintain a analog sound but are controlled by digital circuitry, making them much more stable; the Matrix-6R and Matrix-1000 are both rackmount versions of the Matrix-6. Matrix synthesizers continue to be popular due to their characteristic late-1980s analog sound. "Oberheim Matrix 1000". Sound On Sound. September 1988. Pp. 54–56. ISSN 0951-6816. OCLC 925234032. "Oberheim Matrix-12". Future Music. No. 61. ISSN 0967-0378. OCLC 1032779031. VintageSynth.com has specifications and photos OB6000.de The Editor for the Matrix 1000 Xplorer A realtime editor for the Oberheim Matrix-12 and Xpander synthesizers
Moog Music
Moog Music is an American company based in Asheville, North Carolina which manufactures electronic musical instruments. It was founded in 1953 as R. A. Moog Co. by Robert Moog and his father becoming Moog Music in 1972. Its early instruments included various Moog modular synthesizer systems, followed by the launch of the Minimoog in 1970, which became one of the most influential electronic instruments of all time. Robert Moog founded R. A. Moog Co. with his father in 1953 at the age of 19 in Trumansburg, New York, selling theremin kits to finance his college and graduate school education. In 1963, experimental composer Herbert Deutsch introduced himself to Moog at a music education conference in Rochester, New York after Deutsch had built a theremin following Moog's design; the two of them worked together to build the first modular voltage-controlled synthesizer. By 1967, R. A. Moog, Co. had become a larger enterprise, continuing to sell its theremin kits but with sales focused on the commercial Moog synthesizer.
Though the Moog synthesizer's sound had become iconic with the success of Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach, the instrument nonetheless did not sell well due to its size and impracticality. The company ran deep into debt, turning a profit only one year of its existence - 1969, following the'Switched-On' sensation ignited by Carlos. In November 1971, rival company muSonics bought R. A. Moog, Inc. and relocated the company to New York. An old factory at the north end of Academy Street was purchased; the company was renamed Moog Musonics Moog Music, Inc. In 1972, former televangelist and successful salesman David VanKouvering joined the company as VP of Marketing, creating a network of retail stores throughout the United States and the entire world. Though the company saw success in the introduction of the Minimoog, Moog Music, Inc. was sold to Norlin Industries in 1973. At this point, rival companies Oberheim Electronics and ARP Instruments were producing both monophonic and polyphonic synthesizers that outstripped the Moog in popularity.
By 1975, ARP owned 40% of the synthesizer market share boxing out Moog Music, Inc. In 1976, Norlin moved the company to a facility on Walden Avenue in Cheektowaga. In 1977, once his contract with Norlin expired, Moog left the company to pursue his own ventures, founding the firm Big Briar. By 1978, Moog Music, Inc. had released a number of followup products after the success of the Minimoog, including the Vocoder, the Multimoog, the Polymoog, a series of Taurus bass pedals. Despite numerous artists taking up these products, none of these synthesizers achieved the same level of success that the Minimoog did; as such, the company began contract manufacturing in 1981 in various other industries, including subway system repairs and air conditioning systems. Around the same time, digital synthesis was swiftly becoming a viable alternative to analog synthesizers; the Fairlight CMI, released 1979, was an expensive though formed digital synthesizer and sampler. Though Moog Music, Inc. would attempt to pivot its business model to produce digital synthesizers, the company declared bankruptcy in 1987.
As digital synthesizers became ubiquitous, the 1990s saw a rise in nostalgia for the iconic analog sound of Moog and Minimoog synthesizers, with musicians like David Foster continuing to use them. Minimoogs began fetching high prices as collector's items. In 1994, the Moog Music trademark was purchased by Don Martin; the company moved to Ashevile, NC, introduced numerous new products, including various updates to theremins and Minimoogs that continue to be sold and produced today. After Robert Moog passed away in 2005 due to complications arising from brain cancer, his collaborator Michael Adams took over the company as president; the company has since shifted to being employee owned, with its 62 employees owning 49% of the company's shares in 2015. At the prompting of composer Herbert Deutsch, Moog invented his now iconic Moog modular synthesizer in 1964. Defined by its use of modules, or independent circuits that performed distinctive tasks - oscillators, amplifiers, envelope generators - the Moog synthesizer allowed users to connect different modules in arbitrary configurations to create remarkably complex sounds.
Famously, it employed a keyboard interface. Moog went on to present the synthesizer at the 1964 Audio Engineering Society conference, where it gained notoriety; the Moog saw some measure of success as experimental artists as Paul Beaver, Suzanne Ciani, David Borden began to employ it in their work, the rise of psychedelic rock in the 1960s saw numerous commercial artists employ the Moog in their music, including The Byrds, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors. The greatest commercial success for the Moog synthesizer arrived in 1968 with Wendy Carlos's seminal album, Switched-On Bach, selling over a million copies and winning three Grammy Awards; the success of that album prompted a brief fad of'Switched-On' music that faded away by 1970. Despite the success of the Moog, its large size made it impractical for general use. Together with engineers Jim Scott and Bill Hemsath, Moog built the Minimoog; the Minimoog employed the minimal number of modules possible and did away with patch cords, instead hardwiring the various modules together.
Furthermore, the Minimoog introduced the pitch wheel, enab
Polyphony and monophony in instruments
Polyphony is a property of musical instruments that means that they can play multiple independent melody lines simultaneously. Instruments featuring polyphony are said to be polyphonic. Instruments that are not capable of polyphony are paraphonic. A monophonic synthesizer or monosynth is a synthesizer that produces only one note at a time, making it smaller and cheaper than a polyphonic synthesizer which can play multiple notes at once; this does not refer to a synthesizer with a single oscillator. Well-known monosynths include the Minimoog, the Roland TB-303, the Korg Prophecy. Duophonic synthesizers, such as the ARP Odyssey and Formanta Polivoks built in the 1970s and 1980s have a capability to independently play two pitches at a time; these synthesizers have at least two oscillators that are separately controllable, a duophonic keyboard that can generate two control voltage signals for the lowest- and highest-note. When two or more keys are pressed the lowest- and highest-note will be heard.
When only one key is pressed, both oscillators are assigned to one note with a more complex sound. The earliest polyphonic synthesizers were built in the late-1930s, but the concept did not become popular until the mid-1970s. Harald Bode's "Warbo Formant Orguel", developed in 1937, was an archetype of a voice allocation polyphonic synthesizer. Novachord by Hammond Organ Company, released in 1939, is a forefather product of frequency divider organs and polyphonic synthesizer, it uses octave divider technology to generate polyphony, about 1,000 Novachords were manufactured until 1942. Using an octave divider a synthesizer needs only 12 oscillators - one for each note in the musical scale; the additional notes are generated by dividing down the outputs of these oscillators. To produce a note one octave lower, the frequency of the oscillator is divided by two. Polyphony is achieved so long. In the early-to-mid-1970s, the voice allocation technology with digital keyboard scanning was independently developed by several engineers and musical instrument manufacturers, including Yamaha, E-mu Systems, Armand Pascetta.
The Oberheim 2/4/8-voices and Sequential Circuit Prophet-5 were both developed in collaboration with E-mu System. One notable early polyphonic synthesizer, the Prophet 5 released in 1978, had five-voice polyphony. Another notable polyphonic synth, the Yamaha CS-80 released in 1976, had eight-voice polyphony, as did the Yamaha GX-1 with total 18 voice polyphony, released in 1973. Six-voice polyphony was standard by the mid-1980s. With the advent of digital synthesizers, 16-voice polyphony became standard by the late 1980s. 64-voice polyphony was common by the mid-1990s and 128-note polyphony arrived shortly after. There are several reasons for providing such large numbers of simultaneous notes: Even with only ten fingers, it is possible to play more than ten notes at once. Notes may continue to sound after a key is released; the synthesizer's resources may still be in use to produce the sound of the struck notes tapering off when a sustain pedal is used. A "sound" may be generated by more than one oscillator or sound-source to allow more complicated sounds to be produced.
A synthesizer with 16 oscillators may be capable of 16-note polyphony only when simple, single-oscillator sounds are produced. If a particular patch requires four oscillators the synthesizer is only capable of four-note polyphony. Synthesizers may be configured to produce multiple timbres necessary when sounds are layered or sequenced. Multitimbral instruments are always polyphonic but polyphonic instruments are not multitimbral; some multitimbral instruments have a feature which allows the user to specify the amount of polyphony reserved or allowed for each timbre. Synthesizers use oscillators to generate the electric signal that forms the basis of the sound with a keyboard to trigger the oscillators. However, multiple oscillators working independently are a considerable challenge to implement. To double the polyphony, not only must the number of oscillators be doubled but the electronics must function as a switch connecting keys to free oscillators instantaneously, implementing an algorithm that decides which notes are turned off if the maximum number of notes is sounding when an additional key is pressed.
There are several ways to implement this: Turn off the first note sounded and use the newly freed oscillator to play the new note. With last note priority, priority is based on the order; when new notes are triggered while all voices are playing, the synthesizer frees up polyphony by ending the earliest played sounding note. This is the default mode on most synthesizers. Ignore the newly depressed note. With first note priority, earlier notes are not cut off to make room for ones, once maximum polyphony has been reached, the person playing the instrument must stop playing one or more notes in order to trigger new ones. In highest note priority, new notes that are higher in pitch than ones being played replace playing notes from the lowest on up. Lowest note priority works in the same way. Modern synthesizers and samplers may use additional, multiple, or user-configurable criteria to decide which notes sound. All classical keyboard instruments are polyphonic. Examples include the piano, harpsichord and clavichord.
These instruments feature a complete sound-generating mechanism for each key in t
Drum machine
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion. Drum machines produce unique sounds. Most modern drum machines allow users to program their own rhythms. Drum machines may play prerecorded samples. Drum machines have had a lasting impact on popular music; the Roland TR-808, introduced in 1980 influenced the development of dance and hip hop music. The first drum machine to use samples of real drum kits, the Linn LM-1, was introduced in 1980 and adopted by rock and pop artists including Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Stevie Wonder. In the late 1990s, software emulations began to overtake the popularity of physical drum machines. Rhythmicon In 1930–32, the spectacularly innovative and hard-to-use Rhythmicon was developed by Léon Theremin at the request of Henry Cowell, who wanted an instrument which could play compositions with multiple rhythmic patterns, based on the overtone series, that were far too hard to perform on existing keyboard instruments.
The invention could produce sixteen different rhythms, each associated with a particular pitch, either individually or in any combination, including en masse, if desired. Received with considerable interest when it was publicly introduced in 1932, the Rhythmicon was soon set aside by Cowell and was forgotten for decades; the next generation of rhythm machines played only pre-programmed rhythms such as mambo, tango, or bossa nova Chamberlin Rhythmate In 1957, Harry Chamberlin, an engineer from Iowa, created the Chamberlin Rhythmate, which allowed users to select between 14 tape loops of drum kits and percussion instruments performing various beats. Like the Chamberlin keyboard, the Rhythmate was intended for family singalongs. Around 100 units were sold. First commercial product – Wurlitzer Sideman In 1959, Wurlitzer released the Sideman, which generates sounds mechanically by a rotating disc to a music box. A slider controls the tempo. Sounds can be triggered individually through buttons on a control panel.
The Sideman was a success and drew criticism from musicians' unions, which ruled that it could only be used in cocktail lounges if the keyboardist was paid the wages of three musicians. Wurlitzer ceased production of the Sideman in 1969. Raymond Scott In 1960, Raymond Scott constructed the Rhythm Synthesizer and, in 1963, a drum machine called Bandito the Bongo Artist. Scott's machines were used for recording his album Soothing Sounds for Baby series. First transistorized drum machines – Seeburg/Gulbransen During the 1960s, implementation of rhythm machines were evolved into solid-state from early electro-mechanical with vacuum tubes, size were reduced to desktop size from earlier floor type. In the early 1960s, a home organ manufacturer, Gulbransen cooperated with an automatic musical equipment manufacturer Seeburg Corporation, released early compact rhythm machines Rhythm Prince, although, at that time, these size were still as large as small guitar amp head, due to the use of bulky electro-mechanical pattern generators.
In 1964, Seeburg invented a compact electronic rhythm pattern generator using "diode matrix", transistorized electronic rhythm machine with pre-programmed patterns, Select-A-Rhythm, was released. As the result of its robustness and enough compact size, these rhythm machines were installed on the electronic organ as accompaniment of organists, spread widely. Keio-Giken, Nippon Columbia, Ace Tone In the early 1960s, a nightclub owner in Tokyo, Tsutomu Katoh was consulted from a notable accordion player, Tadashi Osanai, about the rhythm machine he used for accompaniment in club, Wurlitzer Side Man. Osanai, a graduate of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Tokyo, convinced Katoh to finance his efforts to build better one. In 1963, their new company Keio-Giken released their first rhythm machine, Donca-Matic DA-20 using the vacuum tube circuits for sounds and mechanical-wheel for rhythm patterns, it was a floor-type machine with built-in speaker, featuring a keyboard for the manual play, in addition to the multiple automatic rhythm patterns.
Its price was comparable with the average annual income of Japanese at that time. Their effort was focused on the improvement of reliability and performance, along with the size reduction and the cost down. Unstable vacuum tube circuit was replaced with reliable transistor circuit on Donca-Matic DC-11 in mid-1960s, in 1966, bulky mechanical-wheel was replaced with compact transistor circuit on Donca-Matic DE-20 and DE-11. In 1967, Mini Pops MP-2 was developed as an option of Yamaha Electone, Mini Pops was established as a series of the compact desktop rhythm machine. In the United States, Mini Pops MP-3, MP-7, etc. were sold under Univox brand by the distributor at that time, Unicord Corporation. In 1965, Nippon Columbia filed a patent for an automatic rhythm instrument, it described it as an "automatic rhythm player, simple but capable of electronically producing various rhythms in the characteristic tones of a drum, a piccolo and so on." It has some similarities to Seeburg's earlier 1964 patent.
In 1967, Ace Tone founder Ikutaro Kakehashi developed the preset rhythm-pattern generator using diode matrix circuit, which has some similarities to the earlier Seeburg and Nippon Columbia patents. Kakehashi's pate
Los Angeles
Los Angeles the City of Los Angeles and known by its initials L. A. is the most populous city in California, the second most populous city in the United States, after New York City, the third most populous city in North America. With an estimated population of four million, Los Angeles is the cultural and commercial center of Southern California; the city is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity and the entertainment industry, its sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles is the largest city on the West Coast of North America. Los Angeles is in a large basin bounded by the Pacific Ocean on one side and by mountains as high as 10,000 feet on the other; the city proper, which covers about 469 square miles, is the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the country. Los Angeles is the principal city of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second largest in the United States after that of New York City, with a population of 13.1 million. It is part of the Los Angeles-Long Beach combined statistical area the nation's second most populous area with a 2015 estimated population of 18.7 million.
Los Angeles is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States, with a diverse economy in a broad range of professional and cultural fields. Los Angeles is famous as the home of Hollywood, a major center of the world entertainment industry. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index and 9th in the Global Economic Power Index; the Los Angeles metropolitan area has a gross metropolitan product of $1.044 trillion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. Los Angeles hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics and will host the event for a third time in 2028; the city hosted the Miss Universe pageant twice, in 1990 and 2006, was one of 9 American cities to host the 1994 FIFA men's soccer World Cup and one of 8 to host the 1999 FIFA women's soccer World Cup, hosting the final match for both tournaments. Home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California.
The city was founded on September 4, 1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850, five months before California achieved statehood; the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California assured the city's continued rapid growth; the Los Angeles coastal area was settled by the Chumash tribes. A Gabrieleño settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning "poison oak place". Maritime explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area of southern California for the Spanish Empire in 1542 while on an official military exploring expedition moving north along the Pacific coast from earlier colonizing bases of New Spain in Central and South America.
Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2, 1769. In 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. On September 4, 1781, a group of forty-four settlers known as "Los Pobladores" founded the pueblo they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles,'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels'; the present-day city has the largest Roman Catholic Archdiocese in the United States. Two-thirds of the Mexican or settlers were mestizo or mulatto, a mixture of African and European ancestry; the settlement remained a small ranch town for decades, but by 1820, the population had increased to about 650 residents. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the historic district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street, the oldest part of Los Angeles. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, the pueblo continued as a part of Mexico.
During Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta California's regional capital. Mexican rule ended during the Mexican–American War: Americans took control from the Californios after a series of battles, culminating with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847. Railroads arrived with the completion of the transcontinental Southern Pacific line to Los Angeles in 1876 and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1885. Petroleum was discovered in the city and surrounding area in 1892, by 1923, the discoveries had helped California become the country's largest oil producer, accounting for about one-quarter of the world's petroleum output. By 1900, the population had grown to more than 102,000; the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, under the supervision of William Mulholland, assured the continued growth of the city. Due to clauses in the city's charter that prevented the City of Los Angeles from selling or providing water from the aqueduct to any area outside its borders, many adjacent city and communities became compelled to annex themselves into Los Angeles.
Los Angeles created the first municipal zoning ordinance in the United States. On September 14, 1908, the Los Angeles City Council promulgated residential and industrial land use zones; the new ordinance established three residential zones of a single type, where industrial uses were
Signal processing
Signal processing is a subfield of mathematics and electrical engineering that concerns the analysis and modification of signals, which are broadly defined as functions conveying "information about the behavior or attributes of some phenomenon", such as sound and biological measurements. For example, signal processing techniques are used to improve signal transmission fidelity, storage efficiency, subjective quality, to emphasize or detect components of interest in a measured signal. According to Alan V. Oppenheim and Ronald W. Schafer, the principles of signal processing can be found in the classical numerical analysis techniques of the 17th century. Oppenheim and Schafer further state that the digital refinement of these techniques can be found in the digital control systems of the 1940s and 1950s. Analog signal processing is for signals that have not been digitized, as in legacy radio, telephone and television systems; this involves linear electronic circuits as well as non-linear ones. The former are, for instance, passive filters, active filters, additive mixers and delay lines.
Non-linear circuits include compandors, voltage-controlled filters, voltage-controlled oscillators and phase-locked loops. Continuous-time signal processing is for signals; the methods of signal processing include time domain, frequency domain, complex frequency domain. This technology discusses the modeling of linear time-invariant continuous system, integral of the system's zero-state response, setting up system function and the continuous time filtering of deterministic signals Discrete-time signal processing is for sampled signals, defined only at discrete points in time, as such are quantized in time, but not in magnitude. Analog discrete-time signal processing is a technology based on electronic devices such as sample and hold circuits, analog time-division multiplexers, analog delay lines and analog feedback shift registers; this technology was a predecessor of digital signal processing, is still used in advanced processing of gigahertz signals. The concept of discrete-time signal processing refers to a theoretical discipline that establishes a mathematical basis for digital signal processing, without taking quantization error into consideration.
Digital signal processing is the processing of digitized discrete-time sampled signals. Processing is done by general-purpose computers or by digital circuits such as ASICs, field-programmable gate arrays or specialized digital signal processors. Typical arithmetical operations include fixed-point and floating-point, real-valued and complex-valued and addition. Other typical operations supported by the hardware are circular buffers and lookup tables. Examples of algorithms are the Fast Fourier transform, finite impulse response filter, Infinite impulse response filter, adaptive filters such as the Wiener and Kalman filters. Nonlinear signal processing involves the analysis and processing of signals produced from nonlinear systems and can be in the time, frequency, or spatio-temporal domains. Nonlinear systems can produce complex behaviors including bifurcations, chaos and subharmonics which cannot be produced or analyzed using linear methods. Statistical signal processing is an approach which treats signals as stochastic processes, utilizing their statistical properties to perform signal processing tasks.
Statistical techniques are used in signal processing applications. For example, one can model the probability distribution of noise incurred when photographing an image, construct techniques based on this model to reduce the noise in the resulting image. Audio signal processing – for electrical signals representing sound, such as speech or music Speech signal processing – for processing and interpreting spoken words Image processing – in digital cameras and various imaging systems Video processing – for interpreting moving pictures Wireless communication – waveform generations, filtering, equalization Control systems Array processing – for processing signals from arrays of sensors Process control – a variety of signals are used, including the industry standard 4-20 mA current loop Seismology Financial signal processing – analyzing financial data using signal processing techniques for prediction purposes. Feature extraction, such as image understanding and speech recognition. Quality improvement, such as noise reduction, image enhancement, echo cancellation.
Including audio compression, image compression, video compression. Genomics, Genomic signal processing In communication systems, signal processing may occur at: OSI layer 1 in the seven layer OSI model, the Physical Layer. Filters – for example analog or digital Samplers and analog-to-digital converters for signal acquisition and reconstruction, which involves measuring a physical signal, storing or transferring it as digital signal, later rebuilding the original signal or an approximation thereof. Signal compressors Digital signal processors Differential equations Recurrence relation Transform theory Time-frequency analysis – for processing non-stationary signals Spectral estimation – for determining the spectral content of a
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