synthesizer

Electronic musical device for the simulation of vocal or instrumental timbre (tone quality).

The pipe organ was the first major synthesizer, and allowed a mixture of timbres at the unison or harmonic intervals. Modern electrical synthesizers date from 1904 and the Telharmonium of US inventor Thaddeus Cahill, which used a tone wheel (a programmable oscillator later incorporated in the Hammond organ).

Later synthesizers include the analogue trautonium, ondes Martenot, RCA Mark II synthesizer, Moog (the first electronic synthesizer), ARP, and Synthi 100; and digital Fairlight, Synclavier, Roland, Oberheim, and Yamaha keyboards, and the IRCAM 4X series synthesizer.

Types of synthesizer In preset synthesizers, the sound of various instruments is produced by a built-in computer-type memory, which triggers all the control settings required to produce the sound of a particular instrument. For example, the ‘sawtooth’ sound wave produced by a violin is artificially produced by an electrical tone generator, or oscillator, and then fed into an electrical filter that is set to have the resonances characteristic of a violin body.

In programmable synthesizers any number of new instrumental or other sounds may be produced as needed by the performer.

Speech synthesizers can break down speech into 128 basic elements (allophones), which are then combined into words and sentences, as in the voices of electronic teaching aids.