History guide
A short history of the synthesiser
From a 200-tonne dynamo to motorised knobs: the synths that changed things, in date order, with what each one added and what the jargon (voltage control, FM, wavetables, virtual analogue) actually means.
Updated 27 September 2026SynthesizersStage Keyboards
How to read this
This isn't a list of every synth ever made. Each entry is here because it did something the ones before it couldn't. It might be a new way of making sound, a way of playing more than one note, a way of remembering a sound, or a way of being cheap enough for most people to own. Each card gives the year, what kind of instrument it was, a few hard facts (how many oscillators, how many notes at once) and what it brought. Where a new idea turns up, open the 'What is…?' panel for a plain-English explanation.
Nearly every synth on this timeline is built from the same few parts. You only need these to follow the rest:
- Oscillator: makes the raw tone, a repeating waveform (sine, saw, square, triangle) at the pitch you play. More oscillators per note means a thicker sound, because you can detune them against each other or tune one an octave or a fifth away.
- Filter: takes harmonics away. A low-pass filter darkens the sound. Sweeping its cutoff gives the 'wow' you hear in almost every synth part. Taking harmonics away like this is called subtractive synthesis.
- Amplifier (VCA): sets how loud the sound is at each moment.
- Envelope: a shape that runs each time you press a key, usually Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release (ADSR). Put it on the amplifier and it shapes the volume; put it on the filter and it shapes the brightness.
- LFO: a slow oscillator you don't hear directly. It wobbles something else, giving vibrato (pitch), tremolo (volume) or a filter wah.
- Monophonic means one note at a time; polyphonic means chords. 'Voices' is how many notes can sound at once.
- A patch is a saved sound. Early synths had no memory at all: you wrote your settings down or drew them on a chart.
Before the synthesiser (1897–1957)
Electronic instruments are older than most people think. None of these was a 'synthesiser' in the modern sense, but between them they tried out most of the ideas that came later.
1906
Telharmonium
Thaddeus Cahill · Electromechanical, additive
- Patented 1897
- About 200 tonnes
- Tonewheel dynamos
- Played down telephone lines
What it brought: The first instrument to build a sound up out of electrically generated tones. Spinning dynamos made pure tones and the player mixed them to get different timbres. Subscribers heard it through telephone receivers, decades before radio broadcasting.
What is additive synthesis?
Any sound can be described as a stack of sine waves at different pitches and volumes, called harmonics. Additive synthesis goes the other way: it builds a sound by adding sine waves together.
The Hammond organ (1935) does exactly this with its drawbars, each of which adds one harmonic. It is the opposite of subtractive synthesis, which starts with a bright waveform and filters harmonics away. Additive is very flexible but needs a lot of controls, which is why it stayed rare until computers could do the sums.
1920
Theremin
Léon Theremin · Electronic, heterodyne
- Monophonic
- Played without touching it
- Two antennas: pitch and volume
What it brought: The first electronic instrument played live by a performer, and the first people heard in concert halls. The hand's distance from one antenna sets the pitch and from the other the volume. Two radio-frequency oscillators beat against each other to make an audible tone. It gave film sci-fi its sound for decades.
1939
Novachord
Hammond · Electronic, subtractive
- 72-note polyphonic
- 163 valves
- Filters and envelopes
What it brought: Full polyphony (every key could sound at once) and a subtractive chain of oscillator, filter and envelope, 35 years before these became normal on synths. It was too big, costly and fragile to catch on, and it was out of production by the end of the war.
1957
RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer
RCA (Harry Olson and Herbert Belar) · Electronic, programmed
- Room-sized
- Punched paper-tape input
- Could not be played live
What it brought: The first machine actually called a synthesizer. It had oscillators, filters and envelope-style control, but you programmed it by punching holes in a paper roll and waited to hear the result. Composers at the Columbia-Princeton studio used it, but it was a lab instrument, not something you played.
Voltage control and the modular era (1964–1969)
The big break in the 1960s was transistors and one simple idea: let one part of the instrument control another with a voltage. With that, a keyboard, an envelope or an LFO could all 'play' an oscillator or a filter, and cables could wire them together any way you liked.
1964
Moog modular
R.A. Moog Co. · Analogue, modular, subtractive
- Separate modules patched with cables
- Voltage-controlled oscillators, filter, amplifier
- 1 volt per octave
- Monophonic
What it brought: Voltage control made practical and sold as an instrument. Robert Moog's modules shared one standard: one volt up means one octave up. His transistor 'ladder' filter gave the warm, fat sound still called 'the Moog sound'. Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach ↗ (1968) made it famous.
What is voltage control (and a modular)?
Before this, you set an instrument's pitch or tone by hand with a knob. With voltage control, a knob, a key or another module sends a voltage, and the voltage sets the pitch, cutoff or volume.
Because everything talks in voltages, any output can go into any input. Plug the keyboard into the oscillator and it plays tunes. Plug an envelope into the filter and each note opens up and closes. Plug a slow LFO into the oscillator and you get vibrato.
A modular is a cabinet of separate modules with no fixed wiring, so the patch cables are the sound. It is flexible, but you rebuild the sound from scratch every time. The word 'patch' for a sound comes from here.
1965
Buchla 100 series
Buchla & Associates · Analogue, modular, 'West Coast'
- Touch plates instead of a keyboard
- Complex oscillators
- Low-pass gates
- Early step sequencer
What it brought: A second school of synthesis, built at the same time as Moog's but 3,000 miles away. Don Buchla made his for the San Francisco Tape Music Center and avoided the organ keyboard on purpose. He shaped sound by bending waveforms rather than filtering them.
What is 'West Coast' synthesis?
'East Coast' (Moog) synthesis starts with a harmonically rich wave and uses a filter to take harmonics away. 'West Coast' (Buchla) starts with a simple wave and adds harmonics by folding or modulating it.
The low-pass gate is a filter and amplifier in one that closes naturally, like a plucked string or a struck wooden bar. Buchla-style bongo and marimba tones, and much of today's Eurorack, come from here.
1969
VCS3
EMS (London) · Analogue, semi-modular
- 3 oscillators
- Pin-matrix patching
- Small and portable
- Monophonic
What it brought: Modular flexibility in a box you could carry. Instead of cables, you pushed pins into a grid to connect anything to anything. It was affordable by the standards of the time, and it became the sound of British experimental rock and of BBC television.
The synth becomes an instrument (1970–1974)
Modulars filled walls and needed an engineer. The next step was to fix the most useful connections inside one box, so a keyboard player could walk on stage, switch it on and play.
1970
Minimoog Model D
Moog Music · Analogue, subtractive, 'hard-wired'
- Monophonic
- 3 oscillators (the third can be an LFO)
- Noise generator
- 24 dB ladder filter
- 2 envelopes
- 44 keys
What it brought: The template for the synthesiser as we know it. The signal runs left to right across the panel: oscillators, mixer, filter, amplifier, and the order never changes, so no patch cables are needed. It also introduced the pitch-bend and modulation wheels that nearly every keyboard still has to the left of the keys.
Why is 'three oscillators and a filter' such a big deal?
One oscillator on its own sounds thin. Tune three slightly apart and they drift in and out of phase, which gives a thick, moving sound. Tune them an octave or a fifth apart and one key plays a stack.
The Minimoog's bass and lead sound comes from that stack running into a filter that can be driven hard and made to resonate (whistle at the cutoff). Nearly every analogue mono synth since has used the same layout.
In the catalogue: Yamaha reface CS
1971
ARP 2600
ARP Instruments · Analogue, semi-modular
- Monophonic (later duophonic)
- 3 oscillators
- Pre-wired, but patchable
- Built-in speakers
What it brought: The best of both. Every connection is wired up by default, so it makes a sound with no cables in. Plug a cable in and you override that connection. It was built for teaching, and it later gave R2-D2 his voice.
What is semi-modular (or 'normalling')?
A semi-modular synth has a sensible default signal path already wired inside (the 'normalled' connections). Patch points on the front let you break into it and re-route things.
You get an instrument that works straight away, plus modular experiments when you want them. Many of today's small desktop synths (Moog Mother-32, Behringer's clones) work this way, which is why they have rows of jacks next to the knobs.
Polyphony and memory (1975–1982)
Everything so far played one note at a time, and every sound had to be set up again by hand. The late 70s fixed both of those.
1975
Four Voice
Oberheim · Analogue, polyphonic
- 4 voices
- Four complete synth modules (SEMs) side by side
- Each voice set up separately
What it brought: Chords from analogue synths. Tom Oberheim put four of his SEM mono synths in one case under a keyboard that could send notes to each in turn. It sounded huge, but changing a sound meant setting the same knobs four times.
How does polyphony actually work?
A 'voice' is a complete synth: oscillators, filter, amplifier and envelopes. A polyphonic synth has several voices and a circuit that hands each key you press to a free voice.
Four voices means four notes at once. Press a fifth key and the synth has to steal a voice from a note that is already sounding. Early polysynths were expensive for exactly this reason: eight voices meant building eight synths.
1977
CS-80
Yamaha · Analogue, polyphonic
- 8 voices
- 2 layers per voice
- Polyphonic aftertouch
- Ribbon controller
- Around 100 kg
What it brought: Expression. Each key sends pressure on its own, so you can lean into one note of a chord and make it swell or bend. A ribbon along the front slides pitch like a violin. Vangelis's Blade Runner score is the famous example, and very few synths matched its playing expression again until MPE, 40 years later.
What is polyphonic aftertouch?
Aftertouch is pressure: how hard you push a key after it has gone down. Most keyboards that have it use channel aftertouch, where one sensor covers the whole keyboard and pressing harder on one key affects every note.
Polyphonic aftertouch measures each key on its own, so one note in a chord can get vibrato or open up its filter while the others stay still. It is expensive to build, which is why it is still rare.
1978
Prophet-5
Sequential Circuits · Analogue, polyphonic, programmable
- 5 voices
- 2 oscillators per voice + noise
- 40 patch memories
- Microprocessor (Z80)
- Poly-Mod
What it brought: Memory. A microprocessor scanned the keyboard and stored every knob position, so the whole instrument could jump to a different sound at the press of a button. Before this, you couldn't really use a polysynth for three different sounds in one live set. The Prophet-5 made that normal and became the sound of the late 70s and early 80s.
What is patch memory, and why did it need a computer?
A patch is every setting that makes up a sound. Storing it means turning each knob position into a number, and turning those numbers back into control voltages when you recall it.
That job needs a microprocessor. Once there was one in the synth, it could also assign voices, scan the keyboard and later speak MIDI. This is where synths started to have computers inside them.
1982
Juno-60
Roland · Analogue, polyphonic
- 6 voices
- 1 DCO per voice + sub-oscillator
- 56 memories
- Built-in chorus
- Arpeggiator
What it brought: Polyphony you could afford. It had one oscillator per voice, but a sub-oscillator and a lush built-in chorus made it sound much bigger than that. The oscillators were digitally controlled, so they stayed in tune, and memory came as standard. It cost a fraction of a Prophet and ended up all over pop and house records.
What is a DCO?
A VCO (voltage-controlled oscillator) is purely analogue and drifts with temperature, so older synths needed retuning and warming up. A DCO (digitally controlled oscillator) is still an analogue circuit making the wave, but a digital clock keeps its pitch exact.
DCO synths stay in tune and cost less to build. What you lose is a little of the 'alive' drift some players love.
Going digital (1979–1988)
Microchips opened up ways of making sound that analogue circuits couldn't manage: recording real sounds, reading waveforms from memory, and FM. A new standard also let all of these instruments talk to each other.
1979
Fairlight CMI
Fairlight (Australia) · Digital sampler / workstation
- 8 voices
- 8-bit sampling
- Light-pen screen
- Cost about as much as a house
What it brought: Sampling: record any sound and play it back across the keyboard. You could play an orchestra hit, a breaking glass or a choir from the keys. Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush built records around it. The E-mu Emulator (1981), Ensoniq Mirage (1984) and Akai S900 (1986) brought the price down until every studio had a sampler.
What is sampling (and sample-based synthesis)?
A sample is a digital recording. A sampler records a short sound, maps it to the keys and plays it faster or slower to change the pitch. It then usually runs it through a filter and envelope, just like an oscillator.
Nearly every realistic piano, string or drum sound in a keyboard today is sample-based. Yamaha's AWM2 and Korg's PCM engines are this idea with a very large, carefully recorded library in memory.
1981
PPG Wave 2
PPG (Palm Products GmbH) · Hybrid: digital wavetable, analogue filters
- 8 voices
- Digital wavetable oscillators
- Analogue filters
What it brought: Wavetables. Each oscillator reads through a table of 64 single-cycle waveforms, and you can sweep through the table while a note plays. The tone morphs from one wave to the next in a way a filter can't do. Wolfgang Palm's idea became the basis of Waldorf's synths and, much later, of Serum.
What is wavetable synthesis?
An analogue oscillator makes a handful of fixed shapes. A wavetable is a numbered list of many different single-cycle waves stored in memory. The oscillator plays one of them, and a knob, envelope or LFO picks which.
Sweep the position and the timbre changes continuously: hollow, then buzzy, then vocal, all without a filter. That movement is why wavetable synths suit evolving pads and the growling basses of modern electronic music.
1983
MIDI 1.0
Sequential Circuits, Roland and others · Standard, not a synth
- 5-pin DIN cable
- 16 channels
- First shown linking a Prophet-600 and a Jupiter-6
What it brought: A universal language. Dave Smith (Sequential) and Ikutaro Kakehashi (Roland) got the industry to agree on a single way for instruments to send notes and controls to each other. Any keyboard could now play any synth, and home computers could sequence whole songs. It is still in use more than 40 years later.
What is MIDI?
MIDI doesn't carry sound. It carries instructions: 'note 60 on, velocity 100', 'mod wheel at 64', 'change to patch 12'. The receiving instrument makes the sound itself.
That is why a cheap controller keyboard can play a £3,000 synth or a plug-in on a laptop, and why you can record a performance and fix a wrong note afterwards. The MIDI 2.0 update (2020) adds finer resolution and two-way conversation between devices.
1983
DX7
Yamaha · Digital, FM synthesis
- 16 voices
- 6 operators (sine-wave oscillators) per voice
- 32 algorithms
- Velocity-sensitive keys
- MIDI
- Launched at $1,995
What it brought: FM synthesis in an affordable keyboard, and the first mass-market digital synth. Its sound is glassy, bright and percussive: electric pianos, bells, slap bass and brass that analogue synths couldn't do. It sold in numbers no synth had come close to, its E.PIANO 1 preset is on countless 80s records, and it pushed analogue out of fashion for a decade. It was also famously hard to program, with one data slider and a two-line screen, so most owners stuck to the presets.
What is FM synthesis?
FM means frequency modulation. Take two oscillators. The first (the modulator) wobbles the pitch of the second (the carrier). If it wobbles slowly you hear vibrato. If it wobbles very fast, at audio rate, you stop hearing a wobble and hear new harmonics instead: the tone gets brighter and more complex.
Yamaha calls each oscillator an operator. Each is a plain sine wave with its own envelope. The algorithm is the wiring diagram that says which operators modulate which. The DX7 has six operators and 32 algorithms.
Two things decide the sound. The frequency ratio between modulator and carrier sets the harmonics: whole-number ratios sound musical, odd ratios sound metallic and bell-like. The modulator's level sets the brightness. Because every operator has its own envelope, brightness can change over the life of a note. A real piano or bell does the same thing, and a single analogue filter can't copy it.
The catch is that FM is not intuitive. Turning one number up can change the whole character of the sound, rather than just making it a bit brighter. John Chowning discovered the technique at Stanford around 1967, and Yamaha licensed it in the 1970s.
In the catalogue: Yamaha reface DX, Yamaha MONTAGE M6
1987
D-50
Roland · Digital, 'Linear Arithmetic' (LA)
- 16 voices
- Short PCM samples + synthesised waves
- Built-in reverb and chorus
- Joystick
What it brought: The hybrid trick. Short recorded attacks (a breath, a pluck, a hammer) were glued onto synthesised sustains, so a sound could start real and continue as a synth. It was also one of the first synths with built-in digital effects, and its lush presets ('Fantasia') became the sound of the late 80s.
What is LA synthesis?
Memory was expensive in 1987, and the first split-second of a sound is the part that tells your ear what it is. Roland stored only those short attacks as samples and filled in the rest of each note with ordinary synthesis.
The result sounded far more realistic than the memory it used, which made it the stepping stone between pure synthesis and the sample-based workstations that came next.
1988
M1
Korg · Digital, sample-based workstation
- 16 voices
- 8-part multi-timbral
- 8-track sequencer
- Built-in effects
- 4 MB of samples
What it brought: The workstation: a full set of realistic sounds, effects and a sequencer in one keyboard, enough to write a whole track on. It became one of the best-selling synths ever. Its 'M1 Piano' and organ presets defined early-90s house music.
What is a workstation (or 'ROMpler')?
A ROMpler plays back samples held in read-only memory: pianos, strings, drums, basses. It has filters and envelopes to shape them, but no way of recording your own.
A workstation is a ROMpler with a sequencer and effects built in, and it is multi-timbral, so it can play several different sounds at once on different MIDI channels. Today's Yamaha Montage and Korg Nautilus are direct descendants.
In the catalogue: Yamaha MONTAGE M6, Yamaha MODX M6
Modelling, software and modules (1994–2014)
By the 90s, chips were fast enough to calculate a sound as it was played rather than just play recordings back. That was used to imitate real instruments, then to imitate the analogue synths everyone had just sold, and finally to put the whole synth inside a computer.
1994
VL1
Yamaha · Digital, physical modelling
- 2 voices
- Breath controller
- Around $5,000
What it brought: Physical modelling. It simulates the physics of a real instrument, such as a reed vibrating, air in a tube or a bow on a string, instead of playing a recording of one. It responds to breath and pressure the way a real wind instrument does. It was too expensive to sell in numbers, but the idea now lives on in plenty of synths and plug-ins.
What is physical modelling?
A sample is a photograph of one note played one way. A physical model is a set of equations for how the instrument behaves: how hard the reed is blown, how long the tube is, where the string is plucked.
Change how you play and the sound changes the way the real thing would, because it is being calculated live. Modelled pianos, organs and 'analogue modelling' (like Yamaha's AN engine) all come from this idea.
1995
Nord Lead
Clavia (Sweden) · Digital, virtual analogue
- 4 voices (expandable to 12)
- 2 oscillators per voice
- A knob for every function
- Bright red
What it brought: Virtual analogue: an analogue-style synth, with the knobs laid out like an analogue synth, that is really code running on a DSP chip. It was light, stayed in tune and remembered its patches, and it made hands-on subtractive synthesis fashionable again. Roland's JP-8000 (1996) followed and brought the 'supersaw' that defined trance.
What is virtual analogue (VA)?
Virtual analogue is a digital synth programmed to behave like analogue circuits: oscillators, a resonant filter and envelopes, all calculated in software.
You get the familiar subtractive layout without the drift, weight and cost of analogue parts, and usually more voices. Good VA is hard to tell from analogue in a mix. Yamaha's reface CS and the AN-X engine in the Montage M are VA.
In the catalogue: Yamaha reface CS, Yamaha MONTAGE M6
1995
A-100 (the Eurorack format)
Doepfer · Analogue modular standard
- 3U-high modules
- 3.5 mm patch cables
- Width measured in HP
What it brought: Modular synthesis, affordable and open to everyone. Dieter Doepfer's module size and power standard was simple enough for anyone to build to. Hundreds of makers now sell thousands of Eurorack modules, and the 60s modular idea is bigger today than it ever was then.
1999
VST instruments (Neon)
Steinberg · Software
- Runs inside your recording software
- As many copies as the computer can run
What it brought: The synth as a plug-in. Steinberg's VST 2.0 let software instruments run inside a DAW, and the little Neon synth came with it. Since then an unlimited number of synths costs only CPU time, every setting is saved with the song, and classic hardware can be recreated for a fraction of the price. For many producers the first synth they ever use is software.
What is a softsynth (plug-in)?
A softsynth is a synthesiser written as a program that runs inside your DAW (Logic, Ableton, Cubase and so on) or a live host. A MIDI keyboard plays it the same way it would play hardware.
Formats are VST/VST3, AU (Mac) and AAX (Pro Tools). Hardware still wins on hands-on control and on not depending on a computer, which is why controllers and hybrids exist.
2014
Serum
Xfer Records · Software, wavetable
- 2 wavetable oscillators
- Draw or import your own wavetables
- Visual everything
What it brought: Wavetable synthesis made visible. You can watch the waveform change as you move the knobs, and drop in any audio to turn it into a wavetable. Clean, alias-free oscillators and a drag-and-drop modulation system made it the default synth for a generation of electronic producers. Serum 2 followed in 2025.
The analogue revival and new ways to play (2010s–now)
Once software could do everything, hardware had to offer something else: real knobs, real circuits and better ways of playing. Analogue came back, new expressive controllers arrived, and the best current instruments combine several of the older ideas in one box.
2016
minilogue
Korg · Analogue, polyphonic
- 4 voices
- 2 VCOs per voice
- 200 memories
- Built-in oscilloscope display
- About £500
What it brought: Analogue polyphony at a price most people could pay. The revival had started earlier: Moog's Voyager (2002), Dave Smith's Prophet '08 (2007), Arturia's MiniBrute (2012). But four real analogue voices with memory for the price of a mid-range controller keyboard brought it to everyone. Reissues and clones of nearly every classic on this page followed.
2018
MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression)
MIDI Manufacturers Association · Standard, not a synth
- Pitch bend for each note
- Pressure for each note
- Up-and-down slide for each note
What it brought: The CS-80's dream for everyone. MPE became an official MIDI standard in 2018, after controllers such as the ROLI Seaboard (2013) and LinnStrument (2014) had shown what it could do. Each finger can bend, swell and brighten its own note. Synths and plug-ins that support it respond like an acoustic instrument.
What is MPE?
Ordinary MIDI sends pitch bend and pressure for the whole keyboard at once. MPE gives every note its own MIDI channel, so every note can carry its own bend, pressure and slide.
You need an MPE controller and a sound that listens for it. The idea is the same as the CS-80's polyphonic aftertouch, taken further and made standard.
2022
NINA
Melbourne Instruments · Analogue polysynth with digital oscillators
- 12 voices
- 2 analogue VCOs + wavetable + 45 modelled oscillators per voice
- Ladder filter
- Motorised knobs
- 4-part multi-timbral
What it brought: Memory you can see. Recall a patch and every knob physically turns to its saved position, which fixes the oldest problem with programmable synths: the knobs not matching the sound. It also combines ideas from this whole page in one box: analogue oscillators, a Moog-style ladder filter, wavetables and modelled oscillators.
In the catalogue: Melbourne Instruments NINA, Melbourne Instruments DELIA
2023
MONTAGE M
Yamaha · Digital: samples + FM + virtual analogue
- Up to 256 voices (AWM2)
- 8-operator FM-X
- AN-X virtual analogue
- 16 parts
- Channel aftertouch
What it brought: Everything at once. A flagship workstation now combines three of this timeline's big ideas: samples (the Fairlight and M1), FM (the DX7, with two more operators and 88 algorithms) and virtual analogue (the Nord Lead). They run layered together and are controlled from one Super Knob. It is where 60 years of synthesis currently ends up on a single stage keyboard.
In the catalogue: Yamaha MONTAGE M6, Yamaha MONTAGE M7, Yamaha MODX M6
The whole story in one list
- Additive: build a sound from sine waves (Telharmonium, Hammond).
- Voltage control: let one part play another; modules patched with cables (Moog, Buchla).
- Hard-wiring: the useful patch fixed inside one playable box (Minimoog).
- Polyphony: several complete voices, one per note (Oberheim, CS-80).
- Memory: a microprocessor saves and recalls every setting (Prophet-5).
- Sampling: record real sounds and play them from the keys (Fairlight).
- Wavetables: sweep through stored waveforms (PPG).
- MIDI: every instrument speaks one language (1983).
- FM: oscillators modulating oscillators for bright, changing tones (DX7).
- Workstations: samples, effects and a sequencer in one keyboard (M1).
- Modelling: calculate the instrument, or the analogue circuit, live (VL1, Nord Lead).
- Software: the synth as a plug-in (VST).
- Now: analogue again, expression for every note (MPE) and hybrids that do all of the above.