(I know I know: it's sh
it but it's the best I could get after several attempts. It says
"Voice(s) of the Future: The History of the Synthesiser")
Without doubt, there’s one instrument which has been and is identified with progressive rock, even though it has been used in other genres since. Prog rock, along with maybe space and psychedelia, was one of the first music genres to utilise the incredible power of the synthesiser, allowing all kinds of crazy effects and sounds to be made, and also allowing a prog rock band to introduce other instruments into their music (cello, sax, harmonica and so on) that they may not have had, needed players for or strictly speaking knew how to play. Once you could play a synth line that instrument could be reproduced, often so well that you would swear it was actually being played itself. Synthesisers allowed a prog band to really fill out their sound; whereas before you had the basics of guitar, bass, drums and maybe keyboards, now the keyboard, in the form of a synthesiser, could be almost any instrument required or desired. From grand piano to Jew’s harp and from violin to even percussion sounds like castanets, a good synthesiser could produce them all.
In later eras, of course, this led to the synthesiser, or “synth”, being accused of not being a real instrument, of creating everything - including, if required, guitar and bass - on its keyboard, and therefore only really mimicking the sounds of those other instruments. It allowed, however, one man or woman to become an entire band, and many have gone on to successful careers needing nobody else in their band but themselves. Obvious proponents of this kind of one-man-band using a synth would be Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis and the like, with less perhaps well-known but nevertheless successful artists in the field of black metal (Panopticon) and electronica (Solar Fields) .
But the world-famous synth had humble beginnings, and this is where I intend to trace them, from the very first electronic organs and up to analogue synthesisers, right up to the Korgs, Yamahas and Rolands stacked up like rows of rockets on an artillery truck that we see today.