![]() ![]() Unless you were Brian Eno, who teased out wonderfully rich and layered tones from his DX7-including those on his ‘80s ambient LPs and U2’s Joshua Tree-most people bypassed programming in favor of the factory presets. Compared to an analog synth’s instant knob-tweaking gratification, many users found the instrument’s “change-one-component-at-a-time” approach challenging. Not that the DX7 didn’t have its critics. As a keyboard player, you could get a sequencer and a drum machine and make music without going into a studio and hiring a bunch of musicians.” And if the 32 factory presets approximating strings, pianos, flutes, brass, bass, timpani, bells, and more didn’t necessarily sound like the real thing, they did have a character all their own. “It didn’t sound like anything else on the market… It was programmable, had patch memory and was one of the first keyboards with MIDI, so you could integrate and communicate with other systems. In fact, Tschetter notes, the DX7 had a “convergence of things in its favor” that made it ideal for studios and home users. “Love the DX7 Rhodes sound or not, it’s an expressive sound and it provides this piano-like experience that was dynamic and could cut through a band with a bunch of guitars.”Īt just under two grand (about $5k in today’s dollars), the DX7 wasn’t cheap, but it was less expensive and more portable than contemporary counterparts like the high-end Synclavier 1. “Analog synthesizers were great but they weren’t really good at being expressive,” says Tschetter. sound affected by finger pressure, just like on a real piano) made the device appeal to all kinds of keyboardists, not just synth and electronic music enthusiasts. The DX7 was sleek with green switches, a small LCD screen, and a slider to scroll through options in place of the plethora of knobs, buttons, and faders typical of analog synths back then. After a few years refining the original algorithm-and a proof-of-concept release (the GS-1 synth in 1980)-Yamaha released the DX7, a synth that would change the way musicians (and the rest of us) thought about synthesizers. But a team of Yamaha staffers visiting Stanford in the early ‘70s understood Chowning’s vision and licensed the technology. Chowning immediately saw FM’s commercial potential, but keyboard manufacturers such as Hammond and Wurlitzer turned him down. Whereas analog synths of the era used “subtractive synthesis”-requiring users to tweak knobs to filter and shape sound- FM allows a sound wave to rapidly increase or decrease its vibrations, which create entirely new frequencies and harmonically rich overtones that hadn’t really been heard before. “He was trying to write a program that would put vibrato on a sound and, in doing so, made that vibrato really, really fast-to the point where it changed the original sound into something more complex.” ![]() Chowning was a composer writing computer programs to help him compose electronic music and, as I understand it, stumbled upon FM by mistake,” says Yamaha Product Marketing Manager Nate Tschetter. That’s where Stanford University professor John Chowning made his groundbreaking discovery: frequency modulation synthesis (FM, for short). Japanese-based Yamaha birthed the DX7 in 1983, but its roots go back much further - to late ‘60s California. ![]() We asked a few insiders to help us understand this revolutionary machine’s unique charms and where and how its distinctive sounds can be heard in pop music today. Additionally, the DX7 introduced technological innovations that changed how electronic music is made. Its punchy bass, breathy flutes, and crystalline bell and piano tones literally soundtracked much of the 1980s, gracing hits by Tina Turner, Kenny Loggins, A-Ha and Hall & Oates as well as the scores of movies like Top Gun and Ghostbusters. You don’t have to be a synthesizer geek to appreciate the Yamaha DX7’s impact on pop culture. When you think of ’80s music, what are the sounds that come to mind? Maybe drum machines? Guitars drenched in echo? Anguished vocals? ![]()
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