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Moog synthesizer
The wall of patch cables where electronic music left the laboratory. Robert Moog's modular system was a set of separate modules that a player wired together by hand, and for most listeners it was an oddity until Wendy Carlos used one to record Bach.
Switched-On Bach, released by Columbia in 1968, was the first electronically produced album to climb the pop charts, won three Grammy Awards and became the first classical album to go platinum. It made the synthesizer something a record buyer wanted to hear, and every later instrument on this list grew from that change of attitude.
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Minimoog
The synth that made funk basslines squelch. By putting oscillators, filter and keyboard in one portable box, the Minimoog turned the synthesizer into something a band could take on stage, and over its eleven years on sale it sold around 12,000 units.
Its heavy, fat low end is the point. Parliament used it in place of a bass guitar on "Flashlight", Kraftwerk put it on Autobahn and The Man-Machine, and Giorgio Moroder carried it into disco. Prog keyboard players such as Rick Wakeman of Yes took it in the opposite direction, into soaring solo leads. If one monosynth sound defines the 1970s, this is it.
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Prophet-5
Polyphony you could save and recall. Sequential Circuits' Prophet-5 offered five voices, two oscillators per voice, and a patch memory that stored every knob setting, so a sound built in the studio could be called up instantly on stage.
That practicality made it a natural chord machine for synth-pop and new wave. Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Vince Clarke and Kraftwerk all used one, and John Carpenter built his film scores on it. Choose it to hear where the warm, brassy polyphonic chords of early-1980s electronic pop come from, before digital synths cooled everything down.
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Fairlight CMI
The instrument that put the word "sampling" into music. Introduced in 1979, the Fairlight CMI recorded real sounds and played them back from a keyboard, at a price only top studios could pay.
What it gave pop was sounds lifted from the world rather than synthesized, played like any other keyboard voice. Its users included Peter Gabriel, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Trevor Horn and Jan Hammer, and the glossy, collage-like production of 1980s art-pop owes it a great deal. Every sampler further down the timeline is a cheaper answer to the question the Fairlight asked.
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Linn LM-1
Roger Linn's drum computer swapped the bleeps of earlier rhythm boxes for sampled drum sounds, and cost $5,000 when it came out. That made it a studio tool for the well-funded, and it shaped the sound of early-1980s pop and funk.
Prince is the reason to know it. On "When Doves Cry" he dropped an LM-1 beat into the opening and let it run for the whole song, tuning a cross-stick snare down by about an octave and running the drums through his guitar pedals for that odd, knocking sound. It shows the LM-1 at its best: a machine that rewards abuse as much as accuracy.
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Roland TR-808
The booming kick that never went away. Roland released the TR-808 in 1980, and its synthesized drums sounded nothing like a real kit, which is exactly why producers loved it: a deep, sustained bass drum, a snappy snare and that unmistakable clap and cowbell.
Yellow Magic Orchestra used it on "1000 Knives", Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" gave it a hit, and Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" pushed it to the front of early hip-hop. Decades later it became a building block of crunk and trap, where the long 808 kick doubles as the bassline. No drum machine is more central to hip-hop and its many offshoots.
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Oberheim DMX
Harder and punchier than the 808, the Oberheim DMX played sampled drum sounds and sold for around $3,000, a little more accessible than the Linn.
It became a New York hip-hop staple: producer Davy DMX took his name from it and used it on his own records and with Run-DMC and Kurtis Blow. The same machine crossed into new wave, playing a starring role on New Order's "Blue Monday". Choose it to hear how early rap got its stiff, hard-hitting snare before samplers took over.
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Roland TB-303
Misunderstood at its 1981 launch, then reborn as the sound of acid house. The TB-303 is a small bass synthesizer with its own step sequencer, and its resonant filter produces a rubbery, squelching line that sounds nothing like a bass guitar, which turned out to be its appeal.
In Chicago, Phuture's "Acid Tracks", often cited as one of the first acid house records, paired that squelching resonance with TR-909 drums. By the late 1980s the silver box had defined the acid house movement. Producers still twist its cutoff and resonance knobs live, and its acid line remains one of the most imitated sounds in dance music.
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Casiotone MT-40
A home keyboard that started a genre by accident. The Casiotone MT-40 went on sale in 1981 with preset backing patterns, one of them a "rock" rhythm programmed by Casio engineer Okuda Hiroko.
In Jamaica that preset became the Sleng Teng riddim behind Wayne Smith's "Under Mi Sleng Teng", a smash hit in 1985 on the Jammy's label, and Casio's little keyboard is credited with playing midwife to digital dancehall. Proof that genre-defining gear does not have to be expensive, or even meant for professionals.
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Roland TR-909
The four-to-the-floor kick of house and techno. Released in 1983 as the 808's successor, the TR-909 combined analog drum synthesis with digitally sampled cymbals, a first for Roland, and it was no immediate success: Roland stopped after about 10,000 units.
Its punchy kick, crisp hats and clap found their home in the club scenes of Chicago, Detroit, London, Manchester and Berlin, and became the default grammar of house and techno. Roland reckons it has powered more tracks and live performances than any other drum machine. Paired with a TB-303 it is the complete toolkit of acid house.
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Yamaha DX7
Digital FM synthesis in a keyboard working musicians could buy. Yamaha debuted the DX7 in 1983, and Yamaha says it quickly became the best-selling synthesizer of all time, replacing warm analog filters with glassy, bell-like and metallic tones that analog machines struggled to produce.
Its chiming electric pianos, slap basses and bright brass are the sound of mid-1980s pop and power ballads, and its range of timbres won over musicians, composers and sound designers alike. Choose it to understand why so much 1980s radio sounds clean, sparkling and slightly cold.
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Roland Alpha Juno
Home of the "hoover", the swooping, menacing rave stab. The Alpha Juno-1 arrived in 1985 as a modest polysynth, but its factory preset "What The", programmed by Eric Persing, hid a sound nobody expected to become an anthem.
Joey Beltram made it the centerpiece of Second Phase's "Mentasm", and the Dutch duo Human Resource used it on "Dominator", released in 1991 on a hardcore label and an immediate rave hit. The hoover became a signature of early-1990s rave and hardcore, and producers in those styles still recreate it.
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E-mu SP-1200
The gritty sampler behind golden-age hip-hop. Released in 1987, the SP-1200 offered ten seconds of sampling at 12-bit resolution and 26.04 kHz, and its SSM filter chips made everything it touched sound crunchy.
That raw sound, not its specifications, was the attraction for a generation of now-legendary hip-hop producers, and it helped usher in a golden era of beats. Its reach went past rap too: Todd Terry, Daft Punk and The Prodigy are among its users. Choose it to hear where the dusty, compressed punch of boom-bap drums comes from.
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Korg M1
The piano and organ of 1990s house. Korg's M1, released in 1988, was a completely sample-based workstation with built-in effects and a sequencer, and it reportedly sold about 250,000 units.
Its presets became the music. The driving piano in Madonna's "Vogue" is built around the M1's Piano 16 sound, the Organ 2 preset carries the bass in Robin S's "Show Me Love", and the bright M1 piano inspired a whole strand known as piano house. Choose it to recognize the stabs and chords that defined club and rave records for the following decade.
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Akai MPC
MPC60 (1988) and the series it started
Designed by Roger Linn with Akai, the MPC60 launched in 1988 as an all-in-one sampling workstation, and its 16 responsive pads and swing function turned drum programming into something closer to playing. Swing could pull a rigid sequence into a deeper pocket, and that feel became the heartbeat of hip-hop production.
DJ Premier settled on the MPC60 as his main sequencer for Gang Starr, Dr. Dre leaned on the MPC3000 for The Chronic and 2001, and J Dilla's final album relied heavily on the MPC3000 too. Atlanta's DJ Toomp switched from the SP-1200 to the MPC60 in 1989, a line that runs on into trap.
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Akai S1000
The rack behind the breakbeat. Akai's S series was the sampler range British studios favored, and the S1000 of 1988 moved it up from the 12-bit S900 and S950 to 16-bit stereo sampling at 44.1 kHz, for about £2,900 at launch in the UK.
What producers did with it mattered more than the specification: they chopped classic funk breaks into pieces, then twisted, warped and time-stretched them far beyond the original tempo. Hardcore, jungle and drum and bass grew out of that habit, and the artifacts of stretching a break too far became part of the sound rather than a flaw to hide. Choose it to understand how a borrowed drum solo became the engine of a whole genre.
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Roland JP-8000
The supersaw, and with it the euphoric lead of trance. Roland's JP-8000 of 1996 was one of the early virtual analog synths, recreating analog character with digital processing, and it added a Super Saw oscillator that combines seven slightly detuned sawtooth waves into one huge, shimmering tone.
That waveform became hugely popular in trance as the decade progressed and made the JP-8000 a dance-market favorite. Its wide, chorused leads are the sound of the late-1990s trance anthem. Choose it to understand where the stadium-sized hooks of that era came from.
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