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.