The most commonly used electronic instruments are synthesizers, so-called because they artificially generate sound using techniques such as additive, subtractive, FM and physical modeling synthesis to create sounds. Synthesizers are used for the composition of electronic music and in live performance.



A brief history

The first electronic sound synthesizer, an instrument of awesome dimensions, was developed by the American acoustical engineers Harry Olson and Herbert Belar in 1955 at the Radio Corporation of America laboratories at Princeton, N.J. The information was fed to the synthesizer encoded on a punched paper tape. It was designed for research into the properties. Dr. Robert Moog introduced the first practical commercial modern music synthesizer with his Moog synthesizer. This instrument used a series of tone generators with keys that would adjust the pitch of the tone generators. The first digital synthesizers were academic experiments in sound synthesis using digital computers.

A brief discussion on electronic sound synthesizer

The word synthesis means to produce by combining separate elements. Thus, synthesized sound is sound that a musician builds from component elements. A synthesized sound may resemble a traditional acoustic musical timbre, or it may be completely novel and original. This characteristic is common to all synthesized music. Electronically-generated music has not only generated its own totally separate field of music, but several sub-genres. An electronic music synthesizer is capable of creating sounds that are quite unlike any other instrument known to mankind. Creating and using electronic synthesizers and related sound equipment involves considerable aspects of electrical engineering, physics, and math. Using synthesizers to create music is a field where all of these seemingly disparate branches of knowledge come together to produce what is quite possibly the most elegant fusion of art and science currently known to humanity.

Important features of Electronic sound synthesizer

Some of the most important features which are responsible for creating heavenly music from an electronic sound synthesizer are Oscillators, Filters, Envelope, Amplifier and Equalizer.

Oscillators - An oscillator is simply a circuit that generates a repeating electrical wave, like a sine wave, square wave, or saw tooth wave. The oscillator is sometimes called a VCO. An oscillator on a synthesizer usually allows varying the pitch, volume, and shape of the wave to make the tone sound different.

Filters - A filter is a processing element that does something with a sound, usually eliminating part of a sound. The filter on a synthesizer is sometimes called a VCF. It might eliminate sounds of a certain pitch or volume while allowing other sounds to pass through.

Envelope - The envelope generator is most commonly used to control the amplitude or volume of the sound, by routing it to the control input of the VCA. It is even used to control the timbre of the sound, by routing it to the control input of the VCF.

Amplifier - The amplifier can raise, or lower the height of the waveform, thereby raising or lowering the volume of the sound. To control the volume of a sound in the synthesizer, the signal is passed through an amplifier circuit.

Equalizer - An equalizer is a tool which allows you to selectively amplify or attenuate certain frequency ranges of sound.