11 Jul
2023
11 Jul
'23
2:51 p.m.
The Synclavier I was commercially available in 1977, based off the
Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer of earlier times. The core was a New
England Digital minicomputer architecture (they did sell just the
minicomputer to the military, as a side).
The truth is that there were quite a few digital synths in labs in 1977.
--
Will
On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 10:22 AM W2HX via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
And by 1979 there was the fairlight...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_CMI
73 Eugene W2HX
Subscribe to my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@w2hx/videos
Speaking of old computerized music playing
technology, there are two from the PLATO system at the University of Illinois that are
perhaps the earliest of all in their category and not all that well known.
The first of the two is the GSW (Gooch Synthetic Woodwind), which is a four voice, 7
levels per voice, square wave synthesizer. It's fully documented in Sherwin's US
patent 4,206,675. That one was attached to the auxiliary device port of a PLATO terminal
and driven from the host computer, at 1200 bps. It worked quite well for playing music
and was widely used for music education. It's a very simple device as you can see
from the full schematics (which are, surprisingly, given in the patent). That patent was
filed in 1977 but the invention is somewhat older, perhaps 1975 or 1976.
The followon to that is the GCS (Gooch Cybernetic Synthesizer), unfortunately not well
documented. That's a 16 voice programmable waveform (256 words by 16 bits per voice),
more levels (256?), driven as a peripheral off the 8080-based "programmable PLATO
terminal" from a program running in that terminal. So the musical score level
definition of what to play still came from the host, still at 1200 bps, but the
attack/decay etc. shaping would happen in the terminal. That one was a bit of an
electrical muddle, with memory, logic, and D/A per voice followed by a 16 input combiner.
Getting the analog parts to work right was a hairy task with far too many trimpots.
Sherwin vowed that any followup would be digital all the way to one final D/A, which of
course later became the answer in the PC sound cards, but if he did that it was after I
left. The GCS was built around 1977. There were some interesting related pieces of work,
such as a speed-sensing piano keyboard (so unlike an electronic organ you could have
dynamics, exactly as on a piano), a music editing system with a score printing program to
print on a dot matric (electrostatic) printer, and some other stuff.
I'm not sure if the GCS is the earliest fully programmable waveform digital music
synthesizer, but if not it is close.
paul