THE RCA ELECTRONIC MUSIC SYNTHESIZER (The mother of all synths) By Batz J Goodfortune The RCA electronic music synthesizer was first used in 1955. It's development was announced by RCA's then chairman of the board, Brig. General David Sarnoff. He said. "It must occur to you that the day is here when the engineer and the artist should join forces and seek to understand the terminology and problems of each other in order to advance together. If you will form an intellectual camaraderie and arrive at a common language with your colleagues in the arts so that they can learn how to make full use of science and technology, you will see the fruits of your genius bloom in the vineyards of the cultural arts. The liberal arts should not shrug off advances in science and technology as too technical to understand. And engineers at their end should not regard music and the arts as outside their natural domain. For more than a quarter of a century the entertainment arts have felt the magic touch of electronics. As a result, music drama, motion pictures, the phonograph and even journalism have taken on new dimension. New interest has been created in them and their audiences have multiplied from thousands to millions. The music synthesizer aptly illustrates how important it has become for the electronics engineer and the musician to understand the achievements and objectives of each other. The same is true for all men and women in the physical sciences in their relationships to those who are working in the humane sciences. "For the good of America and the world in general, the arts and sciences are challenged to work together and bring their respective talents and skills into focus. In effect, men of science and the arts must play on the same team and understand each other's signals so that can score together". ------------------------------------------------- In effect, the RCA electronic music synthesizer is basically a two channel harmonic additive synth. It takes sine waves at various harmonic intervals and adds them together to form complex harmonic structures. It has all the usual things found on modern synths today like envelope generators, portamento etc, however the terminology they used was a little different. Instead of calling the EG and ADSR generator, they called it a "GD&D control." Growth, decay and duration control. The synth has filters but they are manually adjusted and something called a resonator chain which isn't explained. The whole thing is made from Vacuum tube and mechanical technology of the day. It fills a sizable room and consumes a hell of a lot of power. Exactly how big and how much isn't stated. It's not like they produced a spec sheet and colour glossy brochure for prospective buyers. :) It's input device is a pair of piano rolls. Literally piano rolls. They took apart two pianola mechanisms and put them to service as input devices. The parts are played in on a pianola recorder and further encoded with data to control the synth as it plays. These are in turn synchronized to it's output device. A single disk cutting lathe. Since the synth is only two channels I can only assume that the disks where then taken elsewhere and synchronized together like a multitrack recorder to produce finished works. Indeed the recorder points to this as being the way it's done as they explain how a song (Blue Skys by Irving Berlin. Uploaded to hyperreal as an MPEG) is put together. Circa 1958 there was a Mark II version of the RCA electronic music synthesizer. It was modified from the original. It then contained 2 built in paper piano-roll punchers to record the settings and control of the synth as well as 2 cutting lathes. In addition a tape recorder was added. It was originally located at Collumbia-Princeton university's Electronic music centre. However in 1996 I believe it is being pulled down and it's fate is unknown at the time of writing. It would be nice to think that it would be given a good home in the future and kept in working order. This synth produced some unique sounds. even though the relatively modern voltage controlled, transistorized Moog synthesizers also produced unique tones, there is no comparison to the sound of the RCA beast. Listening to it is like listening to a radio broadcast that has been travelling in space for 40 years. Twisted and warped by time like a message in a bottle. The terminology used on the recording is the rudiments of the synthesis language we use today. Like listening to ancient English. You can understand what they're on about but the language has evolved since. Interestingly they refer to the player of a synthesizer as being a "synthesist". Even though they make a distinction between the engineer programming the machine and the musician playing it. The hopes and aspirations mentioned in Brig. General David Sarnoff's speech above, seem to have been fulfilled in modern synth technology but I'm sure he would have never expected things to have progressed in the manner they have today.