10.6

727Logic Pro Instruments
In contrast to previous modular synthesizers, it was neither necessary nor possible for
players to connect the modules of the Minimoog as they saw fit. All of the modules’
connecting circuitry was hard-wired at the factory. The type and number of modules was
also fixed. This simplified manufacturing considerably, and cut costs dramatically. A major
marketing campaign saw the Minimoog become a huge success. Without alteration to its
basic design, 13,000 Minimoogs were sold worldwide, right up to 1981.
Storage and polyphony
Customers weren’t entirely satisfied with the Minimoog and contemporary synthesizers,
however. Although musicians no longer had to contend with countless cords in order to
play a synthesizer, they still had to deal with numerous knobs and switches before they
could do something as simple as switch from one sound to another. Moreover, keyboardists
were bored with playing monophonic melody lines on synthesizers—they wanted to play
chords. Although dual-voice keyboards that connected two monophonic synthesizers were
available as early as 1970, customers wanted more.
Attempting to satisfy these demands, two schools of thought emerged in synthesizer
design. One approach called for an independent, monophonic synthesizer to be assigned
to every key on the keyboard. To this end, designers married the design principles of
electronic organs to synthesizer technology. Although this breed of instrument was fully
polyphonic—all notes of the keyboard could be heard simultaneously—it wasn’t as versatile
in its control options as a true synthesizer. The first fully polyphonic synthesizer to feature
this type of design was the Moog Polymoog, released in 1975. Developed primarily by
David Luce, it featured 71 weighted, velocity-sensitive keys.
In the second approach to polyphonic sound generation, a synthesizer was assigned to a
key only when the key was pressed—in effect, semi-polyphony. As early as 1973, American
company E-MU Systems introduced the Modular Keyboard System Series 4050, a digital
keyboard that could be connected to up to ten monophonic synthesizers, and thus had
ten-voice polyphony. The problem with this approach was that very few people owned ten
synthesizers, and the amount of time and effort involved in programming a new sound was
an overwhelming deterrent. Digital memory was still waiting to be developed, and, once
again, the evolution of semi-polyphonic synthesizers required the qualities that only digital
keyboards could provide.
The same prerequisite—digital engineering—eventually led to synthesizers that allowed
sounds to be stored. Without the benefit of digital technology, early attempts at storing
sounds included some unusual solutions. For example, a synthesizer with analog
programmability required a dedicated row featuring all of the instrument’s control elements
for every “memory” slot. In this case, a selector switch accessed one of the many identical
control panels and connected it to the sound generator.
The first synthesizer featuring storage slots implemented in this manner was the 1975
Yamaha GX1. The control elements for the system’s storage slots were so small that they
could be adjusted only by using jeweler’s screwdrivers and complicated tools—called
programmers and comparators.