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Kent Sandvik Newbie

Kent Sandvik

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Lucky Man might be the first rock recording ever with a synth solo.

 

Um...

 

No.

 

So which one is it then? Not the word 'might', was not sure myself. Lucky man is from 1971, BTW.

 

"Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys (1966) had a freaking Theremin in it! :D

 

Yep but it was a theremin, not a synth.

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ski Proficient

ski

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1971? No, it was 1973. Same year that Dark Side of the Moon was released. I'm pretty sure you got that info on the web, so maybe there was an earlier release, like outside the US?

 

There's synth work on Abbey Road which I'm pretty sure predates both of those. Something in my brain is also telling me that there's a Stevie Wonder track that features a synth solo that predates Lucky Man. Someone'll have to look that one up to see if I'm right about that tho.

 

Theremin

 

Uh oh... I can see it coming... the debate moving to "what's the definition of a synthesizer", or, "what's a solo". :shock:

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ski Proficient

ski

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WAIT! I KNEW IT!

 

Popcorn!! Are any of you old enough to remember this one? (1969)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_(song)

 

(Make sure the "_(song)" part is included in the URL)

 

 

[EDIT] --- Thinking about this and... DUH!!! Edgar Winter, Frankenstein. Just looked this one up to be sure, and just like with so many classic records of that year (1973) it features, well, we know what it features.

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Kent Sandvik Newbie

Kent Sandvik

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1971? No, it was 1973. Same year that Dark Side of the Moon was released. I'm pretty sure you got that info on the web, so maybe there was an earlier release, like outside the US?

 

There's synth work on Abbey Road which I'm pretty sure predates both of those. Something in my brain is also telling me that there's a Stevie Wonder track that features a synth solo that predates Lucky Man. Someone'll have to look that one up to see if I'm right about that tho.

 

Theremin

 

Uh oh... I can see it coming... the debate moving to "what's the definition of a synthesizer", or, "what's a solo". :shock:

 

Lucky Man was released 1971.

 

A synth is basically something electronic that oscillates. I don't classify a theremin as synth, myself. Could be wrong. If so, the first synth music released was part of Disney's Fantasia.

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Kent Sandvik Newbie

Kent Sandvik

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WAIT! I KNEW IT!

 

Popcorn!! Are any of you old enough to remember this one? (1969)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_(song)

 

(Make sure the "_(song)" part is included in the URL)

 

 

[EDIT] --- Thinking about this and... DUH!!! Edgar Winter, Frankenstein. Just looked this one up to be sure, and just like with so many classic records of that year (1973) it features, well, we know what it features.

 

Popcorn does not have a rock synth solo, as far as I know. So in that sense Lucky Man 1971 is still the one, me thinks. Frankenstein came out 1973.

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Kent Sandvik Newbie

Kent Sandvik

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Kent, linky to where you're getting the 1971 date from?

 

Actually their debut album came out 1970 with the track:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson,_Lake_%26_Palmer_(album)

 

and the single with Lucky Man 1971 so the more correct time is actually 1970.

 

BTW, as a 12-year old ELP fan I sent them a fan letter and got back an autographed picture. Don't know where that one disappeared through all the jumps across this planet.

 

PS: Could someone fix this web site, it's close to impossible to post on it just now due to all the 500 web errors...?

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Kent Sandvik Newbie

Kent Sandvik

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A synth is basically something electronic that oscillates. I don't classify a theremin as synth, myself.

 

What do you think a theremin has?

 

http://www.strangeapparatus.com/Theremin.html

 

Yes, I might be wrong then, was always hoping that synths had more than an oscillator but by that definition it's a synth. Still, Beach Boys' Good vibration does not have a synth solo, exactly. And we could trace back the origins of popular synth music to Fantasia and Hewlett Packard of all people.

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ski Proficient

ski

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OK, thanks Kent. 1971 it is. If we're going to limit the focus to solos in "rock" or "progressive rock" then Lucky Man might just take the trophy for "first". If the category is "pop" then Good Vibrations has that date beat (I'd call the oooo-weee-oooo a solo, personally), as does Micky Dolenz' performance on this one.
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Kent Sandvik Newbie

Kent Sandvik

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OK, one more from the dark recesses of my brain... Isn't there synth (and perhaps solos) on Bowie's "Space Oddity"?

 

It uses a Stylophone, pocket electronic organ, for the 1/3 break and the rest of the song arrangements. This is the 1969 version, not the later versions.

 

Brian Eno did wacko stuff in Roxy Music 1972-73 with an EMS VCS3, too, for example on the track Ladytron.

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Jordi Torres Veteran

Jordi Torres

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A synth is basically something electronic that oscillates

 

Good one!

 

The theremin uses the heterodyne principle to generate an audio signal. The instrument's pitch circuitry includes two radio frequency oscillators. One oscillator operates at a fixed frequency. The frequency of the other oscillator is controlled by the performer's distance from the pitch control antenna.

 

From the almighty wikipedia.

 

J.

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behyer Newbie

behyer

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Thanks for backing me up there, Sandvik, Lucky Man was on the eponymous debut album of ELP in 1970. And while we're talking ELP, Trilogy came out in '72 with From The Beginning on it, which along with a guitar solo, used synths for textures and fills.

 

Re the other stuff, I don't count a theremin as a synth, it's a radio. Nor is a Mellotron a synth, it's just a fancy organ. From Wikipedia, "The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic keyboard..." "The heart of the instrument is a bank of parallel linear magnetic audio tape strips." It doesn't synthesize anything.

 

Back to ELP. In '73, Brain Salad Surgery was released, with some seriously out-there synths. (There's an old story about who exactly played the guitar solo on Welcome Back My Friends... since Greg Lake didn't have the chops. The solo is uncredited. Seems that, in the midst of the "competition" between the supergroups, Keith Emerson was recruiting Jimi Hendrix for the band, but fate intervened. Hmmm.) But I digress. Listen to Still, You Turn Me On, with its processed percussion and keyboards, and you have ELP's fourth synth-based pop hit in three years. In 1973! Top that!

 

And re the late '70s, early 80s Prophet 5 bands, Devo ruled that bunch.

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Kent Sandvik Newbie

Kent Sandvik

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Yes, I take back the notion that a theremin is a synth. Wiki has a good description:

 

"Synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that uses filters and tone generators to create waveforms which are then processed to generate sound."

 

As far as I know theremins don't have filters neither any other processing so that excludes that from the pool of instrumentation using synthesizers.

 

It's kind of amazing now afterwards to see the peaks in popular music such as early 70ies with prog stuff using Moogs and early eighties using cheaper/user-friendly synths for pop music. It all happened so quickly, bands and artists inspired each other.

 

And yes ELP rocks!

 

Something I don't know is who was one of the first guitar players to use guitar synths. Just guessing Fripp, Belew, Todd Rundgren did some weird stuff feeding his guitar into EMS Synth 1973 but maybe that's no true synthesis. Same with David Gilmour 1972. Pat Metheny? But that was around 1978 or so with the Roland GR-300.

 

This has some more info: http://www.mulhern.com/articles/musician_0595_guitarsynths.htm

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ski Proficient

ski

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Regarding the Wikipedia description... :shock:

 

It's an incomplete, sophomoric description at best. (Sometimes the info on Wikipedia just kills me). And if that description is to be believed then a bass sound consisting of just a sine wave (without the use of filters) made on a synth isn't a synth. It's... a theremin? No, it's a... radio? No, of course, it's indisputably made from a synth all the same. The same can be said of the default EXS-24 sine wave when used (popularly, it would seem) as a bass synth. Sure, it's a sampler. But it's playing back a synthesized tone, one not recorded (as in a sample or a Mellotron) and in that context it's a synthesizer.

 

Going by the Wiki description, a DX7 (no filters) wasn't a synth either. Neither would instruments which employ additive synthesis (like a Hammond tonewheel organ). Still, when you consider that certain drawbar settings can be given traditional names (just like those of pipe organs, including "flute" and "vox humana"), we see that the notion of what sounds are considered "synthesized" changes with time and tastes. The vibrato and chorale settings on a Hammond are created (synthesized) mechanically, as are the waveforms (tonewheels) but we can still probably draw the line at what's an organ and what's a synth there. However...

 

A theremin is a radio? Sure, it uses radio frequencies to generate sound artificially (heterodyning producing a sine wave tone). But that doesn't make it a radio.

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Jordi Torres Veteran

Jordi Torres

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...and tone generators to create waveforms which are then processed to generate sound."

 

A theremin's tone generators are its radio-frequency oscillators.

 

As far as I know theremins don't have filters neither any other processing so that excludes that from the pool of instrumentation using synthesizers

 

A filter is just a common component in synthesizers. If a synth doesn't have a filter (or you choose not to use its filters, in case it's a modular synth, for example) the thing doesn't suddenly cease to be a synth.

 

J.

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