On stage during a performance at the Peabody Institute, Sam Pluta sits behind his instrument: a laptop connected to a joystick and two iPads. To his right, pianist Cory Smythe plays arpeggios that ...

Somewhat confusing interface, like most synthesizers. The world of modular synthesis is a gearhead’s paradise. During the Covid-19 quarantine, I watched my ex-boyfriend and his friends become obsessed ...

The Yamaha DX7 is one of the most iconic synthesizers that emerged in the early 1980s, and is still very popular today. That said, with even the newest of these having left the factory back in 1989, ...

Sometime in the mid-two-thousands, when people would still hand you cassette tapes or CDs at shows or in record stores or during hangouts in someone’s parents’ basement or smoke-filled apartment, I ...

The Yamaha DX7 didn’t just join the sound of the '80s, it became it. Its metallic, glassy tones were everywhere, from chart-topping pop to moody ballads and genre-defining soundtracks. As one of the ...

Almost every well-known manufacturer has MIDI keyboards for controlling a digital audio workstation (DAW) and software synthesizers in its range. To stand out from the crowd, M-VAVE recently launched ...

How Japanese ingenuity transformed Western music from within. Tina Weymouth and David Byrne of Talking Heads, performing in front of a Roland Jazz Chorus amplifier in 1980.Credit...Gie Knaeps/Getty ...

As the 1970s turned into the 1980s, a significant change was taking hold in the music world in the form of the adoption of electronic instruments, namely synthesizers. Progressive rock bands like ...

If you can't get enough of the unmistakable, shrill and often bubbling sound of the SID sound chip in the C64, you can use the open-source cartridge "TeensyROM" to connect any musical instrument to ...

This is The Orchid, a new instrument from a new company, Telepathic Instruments, set up by Kevin Parker, the musician, producer and brains behind Tame Impala. The Orchid is a chord generator, a ...