Marshall amps, which debuted in 1962, developing into the hundred-watt Marshall Super Lead model 1959 in 1965. Marshall was marked by a separate amplifier head and cabinet holding four twelve-inch speakers, which could be stacked on top of one another to provide a massive wall of sound. Both Marshall and Fender amps rely on vacuum-tube amplification, which, when overdriven at full volume, create an electronic distortion that is one of the most prized and sought-after sounds. By placing the guitar’s pickups close to the speakers, a feedback loop occurs and guitarists in the 1960s discovered how to sustain tones as long as they wanted. This power to control an electrified sound that at any moment could leap above the threshold of pain has given the electric guitar, and those who play it, a special status.
The first major commercial analog synthesizer, named after its inventor Robert Moog (pronounced mohg), hit the public consciousness in 1968 with keyboardist Wendy Carlos’s Switched on Bach, an album of works by J. S. Bach played exclusively on the Moog.22 Released on Columbia, it reached #10 on the pop album chart, an unlikely development for a classical or electronic album. Rock groups picked up on it right away, in the studio and in concert with the portable Minimoog (launched in 1969). The Beatles used the Moog on Abbey Road (1969), at the ends of “Because” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” and it became a staple of progressive rock bands, such as Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (“Lucky Man,” 1970) and Yes (“Excerpts from ‘The Six Wives of Henry VIII,’” 1973). Stevie Wonder embraced the new technology from his first album once he renegotiated his contract when he turned twenty-one (“Superwoman,” “Evil,” 1972).23
Analog synthesizers utilize voltage-controlled oscillators, filters, and amplifiers to create and shape waveforms based on the overtone series. At first they were monophonic, with the Moog and Arp 2600 (1971) dominating the field. Duophonic (two tones at a time) synthesizers soon came (Arp Odyssey, 1972) followed by polyphonic, which could play up to five tones (Prophet 5, 1978) or eight tones (Yamaha CS-80, 1976) at once. The Casio VL-1, a children’s toy (at $70), was one of the first digital synthesizers to hit the market, in 1979. The Casiotone MT-40, released in 1981 (at $ 150) had a similar low-tech sound, although in 1985 it was used for Jamaican Wayne Smith’s “Under Me Sleng Teng,” moving Jamaican music from reggae to a new electronic dancehall era; its instrumental track was used in many subsequent recordings (called versions in Jamaica).
The Roland TR-808 drum machine, which hit the market in 1980 (at $1,000), used synthesized drums sounds, which could be programmed in a sequence and endlessly looped. This led to revolutionary changes in the way in which music was conceived and produced (A. Dunn 2015-v). Early examples include Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “1,000 Knives” (1981), Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing (1982), Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” (1982), Run-D.M.C.’s “It’s Like That” (1983), and Cybotron’s “Clear” (1983). Boss, a division of Roland, had come out with the DR-55 in 1979 (at $200), making it an easily affordable unit. Depeche Mode used the DR-55 in live performance.24
Professional quality digital synthesizers used frequency modulation (FM), in which a sound carrier (generally a sine wave, a pure tone with no overtones) is operated on by a modulator (another sine wave), creating a complex waveform, enlivening the sonic spectrum, which can change over time. Adding more carriers and modulators to the mix can create an extraordinary variety of sounds. The first digital FM synthesizer was the Synclavier, which went public in 1978 (at $13,000). Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” (1981) helped put the Synclavier onto the 1980s soundscape. Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” (1982) opens with sounds created on the Synclavier II (released 1980). Prices soon dropped dramatically, and the Yamaha DX7 digital FM synthesizer released in 1983 (at $2,000) was widely embraced; its sound was pervasive in the 1980s (e.g., the bass line to Kenny Loggins’s 1985 hit “Danger Zone,” which also uses a LinnDrum).25
Whereas synthesizers create new sounds (whether by analog or digital means), samplers record existing sounds digitally (e.g., a snare drum hit, a one-bar drum pattern, a vocal grunt, a bird chirp), play them (or prerecorded presets) back using a keyboard or programming interface, and can loop the recorded sounds. Samplers were initially marketed either as drum machines or keyboard instruments that could play melodies (monophonic) and soon chords (polyphonic). In 1979 both types went on the market.26
The first drum machine to use digital samples hit the commercial market in 1979: the Linn LM-1 (at $5,000). It had a store of sampled drums sounds but could not record new ones. Prince used it extensively, including on The Time’s “777–9311” (1982) and his own “1999” (1982) and “When Doves Cry” (1984). The next generation LinnDrum hit the market in 1982 (at $3,000) adding crash and ride cymbal sounds. E-Mu’s Drumulator (also just playing prerecorded samples) debuted in 1983 (at $1,000). The E-Mu SP-12 (for twelve-bit sampling) debuted in 1985, as the first drum machine that could record its own samples (though at half the rate of CD quality), an extraordinary innovation. The first generation of sample-based hip hop producers used it, including Marley Marl (for MC Shan) and Rick Rubin (for the Beastie Boys). The SP-1200, which debuted in 1987, greatly expanded the capability to record samples, which was exactly what hip hop producers were searching for; it quickly became a staple of the genre. Although it was designed to sample (record) short drum sounds, Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad hacked it to record and loop longer segments of 1970s vinyl records on their second album (It Takes a Nation of Millions, 1988), which put the machine on the map. Its low-tech twelve-bit, 26 kilobyte sampling rate was a plus in this world, adding some noise in its reproduction, and it remained a vital tool into the 1990s, even after new technology (e.g., sixteen-bit sampling) surpassed it.27
The Fairlight CMI (computer musical instrument), released in 1979 (at $25,000), had a keyboard and monitor interface and could record and play back any sound. One prepackaged sample, an orchestral chord from Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite, has gained some unlikely dispersion: a Fairlight was in the studio where Arthur Baker and Afrika Bambaataa recorded the early hip hop classic “Planet Rock” (1982), and they used that sample in the opening and throughout the whole piece (Fink 2005b). The cost of commercial samplers would quickly drop. The E-Mu Emulator digital sampler debuted in 1981 (at $10,000), with Stevie Wonder as one of the first customers. It was on an Emulator in 1984 that Marley Marl made his history-making discovery that a drum sound could be isolated, sampled, and combined with other sampled sounds. Polyphonic sampling (multiple keys triggering samples) arrived in 1984 with up to eight simultaneous voices in the Emulator II (at $8,000). The Ensoniq Mirage debuted in 1984 as the first keyboard sampler that sold for under $2,000.
Questlove points to Stevie Wonder sampling voices on the Cosby Show (aired February 20, 1986) with his Synclavier (a later model that sampled) as “the first time that 99 percent of us who went on to be hip-hop producers saw what a sampler was.” Soon after (in his midteens) he got a Casio SK-1, a toy keyboard sampler, synthesizer, and sequencer released in 1985 (for under $100), on which he learned the fundamentals of isolating and combining sounds, setting him on his path that would bear fruit with the Roots, one of the most innovative groups of the 1990s (Questlove and Greenman 2013: 66–69).
The Akai series of samplers designed by Roger Linn would eventually displace the E-Mu SP-1200, starting with the MPC 60 in 1988, with sixteen-voice polyphony, an upgraded 40 kHz stereo sample rate, Linn’s trademark quantize and swing rhythm correction, and the ability to play and record sequences in real time, combining a drum machine, sampler, and sequencer into one. The MPC 3000 (1994), which defined the sound of hip hop in the 1990s, featured CD quality sixteen-bit, 44.1 kHz sampling, and much more memory. Wu-Tang Clan cofounder and producer RZA has effectively summarized the role of technology in the development of hip hop with reference to the Akai MPC 3000: “If there’s ever a hip hop hall of fame Roger Linn has to be inducted within the first year…. He’s like the motherfucker who made the piano. He’s a genius that should never stop getting props. It’s like how Grandmaster Flash came with the [turntable] scratch—these guys are the true foundation of our culture. Even to this day 80 percent of hip hop is produced on that machine” (qtd. in Noakes 2014).28
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