The Concise NME Guide To Electronic Music & Synthesised Sound PART TWO — Synthesisers
Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 12 January 1980
POMP
THE trouble with synthesisers is actually playing them, accepting their status as sound-generators and starting from scratch. Mechanical keyboards were included in early synth design to make them more accessible to 'musicians', who were unfamiliar with the principles of electronic music composition. (The mountains, it seems, came to Mohammed). This resulted in the imposition of a preordained status of 'keyboard', like a piano or organ, which the synth has never shaken off, and the subsequent application of piano and organ techniques. This is where things first went wrong...
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