Yamaha’s DX7 synthesiser changed modern music

By B.R.

THE 1980s was, by any measure, an eclectic musical decade. It was a time for kohl-eyed kids to strike poses to electro-pop and for the mullet-haired to raise a clenched fist while listening to glam metal. It was a fine time, too, for flat-topped soul boys and for New Romantic preeners. For the rest, there was a clan of pop royalty to align with, whether George Michael, Michael Jackson or Madonna. Yet, as different as those styles were, they somehow all shared an unmistakable 80s sound. That is down to the influence of a single instrument: the Yamaha DX7 synthesiser.

The DX7 can lay claim to being one of the most important advances in the history of modern popular music. Perhaps not since Leo Fender attached a pick-up to a six-string in 1949, thus introducing the first mass-market electric guitar, can an instrument claim to have so profoundly altered the soundscape of its time. To get a sense of its impact, consider research from Megan Lavengood, a professor of music theory at George Mason University in Virginia. The DX7 came loaded with dozens of sounds, from strings to brass to woodwind. Yet according to Ms Lavengood, in 1986 just one of those presets—“E PIANO 1”—can be heard on around 40% of the singles that made it to number one on America’s Billboard charts. (It is the bell-like piano heard on, for example, George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” and Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All”.) During the same year, calculates Ms Lavengood, 40% of country-music number ones also featured E PIANO 1. So did 61% of R’n’B hits.

Grasping why the DX7 became so dominant means understanding what went before it. The analogue synths from the 1970s—like the Moogs beloved by prog-rock bands such as Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer—were fantastically expensive and came with a circuit board the size of a kitchen dresser. That made them accessible only to wealthy rock stars with a retinue of roadies. Using them required deep technical know-how. Their timbres were created “subtractively”—by filtering out frequencies from a base sound like, it was said, a sculptor chiselling a block of marble. Keyboardists needed to understand how to adjust oscillators, amplifiers and modulators by twisting knobs, sliding faders and connecting cables. Even then, they were often monophonic, capable of producing only one note at a time.

By the late 1970s, the first digital keyboards started to come onto the market. These were less clunky and could play sampled sounds yet they lacked the processing power to make them particularly useful. They also cost a packet. The Fairlight CMI, released in 1979, was priced at $25,000—or, adjusted for inflation, roughly $88,000 today.

The DX7 changed the proposition. Its story can be dated to 1967 and a professor at Stanford called John Chowning. That year Mr Chowning discovered how to synthesise sounds using frequency modulation, or FM. (In essence using one signal to modulate the pitch of another, thus producing a new sound frequency.) He hawked his new algorithm around some of the most famous makers of electronic musical instruments of the time, including Hammond and Wurltitzer. All turned him down. Then in 1973 he showed it to Yamaha. The Japanese conglomerate was already one of the world’s leading musical-instrument makers but, crucially, it was also stuffed full of engineers and had an appetite for disruption. It licensed the technology and set about turning the lofty synthesiser into a humble consumer product.

In 1983 it released the DX7. With it, Yamaha had discovered a “magic potion”, says Mark Vail, a synthesiser historian. The combination of digital FM technology and Yamaha’s expertise resulted in an instrument that was small and easy to use, and came jam full of exciting sounds. Perhaps most important, it was also cheap. At $1,995 it held its own against keyboards six times the price. During the four years it was manufactured it sold around 150,000 units—easily outstripping its competitors. No one, not even Yamaha itself, had any idea the synthesiser market was that big, one of the firm’s sound technicians later recalled.

By the mid-1980s it had become all but ubiquitous. It was the sound of stadium rockers and of small bands playing in the backroom of their local pub. It gave feeling to film scores and TV themes, among them “Top Gun” and “Miami Vice”. Earnest music-tech geeks, such as Brian Eno, became obsessed with its possibilities. A cottage industry sprung up of programmers producing patches—brand new sounds that could be added to the keyboard’s repertoire.

Its success was helped by serendipitous timing. The year the DX7 hit the market, a musical technology called MIDI was also released. Musical Instrument Digital Interface, to give the software its full name, remains to this day an essential piece of kit in any studio. It allows synthesisers to talk to computers and other bits of hardware. For example, parts played on keyboards that run the technology can be edited on a computer screen. Notes can be moved around and their timbre changed. Sequences also can be synced with a drum machine or with other electronic instruments. Being one of the cheapest MIDI-compatible keyboards available, the DX7 became indispensable. The most lavish recording suites were naked without it. Aspiring musicians would build studios in their bedroom, using cheap, basic kit, with the DX7 their cornerstone.

For all that, the DX7 had its limitations. Its strings sound held little warmth, its bass sounds lacked a certain fatness (listen, for example, to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”). And by the end of the decade, its distinct tone had become its undoing; it was considered just too 1980s. “Synths tend to have a decade-long cycle,” explains Nate Mars, a music producer and technologist. “After ten years everyone just wanted a fresh sound.”

Yet, to many people’s surprise, its fall from fashion proved short-lived. Even as the 1990s brought their own style, the DX7’s influence could still be heard in the house-music tracks that were filling urban dancefloors. U2 and Coldplay used it from time to time (perhaps at the behest of Mr Eno, who produced some of their songs). Today the sound of the 80s has become chic again and there have been attempts to recreate the keyboard virtually. Arturia, a music-technology firm, recently released a computer programme called DX7 V (the “V” is for virtual). Bands such as Morcheeba and trendy producers including Metrik are fans.

And therein lies the DX7’s enduring success. It is a keyboard that sounded like the future even as it was approximating the instruments of the past. In doing so, it defined a decade. As Mr Mars says: “Its sound has always been now-future-retro, all at the same time.”