page_title: Electronic music
section_title: Keyboard synthesizers
hierarchical_section_title: Electronic music / Late 1960s to early 1980s / Keyboard synthesizers
caption_attribution_description: Minimoog synthesizer
context_page_description: Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments and circuitry-based music technology. A distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronics only. Electromechanical instruments have mechanical elements, such as strings, hammers and electric elements, such as magnetic pickups, power amplifiers and loudspeakers. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ and the electric guitar, which are typically made loud enough for performers and audiences to hear with an instrument amplifier and speaker cabinet. Pure electronic instruments do not have vibrating strings, hammers or other sound-producing mechanisms. Devices such as the theremin, synthesizer and computer can produce electronic sounds.
  The first electronic devices for performing music were developed at the end of the 19th century and shortly afterward Italian futurists explored sounds that had not been considered musical. During the 1920s and 1930s, electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions for electronic instruments were made.
context_section_description: Released in 1970 by Moog Music, the Mini-Moog was among the first widely available, portable and relatively affordable synthesizers. It became once the most widely used synthesizer at that time in both popular and electronic art music.Patrick Gleeson, playing live with Herbie Hancock in the beginning of the 1970s, pioneered the use of synthesizers in a touring context, where they were subject to stresses the early machines were not designed for.
  In 1974, the WDR studio in Cologne acquired an EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer, which a number of composers used to produce notable electronic works—including Rolf Gehlhaar's Fünf deutsche Tänze (1975), Karlheinz Stockhausen's Sirius (1975–76), and John McGuire's Pulse Music III (1978).
caption: Mini-Moog synthesizer
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