[sdiy] SF Bay Area -- Chowning/Mathews/Roads

[WeAreAs1 at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/30/04 12:46:54 PM, don at till.com writes:

<< Chowning's invention
of frequency modulation (FM) synthesis led to the most successful
synthesizer of all time: the Yamaha DX7. >>

This may just sound like spittling hairs, but in terms of sales, the most 
succesful synth of all time was the Korg M!.  The DX7 was #2.  There were just 
over 300,000 M1's sold, compared to about 250,000 original DX7's sold.  These 
figures are arguable, of course (especially if you're talking to someone from 
Yamaha) but most industry folks (sales executives from Guitar Center, NAMM 
officials, etc.) agree that the M1 outsold the DX7.  Both synths were wildly 
successful compared to most other keyboards that were made before then.  To put the 
scale in perspective, Moog sold a total of about 12,000 Minimoogs and 
Sequential sold around 20,000 Prophet Fives, and those two were HUGE compared to most 
others before them.

Yes, the DX7 is probably a more "important" instrument (it certainly was for 
me), but the M1 was also very important -- it being the first "workstation" 
ROM-playback machine, and as such being the template for just about every modern 
synthesizer made since then.  If you don't like General MIDI; if you don't 
like nasally sampled saxophones played with grotesque guitarish pitch bends; if 
you don't like tweezy, unexpressive sampled acoustic piano sounds and sampled 
distorted guitars washed in too much fake reverb , blame the Korg M1 and the 
300,000 eager dorks who bought them.