Music technology timeline:
- 1956 Forbidden Planet was the first major motion picture to use a purely electronic soundtrack
- 1963 Doctor Who Theme was also one of the earliest electronic soundtracks
- 1968 Switch on Back by Wendy Carlos makes the Moog modular synthesizer a household name
- 1970 The Minimoog makes it practical for musicians to use synthesizers on the road
- 1974 While less flexible than the Minimoog, The ARP Solina makes synth chords and reasonably realistic string sounds.
- 1975 The EMT Digital reverb comes out for well over $10,000
- 1978 The Prophet-5 not only gives us polyphony, but also uses a computer to store and recall patches
- 1980 The Fairlight gives people who have the money to buy one sampling
- 1981 The Linn LM-1 gives us a drum machine with sampled real drums, instead of using synth circuits to generate the sounds.
- 1983 The Yamaha DX7 makes digital synthesis mainstream, giving us bell like timbers just not feasible with analog synths.
- 1985 The Ensoniq Mirage makes sampling affordable for your average musician
- 1986 Alesis makes the Midiverb, giving the world digital reverb for under $500
- 1989 Sound Tools makes digital “in the box” computer editing of recordings affordable (The Synclavier and others did it before, but in systems costing more than houses)
- 1992 Alesis gives us the ADAT; digital multitrack recording went from costing as much as a house (Starting with the 3M in 1979, and costing about the same throughout the 1980s) to costing about $20,000 (Akai ADAM) to costing $4,000 (ADAT) — less than a new car.