Watch Thomas Dolby explain how a synthesiser works
Listen to pretty much any popular record from the 1980s, and you are likely to hear a synthesiser, at least in some format. The instrument was ubiquitous with the decade and led to many great tracks (and some not-so-great). Yet, the synth is a problematic tool to get your head around. Fortunately, Thomas Dolby was once on hand to explain how the damn thing works.
Thomas Dolby rose to fame in the early 1980s, particularly for the hit singles ‘She Blinded Me With Science’ and ‘Hyperactive!’. As such, being such a prominent force in the decade of the synthesiser, he is well placed to explain. Dolby featured on The Ghost of Faffner Hall, a British children’s TV show that had famous musicians give music lessons with the help of a cast of puppets.
On the show, Dolby says excitedly, “I’m Thomas Dolby, and I’m here to explain to you how a synthesiser works. The word synthesiser is used to describe a number of electronic devices arranged for the purpose of sound synthesis, a word meaning the combining of ideas and objects into a bigger whole. In this case, the combining of sounds. Electronic sounds; sounds generated using electricity!”
He continues, “This instrument is capable of generating hundreds of sounds, even thousands of sounds, millions of sounds, trillions of sounds! A synthesiser consists of two things, an oscillator and a filter. The oscillator controls the pitch of the sound, and the filter controls the tone of a sound.”
Seeing as the synthesiser is such a technical instrument, it’s fortunate, for both kids and intrigued adults alike, that Dolby explains its functions in layperson’s terms. In fact, he provides a perfect and amusing analogy to further elaborate on just how the synth actually works.
“I’d like you to think of a synthesiser as a fly in a matchbox,” Dolby says. “I want you to imagine that the fly is an oscillator and the box is a filter, and I’m electricity. If I start to shake the box, the fly will begin to buzz. If I want to raise the pitch of my synthesiser, I give it a bit more electricity or shake the box a little bit harder. The harder I shake the box, the higher the pitch.”
He adds, “If I shake the box and open it at the same time, the tone gets a little bit harsher, and the more I open the box, the harsher the tone becomes. As I close the box, the tone becomes a bit more mellow, and the pitch becomes a bit lower. It’s a lot simpler than you think.”
Check out the full segment from the show below.
