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ARP Avatar
The ARP Avatar was a guitar synthesizer manufactured by ARP Instruments beginning in 1977. While innovative, being one of the first commercial guitar-controlled synthesizers, it was a commercial failure, and is widely blamed for the financial collapse of ARP Instruments. History ARP Instruments began developing the Avatar in 1977, hoping to tap into the guitar player market, which was four times larger than the keyboard player market at the time. The Avatar was synthesizer module virtually identical to the ARP Odyssey without a keyboard with an added 6-way "fuzzbox" distortion effect, intended to be played by a solid body electric guitar via a specially-mounted hexaphonic guitar pickup whose signals were then processed through discrete pitch-to-voltage converters. Although groundbreaking as one of the first commercial guitar-controlled synthesizers, ARP spent $4 million on Avatar's research and development and initial production, and sales of the guitar synthesizer over the two y ...
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Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (; born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is co-founder, leader, guitarist, second lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. Townshend has written more than 100 songs for 12 of the Who's studio albums. These include concept albums, the rock operas ''Tommy'' (1969) and ''Quadrophenia'' (1973), plus popular rock radio staples such as ''Who's Next'' (1971); as well as dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilation albums such as ''Odds & Sods'' (1974). He has also written more than 100 songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs. While known primarily as a guitarist, Townshend also plays keyboards, banjo, accordion, harmonica, ukulele, mandolin, violin, synthesiser, bass guitar, and drums; he is self-taught on all of these instruments and plays on his own s ...
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Keyboard Magazine
''Keyboard'' is a magazine that originally covered electronic keyboard instruments and keyboardists, though with the advent of computer-based recording and audio technology, they have added digital music technology to their regular coverage, including those not strictly pertaining to the keyboard-related instruments. The magazine has its headquarters in San Bruno, California. History and profile Future is the owner of ''Keyboard'' which was launched in 1975. During the initial years the magazine was named ''Contemporary Keyboard''. Over the years, the print and online editions of the magazine have moved into discussions on anything related to gear. The editors and writers of the magazine have covered historical information and stories on the development of keyboards from their inception with pioneers such as Moog Music. At times, editorial and guest articles in the magazine have covered subjects including music philosophy, keyboarding instruction, music theory, and harmonics. ...
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Jimmy Page
James Patrick Page (born 9 January 1944) is an English musician who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin. Page is prolific in creating guitar riffs. His style involves various alternative guitar tunings and melodic solos, coupled with aggressive, distorted guitar tones. It is also characterized by his folk and eastern-influenced acoustic work. He is also noted for occasionally playing his guitar with a cello bow to create a droning sound texture to the music. Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, alongside Big Jim Sullivan, was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Britain. He was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. When the Yardbirds broke up, he founded Led Zeppelin, which was active from 1968 to 1980. Following the death of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, he participated in a number of musical groups throughout the 1980s and 1990s, more specifically X ...
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Howard Leese
Howard M. Leese (born June 13, 1951, in Hollywood, California, United States) is an American guitarist, record producer, and musical director who played with Heart as guitarist and keyboardist for 23 years (1975 through 1998). He continues to record and tour as a solo artist, and as guitarist with The Paul Rodgers Band and Bad Company. In 2013, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Heart. Career Howard received his inspiration to pick up the guitar during the 1960s after seeing Dick Dale, the guitarist in the surf band "the Del-Tones", and feeling the excitement from his playing. He studied violin and music theory at the City College, Los Angeles, and also played in a band called The Zoo. Leese had his first recording contract with Ed Cobb's Sunburst label at the age of 15, as the band ''The Zoo'' with friend and drummer Mike Flicker. Later, when Flicker went to work for Jack Herschorn at Mushroom Studios in Vancouver, Leese went with him as a prod ...
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BBC Radiophonic Workshop
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of the sound effects units of the BBC, created in 1958 to produce incidental sounds and new music for radio and, later, television. The unit is known for its experimental and pioneering work in electronic music and music technology, as well as its popular scores for programmes such as ''Doctor Who'' and '' Quatermass and the Pit'' during the 1950s and 1960s. The original Radiophonic Workshop was based in the BBC's Maida Vale Studios in Delaware Road, Maida Vale, London. The Workshop was closed in March 1998, although much of its traditional work had already been outsourced by 1995. Its members included Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, David Cain, John Baker, Paddy Kingsland, Glynis Jones, Maddalena Fagandini and Richard Yeoman-Clark. History The Workshop was set up to satisfy the growing demand in the late 1950s for "radiophonic" sounds from a group of producers and studio managers at the BBC, including Desmond Briscoe, Daphne Oram, ...
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Paddy Kingsland
Paddy Kingsland (born 30 January 1947) is a composer of electronic music best known for his incidental music for science fiction series on BBC radio and television whilst working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Educated at Eggar's Grammar School in Alton, Hampshire, he joined the BBC as a tape editor before moving on to become a studio manager for BBC Radio 1. In 1970 he joined the Radiophonic Workshop where he remained until 1981. His initial work was mostly signature tunes for BBC radio and TV programmes before going on to record incidental music for programmes including '' The Changes'', two versions of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (the second radio series and the TV adaptation), as well as several serials of ''Doctor Who''. His work on the latter series included incidental music for several serials in the early 1980s. Other well-known series which contained music composed by Paddy Kingsland are ''Around the World in 80 Days'' and ''Pole to Pole'', both travel se ...
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Steve Howe
Stephen James Howe (born 8 April 1947) is an English musician, best known as the guitarist in the progressive rock band Yes across three stints since 1970. Born in Holloway, North London, Howe developed an interest in the guitar and began to learn the instrument himself at age 12. He embarked on a music career in 1964, first playing in several London-based blues, covers, and psychedelic rock bands for six years, including the Syndicats, Tomorrow, and Bodast. Upon joining Yes in 1970, Howe helped to change the band's musical direction, leading to more commercial and critical success. His blend of acoustic and electric guitar helped shape the sound of the band. Many of their best-known songs were co-written by Howe, who remained with the band until they briefly disbanded in 1981. Howe returned to the group in 1990 for two years and has remained a full-time member since 1995. After Alan White's death in 2022, he is the longest-serving member of the band currently active. Howe a ...
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Mike Rutherford
Michael John Cloete Crawford Rutherford (born 2 October 1950) is an English guitarist, bassist and songwriter, co-founder of the rock band Genesis. Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks are the group's two continuous members. Initially serving as Genesis's bass guitarist and backing vocalist, Rutherford also performed most of the band's rhythm guitar parts—frequently on twelve-string guitar—in collaboration with successive Genesis lead guitarists Anthony Phillips and Steve Hackett. Following Hackett's departure from Genesis in 1977, Rutherford assumed the additional role of lead guitarist on the band's studio albums (beginning with '' ...And Then There Were Three...'' in 1978). Rutherford was one of the main Genesis songwriters throughout their career and wrote the lyrics for some of the band's biggest international hits, such as "Follow You Follow Me", "Turn It On Again", "Land of Confusion" and "Throwing It All Away". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as ...
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Guitar Pickup
A pickup is a transducer that captures or senses mechanical vibrations produced by musical instruments, particularly stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, and converts these to an electrical signal that is amplified using an instrument amplifier to produce musical sounds through a loudspeaker in a speaker enclosure. The signal from a pickup can also be recorded directly. Most electric guitars and electric basses use magnetic pickups. Acoustic guitars, upright basses and fiddles often use a piezoelectric pickup. Magnetic pickups A typical magnetic pickup is a transducer (specifically a variable reluctance sensor) that consists of one or more permanent magnets (usually alnico or ferrite) wrapped with a coil of several thousand turns of fine enameled copper wire. The magnet creates a magnetic field which is focused by the pickup's pole piece or pieces. The permanent magnet in the pickup magnetizes the guitar string above it. This causes the string to generate a mag ...
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Analog Signal
An analog signal or analogue signal (see spelling differences) is any continuous signal representing some other quantity, i.e., ''analogous'' to another quantity. For example, in an analog audio signal, the instantaneous signal voltage varies continuously with the pressure of the sound waves. In contrast, a digital signal represents the original time-varying quantity as a sampled sequence of quantized values which imposes some bandwidth and dynamic range constraints on the representation. The term ''analog signal'' usually refers to electrical signals; however, mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic and other systems may also convey or be considered analog signals. Representation An analog signal uses some property of the medium to convey the signal's information. For example, an aneroid barometer uses rotary position as the signal to convey pressure information. In an electrical signal, the voltage, current, or frequency of the signal may be varied to represent the information. ...
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ARP Odyssey
The ARP Odyssey is an analog synthesizer introduced by ARP Instruments in 1972. History ARP developed the Odyssey as a direct competitor to the Moog Minimoog and an answer to the demand for more affordable, portable, and less complicated "performance" synthesizers. ARP produced several versions of the Odyssey from 1972 to 1980. In early 2015, Korg reissued the Odyssey in cooperation with the original designer and ARP co-founder, David Friend. Design The Odyssey is a two-oscillator analog synthesizer, and one of the first with duophonic capabilities (the ability to play two notes at the same time). All parameters, including a resonant low-pass filter, a non-resonant high-pass filter, ADSR and AR envelopes, a sine and square wave LFO, and a sample-and-hold function are controllable with sliders and switches on the front panel. Features *Switchable between sawtooth, square, and pulse waveforms with oscillator sync, a "ring modulator", and pink or white noise. (As with the Kor ...
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