Topic summary
Synthesisers
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Synthesizer.
Rock
The portable Minimoog (1970), much smaller than the modular synthesizers before it, made synthesizers more common in live performance. Early synthesizers could only play one note at a time, making them suitable for basslines, leads and solos. With the rise of polyphonic synthesizers in the 1970s and 1980s, "the keyboard in rock once more started to revert to the background, to be used for fills and atmosphere rather than for soloing". Queen included statements in their 1970s album notes specifying that no synthesisers had been used, but added them in their 1980 album The Game.