John Chowning interview. John Chowning is the inventor of FM synthesis, which is what gives 80s pop music its characteristic sound. Music from before the 80s sounds different because it lacks FM synthesis, and music from the 90s onward sounds different because it has additional synthesis techniques, though FM synthesis is still omnipresent.
John Chowning's story starts with learning to play the violin as a child, after which he got into drumming. At Stanford, he got into a brand new program for electronic music, which had little enthusiasm at that time. Hard to believe but this was 1964. It started with Nyquist sampling theory and Claude Shannon's communication theory. The first algorithms were coded in Algol and FORTRAN, written on punched cards. He originally tried to do 4-channel sound (spatialization). What ultimately led to the discovery of FM synthesis was, in normal sound recordings, the reverberation was part of the input, but he was trying to recreate it synthetically. So he would have signals in different channels and he would do different vibrato effects on different channels, and discovered he could produce tones with unexpected harmonics. From there he learned about how FM radios modulate and demodulate signals. He learned how to make sounds with multiple carrier frequencies and modulator frequencies. He spent years of work from 1967 to 1971 to figure out how to make elegant tones such as brass tones, and patented the technique in 1971. An engineer from Yamaha, which at that time sold only pianos in the US, but was working on home organs that synthesized sounds for the Japanese market, came to Stanford to see his work. It took from 1971 to 1982 before Yamaha came out with the DX7. The DX7 became integrated into many Yahama keyboards and the song "Africa" by Toto (1982) was the first song featuring the DX7 (with a flute sound).
John Chowning is almost 90 so this is a historic interview for anyone interested in electronic music.
John Chowning, Computer Music, DX7 & FM Discovery - Anthony Marinelli Music