Started by Tomás Rinaldi (@tomas_rinaldi) ·
every 80s power ballad has the same electric piano
It's the DX7's 'E PIANO 1' preset, which was apparently on 40% of US number-one singles in 1986. The DX7 was so hard to program from its tiny screen and menus that most people never made their own sounds, they just used the presets.
6 sources · 41 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- “80s ballad electric piano sound”
- Ended at
- “FM synthesis explained”
The Trail
- “80s ballad electric piano sound” (google.com)
- Yamaha DX7 (en.wikipedia.org)
- Frequency modulation synthesis (en.wikipedia.org)
Stanford licensed it to Yamaha in 1973 and the patent earned it about $20 million
- John Chowning (en.wikipedia.org)
found it at Stanford by cranking vibrato way past normal speeds
- Rhodes piano (en.wikipedia.org)
- “FM synthesis explained” (hn.algolia.com)
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