0:00

Drum roll please. Diary of a

0:02

Wimpy Kid Christmas. Cabin Fever. Now

0:04

available on Disney+. It's Christmas

0:06

time. Have you been good last

0:08

year? Last year? Oh no.

0:11

Get ready for the wimpiest. I read

0:13

about this family. They got snowed in.

0:15

And to survive, they had to eat

0:17

each other. Fuck. Christmas ever. I

0:20

think my freckles might have frostbite. Do

0:22

not make eye contact. Diary of a

0:24

Wimpy Kid Christmas. Cabin Fever. Rated PG.

0:27

Parental guidance suggested. Now available on Disney+.

0:30

Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart.

0:32

Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Hey

0:36

Joy, what are you up to?

0:38

Oh, you know, just single-handedly reinventing

0:41

music. Whoa. Just another

0:43

Wednesday, I guess. And

0:45

may I ask just how?

0:47

You're reinventing music? Well, you

0:49

know, between being a beloved

0:51

podcast host, actor, wrestling club

0:53

president, and gum connoisseur, I'm

0:55

also... An aspiring

0:58

DJ. Yes, because

1:00

DJ Dolo is just too good of

1:02

a name to pass up. Was that

1:05

you making all those bleeps and bloops

1:07

just now? You better bleep-bloop-believe it. I

1:10

just found the most bananas

1:12

bonkers never-before-seen instrument in my

1:14

closet. It was right in between

1:16

my collection of party hats and my signed

1:18

Boyz II Men poster. I'm calling

1:20

it the Dolo-Phone Bleep Bloop 5000.

1:25

That looks like a keyboard. With

1:28

a bunch of knobs. Well,

1:30

what it is is the

1:32

Dolo-Phone Bleep Bloop 5000. Because

1:37

it bleep-bloops to the five thousands.

1:40

Wanna hear what I've been working on? Yeah! Music

1:46

to your ears, right? It's

1:50

definitely noise to

1:53

my ears. Joy,

1:55

I don't think that's any old

1:58

keyboard. You're right. It's not. It's

2:00

not a keyboard, it's the Dol-O

2:02

phone. Fleet Blue 5000. Actually,

2:07

I think it's called a synthesizer. Ah,

2:09

you're so right. It is a synthesizer.

2:12

Hey, I didn't know I could play the synthesizer. I'm

2:15

not so sure you can. Watch

2:17

out, world. E.J. Dol-O in the

2:20

house. You're

2:28

listening to Forever Go from APM

2:31

Studios, the show where we explore

2:33

the before. And today, I'm here

2:35

with my co-host, Lilica, from Santa

2:37

Barbara, California. What's up, Lilica? Hi,

2:39

Joy! Today,

2:42

we're talking about synthesizers. One

2:45

of the most revolutionary instruments

2:47

in history. Synths are huge

2:49

today, but they weren't always

2:51

as popular. It took a lot of

2:53

experimentation to bring synthesizers into the mainstream.

2:56

Which we'll learn about soon enough. But

2:59

first, let's listen to some synths. You

3:02

may not realize it, but synthesizers

3:04

are everywhere in music today. From

3:06

Break My Soul by Beyoncé. To

3:13

A Jeweled by Taylor Swift. To

3:20

A Boy by The Weeknd. Synths

3:30

sometimes look like a plastic

3:32

piano keyboard with a bunch of knobs and

3:35

dials. Yeah, but they

3:37

also look like metal boxes with

3:39

lots of switches, knobs, and buttons.

3:42

And they make such awesome sounds. Just listen

3:44

to my DOLO Phone Bleep Bloop 5000. I'm

3:51

still getting the hang of it. Lilica,

3:54

do you play any instruments? Yes,

3:56

I play ukulele and piano. How long

3:58

have you been playing ukulele? Acoustic

6:03

instruments make music by making physical

6:05

vibrations. When you strum a guitar,

6:07

the string's vibrate. When

6:10

you hit a drum, the drum

6:12

itself vibrates. When you sing like

6:15

how I'm singing now, your vocal

6:18

cord's vibrate. Synthesizers are different

6:20

from acoustic instruments. Instead of the

6:22

sound starting with movement, like vibrations

6:24

from strings or your vocal cords,

6:26

it starts with electricity. And

6:29

you can taste that electric signal and shape it

6:31

using all these knobs. Here, I can show you.

6:34

Joy, permission to play the D'olephone Bleep Bloop 5000?

6:37

Abso-bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep. Thanks! Okay,

6:40

this is what the pure electric signal

6:42

sounds like. But

6:45

if I twist this knob, I can

6:47

completely transform the sound. It's

6:59

bankers and one instrument can make so

7:01

many different sounds. If you want to hear

7:03

more about how synthesizers work, our pals at

7:06

Brains On made an episode all

7:08

about it. So check it

7:10

out! Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh, Brains On. Synthesizers

7:13

are so cool. But

7:16

at first, people didn't really realize their

7:18

true potential. It's true. Synthesizers

7:20

got their start when electricity became

7:22

more widespread, and people started experimenting

7:25

with making electronic instruments throughout the

7:27

decades. But early synthesizers

7:30

were really hard to play,

7:32

and really expensive. And

7:34

they were huge. Right! They

7:37

took up whole rooms. You

7:39

couldn't exactly take your synths to band

7:41

practice. Unlike the D'olephone Bleep

7:43

Bloop 5000. So

7:46

people kept trying to improve the

7:48

synthesizer into the 1960s, and that's

7:50

when things really started taking off.

7:53

Technology was bleep-blop-booming.

7:55

Most people had TVs in their homes, and the US

7:58

was set on figuring out how to craft travel to

8:00

the man. And

8:04

rock music was really starting to

8:06

take off. Turn

8:09

it up. I dig

8:11

it, man. Groovy, baby. A

8:14

lot of different engineers wanted to make synthesizers

8:16

that were easier for musicians to play.

8:19

One of those people was Bob Moog. He

8:22

set out to build an instrument that would

8:24

be easy to use, not too expensive, and

8:26

not too big. After a couple

8:29

of years, Bob presented his first synth

8:31

to a bunch of musicians, and a

8:33

lot of them were interested. Bob's invention

8:35

was exciting because it could make so

8:38

many different sounds, like a flute. Or

8:42

trumpets. With

8:48

the Moog synthesizer, you can make the sounds of

8:50

different instruments without ever needing the

8:52

real instruments. Exactly. And

8:55

on top of mimicking instruments that already

8:57

exist, synthesizers could also make tons of

9:00

new sounds, like this. Well,

9:06

bleep my blorp, that's catchy. Almost

9:08

like music from outer space. Moog's

9:11

synthesizer used what looked like a piano

9:13

keyboard to control the sounds. So

9:15

musicians who were already familiar with

9:17

the piano could quickly transfer those

9:20

skills to the synthesizer. Exactly. It

9:22

was still pretty complicated to get a sound you liked. You

9:25

had to experiment by connecting lots of cables

9:27

and fiddling with a ton of knobs. But

9:30

once you found a sound you liked, you

9:32

could play it on the synthesizer almost like

9:34

a piano. Okay, so goal number one achieved.

9:37

It was somewhat easier to play,

9:39

and Moog's synths were also smaller,

9:41

like they didn't take up an

9:43

entire room. Yeah, it's all relative.

9:46

They were smaller, but still heavy. Each

9:49

one was about the size of a refrigerator turned

9:51

on its side. So it wasn't something you

9:53

could throw in your backpack, but definitely

9:56

smaller than other synthesizers at that time.

9:58

They were also more for... Depending

10:01

on which custom parts he bought, they were anywhere

10:03

between $2,000 to $10,000. Today,

10:06

that'd be around the cost of a

10:09

car, or even a couple cars. That

10:11

is... not very affordable, Lilica. I

10:13

know, like, not even close. But

10:16

another synthesizer around the time, called

10:19

the RCA Mark II, cost hundreds

10:21

of thousands of dollars to build.

10:24

Okay, so I guess the Moog was cheaper in comparison.

10:27

Right. The average person

10:29

probably wasn't going to buy a synthesizer,

10:32

but a college music department, or even

10:34

a wealthy musician, might have bought a

10:36

Moog. And people were making really experimental

10:38

music with some Moog. Here's a

10:41

song called Blues Mix by Joel Chaudhaby from

10:43

1966. That

10:56

does sound like something from outer space.

10:58

Yeah! That's so weird. That

11:00

sounds bizarrely fascinating.

11:03

Very. I completely agree. And

11:06

a lot of people thought synthesizers sounded bad

11:08

or weird, which is wild

11:10

because they have so much potential. But

11:13

back then, people didn't really see that.

11:15

Yeah. Some people thought synths sounded more

11:17

like noise than music. That

11:19

meant synthesizers were not in the

11:21

mainstream. That is, until one album

11:24

came along and changed everything by

11:26

putting a fresh new spin on something hundreds

11:29

of years old. Just like

11:31

how I'm reinventing music with my DOLOphone Bleep

11:33

Bloop 5000! Hey,

11:43

you're kind of getting the hang of that. Aw,

11:46

yeah! Alright, hold the

11:48

story. Let's celebrate with a little game

11:50

I like to call... First Things First!

12:00

Today we've got three musical

12:02

instruments, the saxophone, the harp,

12:05

and the banjo. Liliko, which

12:07

do you think came first, which came

12:09

second, and which came most recently in

12:11

history? Ooh, this is a good

12:13

one! Oh, they all feel

12:15

so plausible. Yeah, they do.

12:18

Okay, so let's start with which one you think might be

12:21

the newest. How about that? Maybe saxophone? Like,

12:23

they have a lot of moving parts, so

12:25

I could see where it might have been

12:27

difficult to produce for a

12:29

while. Yeah, yeah, they've got all those little

12:31

buttons and flippers and things with that, yeah.

12:34

Yeah, yeah. I don't know, and I

12:36

feel like the harp, I feel like, is really old.

12:38

It just has, I feel like, I

12:40

mean, if you think about it, like back in ancient Greece

12:43

they had liars, so... Yes,

12:45

yes, I thought that too. And

12:47

a lyre is a stringed instrument. It actually kind

12:49

of looks like a harp. But

12:51

banjos also have strings. Do

12:53

you think the lyre is the grandfather of

12:55

the banjo, maybe? I

12:58

am... Sorry, I'm just

13:00

trying to picture, like, the god Apollo just casually

13:02

playing his banjo. That

13:06

would make for a great mythology story. It's like,

13:08

the band that just came down the mountain.

13:12

Yeah, absolutely, just playing his

13:14

banjo. I would enjoy that

13:16

deeply. That's a story I'd read.

13:19

Yeah. I feel like

13:21

the harp has to be first,

13:23

just because of just

13:26

how historic it is. Yeah.

13:29

So I'm gonna go with

13:31

the harp first, and

13:33

then I feel like the banjo,

13:35

and then the saxophone. I don't

13:37

know, I'm doubting myself big time here.

13:40

I'm gonna go with you, I'm gonna tell

13:42

you to trust your instinct, because that's what I think too. I

13:45

think the lyre thing is really a

13:48

key component in this. So we'll

13:50

say the harp is first, the

13:52

banjo is second, and then third

13:54

is the saxophone. Yeah. They

13:58

said confidently. We'll

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hear the ampers after the credits. Diary

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PG. Parental guidance suggested. Now

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15:58

listening to Forever Go. popular

18:00

record came out that helped since

18:02

sound more like mainstream music. It

18:04

was produced by Wendy Carlos and Rachel

18:06

Elkind. Instead of writing a bunch

18:08

of new songs, they decided to hook people on

18:11

something they already knew. Something deep

18:13

in the crevices of their brainfolds, like

18:15

Old McDonald, with a bleep blorp here

18:17

and a bleep blorp there, hear a

18:19

bleep there, a bloop everywhere, a bleep bloop!

18:22

Yes, something all up in

18:24

their brainfolds. And that

18:26

something was music from Johann Sebastian

18:28

Bach. Oh, I've heard that name

18:30

before. Isn't he a German

18:33

classical composer from like forever

18:35

ago? That's also the name

18:37

of the show? You get it?

18:40

You get it? No, but he

18:43

was like a German classical composer from like the 1700s? Yeah,

18:45

but you still probably know some of his

18:48

songs, like these. Bach

19:22

has bangers! It's true. So

19:25

Wendy and Rachel decided to take some of

19:27

these songs by Bach and play them

19:29

on the synthesizer. But recording the album

19:31

wasn't easy. It took over 1,000 hours

19:34

to finish the album,

19:36

which spanned over five

19:38

months. Five months? That's

19:41

like a whole winter and

19:43

spring just playing the synthesizer.

19:45

And it was really tricky work. For

19:48

one thing, at this point, synthesizers

19:50

could only play one note at

19:52

a time. This made Wendy and

19:54

Rachel's job much harder because a

19:56

lot of times when musicians write

19:58

music, including Bach, they use chords.

20:01

That's when you play multiple notes at the same

20:03

time, like this. But

20:08

at the time, the synthesizer could only play

20:10

one note at a time, so you had

20:12

to play note by note, like this. So

20:18

when Wendy and Rachel wanted to create a chord

20:20

sound, they had to record each

20:22

note separately and then stack them on top

20:25

of each other layer by layer. It

20:33

makes the DoloPhone Bleep Bloop 5000 sound

20:35

like a breeze. And that's not even

20:37

the end of it. The synthesizer was

20:39

constantly going out of tune, and sometimes

20:42

Wendy had to literally bang it with a

20:44

hammer to get it just right. Unlike

20:48

me, I have perfect pitch. M-m-m-m-bleeep

20:51

bloop bloop.

20:55

Bl-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo. So

21:03

after months of recreating these Bach songs,

21:05

Wendy and Rachel released their album in

21:07

1968. It

21:10

was called a switched on Bach, and it

21:12

sounded like this. That

21:24

sounds awesome! Yeah, it does!

21:27

Others thought so, too. And the album

21:29

was a huge hit. People could hear

21:31

classical music that was familiar, but in

21:33

a new exciting form. It's

21:36

extraordinary. Bach is back,

21:38

baby, and better than

21:40

ever. Far out!

21:43

It was genius! Wendy

21:45

and Rachel took the same instrument

21:47

that was once considered bizarre and

21:49

mostly only used in experimental academic

21:51

settings and presented it to the

21:53

public in a way they could understand. Right!

21:56

It was so popular at the time. The

21:58

radio was playing it alongside pop

22:00

and rock songs. In 1970

22:02

it won three Grammys including

22:04

best classical album. And

22:07

it would go on to sell over

22:09

1 million copies making Switched on Bach

22:12

one of the most successful classical albums

22:14

of all time. And thanks to Wendy

22:16

and Rachel's breakthrough album the synthesizer

22:19

started showing up in music

22:21

everywhere from Maxwell's Silver Hammer

22:23

by the Beatles or

22:33

in the bassline it's Stevie Wonder's song

22:35

In The Precision. synthesizers

23:00

weren't just for the radio. Right. Since

23:02

started to be more widely used for

23:04

sound effects in commercials video games

23:07

and movies Wendy and Rachel

23:09

even went on to use the

23:11

synthesizer to score films like A

23:13

Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron.

23:15

And by the 1980s synthesizers were

23:17

getting smaller and more affordable. As

23:19

computer technology advanced so did

23:22

synths. They went digital

23:24

which means instead of using an

23:26

electric signal to make sound the

23:28

synthesizers used computer code which made

23:30

them more accessible to everyone. That's

23:32

awesome! Switched on Bach

23:34

was a game changer. It really

23:36

helped bring synthesizers into the mainstream.

23:39

Today synthesizers are everywhere in music

23:41

and have influenced so many genres.

23:43

To learn more we talked to

23:45

Rihanna Cruz. Howdy

23:48

I'm Rihanna Cruz and I'm the producer

23:50

of the podcast Switched on Pop. We

23:52

are a show about the making

23:55

and meaning of popular music.

23:57

Switched on Bach is really

23:59

important because it motivated

24:01

thousands of people to get

24:04

their own synthesizers, it topped

24:06

the Billboard classical album chart

24:08

for four years, and

24:10

really introduced people to the

24:13

possibilities that sound could

24:15

do, and the

24:17

possibilities that electronic

24:19

instruments could do at that

24:22

point. It just revolutionized things in a

24:24

lot of ways, and I think it's really,

24:26

really important even now, right? Like 60 years

24:29

passed when it was made.

24:31

They're in rock music since the

24:34

60s. They're all over 80s

24:36

music. If you listen to an 80s music

24:38

and you're like, this sounds kind of cheesy,

24:40

there's a synthesizer in there that makes it

24:42

sound like that, and that's sort of a

24:44

charm, right? You hear

24:47

it in funk music. Funk music

24:49

has synthesizers as the

24:51

bass, as the backbone. Sampling,

24:54

which is a cornerstone of hip

24:56

hop, and electronic music, but also

24:58

hip hop, that was introduced because

25:00

of a synthesizer. Hip hop

25:02

without the synthesizer would

25:04

not be a genre, you

25:06

know, because you wouldn't have sampling, you

25:09

wouldn't have the drum machines. There just

25:11

would be nothing, really. There's

25:13

a lot of genres that I think would

25:16

never happen or never get realized

25:19

if, you know, the synthesizer was

25:22

not present. I feel like if we didn't

25:24

have the synthesizer today, music would

25:26

all be analog. And not

25:28

that that's necessarily a bad thing, right?

25:30

People make really great analog music. They

25:32

always have, and they continue to, but

25:35

I think that potential

25:37

of imagination wouldn't

25:41

necessarily be there in the

25:43

way that it is now. And that's what

25:45

I love about music is that it's very imaginative, and

25:47

I get to hear things that I never thought I

25:50

could ever hear before. And I feel like

25:52

a lot of that wouldn't be present if there

25:54

weren't synthesizers. today

26:00

would look so different without synthesizers.

26:03

There would definitely be no dolophone bleep

26:05

bloop 5000s. Hit

26:08

it, Joy. This

26:19

episode was written by Rachel Breeze

26:21

and Ruby Guthrie. We had production

26:24

help from Nico Gonzales-Wistler, Sandin Totten,

26:26

Shayla Farzan, Arunul Deslassi, Anna Goldfield,

26:28

Rosie Dupont, Mark Sanchez, and Anna

26:30

Waggle. Sound design by Rachel

26:33

Breeze. Theme music by Mark

26:35

Sanchez. Beth Perlman is our executive

26:37

producer. We had engineering help

26:39

from Anna Haverman, Der Krameras, and Elliott

26:41

Lanham. The executives in charge

26:44

of APM Studios are Tandra Cavati,

26:46

Joanne Griffith, and Alex Shafford.

26:48

Additional editing help from Cassius

26:50

Adair at Sylveon Consulting. Special

26:52

thanks to Peter Morrow and Charlie Harding.

26:55

If you want to access app-free

26:57

episodes and special bonus content, subscribe

26:59

to our Smarty Path. Check it

27:01

out at smartypath.org. OK,

27:04

Lilica. Ready to hear the answers for first

27:07

things first? Yeah, I'm nervous.

27:09

I know me too. I'm so excited. OK,

27:12

so just like for a reminder, first,

27:14

we had harp, and

27:17

then second, we had banjo, and

27:19

then the most recent, we had

27:21

saxophone. Yeah. Ba ba da ba

27:23

ba ba ba ba da. Da

27:26

da da da da da. Duh-huh, this is

27:28

tense. Duh da da da

27:30

da da da. All

27:32

right, here we go. Oh,

27:34

wow. Shoot. You

27:39

were right. Oh! Duh!

27:42

Yeah! Sike!

27:46

You were absolutely right, yeah. So

27:49

first up was the harp. The harp

27:51

dates back to as early as 3000

27:53

BCE in ancient Egypt. There

27:57

are records of the harp appearing in various cultures

27:59

across the world. the globe, including Asia,

28:01

Africa, and Europe. The harp often

28:03

represents hope or heaven and is

28:06

even a national symbol for Ireland.

28:09

Whoa, I didn't know any of that. Isn't

28:11

that something? Oh yeah. Yeah. I

28:14

didn't know any of that either, but also I feel like we were

28:16

on the right track, right? It definitely is

28:18

the oldest of them. Yeah, Orpheus certainly

28:20

didn't make his way down to the

28:22

underworld with a banjo. But

28:25

speaking of banjos, that was next up. That

28:27

was the 17th century and early 1600s. The banjo

28:31

was invented by enslaved Africans and

28:33

their descendants in colonial North America

28:36

and the Caribbean, dating back to the early

28:38

17th century. And so the banjo was inspired

28:40

by various West African instruments with

28:42

a round gored body, long

28:45

neck, and plucky strings. It

28:47

became a staple sound in American bluegrass, country, and

28:49

folk music. I think that's what we were referencing

28:51

earlier, right? Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah.

28:54

And then last but not least

28:56

is the saxophone. The

28:58

saxophone was invented by Belgian Adolf Sax.

29:01

Oh, Adolf Sax. I wonder where they got the

29:03

name from. In the early 1840s,

29:05

he originally intended

29:08

for the instrument to be used in orchestras and

29:10

military bands. And at first, most

29:12

orchestras thought the saxophone was too

29:14

experimental, but the instrument really caught

29:16

on with French military bands, some

29:19

of which ended up stationed in

29:21

New Orleans. And that's how the

29:23

saxophone eventually made its place in

29:25

jazz music. You know, New Orleans

29:27

is like the home of jazz.

29:29

Yeah, we have the saxophone, the

29:32

dolophone. Yeah. Well, congratulations

29:34

on getting all the first thing first

29:36

answers. And stick around, because

29:38

we'll be back next week with an episode

29:41

all about the history of chewing

29:43

gum. Thanks for listening. Hi,

29:57

Joy Dolo hosted Forever ago here. is

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Brains On! universe. In fact,

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