1977 Bell Lab Digital Synthesizer Used for Phone Research & Testing

Vintage Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer 1977 Demo Video by Creator Hal Alles

Vintage Digital Synthisizer 1977 Published on Jun 15, 2015 urcich

via MATRIXSYNTH

It's fascinating to hear what the original intent of this synthesizer was.

Further below is a video of electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel playing the synth musically.

via Hal Alles on the Synergy list:

"Since a few people have expressed interest, I posted a video on youtube of a demo using the synthesizer I developed at Bell Labs.

This demo was made as a backup for a live demo for the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Talking Motion Pictures.

Hence the references to the movie industry.

The live demo was done on the stage at the Palladium in Hollywood in 1977, so the backup was never shown.
It started life as studio video tape made a few days before the show, converted to 16 mm film, then later to VHS tape, then to DVD, and finally the digital version posted.

Very few people have seen this – I did not have a copy until 1995.

Hal Alles"

Laurie Spiegel plays Alles synth - temporary replacement

Uploaded on Apr 27, 2009 Laurie Spiegel

"This 1977 tape is one of the earliest examples of purely digital realtime audio synthesis. It manages to achieve an analog synth sounding quality, but it is entirely digital synthesis and signal processing.

The interactive software I wrote and am playing in this video recycles my keyboard input into an accompaniment to my continued playing, which is why I called it a "concerto generator". I use part of one of the keyboards for control data entry, and the small switches upper right to access pre-entered numerical patterns. The sliders are mainly pre-Yamaha FM synthesis parameter controls, for the number of harmonics and amplitude and frequency of the FM modulator and carrier that constituted each musical voice.

Until they restore the copy suffering from data corruption please look at this copy instead.

Comments can continue to be left on the original's page where there have been many views and comments views, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4T3eT...

Thanks for watching,

- Laurie"