It’s impossible to deny the role the synthesizer has had in shaping our culture—from defining the sound of music from the mid-twentieth century and today, to creating the quirky beep-boops of R2D2, these electronic instruments have left an indelible mark on the eardrums of modern society. In this guide, we will give an overview of some of the holy grails of electronic instruments and appreciate the specific synthesizers that defined the sound of generations.
Roland Jupiter-8
If you even get the opportunity to play one of the roughly 3,300 manufactured Roland Jupiter 8s, you have been blessed with a rare opportunity. Hovering around $30,000 on the resale market, these instruments are prized possessions of studio owners and lucky individuals who own one. The 8-voice polyphonic subtractive synth was released in 1981 and was one of the first synths to have a split function to play two patches at one, along with a polyphonic unison mode allowing all its oscillators to be stacked onto one note. Buying one wasn’t cheap in the 80s either—costing the equivalent of $20,000 adjusted for inflation in 2025. With its wide range of sounds—from lush pads, piercing leads, to fat bass, the Jupiter-8 defined the sound of popular music in the 1980s and represented a huge leap forward for synth technology.
Songs that use the Jupiter-8: “Hungry Like the Wolf” by Duran Duran, “Radio Ga Ga” by Queen, “Thriller” by Michael Jackson.
ARP 2600
Introduced in 1971, the ARP 2600 is a semi-modular patchable synth that helped synth technology transition from enormous and expensive modular devices (like the original Moog) to smaller and comparatively “affordable” individual units. The ARP 2600 uses fixed basic synth components pre-wired from the factory with patch points that can be used to alter those connections with cables. Ben Burtt used the ARP 2600 to create the voice of R2D2 and make many sounds used in the original Indiana Jones Trilogy. Stevie Wonder had one labeled in braille, and Edgar Winter hung the keyboard module around his neck during performances. Its versatile tonality, filters, and built-in physical spring reverb made the ARP 2600 great for punchy hi-fi leads and bass as well as experimental effects and textures.
Songs that use the ARP 2600: “Frankenstein” by Edgar Winter, “Mr. Hands” by Herbie Hancock, “Birdland” by Weather Report.
Fairlight CMI Series I & II
The Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) may be one of the most historically fascinating synthesizers ever created—just the fact that there existed a digital synthesizer, sampler, and digital audio workstation in 1979 is a technological marvel. The Falirlight CMI was the first true sampler in existence, able to record and manipulate the playback of sound. It was also able to create and edit waveforms with its keyboard and light pen on its monochrome CRT monitor, which able to display three-dimensional sound visualizations—an incredible and useful accomplishment at the time. If you’re interested in the history of synthesis, I recommend you search for a demonstration of this retro-futuristic relic of the late 20th century—it really is a special machine.
Songs that use the Fairlight CMI: “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush, “Shout” by Tears for Fears.
Yamaha DX7
The first commercially successful digital synthesizer and one of the best-selling synths in history, the Yamaha DX7 popularized the sound of FM synthesis in the 1980s. Frequency modulation synthesis opened up new sonic possibilities, using only two oscillators to introduce both harmonic and inharmonic sounds (sounds that don’t line up with the frequency of the fundamental) that could result in complex waveforms – previously, this was impossible to achieve without enormous computational power or a number of oscillators that would be prohibitively expensive, heavy, and enormous.
The DX7 was one of the most affordable synthesizers on the market when it was released in 1983, costing $1,995 compared to the exorbitant prices of analog synths at the time. To this day you can pick one up used for around $1000—a relative steal in the synth market. The electric piano tones and the tubular, glassy, and percussive metallic textures that can be extracted from the DX7 are littered throughout modern culture; while it’s been used in countless hit songs, it was discovered that the Taco Bell “bong” sound was made using the DX7’s “T. Bl-Expa” preset. To this day, it continues to be one of the world’s most popular and attainable synthesizers.
Songs that use the Yamaha DX7: “Versace on the Floor” by Bruno Mars, “When Doves Cry” by Prince, the bass in “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley.
Sequential Prophet-5
When the Sequential Prophet-5 was released in 1977, it marked another huge leap forward for music technology by being the first polyphonic synthesizer with fully programmable memory. Prior to the Prophet-5, there was no way to save settings on a polyphonic synth, so any dialed in sounds for recordings would have to stay that way or be lost forever. The memory recall was a game changer for musicians and recording studios quickly making it one of the most popular and sought-after synths in the market. The Prophet-5 is still manufactured and sold today, along with its successors, the Prophet-6, Prophet-10, Prophet Rev2, along with their hybrid/digital synth lineup.
Numerous recordings have permeated the sound of the Prophet-5 into collective consciousness. Its buttery textural soundscapes are especially notable as the main driver of the iconic soundtrack of Bladerunner, as well as the first and only thing you hear right at the beginning of Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place,” the opener of the era-defining record “Kid A.” Even if you didn’t know about the Prophet-5, it’s likely you’ve known what it sounds like.
Songs that use the Prophet-5: “Everything in Its Right Place” by Radiohead, “Run Like Hell” by Pink Floyd, “Burning Down the House” by Talking Heads.
EMS VCS 3 – “The Putney”
The Electronic Music Studios VCS 3 – A.K.A “The Putney”– is an analog synthesizer whose most distinctive feature is its patchboard routing matrix that uses pushpins to link components in lieu of patch cables found in traditional modular synths. Released in 1969, it was one of the first “portable” synths—an unreasonable claim by today’s standards—but compare it to the leviathan modular synthesis racks that defined the form of nearly all its peers.
The sound of the VCS 3 is can be heard in the catalogs of many progressive rock bands of the 1970s, including King Crimson, The Who, and Pink Floyd. The bell-like sci-fi sounds it creates gave The Who the iconic hocketing synth layers on some of their most famous recordings.
The meticulous workflow of this machine has the user consider the character of its sound before making another patchpin placement or adjusting the joystick, with each control wholistically monitored in a single area. Picking one up today will cost you a pretty penny, but they aren’t impossible to find for sale—if you got the scratch, owning a powerful piece of music history can be your reality.
Songs that have used the Putney: “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who, “On The Run” by Pink Floyd
Oberheim OB series
Released in late 1980, the Oberheim OB-Xa was the culmination of three years of iteration, succeeding the OB-1 and OB-X models to become Oberheim’s flagship instrument. The sound of the OB-X and OB-Xa was imprinted in our minds through the iconic synth bops of the 1980s, such as the haunting ostinato of the Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” (OB-X) or the anthemic eleven-chord hook driving Van Halen’s “Jump” (OB-Xa).
The OB-Xa was the main competitor of the five-voice Sequential Prophet-5 with four, six, and eight-voice polyphonic models, split functionality, and voice layering, along with 120 programmable presets with cassettes for external storage. Today, Sequential is partnered with Tom Oberheim, manufacturing the Oberheim OB-X8, a fully modern analog synthesizer that combines the design and architecture of the OB-X, OB-SX, OB-Xa, and OB-8 synths.
Songs that Use the Oberheim OB series: “Purple Rain” by Prince, “I Want to Break Free” by Queen, “Tom Sawyer” by Rush.
Moog Minimoog
I’d be remiss to not include the Minimoog on this list. It’s perhaps one of the most recognizable synthesizers ever produced, known for creating squishy and juicy bass lines heard on countless funk and soul records and responsible for establishing the template of keyboard synthesizers. Released in 1970, the monophonic Minimoog was the first synth to be sold in retail stores, sold as a portable and more affordable version of their monolithic modular Moog synthesizer, something you could only order directly from Moog.
The impact of the Minimoog changed the trajectory of music across genres, allowing keyboardists to play leads and solos rivaling the dynamic expression only the guitar was capable of before with its first-ever-produced pitch modulation wheel. It became a staple of basslines in R&B, soul, and funk music when it was adopted by the likes of Stevie Wonder and Parliament, used as an expressive and textural tool when first played by jazz royalty such as Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, and defined the sound of progressive rock and disco music with artists like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, ABBA, and Giorgio Moroder.
Originally created as a personal project/hack job done by Moog engineers—sawing keyboards in half and wiring components into a make-shift cabinet by hand—it’s hard to imagine what the world of synthesis would look had the Minimoog not been there to blaze the trail. If you have $5,000 for a monophonic synth, The Minimoog Model D is readily available as a modern-day reissue, nearly identical to the original and still manufactured in their facility in Ashville, North Carolina.
Songs that use the Minimoog: “Gin and Juice” by Snoop Dogg, “Flash Light” by Parliament, “Around the World” by Daft Punk.
Buchla 100 Series
The Buchla 100 was an early modular synthesizer created in the 1960s by Don Buchla, commissioned by avant-garde composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick. While only few were ever produced and were mostly used in personal or academic settings (Subotnick’s Buchla 100 currently resides on the 8th floor of NYU’s Educational Building), the Buchla was a groundbreaking device created specifically for the composition of Musique Concrète—an early style of electronic music and composition that uses recorded sound as its basis, often unbound from conventional harmony, melody, and meter.
With the inclusion of pressure sensitive touch plates, 16-step analog sequencers, dials, and modules whose nomenclature suggests experimentation (The Source of Uncertainty comes to mind), the unconventional Buchla zagged where the familiar Moog zigged. The innately modular design and lack of keyboard led to experimentation that culminated with Morton Subotnick’s 1967 record “Silver Apples of the Moon”—a seminal work that is credited as the precursor to electronic dance music. Buchla is still around today, making eurorack devices modeled after the original with TipTop Audio, as well as their own standalone synths, all with the pressure sensitive touchpads that set them apart from the rest.
Works that use the Buchla 100: “Illuminations” by Buffy Sainte-Marie, “The Wild Bull” by Morton Subotnick.
PPG Wave
In the late 1970s, German musician and inventor Wolfgang Palm innovated wavetable synthesis, a form of synthesis whose technical design centered around digitally controlled oscillators, rather than the traditional voltage-controlled oscillators whose tonal palate is restrained by simple waveforms (Sine, Saw, Triangle, Square, and Pulse). Wavetable synthesis is not beholden to this limitation—put (extremely) simply, it’s able to use multiple unique and arbitrary waveforms as the foundation of musical oscillation, creating tonality and texture that was once impossible to produce.
Released in 1981, the PPG Wave was the first commercially successful traditional keyboard wavetable synthesizer. Its unique glassy textures and haunting soundscapes were completely new and unique at the time and were responsible for the sound that permeated keyboard heavy pop acts throughout the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately for PPG, the rise of FM synthesis began shortly after the release of the Wave and eventually made them an afterthought—wavetable synthesizers were a tool of the famous and wealthy, costing upwards of $10,000—whereas a Yamaha DX7 or other digital FM synth could achieve similar results for a fraction of the price. Nevertheless, the PPG Wave and wavetable synthesis spawned the era defining sound and texture of 80s synth pop, used by the likes of Depeche Mode, Tangerine Dream, Journey, and Tears for Fears. Today, PPG and Palm’s legacy is carried on by Waldorf Music, a manufacturer who creates high-end hybrid wavetable synthesizers based on the foundation of Wolfgang Palm’s designs, particularly the flagship Quantum MK2.
Songs that use the PPG Wave: “Take On Me” by a-ha, “Everything Counts” by Depeche Mode
There are far more legendary synths that defined generations of music—way too many to list in one article. If we didn’t include your favorite on the list, check out our store page for an in-depth product description from our expert writing team, and for more synthesizer content, check out our synthesizer buying guides, as well as our synth basics tutorial, FM synthesis guide—you’ll find some very helpful tips for beginners and get an idea of how FM synthesis changed the game in the 80s.
