Synthony's Synth & Midi Museum

You're a Musician
Not an Engineer ...
Not a Programmer
Not a Typist ...

It's about time art and technology became friends again. With the additional capability of advanced electronic keyboards has come added complexityto the point of interfering with your basic purpose, making music. Until now.

Synthia is the revolution in electronic instruments that brings back character, variety, individuality and simplicity. And Synthia delivers all this along with the most powerful technology ever available in a musical instrument.

The key to Synthia's simplicity and capability is its touch-sensitive plasma display. This display totally obsoletes knobs, switches and patch cords, providing you with a simple and logical link to Synthia's computer. All your options are clearly presented to you on the display. Simply touch your choice and Synthia responds instantly.

A new and patented additive synthesis process is the core of Synthia's revolutionary capability and sound. This process allows you to duplicate the character of acoustic instruments perfectly, or better yet, imperfectly. Slight differences in timbre and dynamics, sympathetics and pitch irregularities are what give each note on an acoustic instrument individual character. Synthia features an electronic analogy to these phenomena - a designed-in randomness - giving your sound a true personality.

A fine acoustic instrument responds differently to each player's touch, letting the feelings of the musician come through the instrument to the audience. Synthia's touch sensitive keyboard is so expressive that no two musicians who play Synthia will sound alike.

Until now, electronic keyboards have been cold and impersonal. But until now there hasn't been a keyboard like Synthia.

So Many Ways to Sound Great

Time-Slice Voicing

Notes played on acoustic instruments go through harmonic and dynamic changes throughout the duration of the note. Until now electronic keyboards have only been able to approximate these phenomena. With Synthia, you can "Time-Slice" each note into segments as small as 10 milliseconds, and alter any or all of the parameters of the voice during that slice. So now you can program all the attack of a grand piano, the slight pitch ramping of a trumpet or the slowly developing purity of a guitar string. In fact, Synthia literally re-defines the term "voice". Notes can begin as one sound and become many sounds during their duration. This total voice flexibility and rich harmonic content (8 per voice) are the key reasons why Synthia is the most advanced instrument of its kind today. By assigning more than one voice to a key and giving each voice its own Time-Slice character, you can create a vivid chorus of sound not attainable on any other single instrument.

Three-Way Programming

Another quality of acoustic instruments is the subtle change in the character of different notes on the same instrument. High notes on the piano have an entirely different character than low notes. Synthia can be programmed to account for this difference. In fact, each note on the keyboard can be programmed individually! Synthia. can be programmed in three ways - Global, Interpolative and Individual.

The most simple method is Global. You merely program one note on the keyboard and then assign that harmonic and dynamic character to all the keys.
Interpolative Programming- is a revolutionary feature that is unique to Synthia. Program any two keys on the keyboard in any way you want and Synthia will adjust all the notes in between to be a proportional blend of the upper and lower note. For example, this feature allows you to program a saxophone into the lower end of the keyboard and have it gradually become a violin at the upper end of the keyboard.
The Individual Programming mode is the ultimate in flexibility. Each note on the keyboard can be programmed to have its own distinct character. Melodies can float across a sea of tone colors and chords become great mountains of rich sound. And, of course, you may split the keyboard into as many different segments as you wish. If you need only four bassoon notes and six piccolo notes, program them into the upper and lower ends of the keyboard and play cello on all the notes in between!

Fast and Flexible

Synthia lets you hear your musical ideas instantly in any programming session, and because the touch-sensitive display is so easy to use, you'll be able to concentrate on creativity, not carry a headful of programming jargon. Synthia's incredible speed lets you create a timeless world of personal sounds with the stroke of your finger. Synthia's flexibility will provide you with years of inspiration and expression.

Real-Time Control

Synthia responds instantly. Just touch the display and hear what you've created without waiting. Up to eight different components of a sound can be assigned to Synthia's exclusive Timbre-Bend™ expression modules where they can be conveniently modified while playing. Pitch, vibrato, harmonic content, pink or white noise and more - assign them to a Timbre-Bend fader or joystick and play away.

Synthia-A Complete System

In addition to the keyboard and display, Synthia also includes a versatile and powerful control unit. This rugged 19" rack mount unit can be remotely located, removing clutter from the stage. The control unit is also available in two configurations, Integrated and Modular. The Integrated System control unit contains the computer and up to 16 voice cards. The Modular System features a computer unit that can drive up to four voice units with up to 16 voices each - enough music power to handle 16 keyboards!

Beauty and Intelligence

Synthia is not only the most intelligent electronic instrument, it's also the most beautiful. The cabinet is finished in black and brushed aluminum with solid, hand-rubbed cherry accents. Your choice of rare woods is an optional extra. The style- integrated legs are both adjustable and removable. Synthia is just as much at home on center stage as in the studio. Synthia finally proves that ruggedness and style aren't mutually exclusive.

The information above was furnished by an inventor of the Synthia, Mr. Mark E. Faulhaber

A subsequent email message is worth posting here. Our thanks to Mr. Faulhaber for his contribution to our Museum.

As I was reviewing the writeup I sent you, I noticed a couple of errors.
Below is a corrected version:

ASI was formed in 1980 by four guys who were interested in doing something
different from their full-time jobs as engineers with a large chemical
company. Since about 1974, I had developed an interest in electronic music,
combining my training in electronics with a love of music. On my own, I
obtained a patent in 1976 for a new way to develop timbre using additive
synthesis, and had demonstrated a monophonic model at local IEEE meetings.
The three other guys saw my device as a mechanism for getting into business.
I was interested in pursuing my ideas further, and agreed to join them to
form ASI.

Only one year after formally forming the company and working part time, the
four of us had built a laboratory and produced two working prototypes. We
obtained a booth at the NAMM show in Atlanta in June 1982 and showed them to
the public.

Both performed flawlessly throughout the week. (Bob Moog was an interested
visitor to the booth.) We also presented Synthia to a crowd of over 700 at
the University of Pennsylvania Conference on Electronic Music and the Arts.
Later, we showed Synthia at the AES Convention and Exhibit in Anaheim, CA.
While on the west coast, we visited the Stanford University Center for Computer
Music and several studios. Unfortunately, we ran out of money and resources and
had to close down our Company in1983 before we could make a sale. At present,
both prototype units lie dormant in my basement lab. Age has affected the contacts
in the system backplane, so neither is in working order. It was a wonderful
experience while it lasted.

Synthia was truly a unique instrument for its time, which may have had
something to due with its failure to be accepted by what we found to be a
very conservative music industry. Its touch-sensitive plasma display was
state-of-the-art. Synthia featured about 250 different menus which could be
navigated merely by moving the finger on the display. Each note was
individually and completely programmable for pitch, timbre, effects, and
their development over time. That is, the development of a note could be
programmed in one to 99 steps from .01 to 10sec in length. There were two
digital tape decks installed with the display which would record and
playback instruments which were developed on Synthia, and all of the
attributes of a player's performance.

The 61-note keyboard was velocity sensitive and could be programmed to play
different selections on both key down and key up. Voices could be assigned
to either or both stereo channels. Today, all of these features can be obtained
with a MIDI keyboard, a computer, software, and a good sound card at a
comparatively low cost. But over the years it has been interesting to see how
many of the then unique features of Synthia have been incorporated in its successors.

Mark E. Faulhaber