Making music at home used to be almost impossible. In the 1960s, a synthesizer was a wall of boxes and cables, and most of them ended up in studios, not with regular musicians. Then in 1970, Moog came out with the Minimoog, a smaller keyboard you could actually buy in a music store. In 1978 the Prophet 5 showed up, and it could save its sounds, so you didn’t have to rebuild them by hand every time.
Then recording got cheap too. In 1979, TEAC put out the Portastudio, a four-track recorder that used regular cassette tapes, and Bruce Springsteen recorded his album Nebraska on one. In 1983, MIDI let keyboards from different companies talk to each other. By 1985, the Atari ST computer came with MIDI built in, and a keyboard, tape deck and a computer on one desk added up to a whole studio.
Big moments
- 1970: the Minimoog
- 1978: the Prophet-5
- 1979: the TEAC Portastudio
- 1983: MIDI
- 1985: the Atari ST
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