Tom Oberheim

One of the biggest things no one tells you about synthesizers when you first start learning to play them is: not all synths are good for making music that pleases the ear. Electronic musicians will frequently say (if you care to ask) that their favorite synth is one of the various Roland, Moog, or Oberheim classics that just sound good no matter how you dial in their knobs, faders, switches, and buttons. The best instruments of any type are those that sound so good when you play them that you just want to keep playing them more and more all the time—the instruments that make you want to make music.

Tom Oberheim is the last living member of the pantheon of visionary electrical engineers who invented the synthesizer and the other electronic instruments that followed. Oberheim designed many of the most novel instruments of the twentieth century and helped establish the bedrock technological standards upon which the vast majority of modern music is still made, as much a towering genius as Robert Moog, Don Buchla, or Ikutaro Kakehashi. You can draw a straight line tracking the evolution of Oberheim’s tools and instruments through the sound of all popular music from the late 1960s to this day. Guitar gear innovator Jim Dunlop once described his work as “making paintbrushes for the masters.” Oberheim has made some of the finest sonic paint brushes of all time, and his brushes remain in wide use and in high demand to this day.

My first synthesizer was a MicroKorg I got in 2006, a modern classic instrument that debuted in 2002 and has been a mainstay across genres ever since. It’s a compact little 37-mini-key “virtual analog” synthesizer, designed by the manufacturer Korg to emulate the architecture and functionality of the old-school analog type of synth that Oberheim pioneered. When I first plugged the MicroKorg into an amplifier, turned it on, and hit a single key, the wild sounds that erupted from the amp in arpeggios and echoes slapped me silly enough to turn my guitar-obsessed head around. I never turned back. Since then, I’ve collected an array of vintage and modern electronic instruments made by Korg, Moog, and Roland, among others. But I still can’t afford an Oberheim synth, even if I could find the rare Oberheim owner willing to part with their dear friend. Because like any instrument, a synth is a friend to the musician who adopts it, and it can quickly become a best friend.

Born in Kansas in 1936, Oberheim moved to Los Angeles at age 20 and became an expert in computer engineering and physics while studying at UCLA. He also sang in various local choirs. As such, he didn’t come up through either of the original hubs of electronic music in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area that gave rise to the dubious distinction between the “East Coast synthesis” of Robert Moog and the “West Coast synthesis” of Don Buchla. Oberheim came out of the cradle of the professional music industry in Los Angeles, living his life among live performers, session musicians, television/film composers, and other working music makers who heard, liked, and demanded more of his instruments and tools. This is a primary reason he was able to create so many fresh, unusual instruments that resonated so strongly with the leading musicians of his time and beyond.

Beginning in the 1960s, Oberheim accomplished and participated in a vast range of the most important standard-setting advances in musical instrument technology of each decade that followed. To name a few: the first commercially available “polyphonic” synths, capable of playing more than one note at the same time; the first digital “patch” memory storage for synth control settings, allowing a player to recall specific sounds they had previously dialed in on the physical analog controls without having to reset every single knob to the proper position; the MIDI protocol (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) that has been the industry-standard lingua franca of connectivity between electronic instruments made by different manufacturers since its debut in the 1980s, which Oberheim helped develop in collaboration with some of his greatest peers (and competitors) in the synth business; and of course, at the peak of his career throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the legendary OB-X series of synthesizers and many of the other most powerful, valuable, and era-defining synths of all time.

Early adopters and champions of Oberheim synths included Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Jan Hammer, and many other famous keyboardists in many different genres. Most crucially, one musician of the 1970s above all others sent the sounds of Oberheim and his peers’ new sonic paintbrushes rocketing straight to the front and center of the popular music world: Stevie Wonder. And one musician of the 1980s above all others took the ball from Stevie, ran with it faster than anyone, and dunked on the competition year after year: Prince. If you’ve ever listened to Purple Rain, 1999, or any other album Prince recorded in the 1980s, you know what an Oberheim synth sounds like.

Oberheim rebooted his company Oberheim Electronics in 2022, based in the Bay Area where he currently lives, making and selling updated modern versions of his classic synthesizers. He is still active in the musical instrument industry at large, and continues to make special appearances at conferences and events like the annual National Association of Music Merchants trade show. Oberheim is a lifer in music, in the best sense of the word: the type of music lover who builds his life around his passion, for both himself and his community of music lovers.

Musical instrument salesmen of the early 1970s originally pitched the keyboard synthesizer to musicians (as opposed to academic experimenters and researchers) as an instrument with the power to sound like a multitude of pre-existing instruments, whether brass, woodwind, plucked, or percussive. But Oberheim envisioned his devices to create compelling sounds that do not yet exist in the world. The creativity inherent in these boxes of wires speaks to the hearts of inventors and artists alike.

The synthesizer converts electrical current and voltage into waves of shapeable sound, in a manner that remains as mysterious to most musicians as the workings of an automobile engine are to the average driver. These unearthly sounds not found in nature have long been associated with danger, eeriness, and the occult, thanks to the synth-heavy film soundtracks of John Carpenter, Vangelis and others in the 1980s. The sounds of the synthesizer still retain the power to shock, awe, surprise and delight, 60 years after Oberheim began to solder his dreams into reality. This inspiring sense of richness and wonder is the core joy I’ve found in twisting the knobs, flipping the switches, and plumbing the depths of these electronic contraptions with piano keys bolted on. Here lies the root of my capability and skill as a musician to breathe life into the ghosts in these machines. As Arthur C. Clarke said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”