alt Hacker NewsAhem, just two words. Yamaha DX-7.
Synth music elevated electric bound tones to anything ever heard.
I remidn you that most of the rock and roll and rock music was about speed and mimicking the sound of a rumbling car engine, as it was a symbol of the freedom in America, being able to run away from your toxic communities to find yourself better anywhere else.
That was the message for the young with rock and roll: a speedy engine for your ears.
Electronic music was like replacing a car with UFO evoking you a space travel.
With the progressive subgenre of techno music you got the same feeling, but with no subtle hints. Heck, one of the most known songs in Spain ever, "Flying Free", literally remixes the sounds of drifting cars between the melodies, making the listener really happy in a very direct way as tons of youngs in the 90's got into the outskirt night clubs... by car. So they felt as driving an infinite highway rave with no end for days.
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The DX-7 FM synthesis opened the door to a pretty narrow but interesting range of sounds, bells and brass, which people loved and it was a ripsnorting success for a time, but it didn't displace subtractive analog synths and people aren't exactly playing FM synthesizers any more, while they are now heavily back into analog subtractive. of course there are also romplers and samplers etc. and those can achieve sounds that FM did, but it's hard to call the DX-7 any type of be-all end-all.
The amusing thing (to me at least) is that while the DX7 gave users almost infinite options as to how they could create and shape sounds, if you know what to listen for you'll hear the E PIANO 1 and BASS 1 presets an about half of all mid 80s hits. Turns out when they gave musicians a tool with immense flexibility, many of them still chose to use two of the (admittedly great) preset sounds.