The Synthesizer

The Synthesizer: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding, Programming, Playing and Recording the Ultimate Electronic Music Instrument documents the journey of the synthesizer from its austere and obscure beginnings to its present highly-sophisticated and popularized forms.

This book is more of a historical, in-depth survey than a how-to, though it does describe how to select and program a synthesizer.

This is not a coffee table book. Vail created this book with the desire to make a wealth of knowledge and information accessible and affordable to synth enthusiasts, so all of the photos are printed in black and white, and the paper is very light.

Mark Vail is a synthesizer historian and expert who served on the editorial staff at Keyboard magazine from 1988 to 2001.

Softcover, 432 pages

Published February 19, 2014 by Oxford University Press