ARP Instruments, Inc. was a Lexington, Massachusetts [1] manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, founded by Alan Robert Pearlman [2] [3] [lower-alpha 1] in 1969. It created a popular and commercially successful range of synthesizers throughout the 1970s before declaring bankruptcy in 1981. The company earned a reputation for producing excellent sounding, innovative instruments and was granted several patents for the technology it developed.
Alan Pearlman was an engineering student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts in 1948 when he foresaw the coming age of electronic music and synthesizers. He later wrote:
Following 21 years of experience in electronic engineering and entrepreneurship, Pearlman founded the company in 1969 with $100,000 of personal funds and a matching amount from investors, with fellow engineering graduate David Friend on board from the beginning as the co-founder of the company. [5] The company derived its name from Pearlman's initials, and existed briefly as the ARP Instrument Division of Tonus, Inc. [6] [7] Their first instrument, the ARP 2500, was released the following year. [4]
The ARP 2600 began production in 1971. As an engineer, Pearlman had little understanding of the music industry or its potential audience. He felt the best market for synthesizers would be music departments at schools and universities, and designed the instrument to be easy to use for this reason. [8] David Friend and musician Roger Powell toured the US demonstrating the 2600 to various musicians and dealers, and it quickly became a popular instrument. [9] The first significant user of the 2600 was Edgar Winter, who connected the keyboard controller of the 2600 to the main unit via a long extension cord, allowing him to wear the synth around his neck like a keytar. Stevie Wonder was an early adopter of the 2600, who had the control panel instructions labelled in Braille. [10]
Throughout the 1970s, ARP was the main competitor to Moog Music and eventually surpassed Moog to become the world's leading manufacturer of electronic musical instruments. [11] Performers found that ARP synthesizers were better at staying in tune than Moogs owing to superior oscillator design. The 2500 used a matrix-signal switching system instead of patch cords on a Moog, which led to some performers complaining about crosstalk between signal paths. The 2600 on the other hand, used hardwired ("normaled") signal paths that could be modified with switch settings, or completely overridden using patch cords. [12]
There were two main camps among synthesizer musicians — the Minimoog players and the ARP Odyssey/ARP 2600 players — with most proponents dedicated to their choice, although some players decided to pick and choose between the two for specific effect, as well as many who dabbled with products produced by other manufacturers. Notably, the 2500 was featured in the hit movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind ; [13] ARP's Vice President of Engineering, Phillip Dodds, was sent to install the unit on the movie set and was subsequently cast as Jean Claude, the musician who played the now famous 5-note sequence on the huge synthesizer in an attempt to communicate with the alien mothership. [14]
The Odyssey was released in 1972. It was designed as a cut-down version of the 2600 for touring musicians, competing with the Minimoog, and contained a three-octave keyboard. Later versions featured a pressure-pad operated pitch control system. [15]
The best selling ARP synthesizer was the Omni, released in 1975. It was a fully polyphonic keyboard that used top-octave divide-down oscillators that had been used on electronic organs, and competed with the Polymoog. [15] In 1977, the company peaked financially with $7 million sales. [16] The Quadra was released the following year, and contained a number of synthesizer modules combined and controlled by a microprocessor. [16]
The demise of ARP Instruments stemmed from financial difficulties following development of the ARP Avatar, [17] a synthesizer module virtually identical to the ARP Odyssey without a keyboard and intended to be played by a solid body electric guitar via a specially-mounted hexaphonic guitar pickup whose signals were then processed through discrete pitch-to-voltage converters. [18]
Although an excellent, groundbreaking instrument by all accounts, the Avatar failed to sell well. ARP Instruments was never able to recoup the research and development costs associated with the Avatar project [19] and after several more attempts to produce successful instruments such as the ARP Quadra, ARP 16-Voice & 4-Voice Pianos, and the ARP Solus, the company finally declared bankruptcy in May 1981. [20]
During the liquidation process, the company's assets and the rights to the manufacture of the 4-Voice Piano and also the prototype ARP Chroma – the company's most sophisticated instrument design to date – were sold to CBS Musical Instruments for $350,000. [21] The project was completed at CBS R&D, and the renamed Rhodes Chroma was produced from 1982 to late 1983. The instrument has a flexible voice architecture, 16-note polyphony, weighted, wooden keyboard action with 256 velocity levels, a single slider parameter editing system (subsequently implemented on the Yamaha DX7); and the inclusion of a proprietary digital interface system that predated MIDI. [22] It was controlled internally by an Intel 80186 microprocessor. [23]
In 2015, almost three and a half decades after it closed its doors, the company's second flagship instrument, the ARP Odyssey, was brought back into production by Korg, working in collaboration with David Friend, Alan Pearlman's co-founder at ARP. [5] In 2019, German manufacturer Behringer released their own version of the instrument, the Behringer Odyssey.
In 2013, Swedish DIY Synthesizer designer The Human Comparator released a DIY remake of the ARP 2600, dubbed the TTSH ("Two-Thousand Six Hundred"). Korg released a limited-edition revival of the ARP 2600 called the 2600 FS in 2019, with the instrument officially shipping in early 2020. Behringer likewise designed a modernized rack-mountable version of its own, the "Behringer 2600", which became available in early 2021.
Both the ARP 2600 and Arp Odyssey have been professionally recreated as virtual instruments. GForce Software and Arturia have modeled the 2600, while GForce and Korg offer virtual versions of the Odyssey, the latter officially endorsed by David Friend. [24] [25] [26]
The freeware synthesizer emulator Bristol features software versions of the ARP 2600, ARP Odyssey, ARP Axxe, and ARP Solina String Machine. [27]
Some notable ARP users and endorsers include:
ARP: Amerikanischer Synthesizerhersteller, benannt nach dem Begründer Alan Richard PEARLMAN. (German: "ARP: American synthesizer manufacturer, named after founder Alan Richard PEARLMAN.")
An analog synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically.
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument that records and plays back samples. Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, sound effects or longer portions of music.
Keytar is a keyboard instrument similar to a synthesizer or MIDI controller that is supported by a strap around the neck and shoulders, similar to the way a guitar is held.
Équinoxe is the fourth studio album by French electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, released in December 1978 on the Dreyfus record label, licensed to Polydor Records for its worldwide distribution in 1979. The album featured two singles: "Équinoxe Part 4" and "Équinoxe Part 5", the latter having more success reaching No. 45 on the UK Singles Chart. It reached number 11 on the UK Album Chart and number 126 on the US Billboard 200 chart.
Sequential is an American synthesizer company founded in 1974 as Sequential Circuits by Dave Smith. In 1978, Sequential released the Prophet-5, the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer, which was widely used in the music industry. In the 1980s, Sequential was important in the development of MIDI, a technical standard for synchronizing electronic instruments.
The ARP Odyssey is an analog synthesizer introduced by ARP Instruments in 1972.
The ARP 2600 is a subtractive synthesizer first produced by ARP Instruments, Inc in 1971.
Alan Robert Pearlman was an American engineer best known as the founder of ARP Instruments, Inc., one of the early leading American synthesizer manufacturers.
The ARP Pro Soloist was one of the first commercially successful preset synthesizers. Introduced by ARP Instruments, Inc. in 1972, it replaced the similar ARP Soloist (1970–1971) in the company's lineup of portable performance instruments.
Cyclone is the eighth studio album by Tangerine Dream and the first in their canon to feature proper vocals and lyrics. The cover is a painting by band leader Edgar Froese.
Polyphony is a property of musical instruments that means that they can play multiple independent melody lines simultaneously. Instruments featuring polyphony are said to be polyphonic. Instruments that are not capable of polyphony are monophonic or paraphonic.
Electronic Music Laboratories, commonly abbreviated to EML, was a synthesizer company founded in 1968 in Vernon, Connecticut, by four engineers. It manufactured and designed a variety of synthesizers sharing the same basic design but configured in different ways.
The ARP Quadra was a 61-key analog synthesizer produced by ARP Instruments, Inc. from 1978 to 1981. The machine combined pre-existing products: the Omni, Odyssey, a Solina-esque string synthesizer unit, a phaser and a divide-down organ with ADSR envelope, and a 4075 24 db low pass filter into one box. It has four sections. Bass is on the bottom two octaves, has two unison bass circuits, with AR and a single pole low pass filter and a related AD envelope for cutoff. A string section is similar to the ARP Omni. Poly Synth, and a two voice Lead Synth similar to the Odyssey and a five way mixer with four unit outputs, a stereo pair, a line mono and an XLR out.
The ARP Omni was a polyphonic analog synthesizer manufactured by ARP Instruments, Inc.
Thomas Elroy Oberheim, known as Tom Oberheim, is an American audio engineer and electronics engineer best known for designing effects processors, analog synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines. He has been the founder of four audio electronics companies, most notably Oberheim Electronics. He was also a key figure in the development and adoption of the MIDI standard. He is also a trained physicist.
A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.
The E-mu Modular System is an analog modular synthesizer built by E-mu Systems in 1974. It competed with synthesizers such as the ARP 2500, ARP 2600, and Moog modular synthesizers, although E-mu designed the instruments for mostly universities and notable musicians who submitted custom configuration requests. The Modular System's polyphonic keyboard and sequencer are controlled by a microprocessor. Around 100 units are thought to exist today.
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{{cite magazine}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)3 FOR THE SHOW 1. ARP Sequencer The long-awaited ARP live performance sequencer is here. Loaded with elegant features, the sequencer interfaces with the ARP Axxe, Odyssey and 2600 synthesizers. ... MUSIC TRADES. MAY. 1976 31.
The new ARP Sequencer adds rich new textures to your music while it frees both hands for playing keyboards. Just patch the ARP Sequencer into an Axxe, ...
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