Yamaha DX7

Avery Burdette, the product manager for Yamaha Corporation of America, began his long love of music pushing down the pedals of his mother's organ as a small child while his mother played. Avery played trombone in school bands before forming a Southern-Rock style group in high school. He also worked in music retail before joining Yamaha in 1987. During his years with Yamaha he took part in the launching of several innovative products and witnessed first hand the company’s growth and development into newer product fields. Avery was able to provide our collection with first hand insight into the product development of Yamaha in the post-DX7 era. 

Dr. John Chowning is known throughout the world for his discovery of FM sound synthesis, which, when used in the context of electronic musical instruments, provided an alternative to the way synthesized music was being created. The technology was first used with great success in the Yamaha DX7, which not only sold extremely well and was a success in the market place, but it changed the way the world thought of and used electronic keyboards. As a professor at Stanford University, Dr. Chowning also designed a number of other applications for FM sound synthesis and similar electronic musical concepts.  

Karl Hirano was a synthesizer engineer for Yamaha in Japan during the great MIDI boom of the early 1980s. In fact, Karl was a member of the team that gathered at the 1983 NAMM Show to discuss the MIDI spec and agree on the protocol and how MIDI would be engineered into the vast number of new electronic keyboards and synthesizers that were in high demand at the time. Karl later played an important role in several MIDI organizations, presentations and focus groups, marking an important part of the music product industry’s history.  

Max Mathews was working as an engineer at the famed Bell Laboratory in 1954 when he was asked to determine if the computer Bell was designing could create music. The landmark Music 2 and later Music 4 projects put the two concepts together as early as 1957-–the computer and music had a future and Max was there for the birth. Max had moved on to musical programming when Don Buchla and Robert Moog created similar electronic music in the form of the synthesizer. As a Stanford University professor, Max worked with his close friend John Chowning for several decades on a number of programs including the technology used for Yamaha’s DX7.
 

Takuya Nakata is the Director and Executive Officer for Yamaha in Japan. During his NAMM Oral History interview he provided details about the development of Yamaha’s electronic musical products beginning with the D-1 organ in 1959. Mr. Nakata also related the stories of the GS-1 digital keyboard in 1981 and how that technology lead to the revolutionary DX-7, which was introduced in 1983 and forever changed the way MIDI and electronic keyboards were designed. These successes lead to the creation of PCM sound source, the VL1 synthesizer (1993) and Yamaha’s own LSI’s.
 

Richard O’Donnell was vice president of Yamaha Corporation of America at a very historic time in the company’s growth and development, the 1970s. Richard worked on several projects including managing the operations for the Everett Piano Plant in Michigan, which Yamaha purchased to expand its piano manufacturing. Richard later oversaw the Georgia manufacturing plants for Yamaha and witnessed first-hand the growth of the company within the American market. Being active in the company at the time of the release of the DX7 in the early 1980s, Richard was able to provide his views on the development of MIDI driven products and how Yamaha became one of the industry’s leaders in the field.