From Kraftwerk earworms to images of raves, futuristic fashion or flashy accessories, the sound of a synthesizer or bump of a sub-bass—the reality of electronic music, like everything else, is surrounded by a network of references.
And at the top of electronic music’s iceberg, with “Sandstorm”, “Cotton Eye Joe”, dubstep, and Rick Astley, one electronic instrument stands above others: the instantly identifiable, iconic keytar.
Devo used keytars in their music videos. Prince designed his own keytar for his band. Bobby Brown made the keytar cool in the world of R&B. Lady Gaga, Valerie Poxleitner (Lights), and a litany of electro-pop bands from the early 2000s saw the keytar through the turn of the century.
While Chang’s keytar in Community may highlight the uncanniness of the instrument, Snoop Dogg’s performance in the video for “Sensual Seduction” AKA “Sexual Eruption” certainly provides a counterpoint to popular culture’s totally unfair preconceptions of frankly one of history’s most ambitious hybridizations—the performability of the keyboard interface with the freedom and maneuverability of a guitar.
More Than a Prop
The journey of the keytar has culminated in iconic sounds across popular music. Seemingly known for its use in solos, the ego pumping confidence of the keytar has been used by some of music’s greatest performers. George Duke, Herbie Hancock, Rick Wakeman, and Belinda Bedeković have all unleashed their genius on the keytar.
Belinda Bedeković specifically is known for her almost unbelievable skill with the keytar.
Artists like Depeche Mode utilize the keytar in their studio recordings of "Just Can't Get Enough" and "People Are People". Prince’s keyboardist Tommy Barbarella, and Prince himself, would use Prince’s patented Purpleaxxe in their live performances during the 1990s. Nine Inch Nails, Miami Sound Machine, Jean Michel Jarre, Soul II, Black Eyed Peas, Justin Timberlake, Them Crooked Vultures, Dragonforce, Dream Theater, Stereolab, The Human League…the list goes on, and the keytar keeps popping up.
Even though today’s keytar is so wildly different from the first iterations, in fact the word “keytar” was not used til the late 1970s, the vision of the instrument has been persistent. But before tech like MIDI controllers, FM synthesis, oscillators, and voltage control would shape the trajectory of electronic instrument design, acoustic instrument makers found their own path to find that balance of performability and form.
This is the story of the keytar.
Early Beginnings
Today we appreciate the style and flexibility of the keytar as a performance instrument. Depending on the design of the keytar, think a 61-key monster synth, the gracefulness of the design is concern number one—the player needs to be able to play the instrument.
Modern sales pitches promise that keyboardists can take center stage, joining the more freestanding members of the band in the spotlight…leveraging the cliche that vocalists and guitarists get all the glory during a live performance. Certainly, the draw of a keytar bridges the gap between the fire within the keyboardist and what the keyboardist gets to show while performing—and there is nothing wrong with more joy and expression.
This is, after all, the impetus of music making: and by extension, the drive behind instrument makers. Like many movers in music history, the instrument maker Carl Leopold Röllig of Vienna took this to heart when he created the Orphica in 1795, perhaps the earliest iteration of what we now might recognize as a keytar.
[Above: the Orphica; image via Kunst Historisches Museum Wien (KHWM)]
The Orphica, named after the mythical Orpheus, sounded like a dulcimer and featured a “capatosto,” or transposing mechanism like a stringed instrument and vienna-style diminutive keys like a piano, joining “the lute and the fortepiano,” according to Röllig.
Röllig’s hope for the instrument was to provide amateur artists the ability to bring instruments with them, a “hiking instrument": imagine playing the Orphica outdoors at a picnic. It was created “ for calmness and gentle feelings—for the night, friendship, and love,” in Röllig’s own words.
Röllig’s Orphica had a short life. Not many were made in the period between 1795 and 1820, but still, the instrument did find some appeal. Ludwig van Beethoven composed WoO.51, an Allegro in C Major, and an unfinished Adagio in F Major in 1798 for the wife of his friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler—both pieces were originally written for the Orphica. Europe’s novelty, the “Weekend Piano” would stand alone as the most innovative way to strap a keyboard on your chest until the international phenomenon of the piano accordion.
Patented in 1829, the accordion is a variation on the “Hand-Aeoline,” which was invented by Christian Friedrich Buschmann in 1822. Buschmann’s “Hand-Aeoline” was a keyboard with expanding bellows attached, the bellows pushed air through free vibrating reeds, like the traditional Chinese instrument the Sheng, within the keyboard body. The sound and performability of the piano accordion would go on to influence the South American Tango, Merengue & Cumbia, American Cajun, Western Swing, Alpine, French Musette, Balkan, and Irish & Scottish Folk Music and Jazz.
The piano accordion would enjoy an uninterrupted reign for over 100 years until the chains of innovation would move forward, bringing a new chapter to the story of the keytar.
The Age of Electronics
The Weltmeister Basset, released in 1963 was a wearable bass keyboard with a left handed neck, also known as a combo-bass. The Bassett is similar to the Farfisa Transicord in that it is a keyboard repackaged in a wearable format, features the Clavinet’s action mechanism, and a 32-key, F-C keyboard.
It would be the first modern proto-keytar to take a form resembling a guitar—setting a standard for what wearable electronic instruments should do and look like.
In 1966, Swedish instrument manufacturer Joh Mustad AB would introduce the world to an instrument whose body, performance style, and tech would bring the guitar-style keyboard right to the source of popular music. Joh Mustad AB’s Tubon was a tubular, electronic bass instrument meant to be worn around your neck and held like a guitar. The Tubon had six distinct voices: Tuba, Contrabass, Electric Bass, saxophone, electric bass, and woodwind.
Although very few were sold outside of Sweden, it did make appearances on a variety of pop and folk albums within the country. The Tubon did appear in the UK under the company name Livingstone. Notably, Paul McCartney and John Lennon would use the Tubon. In fact, the Mellotron mkII intro to “Strawberry Fields Forever” was originally written for the Tubon.
Edging for the Spotlight
The '60s and '70s were formative years for electronic music and electronic sound and the boundary pushers in the world of popular music came in the shape of musicians and inventors alike. Like Wendy Carlos and Moog, a few players have become almost synonymous with their instrument of choice. One such player is Edgar Winter and his ARP 2600.
Edgar Winter was an early adopter of the ARP 2600, ARP Instrument Inc.’s flagship modular system of the 1970s and would be the perfect messengers for the coming of the keytar. It would be that Edgar Winter Group single “Frankenstein” (1973) that would be the edge of the spear. “Frankenstein,” like “Free Ride,” is one of the Edgar Winter Group’s biggest hits and it features one of the most iconic synth solos in classic rock.
In the group’s classic in-studio interview and performance in 1973 (above), you can see Edgar Winter playing his ARP system (and saxophone), but he is doing something different, he is wearing the keyboard controller for the ARP 2600 around his neck, in sync with the guitarists, riffing between his sax and synth like never seen before.
Originally released in a small batch of 25 starting in 1971, the ARP 2600 is one of the greatest analog synthesizers ever made featuring a semi-modular design. The synth’s analog signal path includes three oscillators, one 24 dB/oct filter, one ADSR envelope, one VCA and one mixer section, all of which can be modulated with the 2600’s legendary faceplate of switches, sliders, and iconic labeling design.
Thanks to players like Edgar Winter, Stevie Wonder, and Herbie Hancock, the legacy of ARP has arced from a garage in Massachusetts to a spot at the table of the history of music and technology. By the end of the 1970s the electronic instrument and device market had grown at an insane rate. Household names today began showing up worldwide.
From the Future to the Future
In the fall of 1978, George Mattson, of Mattson Modular Systems and Performance Music Systems (PMS), set on a path to build the first modern keytar. It was called the Syntar—and the world got its first peek at NAMM in 1979 in Atlanta.
[Above: George Mattson demonstrating the Syntar.]
By 1980, the PMS Syntar was available to the public and it had it all—three octave keyboard, independent power supply and interface, with high and low outputs and gold plated buss bars and spring contacts for high-quality key-stroke connections. No feature was sacrificed for form, the Syntar boasted an oscillator output for controlling other devices, a CV input so you could control the Syntar with other devices, and an external audio input to process audio through the Syntar’s four-pole, 24db/octave filter, which was continuously variable between low-pass, band-pass, high-pass, and notch filtering modes and featured self oscillation.
The Syntar had all the essential tools for an analog system—ADSR and AD envelope generators, variable controlled LFO, sample and hold (with LFO), mixers for oscillator control, filter control, and amplitude control, a transpose function, and glide controls.
The Syntar really shined with unparalleled control via its unique neck.
The neck of the Syntar controlled multiple parameters like pitch bend direction and modulation, filter speed sweep direction, speed, and modulation and amplitude parameters through nine continuously variable CV controllers, giving the Syntar the edge to “create lead lines and effects that until now were impossible to create with one hand.” The neck also controlled glide direction and patterns with three switches: a switch for one-way glide pattern, a switch for two-way pattern, and a switch to change between linear and exponential glide.
The Syntar was truly “more than a common synthesizer”, the result of a lightbulb moment in a spread out studio space, whose release beat designers with larger facilities, and the first true keytar. But the Syntar would not be the only keytar for long—and Moog’s answer to the PMS Syntar was about to take the keytar commercial.
PMS lacked the capacity to produce the instrument en masse, and it was Moog’s Liberation—a non-functioning prototype of which was also at that NAMM show in 1979—that would set the pace for the major industry brands.
The Moog Liberation was a fully featured analog synthesizer which could be played like a guitar. Unlike the Hillwood RockeyBoard RB-1 and Roger Powell’s Powell Probe, or even the Clavitar, the Liberation was not just a piano with a VCF or a controller for external gear, but a high-quality Moog synthesizer that was completely mobile.
Used by artists such as 808 State, Apollo 440, Devo, and Kool and The Gang, the Liberation was a dual-oscillator monophonic, strap-on keytar style performance synthesizer and a close relative to Moog’s Prodigy synthesizer. It offered a robust mixer section featuring ring-mod, noise, and polysynth controls (10-voice polysynth organ section), and a built out hand-grip, guitar style neck.
The neck featured a ribbon controller for touch control over pitch bending and switches for force, glide, mod amount, filter, and volume control. The Liberation’s ribbon controller pushes the boundary of what a keytar can be, reimagining performance and control possibilities.
Dawn of the New Age
The 1980s was all about reimaging a new future—from glampop to Windows and Apple, from Nintendo to the CD, the old world is quickly slipping behind in the glow of electronics and the digital future.
The synthesizer helped usher in this new modern age, they made the sounds with which advertisers would sell this new era, synthesizers were a symbol of cutting edge in music and in the public imagination. The future had a sound and it was electronic music.
The keytar would thrive in this new world and it would be the 80s that would propel the design of the keytar. bringing trends that are still followed today. Helping to bring the future to the people were instrument manufacturers like Korg, Roland, and Yamaha. Among others like Oberheim, Linn Electronics, and New England Digital, these three Japan-based instrument makers were bringing some of the best synthesizers, drum machines, and sequencers to the market. It should be no surprise that they would also bring their own twist on the keytar.
In 1982 Roland released one of the most popular monophonic bass synths of all time, the SH-101 32-Key Monophonic Synthesizer. Uniquely, the SH-101 could be turned into a keytar by adding the modulation handgrip, the MGS-1, which came with a strap and hardware—everything you would need to don the bass synth and take the stage.
It would be one of the last keytar designs to not feature MIDI connectivity, and while trends were to tip towards keytar style controllers, the SH-101 was a powerful analog synthesizer related to the TB-303 and the Juno-106, but in a much more mobile package.
The list of artists who used the SH-101 is massive and its popularity is a testament to Roland’s high quality output. Portishead, 808-State, Jimmy Edgar, Apollo 440, Devo, Union Jack, Luke Vibert, Dirty Vegas, Josh Wink, Aphex Twin, Astral Projection, Les Rythmes Digitales, Sense Datum, Squarepusher, Sascha Konietzko of KMFDM/MDFMK, Freddy Fresh, Lab-4, Nitzer Ebb, the Chemical Brothers, Boards of Canada, Prodigy, and more have all used the SH-101, leveraging the focused signal flow of Roland’s first keytar.
The SH-101 features a single VCO with independent levels for saw, square/pulse/pwm and a sub-oscillator, an LFO with triangle, square, random waveforms, and ADSR Envelope module. The synth had CV/ Gate connectivity, a 100-step digital sequencer, an ARP and white noise generator. The VCF, pitch, and LFO could all be controlled via pitch bend.
Its sleek and straightforward design meant players are offered, not limited to, a select set of waveforms, envelopes, filters, and controls, all of which have helped bring the precision needed to make IDM, DnB, acid house, and other technically demanding genres, many of which owe their inception to the instrument. But, while the SH-101 may mark a shift in the world of electronic instruments, offering affordable quality and customizability without any considerable learning curve, it does lack the aesthetic of the iconic keytar.
Like the Sequential Circuits Prophet Remote, the SH-101 was rather boxy as it was intended to be played horizontally. Unlike the SH-101, the Sequential keytar was a controller and not capable of making sounds internally.
The Sequential Circuits Prophet Remote was released in 1984 and is one of the last rectangular keytars. It came with a 20-foot proprietary cable so you could make your way out into the thick of the performance, even if you were kept within that 20 foot perimeter.
That same year, Japanese instrument manufacturer Korg released the RK-100, a keytar style MIDI controller, which would be the first angular keytar to hit the market, setting the standard for pretty much every keytar to follow. The RK-100’s neck featured program selection, volume, bend, octave, and “MG” control. The keytar’s MG control was interesting, defining the modulation intensity for the receiving synthesizer and a destination switch for even more control and celebrating the power of MIDI.
By the late '80s the keytar craze was in full bloom, and the market was full of options some more well known than others. With offerings from Casio (AZ-1, CS-01, CZ-101), Roland (AXIS), Lync, and more, whether you were in the market for a keytar controller, synth with a handgrip, or a synthesizer with strap pins just in case, a more mobile keyboard was certainly not hard to come by.
Even in a sea of options, the end of the decade would hold one more keytar gem. In 1987 Yamaha released the SHS-10, one of the most accessible keytars ever released. The SHS-10 was part of Yamaha’s line “Sholky” (shoulder keyboard) instruments, but unlike Yamaha’s earlier keytars, the KX5 or KX1, the SHS-10’s interface and build aligned closer to their Portasound VSS30 Digital voice sampler, the former examples are considered professional instruments while the latter are thought of as toy-like instruments.
Comparable to the Casio SK line of cheap mini keyboards, the SHS-10 came in two colors—gray and red—and a rare third, black and gold variant.
As far as a synth goes, the SHS-10 did not offer much in terms of user patching or sound design. The keytar offered 25 unique voices, 6-note polyphony, through an internal FM synth and was capable of sending MIDI out. On top of the 25 non-editable voices, the SHS-10 had 25 rhythms to accompany, which were sent out on a separate MIDI track so you could program your external devices without having to filter keyboard information, an auto-chord function, a chord sequencer, pitch bend, and effects like portamento, sustain, and vibrato.
We have all heard this synth at one point or another. Wham’s famous “Last Christmas” is certainly the most popular example of this little pick-up-and-play FM synth. In fact, the song was licensed to play via the “demo” button on some models.
The Future and Beyond
Fast forward to today and the keytar has not changed much in terms of form and performability, but the quality of the instruments has continued to grow with the times.
It could be said we are going through a little bit of a keytar boom as a variety of new models have come out in the last 10 years Roland Lucina AX-09 (2010), Alesis Vortex Wireless 2 (2018), Behringer MS-1 RD (2019), Roland AX-Edge (2018), and the Korg RK 100S 2 (2022) are some of the newest keytars out from the main names in electronic instrument manufacturing.
MIDI capability is a must and modern keytars controllers like the Alesis Vortex Wireless 2 are meant to deliver that stage-first mentality. Bigger keytars like the Roland AX-Edge and the Korg RK 100S 2 are full synthesizers with their own voice and swagger, ideal for energetic keyboardists.
The story of the keytar proves that outside of the box thinking and imagination in instrument design is a valuable spark that can light up new possibilities in sound and performance. From the Orphica to a wearable controller that you can use to play a software synth from center stage, the keytar is an example of just how customizable your experience with electronic instruments can be.
