Wolfgang Palm

Wolfgang Palm(born 1950) is a German musician and inventor who was the founder and owner ofPalm Products GmbH(PPG) and the inventor and creator of various pioneering technical designs for analog and digitalsynthesizers.He is widely acknowledged as the father ofdigital synthesisand as a trendsetter in the use ofcomputer technologyin the making of electronic music.

Palm's interest in synthesis technology began as a keyboardist in various local bands in his hometown ofHamburg, Germany.His namesake corporation began operating as early as 1975, manufacturingmodular synthesizersin small numbers forelectronicaactTangerine Dreamand other musicians.

Palm is arguably most famous for the development of products usingwavetable synthesis,starting in the late 1970s when he created his Minimoog-like synthesizer - the 1020 - featuringdigitally controlled oscillatorsinstead of thevoltage controlled oscillatorsthat his 1002 synthesizer and all other analog synthesizers of that time were using.He also created the 360 Wavecomputer that would later become the renowned PPG Wave series. Palm's design was the impetus for the creation of the highly successful PPG Wave synthesizer, which was used by numerous bands throughout the 1980s and beyond. The sounds in the PPG Wave inspired other manufacturers of digital synthesizers, such asSequential CircuitsandEnsoniq.Today, nearly every digital synthesizer is in some way based on the concept of wavetable synthesizers.

Wolfgang Palm was also one of the first people to experiment with data transmission systems for exchange of data between digital synthesizers andsequencers.His early design of an 8-bit parallel bus system was later abandoned and replaced byMIDI.

References

• "Palm Productions GmbH (PPG)"Synth Museum website
• "PLEX restructuring Synthesizer by Steinberg and Wolfgang Palm as yet unheard of"crmav.com
• The 10 greatest synthesizers of all timeMusic Radar

External links

• Official website
• Wave 2.2PPG website
• PLEX 2