Developed and marketed by EMS, the VCS3 — its true name, which stood for the voltage-controlled studio, attempt No. 3 — was tiny compared to its behemoth American counterparts. Instead of dozens of jacks spread across several square feet or more of panel space, the VCS3 offered a tiny, square patch-board matrix. Whereas American synth modules were interconnected using handfuls of patch cables, small pins were inserted into the VCS3’s patch board to route control and audio signals through the device. “There was actually a very good reason for using that patch board,” explains David Cockerell, designer of the VCS3. “We got a good deal on them surplus and bought a few hundred pretty cheaply.”
Since 1965, Cockerell had worked for Peter Zinovieff, who’d purchased a DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) PDP-8, the first minicomputer, and put together one of the early computer music studios. According to Robin Wood, who joined EMS in 1970 and has owned it since May of 1995, “At least half of EMS was a very expensive computer studio where DEC computers were used to control prototype analog systems, not only for generating simple analog synthesizer sounds, but also for some very sophisticated filter bank systems that could analyze sounds.”
“There was a group of three of us,” Cockerell explains, “Peter Zinovieff, myself, and Tristram Cary. They were both into avant-garde music, what you would call serious music in the classical tradition. It was toneless, and they thought the keyboard was of secondary importance. The VCS3 wasn’t really a keyboard instrument to start with. We sort of added the keyboard on as an afterthought.” The keyboard in question was the DK2, a three-octave, duophonic mechanical affair installed with control electronics in a wooden cabinet that matched the VCS3.
Portability was an afterthought as well. “The VCS3 was pretty awkward to carry around,” Cockerell asserts. “It would have to be in a box as big as a tea chest. It didn’t fold over or anything.” By 1971, Cockerell had squeezed his VCS3 electronics into an oversized briefcase, and the Synthi A was born. He also designed the KS, a 2-1/2 octave touchplate keyboard with a 256-event monophonic digital sequencer. These would fit inside the Synthi A’s lid to make it the Synthi AKS.
Like the American analog synths of the time, EMS’s oscillators tended to drift. “They were a bit dodgy onstage,” Cockerell reports. “You had to keep tuning them up.” Wood concurs, “They’re rather temperamental with regard to tuning and pitch stability. People who used them onstage deserve a lot of credit for their bravery. If you wanted to use one with a keyboard in performance, you had to let it settle down for about half an hour before you could set the tuning. Even then, if someone were to open the door and let in cool air just before your lead solo, you could easily be in trouble.”