Kurzweil Music Systems
| Public | |
| Industry | Electronics |
| Founded | 1982 |
| Headquarters | United States |
|
Key people
|
Raymond Kurzweil (Founder) Stevie Wonder (Founder) |
| Products | Musical instruments |
| Website | kurzweil |
Kurzweil Music Systems is an American company that produces electronic musical instruments for professionals and home users. Founded in 1982 by Stevie Wonder, Raymond Kurzweil, a developer of reading machines for the blind, and Bruce Cichowlas, a software developer, the company made use of many of the technologies originally designed for reading machines and adapted them to musical purposes. They released their first instrument, the K250 in 1983, and have continued producing new instruments ever since.
The company was acquired by Young Chang in 1990. Hyundai acquired Young Chang in 2006 and in January 2007 appointed Raymond Kurzweil as Chief Strategy Officer of Kurzweil Music Systems.
The company launched the K250 synthesizer/sampler in 1984: while limited by today's standards and quite expensive, it was considered to be the first really successful attempt to emulate the complex sound of a grand piano. This instrument was inspired by a bet between Ray Kurzweil and musician Stevie Wonder over whether a synthesizer could sound like a real piano. First issued as a very large and heavy keyboard, the electronics were also issued in a very large and heavy rackmount version, as the 250RMX (Rack Mount "Expander"—the presumed intention being that one could drive via MIDI and sequencers one or more "expanders"). Additional sample ROMs were developed and issued for both models.
As opposed to using 'sample-based' or 'subtractive' synthesis, the K150 (a rack-mount unit) uses additive synthesis. Hal Chamberlin (mentioned below) developed software to run on Apple II class computers, which would allow extensive control of the very rich possibilities of the K150. This synthesizer was never a commercial music success, but was very popular in academic and research facilities.
The K1000 and K1200 (and their rack-mounted variants) were designed to deliver the sample libraries developed originally for the K250 to a wider audience in less expensive and physically more manageable forms. Unlike the K250, these instruments could not sample new sounds directly; but their programming architecture and operating system were evolutionary steps that would culminate in the K2xxx series. There were several keyboard versions issued, and the 1000 modules were originally issued in PX (pianos and mixed bag), SX (strings), HX (horns and winds), and GX (guitars and basses) versions, each with differing sample-ROMs. As computing and electronics technologies changed rapidly during the period, larger sample bases could be combined. The later 1200 module versions contained these larger sample bases (i.e., PX+SX; SX+HX; HX+GX).
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