Tom Oberheim

Thomas Elroy Oberheim (Born July 7, 1936, Manhattan, Kansas), known as Tom Oberheim, is an audio engineer best known for designing effects processors, analog synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines. He has been the founder of four audio electronics companies, most notably Oberheim Electronics. He was also a key figure in the development and adoption of the MIDI standard. He is also a trained Physicist.

Oberheim was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas, also the home of Kansas State University. Beginning in junior high school, he put his interest in electronics into practice by building hi-fi components and amplifiers for friends. A fan of jazz music, Oberheim decided to move to Los Angeles after seeing an ad on the back of Downbeat Magazine about free jazz performances at a club there. He arrived in Los Angeles in July 1956 at the age of 20 with $10 in his pocket. He worked as a draftsman trainee at NCR Corporation where he was inspired to become a computer engineer. Oberheim enrolled at UCLA, studying computer engineering and physics while also taking music courses. Over the next nine years he worked toward his physics degree, serving in the Army for a short period of time, harmonizing with the Gregg Smith Singers, and working jobs at computer companies (most notably Abacus, where he first began designing computers).

Oberheim was attending a class during his last semester at UCLA when he met and became friends with trumpet player Don Ellis, and keyboardist Joseph Byrd of the band The United States of America, who were attending the same class. Oberheim stayed in touch with both Ellis and Byrd after leaving UCLA, and ended up building an amplifier for Ellis to use for his public address system. Oberheim also built guitar amplifiers for The United States of America, and their lead singer Dorothy Moskowitz asked him to build a ring modulator for the band (Joseph Byrd had used one while a band member, and Moskowitz wanted one for the band's new keyboardist, Richard Grayson). While ring modulator circuit information was readily available, it was a 1961 article by Harald Bode in Electronics Magazine that gave Oberheim the information he needed to design and hand-build one for musical application. Oberheim also built a ring modulator for Don Ellis. After hearing about Oberheim's device, film composer Leonard Rosenman contacted him for a ring modulator to use in the production of the Beneath the Planet of the Apes film soundtrack. Oberheim, who had grown tired of designing computer equipment, found far greater personal satisfaction in designing equipment used by artists to create music and the positive feedback he received from musicians like Herbie Hancock and Jan Hammer.

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