"Satanic Majesties" is probably wrong, I think... since the keyboards that Brian and others were playing was a mellotron not synthesizers.

So what's the correct answer?

It's probably Beggars Banquet as I think Mick bought his Moog in '68; I seem to remember Streetfighting Man using it for a backgound drone but don't quote me on this.

where is His Majesty when we need him? here's a semi-relevant post, anyway: [www.iorr.org] -
"The Rolling Stones did not buy [a moog synthesizer] until September 1968"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-09-10 21:38 by with sssoul.

"It´s Only Rock´n´Roll" comes to mind...

Fingerprint File is the first, I believe.
Satanic Majesties and Beggars Banquet use the Mellotron.
Jagger may have had a Moog synth back in late '68 (used in that Kenneth Anger film), but it never made it onto any Stones album.

What about 'Can you hear the music'?

Also on 100 YA, after the bridge of the song It has a synth sound. The part with Billy On the Clavinet. I don't know if what he was playing on could be considered a synthesizer.

Brian Jones played Theremin on Please Go Home in 1967. I guess that's the earliest one. On TSMR they fooled around with an oscillator but AFAIK that was built in the mixing desk so it wasn't an instrument on it's own.

I'd say Goat's Head Soup. What's the opening riff of Can You Hear The Music played on? Sounds like a bass synthesizer.

i was gonna guess fool to cry and that album but you guys are WAY into the back in the day stuff...good to see...

Quote
Silver Dagger
I'd say Goat's Head Soup. What's the opening riff of Can You Hear The Music played on? Sounds like a bass synthesizer.

A guitar with a wha through a Leslie speaker.

Come to think of it, you're right tomk. In that case maybe Beelyboy is right with his assertion that it's Fool To Cry. String synth I believe on that one.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2009-09-11 13:44 by Silver Dagger.

No, it's Fingerprint File (or the IORR album). IORR Is the first "credited" album, I believe, with a synth. There's no synthesizer on Exile or GHS.
A Mellotron, an oscillator, a Theramin, are not synthesizers (at least to my ears). An idea of what was to come? Perhaps, but I wouldn't call those synths.

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones bought some of the first Moog synthesizers on the market in the late 1960s.
Jagger appeared with a Moog modular in Performance.It was the first only—feature film in which a Moog synthesizer made an appearance.



If records available at moogarchives.com are correct (and there's no reason to believe they are not), then the Rolling Stones did not purchase a Moog synthesizer until 3 September 1968, in other words, about five weeks prior to the end of the filming of Performance, and after the recording of Beggar’s Banquet (and therefore not, as one might have expected, immediately after the recording of 1967’s psychedelic Their Satanic Majesty Requests). And if Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, in their marvelous book Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (Harvard University Press, 2002) are correct, then Jon Weiss, "the Man from Moog,” did not arrive in London with the Rolling Stones’ Moog synthesizer until late summer 1968, which jibes with the above date of 3 September 1968.

Apparently at the time the idea was that Mick was going to use the Moog synthesizer “as his instrument in the band” (303). At some point, soon after Jon Weiss’s arrival in London, Weiss and Jagger came up with the idea of using the synthesizer as a prop in Performance: “The Moog with its rows of knobs and dials would make a perfect addition” (303). Since, as Pinch and Trocco so astutely observe, the synthesizer was “part of the sixties apparatus for transgression, transcendence, and transformation” (305), the Moog was indeed an ideal prop for Performance, especially since its appearance coincides with Chas’s (James Fox’s) tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms.

We first see the Moog synthesizer—which would have been an utterly unfamiliar piece of technology to the vast majority of viewers at the time—as it sits on the floor of Turner’s studio, a bewildering array of knobs and patch cables framed by fluorescent light bulbs. Turner sits on the floor before it.

If records available at moogarchives.com are correct (and there's no reason to believe they are not), then the Rolling Stones did not purchase a Moog synthesizer until 3 September 1968, in other words, about five weeks prior to the end of the filming of Performance, and after the recording of Beggar’s Banquet (and therefore not, as one might have expected, immediately after the recording of 1967’s psychedelic Their Satanic Majesty Requests). And if Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, in their marvelous book Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (Harvard University Press, 2002) are correct, then Jon Weiss, "the Man from Moog,” did not arrive in London with the Rolling Stones’ Moog synthesizer until late summer 1968, which jibes with the above date of 3 September 1968.

Apparently at the time the idea was that Mick was going to use the Moog synthesizer “as his instrument in the band” (303). At some point, soon after Jon Weiss’s arrival in London, Weiss and Jagger came up with the idea of using the synthesizer as a prop in Performance: “The Moog with its rows of knobs and dials would make a perfect addition” (303). Since, as Pinch and Trocco so astutely observe, the synthesizer was “part of the sixties apparatus for transgression, transcendence, and transformation” (305), the Moog was indeed an ideal prop for Performance, especially since its appearance coincides with Chas’s (James Fox’s) tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms.

We first see the Moog synthesizer—which would have been an utterly unfamiliar piece of technology to the vast majority of viewers at the time—as it sits on the floor of Turner’s studio, a bewildering array of knobs and patch cables framed by fluorescent light bulbs. Turner sits on the floor before it.

[60x50.blogspot.com]








I am a Frenchie ,as Mick affectionately called them in the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 .

Moog Modular Systems
Manufactured by the R.A. Moog Company, Trumansburg, New York
Beginning in January 1967, modules were serialized (each starting with 1001). Until late 1969, Modular System records were kept by MODULE rather than SYSTEM Serial Number. The list below indicates Purchasers of each Modular System, with serial numbers of the 910 Power Supply, along with a partial configuration of the system.

910 s/n 901 901A 901B 904A 904B 902 911 Sold To Date
1068 1 3 9 1 1 3 3 The Rolling Stones 09.03.68


[www.moogarchives.com]



I am a Frenchie ,as Mick affectionately called them in the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 .

Undercover, as a instrument among others.

2 1 2 0

Thanks for all the responses. It was this photo that I saw the other day that got me wondering:



Website Beatles.com was recently updated with many rare pics that I've never seen before... like this one of John Lennon and a Moog synthesizer.

Mike Vickers (formerly of Manfred Mann) is in this photograph - he was employed to program the Moog during the recording of the album "Abbey Road."
Photographed on the same day as the "Abbey Road" album cover photograph. (Photographer not listed.)

I guess the Beatles's first album with sythn was Abbey Road? ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "Here Comes The Sun", etc. )



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-09-11 14:16 by schillid.

Quote
tomk
A Mellotron, an oscillator, a Theramin, are not synthesizers (at least to my ears). An idea of what was to come? Perhaps, but I wouldn't call those synths.

That would lead us to the question "what is a synthesizer?". The Mellotron isn't a synthesizer for obvious reasons and the oscillator used on TSMR wasn't an instrument on it's own.

But the theremin could (at least IMO) be considered a very very basic synthesizer and most electronic instruments are. I mean it's a waveform from an oscillator(variable?) with portamento and a basic volume envelope.

The first use of a Moog synth on a pop/rock album goes to the Monkees on
Pisces, Aquaries,Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd. released November 1967.
It appears on Daily Nightly (played by Micky Dolenz) and Star Collecter
(played by Paul Beaver). I believe it also appears on the Byrds'
Notorius Byrd Brothers album rerleased December 1967.

Quote
tomk
The first use of a Moog synth on a pop/rock album goes to the Monkees on
Pisces, Aquaries,Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd. released November 1967.
It appears on Daily Nightly (played by Micky Dolenz) and Star Collecter
(played by Paul Beaver). I believe it also appears on the Byrds'
Notorius Byrd Brothers album rerleased December 1967.

On a similar theme (tho' I may be mistaken) doesn't Simon & Garfunkel's 'The Boxer' have the same claim as the first commercially released single to feature a synth?

Quote
ROLLINGSTONE

Quote
tomk
The first use of a Moog synth on a pop/rock album goes to the Monkees on
Pisces, Aquaries,Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd. released November 1967.
It appears on Daily Nightly (played by Micky Dolenz) and Star Collecter
(played by Paul Beaver). I believe it also appears on the Byrds'
Notorius Byrd Brothers album rerleased December 1967.

On a similar theme (tho' I may be mistaken) doesn't Simon & Garfunkel's 'The Boxer' have the same claim as the first commercially released single to feature a synth?

I'm not sure there's a synth on The Boxer.
However, there is one on Save The Life Of My Child from Bookends
which came out early 1968.

Doesn't Taylor play a synth on "Time waits for no one"?
I can not think of any synth on asTones album up until then.
"Can you hear the music" as big as it is, sounds like guitar through leslie plus an organ doing the descending pattern.

Just wanted to add that I think this is a really good question.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-09-12 08:03 by Palace Revolution 2000.

I used to incorrectly think that Jumpin' Jack Flash was the first #1 single ever with a synthesizer (the very end part... what is that noise?)

[thepowergoats.com]