Massachusetts Institute of Technology / MIT Museum
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NOTE: Special schedule on Thursday, May 23. See our Hours & Admission page for details.

The Paradiso Synthesizer

The sounds produced by the Paradiso Synthesizer are "programmed" manually by running wires between various outputs and inputs. The synthesizer's modules produce complex and varied sonic environments from the complicated "patch" - the set of connections - that MIT Media Lab Professor Joe Paradiso improvised. The patch determines both the sounds and how the sounds are controlled and triggered, ensuring that the sonic environment generated by the synthesizer will never be repeated.

Unlike today's digital synthesizers, which normally hide their many capabilities behind menus or graphical interface screens that allow for changing only one parameter at a time, the modular synthesizer exposes all aspects of sound creation and modification simultaneously via the physical modules.

"Perhaps the world's largest homemade modular electronic music synthesizer," the Paradiso Synthesizer was built mostly between 1975 and 1985.

Learn more:

Listen to the live stream at http://synth.media.mit.edu/
Read more about the synthesizer at http://web.media.mit.edu/~joep/synth.html
Watch video of MIT professor Joe Paradiso's Modular Synthesizer: Paradiso Synthesizer

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