A synthesizer is a revolutionary musical instrument that creates (synthesizes) a wide variety of sounds using electricity and a combination of different frequencies. 

The synthesizer now exists in many different forms, but really soared to fame in the '70s and '80s, powered by visionary women. Born from the 1922 debut of the Theremin, an invention popularized by pioneer Clara Rockmore, the synthesizer has since become a staple across all musical genres.

In 1964, Bob Moog introduced the first modular voltage-controlled synthesizer and radically changed the sound and composition of music — the Moog Modular remains one of the most sought-after synths to this day. It was another female synth pioneer, Wendy Carlos, then a music composition graduate student at Columbia University, who worked closely with Moog to refine and develop his iconic namesake synth. Six years later, Carlos brought the Moog to a much wider audience with her GRAMMY-nominated debut hit album, Switched-On Bach.

Thanks to producers like Giorgio Moroder, who transformed disco with space-age sounds on Donna Summer's 1977 dance hit "I Feel Love," synths — then still bulky, complex and incredibly expensive — burrowed their way into popular music. Synths became essential instruments in the burgeoning sounds of the '80s with new wave, synth-pop, house, and techno bringing them to different audiences.

Read on to learn about five women synthesizer legends of past and present: pioneering synth composers Wendy Carlos and Suzanne Ciani, New Order's Gillian Gilbert, LCD Soundsystem's Nancy Whang, Nation of Language's Aidan Noell.

These are not the only women who've made the synthesizer their own and used it to bring us to new sonic worlds and inspire the next generation of pioneering artists, but they are essential names you should know. (Check out the 2021 documentary Sisters with Transistors for further learning.)

Suzanne Ciani

Dubbed the "diva of the diode," Suzanne Ciani is a pioneering electronic composer and modular synth wizard. She's been active since the late-60s creating countless unforgettable and otherworldly sounds with synths, from the iconic Coca-Cola fizz sound to experimental ambient music with younger generations of electronic composers such as Jonathan Fitoussi and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. Ciani performs mesmerizing live modular synth shows, and back in 1980, blew David Letterman's mind with her trippy demonstration of the legendary Prophet-5 synth and her vocoder setup.

In 1968, while getting her Master's degree in composition at UC Berkeley, Ciani met Don Buchla, the creator of the keyboard-less Buchla analog modular synthesizer. She went on to work with his company after graduation, soldering synth parts so she could afford her own Buchla synth. While working there, she asked the founder to teach her and her fellow curious coworkers synth lessons, but after the first class, Buchla told her they didn't want women in the class. The blatant sexism didn't stop Ciani, who put out her debut album in 1970 and moved to New York City in 1974 with her Buchla, soon after landing solo performance gigs at art galleries.

Her groundbreaking career revolutionized sounds in music, advertising, and entertainment. In addition to her iconic Coke sound, she composed jingles for AT&T, General Electric, Energizer and other major companies, as well as sound effects for a Star Wars disco album, and used her vocoded voice to give sound to the Xenon pinball game. Over the years she's put out tons of studio and live albums and has earned five GRAMMY nominations in the Best New Age Album category, demonstrating the genre represents so much more than flutes and chimes.

Wendy Carlos

You can't talk about synthesizers without talking about the GRAMMY-winning pioneering electronic composer Wendy Carlos. 

Long before Kim Petras became the first openly trans woman to take home a GRAMMY for "Unholy" with Sam Smith in 2023, Carlos took home three golden gramophones for her debut album Switched-On Bach in 1970 (nine years before she came out as trans). The groundbreaking album consists of short pieces of Bach's music played on the then-new Moog synthesizer, an electronic instrument she helped develop with Bob Moog, that would radically change the sound of popular music forever. All three of her Switched-On Bach wins were in the classical category, including Classical Album of the Year and Best Engineered Recording, Classical.

Switched-On Bach was a true labor of love and a smash hit. Working with classical musician Rachel Elkind, Carlos spent over 1,100 hours in the studio — synths then could only play one note at a time. After it was released in October 1968, it hit No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and held the No. 1 spot on the Classical Albums chart for a whopping three years. It introduced people to the future of synthesized music, and also brought new listeners into classical music. Eighteen years later, it was certified platinum by the RIAA, the first synthesized album and only the second classical album to do so.

When Carlos was working on The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, a classical synth album featuring Bach, Beethoven and others, she read A Clockwork Orange and found that her music fit the book's dystopian eeriness of the book. She shaped "Timesteps" to fit the story and sent it to director Stanley Kubrick, who hired Carlos and her long-time producer Elkind to create the soundtrack for his film adaptation of the book. 

The trio reunited in 1980 for The Shining soundtrack. Carlos also composed the 1982 Tron soundtrack on the Moog and a Crumar General Development System (GDS), an early keyboard synthesizer workstation, of which only 10 were made.

Gillian Gilbert

In 1980, Gillian Gilbert joined iconic British new wave band New Order in its creation after the tragic loss of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. She was brought on as the second guitarist to support lead guitarist Bernard Sumner, who was taking on singing duties.

She was one of the handful of talented women working behind-the-scenes at Manchester's Factory Records. She was just 19, in college studying graphic design, working at Factory Records and playing guitar in a punk band. 

She didn't yet know how to play keys or song write, so she took piano lessons and learned to read music. Inspired by their experience in the New York club scene, the band wanted to experiment with synthesizers and programmed music and she played a pivotal role in their groundbreaking sonic exploration.

"There was always a lot of the typical: 'Oh, are you the singer?' No, I’m not the singer, I play instruments. But I never got that [sexism] at Factory Records," Gilbert said in "I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women at Factory Records." 

"There was never anything about macho blokes. We were all one, and I wasn’t any different to anybody else, and the whole Factory thing was like that. There were a lot of women in Factory that gave as good as they got. It was never us and them – it was all just one big family."

In 1983, New Order and Factory Records hit gold with "Blue Monday," a pivotal club track that brought the punk and disco kids together — and the best-selling 12-inch of all time. Clocking in at seven-and-a-half minutes, it was the band's (very successful) attempt to make a completely electronic track.

"It was my job to program the entire song from beginning to end, which had to be done manually, by inputting every note. I had the sequence all written down on loads of A4 paper Sellotaped together the length of the recording studio, like a huge knitting pattern. But I accidentally left a note out, which skewed the melody," Gilbert told The Guardian about "Blue Monday" in 2013.

In 1991, Gilbert and New Order drummer Stephen Morris started side project The Other Two, releasing dance pop bop "Tasty Fish," two albums and a lot of music for TV. The two have been married since 1994 and, when the band was working on 2001's Get Ready, their second child, then just an infant, was diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder. Gilbert left the band to care for her, and was replaced with Phil Cunningham.

Gilbert rejoined the band to record 2016's Music Complete, a welcome return to the dancefloor-ready synth pop they pioneered in the '80s. 

Nancy Whang

In 2002, James Murphy released his debut single as LCD Soundsystem, "Losing My Edge" and needed to quickly form a band to play the gigs he'd been getting booked for off of its success. When he called on his NYC scene friend Nancy Whang to join LCD Soundsystem, her musical experience consisted of taking piano lessons in her youth. 

Whang worked with Murphy and the rest of the band to create timeless, brooding synth pop, evolving their sound a long way from their DIY post-punk days. Her interest in synths began with her love of new wave—the second 45 record she ever bought was from Depeche Mode.

LCD has earned a reputation for well-oiled live performance, in no small part to Whang's deft playing and captivating stage presence, offering a stellar, hypnotizing live show time after time.

Last year, she told Synth History that her favorite synths are the Moog Mavis and the Yamaha CS-80, which she usually keeps in her bedroom and that New Order's second album, 1983's Power, Corruption & Lies is one of the top three albums that transformed her.

Whang also DJs and makes music outside of the band, including groovy dance tunes with John MacLean as The Juan MacLean, one of DFA's earliest signed acts and LCD's influences. Just as her voice is a key instrument in LCD's magic equation, it's been featured in influential early-00s alternative dance tunes like Soulwax's "E Talking" and Munk's "Kick Out The Chairs." In 2022, she joined Aidan Noell, the keyboardist in rising Brooklyn synth-pop trio Nation of Language, to drop a fresh electro cover of one of the earliest Detroit proto-techno tracks, "Sharevari."

Aidan Noell

Like Gilbert and Whang, Aidan Noell is a self-taught synth master. She and her husband, Ian Devaney, along with bandmate Alex MacKay, are keeping the spirit of new wave alive with Nation of Language, their Brooklyn synth-pop outfit inspired by the likes of Talking Heads and Kraftwerk. When Noell and Devaney got married in 2018, they requested donations towards recording their debut album instead of gifts. They self-released Introduction, Presence in May 2020 and quickly started building a following that included loyal support from taste-making Los Angeles-based KCRW DJ Travis Holcombe.

Nation of Language have been touring pretty much non-stop since COVID lockdown ended, but still had time to release a sophomore album, A Way Forward, on London indie Play It Again Sam in November 2021. They kicked off 2022 by making their television debut on "The Late Show with Steven Colbert" and dropped their third album, Strange Disciple, last September.

While Devaney is the lead songwriter for Nation of Language, Noell's deft keyboard and synth skills are an essential part of their recordings and live performance. In 2021, she wrote and released her first solo music — inspired by her love of '80s deep cuts she calls "strange new wave" — on a Behringer MS1 synth, demonstrating her natural songwriting ability. She also taught herself to DJ and is actively creating a supportive community among other indie musicians, particularly with other women synth players, like Whang.

"My friend Michelle [Primiani] [was] the band Glove, she’s one of my synth icons, and she just got the Korg Prologue which is an extremely cool machine. There’s a lot about aesthetics that draws me to synthesizers which seems superficial, but there is a look and feel to certain synths that just draw me in. Ian and I would love to have a MiniMoog. We always talk about what synth we would buy if we won the lottery. We don’t play the lottery though," Noell said in 2021.

Aidan Noell bears the torch for the next generation of the ever resourceful and pioneering synth sisterhood.

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