George Mattson (synthesizer inventor)
American synthesizer inventor
George Mattson (born October 1954) is an American inventor, and is an early pioneer in electronic music synthesizer technology. He is credited with the invention of the Syntar, the first fully self-contained "keytar", in 1978, and is founder and owner of Mattson Mini Modular. Mattson lives in the Seattle area.
Early life
Mattson was born in 1954 in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1964, following the Great Alaskan earthquake, Mattson's father, a geologist, took a job in Anchorage, and relocated the family. It was around this time that Mattson became interested in music, and began learning to play flamenco and classical-style guitar.
Mattson’s father got his sons involved with the local ham radio organization, and in May 1967, Mattson received his ham radio license, making him the youngest amateur radio operator in the nation at the time. The ham radio courses gave him his early background in electronics.
In 1968, Mattson overheard his older brother and father discussing the electronic synthesizer, a device that "could create sounds similar to conventional instruments, imitate environmental sounds, and create sounds never heard before." Mattson was excited by this idea, and vowed to get his hands on one.
In fall of 1973, Mattson moved to Moscow, Idaho to attend the Idaho School of Mines at the University of Idaho, studying mining and metallurgy.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Mattson (synthesizer inventor)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.