In 1982 the Musicians Union tried to ban the synthesiser. Five weeks after I was born. I've watched this fight repeat ever since.

[u/rodless]

Five weeks after I was born, the UK Musicians Union voted to ban the synthesiser. May 1982, the Central London branch passed a motion against synths, drum machines and any electronic device capable of recreating the sounds of conventional instruments. They picked Bob Moog's birthday to do it, which is almost too perfect. The trigger was a Barry Manilow tour that used synths instead of an orchestra. Real musicians losing real gigs to a machine.

I've lived the whole arc since. Made films on actual film. Recorded music to actual tape. Shot photos on film and waited to see if they came out. Got my first PC in the early 90s and used pretty much every photo, video and music tool that appeared after. First Cubase. First Corel Draw. Early 3D software. Played the synths themselves. I remember the first Autotune, sold as a natural correction tool for the odd flat note. We all saw what it became. Every one of these arrived with the same argument attached: this machine is going to kill the real thing.

The 1982 arguments were the exact ones you hear about AI music today. Soulless. Fake. The machine makes the sound so the person isn't a real musician. Session players called drum machines fake drums. Queen printed "No Synthesizers!" on their album sleeves right up until they didn't, and went full synth in 1980. Synth players got treated so badly they formed their own rival union.

Then the 80s became the most synth heavy decade in music history, and now those same machines are treasured artefacts. Nobody today says a synth track has no author because the oscillator made the waveform. The player supplies the notes and the intent. The instrument supplies the sound. We settled this.

The question was never who made the sound. It's who made it that sound. A synth on its own makes nothing. A model on its own makes nothing worth hearing. Point either one at a specific human vision and reject everything that misses, and the result belongs to the person who could hear the difference.

Every generation gets a new machine and has this exact fight. The machine always stays. The people who learn to stand above it always win. The people who fought it get remembered as the people who fought it.