Doug Curtis (March 8, 1951 – January 10, 2007) was the founder of Curtis Electromusic Specialties and OnChip Systems. Curtis was the designer of many original
analogue ICs, used in a number of notable
electronic music instruments
An electronic musical instrument or electrophone is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronic circuitry. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical, electronic or digital audio signal that ultimately is plugged into ...
. He was described in
''Keyboard'' as "one of the most important and least known synthesizer pioneers of the 20th century".
Biography
While attending high school, Curtis combined his aptitude for physics and mathematics with an interest in music and synthesizers to design and build an
analog synthesizer
An analog synthesizer () is a synthesizer that uses Analogue electronics, analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically.
The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a var ...
. He attended
Northwestern University
Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...
's School of Communications, where he majored in radio/television/film and built several other synthesizers. Upon graduation, he qualified for a post as junior engineer by showing circuit boards of his designs. He entered a competition to design a semi-custom chip and won, resulting in a job at Interdesign, where he worked for four years.
In 1979 he founded Curtis Electromusic Specialties (CEM), which produced the integrated circuits that were used in a variety of analog synthesizers for decades, beginning with projects for
Oberheim Electronics
Oberheim is an American synthesizer manufacturer founded in 1969 by Tom Oberheim.
Beginning in 1975, Oberheim developed some of the first commercially available polyphonic synthesizers and was a prominent synthesizer and drum machine manufacture ...
and
ARP, and later including
Roland
Roland (; ; or ''Rotholandus''; or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. The historical Roland was mil ...
,
Moog,
Sequential Circuits
Sequential is an American synthesizer company founded in 1974 as Sequential Circuits by Dave Smith. In 1978, Sequential released the Prophet-5, the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer, which was widely used in the music industry. In the ...
and many others.
[ Curtis' ]voltage-controlled filter
A voltage-controlled filter (VCF) is an electronic filter whose operating characteristics (primarily cutoff frequency) can be set by an input control voltage. Voltage-controlled filters are widely used in synthesizers.
A music synthesizer VCF ...
, often referred to as a 'Curtis filter', is said to have ''that Curtis sound'', described as "saturated, brash and powerful". He was awarded patents for several of his designs.
In 1988, Curtis established the company OnChip Systems in order to offer semi-custom chips for a broad range of applications and industries.[
]
References
External links
Curtis Electromusic
website
page on Doug Curtis
Obituary
in ''San Jose Mercury News'' 14 Jan 2007
{{DEFAULTSORT:Curtis, Doug
Computer hardware engineers
American audio engineers
2007 deaths
1951 births
20th-century American engineers
20th-century American inventors