21 Facts About Tom Oberheim

Tom Oberheim has been the founder of four audio electronics companies, most notably Oberheim Electronics.

Tom Oberheim was a key figure in the development and adoption of the MIDI standard.

Tom Oberheim arrived in Los Angeles in July 1956 at the age of 20 with $10 in his pocket.

Tom Oberheim worked as a draftsman trainee at NCR Corporation where he was inspired to become a computer engineer.

Tom Oberheim enrolled at UCLA, studying computer engineering and physics while taking music courses.

Tom Oberheim was attending a class during his last semester at UCLA when he met and became friends with trumpet player Don Ellis, and keyboardist Joseph Byrd of the band The United States of America, who were attending the same class.

Tom Oberheim stayed in touch with both Ellis and Byrd after leaving UCLA, and ended up building an amplifier for Ellis to use for his public address system.

Tom Oberheim built guitar amplifiers for The United States of America, and their lead singer Dorothy Moskowitz asked him to build a ring modulator for the band.

Tom Oberheim raised approximately $6,000 from friends to start Tom Oberheim Electronics.

At the time, Tom Oberheim was spending time with the band Bryndle, and had developed a fascination with the sound of instruments being played through a Leslie rotary speaker.

Tom Oberheim went on to design other products for Maestro, including the Universal Synthesizer for guitars.

Tom Oberheim further expanded on the performance capabilities of 2-note polyphony in 1973, using his computer engineering experience to design the DS-2, one of the first digital-electronics-based music sequencers.

Tom Oberheim introduced the SEM, the first synthesizer bearing his company's name, at the Audio Engineering Society convention in Los Angeles in May 1974.

Tom Oberheim expanded the SEM concept, and again enlisting the expertise of Dave Rossum and Scott Wedge of E-mu Systems, combining the SEM with a digital keyboard, created the Oberheim 2-Voice and 4-Voice synthesizers, the first commercially available polyphonic music synthesizers.

Later that same year, the Tom Oberheim name was sold to Gibson Guitar Company.

Tom Oberheim departed the company two years later and filed a lawsuit against his ex-lawyer for legal malpractice.

In 1987, Tom Oberheim formed Marion Systems in Santa Monica and later Lafayette in California.

Tom Oberheim developed the Marion Systems MSR-2, a modular synthesizer concept.

In 2009, Tom Oberheim began hand-building and selling an updated SEM synthesizer with upgraded features, but with a true analog design as faithful to the sound of his original SEM as possible.

In 2015, Tom Oberheim announced the Two-Voice Pro, an upgraded and improved version of the instrument he described as his favorite of Tom Oberheim's early years.

Tom Oberheim was a core member of an informal discussion group which met weekly in a Berkeley coffeehouse.