The ever popular and ubiquitous synth pad is the perfect example of a synth patch that has developed exponentially over its many years of production deployment. Emanating from synthetic string machines, which were one of the few polyphonic devices in use during the early ’70s, it didn’t take long for producers to find ever more ingenious ways of creating pad-like textures.
While the sound of string machines was relatively plain, bolstering their basic tones with modulation effects, such as chorus, substantially thickened the texture. This was often coupled with the use of some form of gating effect; the basic square gate, which effectively switched the sound on and off in tempo, became a popular device, used by everyone from Roxy Music to The
