Pounding on the keys of a piano, an occasional run or high note to add style, but something more is needed. Through the evolution of synthesis, new tools have been discovered to enhance our creativity and productivity. Professional musicians were the first to explore the electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Today music educators, computer hobbyist, and consumers are attracted to electronic keyboards, and intrigued by these moderately priced marvels. MIDI opens up a much wider avenue of recording power to musicians also. Electronic keyboards have the power to turn a person into a one man band, and some promise to make a musician out of everyone no matter how unskilled. Who is it for though? What can be done with one? What is MIDI? How did this technology come about? History Older folks have been hearing electronic sound for over three, almost four decades whether they realized it or not. They heard it all the time in pop music, theme songs, advertisements, motion pictures, jazz, and even classical music (Donaldson 1988, 3). The idea of the "band in a box" has been around for centuries with the player piano and the Rhythm Ace (Goldberg 1992, 24). When the music synthesizer was introduced in 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, it made virtually every kind of sound or combination of sounds available to the composer. Babbitt was an early exponent of the instrument with his 'Composition for Synthesizer' in 1961 (Comptons Interactive Encyclopedia and Reference Collection 1994, computer). Use of electronics for musical expression can be linked to the movement of pop and rock in the 1960s and 1970s when it was realized that synthesis could make new and better sounds. Synthesizers had problems at first. In order to generate a synthesized sound a complex organization of patch cables had to be manually wired to each device. When the sound had to be changed it was necessary to rewire the entire thing. Also musicians had to play the keyboard and the effect device at the same time. Micro electronics made the keyboards smaller. Integrated circuits and microprocessors added to the technology, saved time, and solved most of the former problems (Donaldson 1988, 3). This microchip revolution promised to make us more productive (Goldberg 1992, 24). Another step was the computer. An early example of computer music was 'Illiac Suite' for string quartet, which was composed by the Illiac digital computer at the University of Illinois in 1957. The computer was programmed to generate random integers that represented pitches and note values. The integers were then screened by instructions based on traditional rules of composition. A further development in 1963, engineered by Max V. Mathews at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, was the direct synthesis of sound programmed by a deck of punched cards. This eliminated the need for a performer (Comptons Interactive Encyclopedia and Reference Collection 1994, computer). MIDI, the modern digital communication standard for connecting differently manufactured musical electronic devices was established as a cooperative effort, in 1983, by American and Japanese industries (Donaldson 1988, 4). Composers have utilized the electronic technology in combination with conventional performance. Edgard Varese's 'Deserts' in 1954 was scored for wind instruments, percussion, and three interpolations of electronic sound. Babbitt combined the synthesizer with both recorded and live soprano voices in 'Philomel' in 1964 (Comptons Interactive Encyclopedia and Reference Collection 1994, computer).