Stevie Wonder? Where To

It truly began with Tonto's Expanding Headband. For those who've forgotten, Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil were white children of the psychedelic era whose field of expertise was synthesizer technology. Headband was their conceptual primer on the uses and potential of Arp and Moog synthesizers, and was pivotal in reshaping the musical direction of artists for whom the folk era and straight up rock and R&B were beginning to pale.

Stevie Wonder had been experimenting with electric keyboards like the clavichord and the clavinet since '68. But it wasn't until Richie Havens brought him to Margouleff and Cecil that the Wondersound we know today was crystalized. Where I'm Coming From and Music Of My Mind had already established Wonder as a . young man with more on his mind than baby love and "Fingertips." But as a blind composer, Stevie sought the tools that would expand his already considerable instrumental capabilities, without necessitating a lot of movement or the unsure cooperation of sighted arrangers and transcribers. Computeramplified keyboards were the answer. Programmable, adjustable, and with a memory to rival Stevie's own, the Moog systems wired for Wonder by the founders of Centaur Music made him a one-man orchestra, able to develop and record the non-traditional sounds in his head without the awkward intermediacy of other musicians or studio engineers.