George Mattson

George Mattson (born October 1954) is an American inventor, and is an early pioneer in electronic music synthesizer technology. He is credited with the invention of the Syntar, the first fully self-contained "keytar", in 1978, and is founder and owner of Mattson Mini Modular. Mattson lives in the Seattle area.

Early life Mattson was born in 1954 in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1964, following the Great Alaskan earthquake, Mattson's father, a geologist, took a job in Anchorage, and relocated the family. It was around this time that Mattson became interested in music, and began learning to play flamenco and classical-style guitar.

Mattson’s father got his sons involved with the local ham radio organization, and in May 1967, Mattson received his ham radio license, making him the youngest amateur radio operator in the nation at the time. The ham radio courses gave him his early background in electronics.

In 1968, Mattson overheard his older brother and father discussing the electronic synthesizer, a device that "could create sounds similar to conventional instruments, imitate environmental sounds, and create sounds never heard before." Mattson was excited by this idea, and vowed to get his hands on one.

The Syntar

Mattson's older brother soon joined him, and they set up a recording studio to write and record music for the commercial market. Mattson's synthesizer collection was growing, and had begun to take up a lot of space. Regarding his revelation that inspired the Syntar: "Oct. 04, 1978, I was alone in the room running back and forth between the consoles and the keyboards when I said to myself, 'What I need is....' and the concept of the Syntar hit me. Then I thought, 'Somebody should make one of these.' Then I thought, 'Hey, I could do this!'"

In January 1980, Mattson went to the NAMM show in Anaheim, where he walked by the Moog booth, only to see a non-working prototype of the Moog Liberation "keytar" hanging on a mannequin. Mattson returned home, resolved to produce the Syntar first. He decided to release the Syntar under his own leadership with his new company name, Performance Music Systems. However, Moog was better financed, and the Liberation became the first mass-produced "keytar".