In or around 1970, my folks purchased a Kimball organ with tons of pushbuttons, voices and pedals. I think this was the first exposure I had to an electronic instrument of any kind. I quickly found that I had no aptitude whatsoever for keyboard instruments, but that did not stop me from spending hours playing with various sounds on the organ or just mashing keys. I think this more than anything started a fascination with sounds that weren't quite "natural" as music went. There were buttons for "brass", "strings", "trumpet" and many more that sounded almost entirely unlike the instruments they were supposed to emulate but they did do something to the sound! I think the organ we had was state of the art for the time by being mostly "solid-state" - meaning no vacuum tubes.
