In the early 1960s electronic music was mostly the domain of experimental composers, and early synthesizers filled whole rooms with hundreds of vacuum tubes. Robert Moog, a Cornell doctoral student who designed theremins, met the composer Herb Deutsch in 1963 and set out to build a compact, affordable instrument. He used newly available silicon transistors to build a voltage-controlled oscillator, where the pitch follows the control voltage at one volt per octave. Customers requested features like the envelope, the filter and the touch-sensitive keyboard, which became standard. By the 1970s synthesizer had become the standard term for such instruments.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.