Synth is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Krautrock" of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a distinct genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late-1970s to the mid-1980s. Synth helped to establish the place of the synthesizer as a major element of pop and rock music, directly influenced subsequent genres including house music and Detroit techno, and has indirectly influenced many other genres and individual recordings.
