If you've ever listened to Gary Numan's early work and wondered how he got those icy, dystopian, and totally unique sounds, you're not alone. The whole thing started by accident when he and his band Tubeway Army were in a studio and found a Moog Minimoog just sitting there. He'd been a punk guitarist, but that one encounter with a synth changed everything. The Minimoog became the backbone of his early sound, giving him that famous, growling, fuzzy bass line on songs like "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "M.E." It was all about its distinctive filter, which gave the sound a rich, low-end resonance.
But it wasn't just the Minimoog. The other star of the show was the Polymoog, particularly its "Vox Humana" preset. This wasn't a standard, super programmable synth, it was more of a string machine with organ, harpsichord, and other presets. The "Vox Humana" was a warbly, string-like sound that Numan used everywhere, most famously on the anthemic main riff of "Cars." Fans even started calling it the "Vox Numana." He also used an ARP Odyssey, a duophonic synth known for its pitch-bend features, to create those siren-like, gliding lead sounds you hear on a lot of his tracks.
On the drum machine side of things, his early albums often featured the Roland CR-78. This was a pre-programmed analog drum machine with a limited set of sounds, but Numan used it to create a stiff, robotic pulse that perfectly matched his cold, sci-fi aesthetic. You can hear its subtle but steady rhythms on tracks like "The Aircrash Bureau." As he moved into the '80s, he started to get into the LinnDrum, a digital drum machine that used real drum samples. This gave his music a much more polished, punchy, and modern feel, which you can hear on albums like I, Assassin.
The interesting thing is that while Numan was at the forefront of the synth-pop movement, he was a bit of a traditionalist at heart. He never completely abandoned live instruments. He'd often combine the cold, electronic beats of a drum machine with an acoustic drummer, and he'd use effects pedals to make his synths sound more like distorted, metallic guitars. It was that blend of man and machine, and the genius of using a handful of now-iconic instruments, that created his instantly recognizable sound and influenced a whole generation of musicians.