Go All In—Like Stevie Wonder
In the early 1970s, Stevie Wonder was already a star.
He was a child prodigy, at that point the youngest artist ever to top the Billboard Hot 100 (“Fingertips Pt. 2”). He had already recorded a string of hits in the Motown style: “Uptight,” “For Once in My Life,” and My Cherie Amour.” He had started taking ownership of his sound by self-producing his record, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” in 1970.
In other words, he was twenty years old and already a paragon of the Motown pop sound.
But Wonder didn’t rest on his successes. He was hungry for something more.
He wanted to create music that truly reflected his artistic vision—something groundbreaking.
Enter two unlikely collaborators: Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil, a pair of audio engineers who were tinkering with a hulking, mysterious machine called TONTO (The Original New Timbral Orchestra).
The TONTO Synth
TONTO was the world’s first multitimbral polyphonic synthesizer, a sprawling, room-sized labyrinth of knobs, wires, and patch panels that looked more like a spaceship console than a musical instrument.
Stevie met the duo at Media Sound Studios in New York. As the story goes, when Margouleff and Cecil demonstrated TONTO’s capabilities, Stevie’s reaction was immediate: “I want to work with you guys.”
But Wonder didn’t just tinker. He went all in.
He spent the next four years working tirelessly to explore new sounds, and releasing four groundbreaking albums in the process.
One breakthrough moment came during the recording of Superstition. Stevie had been fooling around with a funky drum pattern, and Margouleff suggested layering a clavinet line on top of it. When Stevie synced up the clavinet’s groove with the drums, the entire studio seemed to light up. That moment birthed one of the most iconic riffs in pop history.
We can learn from Stevie Wonder. First, he didn’t rest on past accomplishments. He kept searching, trusting his creativity to take him to a new era.
Second, when he came across TONTO, he had the courage to go all in, to spend the next four years of his career (that’s a long time when you’re twenty!)
Go all in on your creative vision in 2025.
But beyond the innovation, there’s a critical lesson in the story: creativity thrives at the intersection of curiosity and collaboration. Stevie’s willingness to step into uncharted territory—and the engineers’ openness to working with a musical genius—turned a quirky experiment into timeless art.