Regarding Depeche, people on Youtube have broken down exactly what each band member was playing during the 80s shows; you might find it interesting. The parts are simple. I don't say that to knock them at all, on the contrary it shows that pianistic excellence has little to do with great synthpop. Alan Wilder is a trained pianist and found little scope for his talents in those shows.
Of course the fast, repetitive bits were either on tape or sampled into the Emulator keyboards.
Good question. Definitely learn the rudiments of piano playing, up to playing block chords (triads) with either hand.
Beyond that, I think they diverge too much. A lot of piano technique is getting both hands working together to play rhythm and melody - but generally synths are doing one thing at a time, and cooperating with other instruments.
A lot of classic synth lines are monophonic, aka "one-finger" lines, although to play them fluidly with one finger would be pretty hard. So pianistic skills would be wasted in this context.
When polysynths got common in the mid 80s, pianistic fingering of chords (but not necessarily rhythms) was used. I mean, to play the melancholy chords of "Drive" by the Cars, you need some of the skills of a pianist, but not rhythmic ones. You do need two hands.
(Of course the DX7 was played very much as a piano at times)
I do think you need the music theory though, such as awareness of chords and functional harmony.
Consider learning some of the classic synth basslines - they tend to have tutorials on youtube - like Material Girl or Tarzan Boy.
The Bell System (America's telecom monopoly until it's breakup in the 80s) pretty much avoided Phillips, etc. screws. Everything was slot (or pin-hex tamperproof). I do see mention of a Phillips driver in this 1961 BSP: http://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/bsp-bel...
The slotted terminal screws worked well because they were cheese head, or cylindrical, allowing the driver to apply torque at the very edge of the slot. Outside the Bell System, terminal screws are usually binding head, which has a fillet around the top edge, removing material where it's most needed.
In the Parsons Code section, if I'm reading correctly, the chords are conceived along an up-down axis. However chords do not really have that relation. Going from 1maj to 5maj can be up a fifth or down a fourth.
To illustrate this, first listen to the default 1645 progression on rhythatom. Then change the octave of row 2 (4maj chord) from +0 to +1. Can you hear its similar role in the progression, even though it's now stressed by being up an octave?
In theory it should run in any Chrome/Chromium browser, but I've received several reports of rhythatom failing to play. Would appreciate any help or ideas.
There doesn't seem to be any indication of major/minor. One way to interpret that is "always use the diatonic." Which means only use notes in the key, which means chords (1,4,5) are major while (2,3,6) are minor. However songs can have non-diatonic chords.
If you look at Rhyathatom, it defaults to the well-worn 1645 progression - the 6 is explicitly minor, which makes it diatonic. Try making the 6 major and you get a different animal - kind of sinister! That's a non-diatonic chord.