Electronic music

History

Late 19th century early 20th century

The earliest purely electronic instrument was the Teleharmonium or Telharmonium, developed by Thaddeus Cahill in 1897. Simple inconvenience hindered the adoption of the Teleharmonium: the instrument weighed seven tons and was the size of a boxcar. The first practical electronic instrument is often viewed to be the Theremin, invented by Professor Leon Theremin circa 1919 - 1920. Another early electronic instrument was the Ondes Martenot, which was used in the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen and also by other, primarily French, composers, such and Andre Jolivet.

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Post-war years: 1940s to 1950s

Main articles: History of electronic art music, Musique concrète

Related Topics:
History of electronic art music - Musique concrète

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In the years following World War II, Electronic music was embraced by progressive composers, and was hailed as a way to exceed the limits of traditional instruments. Modern Electronic composition is considered to have begun in force with the development of musique concrète and tape recorders in 1948, only to rapidly evolve with the creation of early analog synthesizers. The first pieces of musique concrète were written by Pierre Schaeffer, who later worked alongside such avant-garde classical composers as Pierre Henry, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen has worked for many years as part of Cologne's Studio for Electronic Music combining electronically generated sounds with conventional orchestras. The first electronic music for magnetic tape composed in America was completed by Louis and Bebe Barron in 1950.

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The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City (now the Computer Music Center) was founded in 1959 by Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening. They had been working with magnetic tape manipulation since the early 1950s, and a studio was built there with the help of engineer Peter Mauzey. RCA contributed the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer which used vacuum tube oscillators and incorporated the first electronic music sequencer. This became the center for American electronic music until about 1980. Robert Moog developed voltage controlled oscillators and envelope generators while there, which became the heart of the Moog synthesizer.

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Max Mathews began using computers to create music at Bell Laboratories in 1957. Other well-known composers in this field include Edgar Varèse and Steve Reich. (See the main article on Electronic art music for more information.)

Related Topics:
Max Mathews - Bell Laboratories - Edgar Varèse - Steve Reich - Electronic art music

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1960s to late 1970s

At the Radiophonic Workshop, the sound special effects unit of the BBC, Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire created one of the first electronic signature tunes for television as the theme music for Doctor Who in 1963. A short file sample of this can be found .

Related Topics:
Radiophonic Workshop - BBC - Ron Grainer - Delia Derbyshire - Television - Doctor Who - 1963

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Although electronic music began in the world of classical (or "art") composition, within a few years it had been adopted into popular culture with varying degrees of enthusiasm. In the 1960s, Wendy Carlos popularized early synthesizer music with two notable albums Switched-On Bach and The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, which took pieces of baroque classical music and reproduced them on Moog synthesizers. The Moog generated only a single note at a time, so that producing a multilayered piece, such as Carlos did, required many hours of studio time. The early machines were notoriously unstable, and went out of tune easily. Still, some musicians, notably Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake and Palmer did take them on the road. The theremin, an exceedingly difficult instrument to play, was even used in some popular music, most notably in "Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys. There was also the Mellotron which appeared in the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever, and the volume tone pedal was uniquely used as a backing instrument in Yes It Is.

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Moog was not the only early synthesizer developer. On the West Coast, Donald Buchla developed synthesizers that, unlike the Moog, were not keyboard-based.

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As technology developed, and synthesizers became cheaper, more robust and portable, they were adopted by many rock bands. Examples of relatively early adopters in this field are bands like The United States of America, The Silver Apples and Pink Floyd, and although not all of their music was electronic (with the notable exception of The Silver Apples), much of the resulting sound was dependent upon the synthesiser. In the 1970s, this style was mainly popularised by Kraftwerk, who used electronics and robotics to symbolise and sometimes gleefully celebrate the alienation of the modern technological world. To this day their music remains uncompromisingly electronic. In Germany particularly electronic sounds were incorporated into popular music by bands such as Tangerine Dream, Can, and others.

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In jazz, amplified acoustic instruments and synthesizers were combined in a series of influential recordings by Weather Report. Joe Zawinul, the synthesizer artist in that group, has continued to field ensembles of the same kind. The noted jazz pianist Herbie Hancock with his band The Headhunters in the 1970s also introduced jazz listeners to a wider palette of electronic sounds including the synthesizer, which he further explored with even more enthusiasm on the Future Shock album, a collaboration with producer Bill Laswell in the 1980s, which spawned a pop hit "Rockit" in 1983.

Related Topics:
Jazz - Acoustic instrument - Weather Report - Joe Zawinul - Herbie Hancock - The Headhunters - Bill Laswell - 1980s - Rockit - 1983

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Musicians such as Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, Ray Buttigieg, the Japanese composers Isao Tomita, Kitaro also popularised the sound of electronic music. The film industry also began to make extensive use of electronic music in soundtracks. An example is the Wendy Carlos' score for A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick's film of the Anthony Burgess novel .

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The score for Forbidden Planet, by Louis and Bebe Barron, had used electronic sound, although not synthesizers per se, in 1956. Once electronic sounds became more common in popular recordings, other science fiction films such as Blade Runner and the Alien series of movies began to depend heavily for mood and ambience upon the use of electronic music and electronically derived effects. Electronic groups were also hired to produce entire soundtracks, just like other popular music stars.

Related Topics:
Forbidden Planet - Louis and Bebe Barron - Science fiction - Blade Runner - Alien - Mood - Ambience

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Late 1970s to late 1980s

Main articles: History of industrial music, Electropop

Related Topics:
History of industrial music - Electropop

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In the late 1970s and early 1980s there was a great deal of innovation around the development of electronic music instruments. Analogue synthesisers largely gave way to digital synthesisers and samplers. Early samplers, like early synthesisers, were large and expensive pieces of gear -- companies like Fairlight and New England Digital sold instruments that cost upwards of $100,000. In the mid 1980s, this changed with the development of low cost samplers. From the late 1970s onward, much popular music was developed on these machines. Groups like Heaven 17, Severed Heads, The Human League, Yazoo, The Art of Noise, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Depeche Mode and New Order developed entirely new ways of making popular music by electronic means. Fad Gadget is cited by some as a father to the use of electronics in New Wave.

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The natural ability for music machines to make stochastic, non-harmonic, staticky noises led to a genre of music known as industrial music led by pioneering groups such as Throbbing Gristle (which commenced operation in 1975) Wavestar and Cabaret Voltaire. Some artists, like Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, and Severed Heads, took some of the adventurous innovations of musique concrète and applied them to mechanical dance beats. Others, such as Test Department, Einstürzende Neubauten, took this new sound at face value and created hellish electronic compositions. Meanwhile, other groups (Robert Rich, :zoviet*france:, rapoon) took these harsh sounds and melded them into evocative soundscapes. Still others (Front 242, Skinny Puppy) combined this harshness with the earlier, more pop-oriented sounds, forming electronic body music (EBM).

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Allied with the growing interest in electronic and industrial music were artists working in the realm of dub music. Notable in this area was producer Adrian Sherwood whose On-U Sound record label in the 1980s was responsible for integrating the industrial and noise aesthetic with tape and dub production with artists such as the industrial-funk outfit Tackhead, vocalist Mark Stewart and others. This paved the way for much of the 1990s interest in dub, first through bands such as Meat Beat Manifesto and later downtempo and trip hop producers such as Kruder & Dorfmeister.

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Recent developments: 1980s to early 2000s

Main articles: History of techno, History of house, History of trance

Related Topics:
History of techno - History of house - History of trance

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The development of the techno sound in Detroit, Michigan and house music in Chicago, Illinois in the early to late 1980s, and the later UK-based acid house movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s all fuelled the development and acceptance of electronic music into the mainstream and to introduce electronic dance music to nightclubs. Electronic composition can create rhythms faster and more precise than is possible using traditional percussion. The sound of electronic dance music often features electronically altered sounds (samples) of traditional instruments and vocals. See dance music.

Related Topics:
Techno - Detroit, Michigan - House music - Chicago, Illinois - 1980s - UK - Acid house - 1990s - Mainstream - Percussion - Samples - Dance music

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The falling price of suitable equipment has meant that popular music has increasingly been made electronically. Artists such as Björk and Moby have further popularized variants of this form of music within the mainstream.

Related Topics:
Popular music - Björk - Moby

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◄ Electronic music: Introduction

Electronic music: Overview ►

~ Table of Content ~

►	Introduction
►	History
►	Overview
►	Electronic music press
►	See also
►	Bibliography
►	External links

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