Why end at 1990? Did 120 years sound more rounded then 130? Haven't there been several advances made in recording technologies since then? MiniDisc, MP3, widespread adoption of compact discs, SACD. Fourteen years is a long time...
As I suspected, the site is fairly old, click on "Introduction": '120 Years Of Electronic Music' is an ongoing project and the site will be updated on a regular basis (currently v3.0 feb 1998).
Regular basis..
Re:Why 1990?
by
TehHustler
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I expect that the jump from 1990 to 2004 will take a considerable amount of writing, when you think of all the technological advances we have had in such a short amount of time. And as someone else has pointed out, it does say "regular basis"
Re:Why 1990?
by
thrash242
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I agree that they shouldn't have stopped at 1990, but what do MiniDiscs, MP3, etc have to do with electonic music? It's about instruments, not ways of storing music electronically. Country music can be stored in MP3s, but it's certainly not electronic music.
You're right that there have been advances since then, but not about what kind. I think the widespread use of software rather than hardware is the biggest change in the last few years. Modern software synths, samplers and effects now are comparable in sound quality and usually more flexible than their hardware equivalents.
Well, in a time span of 130 years once a decade is frequently.
--
--
Cheers!
Re:Why 1990?
by
Emperor+Igor
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Right. Electronic music is evolving along the same lines as the computer did. It's becoming more and more accessible to the average person to make really complex music tracks at home.
The story title is wrong
by
the_raptor
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· Score: 2, Informative
Its a list of electronic Instruments (according to the Fscking Article). Slow news day?
would Doctor Who, and bad Sci-fi movies have been without Where one of these for the sound effects?
Re:Greatest instrument ever!
by
kfg
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The Theremin is hardly obsolete. Moog makes them and it is still being composed for. Led Zepplin, among others, have used them in modern recordings.
No, it isn't as popular as the guitar, or even the recorder, but then it never was in the first place.
If you want an example of an "obsolete" instrument that would the violin. The Theremin supercedes it.
KFG
Re:Greatest instrument ever!
by
Gordonjcp
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Possibly, but most of the original "lead" of the theme music was done with a sine oscillator, careful tweaking of the frequency knob, and lots of cutting and shutting on tape.
The TARDIS sound effect was made by running a key down the bass strings of a gutted piano, and a bit reverb. Lots of BBC Radiophonic Workshop sound effects were made by bashing, bending and otherwise abusing fairly common objects, then speeding up, slowing down, and reversing the sounds on tape. The "laser gun" effects in Blake's 7 were apparently made by gaffa-taping a microphone to an electricity pylon, and bashing one of the other legs of the pylon with a big spanner.
Re:Greatest instrument ever!
by
proj_2501
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· Score: 3, Insightful
it's 120 years of electronic musical instruments...
For example, Steve Reich's Pendulum Music is pretty much electronic music, but doesn't involve an electronic musical instrument.
Comment removed
by
account_deleted
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What about NI
by
slashflood
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· Score: 5, Informative
They list Steinberg, but ignored Native Instruments, the producer of Reaktor. Very incomplete.
Re:What about NI
by
tulimulta
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· Score: 3, Informative
I don't think that NI existed in the 1980s. Do correct me if I'm wrong.
The beginning of the list was fascinating, but from the 1970s onwards the list has glaring omissions. Where's the ARP synths? Not to talk about the 1980s list. They should remove the last 20 years from the list, since other sites manage that part way better, eg. synthmuseum.com.
-- -
Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
Hmm...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Might make a nice addition to the Wikipedia page on the same topic, with the author's permission, of course. Dunno why this is on the front page of Slashdot, though...
Seems like they have concentrated on the instruments themselves. I reacted to this myself as i expected to see Kraftwerk mentioned somewhere around 1970.
On a side note, i am going to a Kraftwerk concert this week. I am very much looking forward to it. =)
-- You cant fight in here, its a war room!
Lifted from Bash.org
by
The-Bus
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
c-rock: Whatever happened to sex drugs and rock n roll? Now we just have aids crack and techno.
--
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Re:in 1990 it ended because
by
thrash242
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Far from all electronic music is rave "music". There is a lot of innovative stuff being made today. But, it's just like mainstream rock, rap, whatever...the most visible 90% of any music genre sucks. Of course, "electronic music" isn't a genre per se, it's the way it's made. Anyway, my point is: not all electronic music now is rave "music", just like not all electronic music in the 80s was New Wave.
I'm wondering why they didn't make it until 2000 and make it 130 years of electronic music? Well, the article is actually about instruments, not the actual music (from what I saw, anyway). But plenty of cool isntruments have come out since 1990; both software and hardware.
And I realize that your post was probably intended as humor, but I thought I'd point this out anyway.
Theremin!
by
Random_Goblin
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· Score: 4, Informative
The Theremin Leon Termen Soviet Union 1917
This looks to be the oldest electronic instrument that is still regarlly used today... of particular note is the artist Goldfrapp who plays a theremin in a MOST provocative manner during her live gigs!
87 years is quite a respectable age. I can't see a date for electric guitar anywhere on the site.
also just got to love
Dr Kent's Electronic Music Box Dr Earle Kent USA 1951
do you think he had an advertising jingle?
Re:But who cares about such old history?
by
thrash242
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· Score: 3, Insightful
To me, electronic music is the geekiest kind. At least some (ie: not rave crap or piano music played on an electronic keyboard) electronic music. What other kind of musician other than a geeky one sits around staring at a computer screen and in front of boxes with oodles of knobs making bleepy noises? It's not as "cool" or socially accepted as playing guitar, piano, etc. Guitarists and drummers and the like don't have to worry about all the very technical aspects of synths, sequencers, samplers, etc that electronic musicians do. Plus, if you like computers and technology, it seems like you'd want to make or listen to music made possible by computers and technology.
Most people on Slashdot don't seem to be that much into electronic music, which kind of surprises me. Or maybe I'm guessing wrong.
Software synths
by
CausticPuppy
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· Score: 2, Informative
Maybe they update the page every 10 years or something. In 2008 they'll have coverage up through 2000 perhaps?
If they can cover up through 2004, probably one of the most important developments is software-based synthesizers, which either use totally new methods of synthesis (example: Antares Kantos) or emulate many of the older models on that list.
So there have been improvements in electronic music and synthesis in recent years, but nowadays everything is so electronic anyway that we don't hear anything and think "oh that's groundbreaking."
An analogy can be made with computer special FX. It's kind of like how the dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park movie blew everybody away and were revolutionary back then. Now, over 10 years later, CG effects are 100 times better, but everybody is so used to CG effects by now that not a lot of it is revolutionary any more.
-- -CausticPuppy
"Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Re:But who cares about such old history?
by
WoodenRobot
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There's little geekier than the IDM scene, which seems to thrive on how obscure your tastes can get. There's an immense number of 'bands' that have popped up out there thanks to people using their computers to make the music they want to hear. Although there's a lot of crap out there, there are also some real gems.
It's a shame that people, especially in the US, it seems, think electronic music = bad chart 'techno', and therefore discard an immense amount of cool music. (
-- --- "I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
Re:List of instruments, yes, influence, no.
by
Nosher
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· Score: 3, Interesting
There's an interesting article about the creators of the Dr. Who theme, the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, here (especially the section entitled "early days"). The Workshop is indeed often credited with introducing electronic music (influenced to a degree by the French "Music Concrète" school) into the mainstream, at least in the UK. There were all sorts of cool tales about the hacks they used to create their effects, for example tape-loops that were so long the tape would be fed out of one room, down the corridor and back through another office.
-- It's too late for me to die young
Ok then - who here plays?
by
mccalli
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Interesting one for me this - I got into keyboards and computers at roughly the same age (about nine), and have been using one to help with the other ever since.
This mushroomed when I got an Atari ST - still the most influential machine for me. I got it for the games, but also spent time learning C on it and got into Steingberg Pro 12 - I bought the excellent for its time mono monitor, and never looked back.
Main inspiration for learning electronic music as a kid would be the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Always remembered for their Dr Who work, it's often forgotten that they did an awul lot more than this - the incidental music for the nature series Life On Earth was superb, and it's a track called The Astronauts (Through A Glass Darkly album, Peter Howell) which finally made me decide I wanted to play.
I've since decided to try learning piano as well as keyboard (very different - left hand work especially), but I'm essentially a keyboard player dabbling with piano, not a pianist dabbling with keyboards.
So, who else then? Any links to music? I've barely put online anything I did, but there's some really early teenage stuff from me and also a couple of ~1999 tracks available here. Don't laugh too loudly please...I've written better. Honest.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Ok then - who here plays?
by
zoeblade
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Re:Electric guitar is missing
by
MBAFK
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I noticed this too, but after a bit of googling I found out probably why it's not on that list:
Source
An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. In contrast, the term electric instrument is used to mean instruments whose sound is produced mechanically, and only amplified electronically - for example an electric guitar.
What with the one liner? No link, no cheap stab at MS or Linux? There should be a minimum lenght for news and comments, otherwise this place will look like a cheap blog... oh wait!
the instrument..and the musicians?
by
cabazorro
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· Score: 3, Informative
For the site to be truly complete it should provide famous music/musicians that made the sound of some of this instruments popular. The likes of: Tomita Jean Michelle Jarre Kitaro Vangelis Mike Oldfield Philip Glass and of course Tangerine Dream.
-- - these are not the droids you are looking for -
Re:My message to techno handbaggers.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Techno handbag disco music is just a noise that comes out of machines. And just look on your local high street on a Friday or Saturday night and see the barely-clad, drug-crazed, orange, under-age youngsters queuing up to get into over-priced night-clubs to techno handbag disco the night away and possibly later surrendering their bodies to the nearest sentient being wearing the right brand of training shoes.
Dear me. Do you seriously think that's all electronic music is? Meat Market Music is obviously going to be pure crap - and absolutely nothing to do with people who have some real talent.
How about folks like Autechre, Coil, Eno, Aphex Twin, Orbital, Jeff Mills, Peshay, Basic Channel, Ritchie Hawtin - many of whom MAKE their own instruments...
Give me some good old-fashioned guitar-based rock any day. Slayer, Voivod or even Metallica if things get desperate.
Mmmm. Officially Rebellious Music(TM).
I remember I had a friend who loathed the notion of anything but metal, thinking what you see on MTV represents in any way electronic music - he changed his mind when I dragged him to some of Leeds' underground Acid Techno nights. Do yourself a favour - get a clue about what's out there, there's many excellent things to find....
Re:Modern Electronica and House....
by
justkarl
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Modern Electronica, House, Techno, etc actually came from Detroit, Michigan, USA.
I would disagree. Although modern "techno"(in the specific definition of it) comes from detroit, most people would argue that house music was born in Chicago & New York as a bastard child of disco. Most orgins of different types of electronic music, in my opinion, can be attached to different locations in the U.S. and parts of europe.
Re:See also...
by
3)+profit!!!
·
· Score: 2, Funny
In the "disclaimer" section of that site:
This guide is a non-technical, irreverent critique of electronic dance music. Its purpose is to entertain before it inforums. I suppose it could be used as a credited resource or educational primer, but that's not recommended since I made most of it up. Several biases here are celebrated lavishly, because downcasting people for their taste in music is close-minded. Except if their taste in music sucks.
They miss one of the most important ones.
by
illectro
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Modern Electronic music frequently features the 'acid' sound which was originally introduced to the Chicago House scene when some producers dicovered the Roland TB 303 automated bass synthesiser and sequencer. It was a pretty cheap piece of equipment and it never sold well. Most of them ended up discarded or in garage sales..... they only sold 20,000 over the 18 months that it was available. It didn't sound anything like that bass guitar it was supposed to be replacing.
However, the pioneering house music producers discovered that if the resonance and accent controls were turned up higher than any sane user had tried before then it produced a distinctive sound. Add some simple sequencing to som knob twiddling, lay it over a drum beat and *bang* that's where acid house came from.
The page does have a link which has a photo of the tiny machine, but you should check out this page for a more detailed history of this accident in electronic music evolution.
This list is hardly comprehensive!
by
mixwhit
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Where's the Sal-Mar Construction, created by Salvatore Martirano in the early 1970's, toured throughout the world in the 70's and 80's, and still seen as one of the most interesting improvisatory electronics instrument ever devised? How about one of the first wave synthesizers by James Beauchamp in the 1960's? The page also seems to include some software systems as instruments (as it should), but leaves out most such systems (CMusic, Music V, CSound, Music 4C, max, kyma, etc.).
This is a pretty bad/. post.
Slashdot Mirror
Why end at 1990? Did 120 years sound more rounded then 130? Haven't there been several advances made in recording technologies since then? MiniDisc, MP3, widespread adoption of compact discs, SACD. Fourteen years is a long time...
Nothing but the finest in meaningless drivel
Its a list of electronic Instruments (according to the Fscking Article). Slow news day?
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
would Doctor Who, and bad Sci-fi movies have been without Where one of these for the sound effects?
it's 120 years of electronic musical instruments... For example, Steve Reich's Pendulum Music is pretty much electronic music, but doesn't involve an electronic musical instrument.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They list Steinberg, but ignored Native Instruments, the producer of Reaktor. Very incomplete.
or just a link of the day?
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
Might make a nice addition to the Wikipedia page on the same topic, with the author's permission, of course. Dunno why this is on the front page of Slashdot, though...
Discogs is my favorite source for info on electronic music.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
120 years of electronic music, and no mention of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen? How could they leave him out?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
c-rock: Whatever happened to sex drugs and rock n roll? Now we just have aids crack and techno.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Far from all electronic music is rave "music". There is a lot of innovative stuff being made today. But, it's just like mainstream rock, rap, whatever...the most visible 90% of any music genre sucks. Of course, "electronic music" isn't a genre per se, it's the way it's made. Anyway, my point is: not all electronic music now is rave "music", just like not all electronic music in the 80s was New Wave.
I'm wondering why they didn't make it until 2000 and make it 130 years of electronic music? Well, the article is actually about instruments, not the actual music (from what I saw, anyway). But plenty of cool isntruments have come out since 1990; both software and hardware.
And I realize that your post was probably intended as humor, but I thought I'd point this out anyway.
So it's the Victorians who are to blame for techno handbag disco music! :-)
Stick Men
This looks to be the oldest electronic instrument that is still regarlly used today... of particular note is the artist Goldfrapp who plays a theremin in a MOST provocative manner during her live gigs!
87 years is quite a respectable age. I can't see a date for electric guitar anywhere on the site.
also just got to love
do you think he had an advertising jingle?
To me, electronic music is the geekiest kind. At least some (ie: not rave crap or piano music played on an electronic keyboard) electronic music. What other kind of musician other than a geeky one sits around staring at a computer screen and in front of boxes with oodles of knobs making bleepy noises? It's not as "cool" or socially accepted as playing guitar, piano, etc. Guitarists and drummers and the like don't have to worry about all the very technical aspects of synths, sequencers, samplers, etc that electronic musicians do. Plus, if you like computers and technology, it seems like you'd want to make or listen to music made possible by computers and technology.
Most people on Slashdot don't seem to be that much into electronic music, which kind of surprises me. Or maybe I'm guessing wrong.
Maybe they update the page every 10 years or something. In 2008 they'll have coverage up through 2000 perhaps?
If they can cover up through 2004, probably one of the most important developments is software-based synthesizers, which either use totally new methods of synthesis (example: Antares Kantos) or emulate many of the older models on that list.
So there have been improvements in electronic music and synthesis in recent years, but nowadays everything is so electronic anyway that we don't hear anything and think "oh that's groundbreaking."
An analogy can be made with computer special FX. It's kind of like how the dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park movie blew everybody away and were revolutionary back then. Now, over 10 years later, CG effects are 100 times better, but everybody is so used to CG effects by now that not a lot of it is revolutionary any more.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
It's a shame that people, especially in the US, it seems, think electronic music = bad chart 'techno', and therefore discard an immense amount of cool music. (
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
There's an interesting article about the creators of the Dr. Who theme, the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, here (especially the section entitled "early days"). The Workshop is indeed often credited with introducing electronic music (influenced to a degree by the French "Music Concrète" school) into the mainstream, at least in the UK. There were all sorts of cool tales about the hacks they used to create their effects, for example tape-loops that were so long the tape would be fed out of one room, down the corridor and back through another office.
It's too late for me to die young
This mushroomed when I got an Atari ST - still the most influential machine for me. I got it for the games, but also spent time learning C on it and got into Steingberg Pro 12 - I bought the excellent for its time mono monitor, and never looked back.
Main inspiration for learning electronic music as a kid would be the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Always remembered for their Dr Who work, it's often forgotten that they did an awul lot more than this - the incidental music for the nature series Life On Earth was superb, and it's a track called The Astronauts (Through A Glass Darkly album, Peter Howell) which finally made me decide I wanted to play.
I've since decided to try learning piano as well as keyboard (very different - left hand work especially), but I'm essentially a keyboard player dabbling with piano, not a pianist dabbling with keyboards.
So, who else then? Any links to music? I've barely put online anything I did, but there's some really early teenage stuff from me and also a couple of ~1999 tracks available here. Don't laugh too loudly please...I've written better. Honest.
Cheers,
Ian
I noticed this too, but after a bit of googling I found out probably why it's not on that list:
Source
An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. In contrast, the term electric instrument is used to mean instruments whose sound is produced mechanically, and only amplified electronically - for example an electric guitar.
What with the one liner? No link, no cheap stab at MS or Linux?
There should be a minimum lenght for news and comments, otherwise this place will look like a cheap blog... oh wait!
For the site to be truly complete
it should provide famous music/musicians that
made the sound of some of this instruments
popular. The likes of:
Tomita
Jean Michelle Jarre
Kitaro
Vangelis
Mike Oldfield
Philip Glass
and of course
Tangerine Dream.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
Dear me. Do you seriously think that's all electronic music is? Meat Market Music is obviously going to be pure crap - and absolutely nothing to do with people who have some real talent.
How about folks like Autechre, Coil, Eno, Aphex Twin, Orbital, Jeff Mills, Peshay, Basic Channel, Ritchie Hawtin - many of whom MAKE their own instruments...
Give me some good old-fashioned guitar-based rock any day. Slayer, Voivod or even Metallica if things get desperate.
Mmmm. Officially Rebellious Music(TM).
I remember I had a friend who loathed the notion of anything but metal, thinking what you see on MTV represents in any way electronic music - he changed his mind when I dragged him to some of Leeds' underground Acid Techno nights. Do yourself a favour - get a clue about what's out there, there's many excellent things to find....
Modern Electronica, House, Techno, etc actually came from Detroit, Michigan, USA.
I would disagree. Although modern "techno"(in the specific definition of it) comes from detroit, most people would argue that house music was born in Chicago & New York as a bastard child of disco. Most orgins of different types of electronic music, in my opinion, can be attached to different locations in the U.S. and parts of europe.
Modern Electronic music frequently features the 'acid' sound which was originally introduced to the Chicago House scene when some producers dicovered the Roland TB 303 automated bass synthesiser and sequencer. It was a pretty cheap piece of equipment and it never sold well. Most of them ended up discarded or in garage sales..... they only sold 20,000 over the 18 months that it was available. It didn't sound anything like that bass guitar it was supposed to be replacing. However, the pioneering house music producers discovered that if the resonance and accent controls were turned up higher than any sane user had tried before then it produced a distinctive sound. Add some simple sequencing to som knob twiddling, lay it over a drum beat and *bang* that's where acid house came from. The page does have a link which has a photo of the tiny machine, but you should check out this page for a more detailed history of this accident in electronic music evolution.
Where's the Sal-Mar Construction, created by Salvatore Martirano in the early 1970's, toured throughout the world in the 70's and 80's, and still seen as one of the most interesting improvisatory electronics instrument ever devised? How about one of the first wave synthesizers by James Beauchamp in the 1960's? The page also seems to include some software systems as instruments (as it should), but leaves out most such systems (CMusic, Music V, CSound, Music 4C, max, kyma, etc.). This is a pretty bad /. post.
They had electrons in 1870?
Fuck it