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The Birth of Electronic Music
fm6 writes "NPR has a story up about the first musicians to compose electronic music. In 1947, Louis and Bebe Barron received an early tape recorder as a wedding present. About the same time, Louis Barron became interested in Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics and its thesis of common elements in living and artificial systems. This led the Barrons to create a new kind of music using electronic circuits and painstakingly edited magnetic tapes. The Barrons music was featured in various avant-garde records and movies, and finally reached a mass audience in the Science Fiction classic Forbidden Planet."
Electronic music has been around for longer than that... we all know that
And we all know that Jean Michel Jarre is the father of medern electronic music.
digital music is great. Where would we be without it? Those techno clubs just wouldn't be the same.
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
Doctors first discovered tinnitus.
The claim that electronic music is all post-war seems a little hard to sustain. Theremin?
Ondes Martineau?
ian
louis barron especially never got anything close to the recognition he deserved, as he was quickly outshone by Bob Moog and the like. great piece. the interview with bebe was heartrending.
i was pretty surprised that there was no mention of Lev Termen, though. any discussion of the "birth" of electronic music has to start with the theremin. doesn't it?
Fifty years later, it seems electronic music has fizzle out a little after being hyped as the next big thing in the 90s. I only hear it during fight scenes in movies now. In fact, one of the last good electronic albums I heard was from Japanese Telecom, a relative unknown.
I guess the repetitive unS unS unS bores me after a while. What are the new movements going on in the electronic music world that the mainstream has yet to become aware of?
There was a long piece on this yesterday morning.
Amazon referrer ID is still in that address - somebody's going to become very rich tonight...
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
In the jazz club, down the road
When people first used electronics to make noises they certainly made some fucked up ones (Electronic Musical Instrument 1870 - 1990)
I bet they'd be pissed to learn that the fruit of their endeavors would be making backing tracks for "pop stars" (though I reckon they'd be stoked about SquarePusher)
Leo Theremin is often cited as a godfather of electronic music. He was responsible for creating for one of the earliest electronic instruments back in 1917.
You can read about him here
I am not conversant with theremin's musical literature, but any original compositions for this instrument would predate the composers mentioned in the article by several decades.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
dammit, why did I burn my mod points up on that stupid message queuing thread?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleharmonium
who fact checks for NPR? someone from CBS?
.cig
I was thinking the same thing. The Theramin was invented before 1921.
People in the Dada movement were creating mechanical music (or rather, un-music and noisy stuff) before 1920. Dada has had a pretty heavy influence on the modern industrial scene...
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I dunno what that was, but it made Philip Glass' music sound like full blown orchestral scores with complex melodies...
Do you remember Hot Butter & Popcorn?
Some even dance to it now.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm not familiar with the Theremin in any way, but the article does mention that it was composed onto a magnetic tape, or something - perhaps they meant "first electronically stored" music ?
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I'd argue that tape editing is hardly the birth. If you take the later development of sequencers as the real birth credit gets muddy, but perhaps it was Raymond Scott...
Can't find much information skimming through that link. Are you sure you don't mean the futurists? Luigi Russolo for example.
-mkb
Dio 'Holy Diver'!
This is hardly the first electronic music. That honour goes to some American chaps in the late 1890's, who devised a giant machine that played the Victorian equivalent of lift music. The concept was to pipe this music over wires into restaurants and clubs all over town, to save the venues the cost of maintaining house bands.
They even had a successful rollout, with mellow, unoffensive tinkelings broadcast citywide. However, the exercise was doomed to failure because it was extremely costly to keep running. Ultimately, it shut down.
Electronic Musician ran an article on this a few years back. I'd quote you reference but I am currently around 14 hours flight from my home.
All the best electronic music seems to come from Europe.
:-)
Aphex Twin
Kraftwerk
Squarepusher
-Ziq
The REPHLEX label
stuff like that
The present-day composer refuses to die!
And do not forget that HP started when Hewlett and Packard built an electronic sound generator for Disney in '39
Paul B.
agh nevermind... it's not like they invented magnetic tape, either - so i still don't know what the story's talking about...
*realizes that this is slashdot and forgets about it*
Some other groups definately worth mentioning that have been around since around the 60's:
Tangerine Dream
Kraftwerk
Isao Tomita
Vangelis
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If we are going to discuss electronic music, lets not forget Kraftwerk, Pioneer in the genre.
http://www.virginrecords.com/daft_punk/
It is a difficult concept. It is not logical.
Electronic music is for trendy Europeans. Quit trying to pretend it isn't terrible.
If you like electronic music, a good point for downloads is http://www.tracetraffic.com. You need to sign up, open up a certain port for bittorrent, and have a down/up ratio, but I have found it to be well worth it. The best part is the offerings of full length DVD's that are generally hard to rent/find. It's mostly trance, but there is some variety. I don't run the site, and don't who who does. Slightly offtopic so mod me down, whatever.
There are numerous fan pages for her, which is truly remarkable for a person who barely got any mention before her death from cancer in her early 60s. Of course, now she's dead and can't enjoy her fame, she's a celebrity. There was even a play written with her as the focus.
I think it fair to say that electronic music has been born and reborn many times, but has yet to really reach the heights the true visionaries expected of it. Like NASA, electronic music has been mostly promise and far too little creative genius.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Oliver Messiaen recorded 'Oraison" in 1937, 10 years before these guys. It's quite nice, actually.
They were important and all, but they were hardly the first.
Heck, Lev Termin patented the Theremin in 1927, when the Barrons were little kids.
You can find a lot of this stuff on a 3-disc set called "OHM" variously "Early Gurus of Electronic Music" or "History of Electronic Music" but always OHM, afaik.
Here's a shameless plug for EAR-Rational Music, the guys i bought my copy from. google for 'em.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Different movements, similar time. And actually their music sounds pretty similar. It's all realated.
As I understand it, the futurists were move about burning down the old culture and creating a brand new culture. I think they actually had big ambitions.
Dadaists were more about breaking any rules possible... they did crazy, irrational stuff on purpose. I can't find any music, but think of being stuck in a room with 10 machines all beating at a different rhythm, different tune, and none of the beats work with the beats of another machine, or running forks against garbage can lids.
Annoying as heck. Sometimes quite interesting.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
If you'd rather Bezos collect the extra pocket change...
Cybernetics, Second Edition
Forbidden Planet
(and far better, to my mind, than The Day The Earth Stood Still and its fascist interstellar-UN robot overlords)
Well I for one welcome our new fascist interstellar-UN robot overlords.
(You know it had to be said.)
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
John Cage {1912-1995) was another pioneer of electronic music. Interestingly his estate sued another composer, Mike Batt, claiming that his piece, one minutes silence, infringed on John Cages copyright for 4'33", another totally silent track.
As Ishkur will tell you, electronic music has been around a lot longer than 1947. It'll also tell you that electronic music is more than that "blips and bleeps" that your annoying loser roommate at college played. It's pretty likely that *you* listen to some "techno," and don't even know it!
Someone who actually knows something and isn't just spouting off. Wow.
You can find their music, as well as a host of others, on OHM: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music... I'm sure that this available at your favorite place of purchase. I bought it a year or two ago.
Uneven but pretty interesting.
I can't find any music, but think of being stuck in a room with 10 machines all beating at a different rhythm, different tune, and none of the beats work with the beats of another machine, or running forks against garbage can lids.
sounds almost as entertaining as a nau zee aun performance involving bench grinders and sparks flying into the audience
-mkb
I'm still laughing at the Stereo Review cartoon ca. 1975 with a radio announcer introducing a performance of a Stockhausen piece, performed on the original transistors, resistors and capacitors.
...the first electronic music experiment was done by Lev Sergeivitch Termen and his famus Theremin.
Also not true - the link you point to lists electronic instruments going back to 1876, forty years before the theremin. The Telharmonium (1897) was a pretty sophisticated instrument, but it weighed 200 tons, and vacuum-tube amplifiers hadn't been invented yet, so it wasn't very practical.
The musical heirs of this mode of thinking were the Experimentalists, most notably John Cage, who wrote stuff like: 4:33 (four minutes and 33 seconds of the performer not making any noise) I Ching (Completely randomly generated music) Again, not directly Dadaist, but definitely based on those sentiments.
I am officially gone from
Probably this is one of the best sites i know about the topic. Definitely the electronic music is not 57 years old
...be aware that the linked-to NPR story says nothing about the Barrons being 'the first' or any such nonsense; it only calls them 'pioneers', which seems a fair claim. They do say that Forbidden Planet was the first major motion picture with an all-electronic score, which is a more plausible and defensible claim, but the line about the Barrons being first is strictly the submitter's and not NPR's.
- First A-Chronology 1921-2001
- Second A-Chronology 1936-2003
- HubertMore like birth of musical trash. No, that's not right either...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Those are electronic musical instruments. The Barrons created "recordings" of music by manipulating the tape directly, rather than by recording sound. Which can a better claim to "Electronic Music" is debatable, but they are clearly different things, like a scanner and a paint program are different. Of course, these days they are generally used together.
It does a good job of covering the bases... albeit a little incomplete. Modulations is a great film!
I believe the "first" that Louis and Bebe Barron hold is that they composed the first completely electronic film score. The theremin was widely used in film previously, probably most notably in The Lost Weekend, but the biggest sensation Forbidden Planet caused, was on Vine at the AFofM offices. Bebe told us this story several years ago, and its a fascinating chapter in how the unions stifled progress and ultimately won an agreement that exclusively electronic music would be a "one time only" exception. It is wonderful to see her referred to. She was battling cancer when we last saw her about 5 years ago. Looks like she won!
Ishkur's guide to electronic music recently added a funny but informative little section about the history of electronic music.
The page has samples from dozens of different genres, so if you've ever wondered about the difference between goa and psy-trance, it'll help you figure it out too.
-S
there is a difference between electronic and digital music. electronic music can be synthesized from analog components not necessarily digital ones.
Does anyone have one of the first electronic music online to listen to? I wonder what they were like then back in the old days.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Trance Traffic now with clicky poppy goodness
I should have known better than to play "the first" game. Usually comes down to some trivial detail only of interest to Guiness dweebs.
According to that URL, Raymod Scott had already *PATENTED* numerous Electronic Music Machines before these guys ever got their tape Machine.
There is also the Theremin, which came way before these two as well. To give them credit for being "the first" is really quite silly.
If anymody is to be credited with this, it is Raymond Scott. Not only did he compose electronic music, but invented the syntesizer, sequencer and drum machine, which together form the basis of modern electronic music. Hell, Bob Moog himself cites Scott as his biggest influence.
Some 2" tape, a razor and some resistors do not a genre create!Drew Crampsie - Software Developer
Open Source Business : The Tec
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I mirrored aminet and modarchive.org on my desktop machine. It's nice being able to brag about a multi-gigabyte music collection that averages about 100KB for a 8-10 minute song.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I'll probably get a ton of hits this time -- but I can't picture a lot of Slashdotters wanting their own copy of Cybernetics or Forbidden Planet. Most will read the reviews on Amazon, then go to Netflix and/or their public library. If past experience is any judge, I'm more likely to make money from people who follow my links to Amazon, and then decide to pick up a video game while they're there!
I'll post results on my Slashdot journal in a couple days, in case anybody's interested.
I prefer pounding hammers against strings. And it tends to be musical.
It should be noted that the article doesn't say the Barrons were the first musicians to compose electronic music, just that they were electronic music pioneers, and that Forbidden Planet was the first film to feature an all-electronic score. In fact, the article links to an earlier NPR piece about the invention of the trautonium in 1929, an electronic instrument that clearly predates the Barrons.
"Pioneers" is not the same as first or birth. Theremins started in 1917 for petesakes.
This did not happen in Europe. 'Disco' music just kept on evolving into the next thing, and the modern sound of electronic music came to the fore as European bands adopted it and experimented with it.
Today, for some unfathomable reason, electronic music is associated by Americans with the gay scene. In Europe, electronic music is pretty much mainstream. Harder core Trance is found predominantly in the nightclubs, on compilation CDs, and on dance-oriented radio shows hosted by superstar DJs like Boy George, Paul Oakenfold, and Judge Jules, but mainstream Euro pop music has a noticably higher content of electronic sounds. Even American-based artists who want to market their wares in Europe frequently bring out 'electronicised' remixes of their songs to cater for that market.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The work of Jacob Markowitz at Allen Organ Company in 1939, the first electronic organ. See here for more. I always liked how they were using digital sampled sounds back in 1971.
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
As others have, and will continue to point out, electronic music is as old as electronics itself.
(Of course, determining what you call "music" is still very subjective...)
It's The Tempest. Morbius is Prospero, his daughter Altaira is Miranda and Robbie the Robot is Caliban. The plot is almost identical. Nonetheless, it's a great film and a good reworking of a classic play for modern times.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Prof. Theremin was back in Russia by 1938, and he had been present for the composition of various music for his instruments while in the US. The First Aerphonic Suite for Theremin and Orchestra was composed by Joseph Schillinger in 1929.
Further proof exists in that Clara Rockmore recorded Anis Fuleihan's Concerto for Theremin in 1945, fully two years before the Barrons got their start, and I think she had performed it in 1939, but I'm not certain of the latter. (It's an absolutely jaw-dropping recording by the way, her virtuosity on the instrument remains unsurpassed.)
We all know that Strong Bad is the creator of Electronic music. (Or at least great Techno...)
http://www.zu33.com/moog/ This is a good movie to see if your interested in the birth of electronic music, old analog synths, theramins and such is a movie called 'Moog' which is all about Robert Moog one of the pioneer inventors in electronic instruments .. although robert wasnt the first, he was a key figure in the development of electronic music.
Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live in cars
Here in my car
I can only receive
I can listen to you
It keeps me stable for days in cars
[Instrumental Interlude]
Here in my car
Where the image breaks down
Will you visit me please
If I open my door in cars
Here in my car
You know I've started to think
About leaving tonight
Although nothing seems right in cars
Bah. Star Wars isn't fit to lick Forbidden Planet's boots. While SW does have an Oedipal conflict to give it a little weight, it's basically a cowbow flick in space.
FP, on the other had, also has its Freudian elements (that's "id" not "ID"), but its story follows Shakespeare's "The Tempest", and raises significant questions about how technology amplifies human capabilities and our ability to survive weilding that kind of power.
That was electric music, not electronic.
:))
As there were no valves or transistors involved, there were no electronic devices.
The machine was essentially a huge generator with many rotors that outputed ac at many different frequencies. Connect those outputs to a keyboard and mix the result you have an organ.
It gave out some power too, enough to breakthrough over everyones telephone calls when tested (they used the telephone lines to distribute the signal), so eventually they had so many complaints they stopped it.
The bigger toothed drums (bass notes) were about four feet tall.
Hm. I think the article was just attempting to highlight some often-overlooked contributions by the Barrons. I mean, I've never even heard of them, so I found it quite interesting.
The submitter is the one who seems to have goofed here, by presenting this short blurb as "The Birth of Electronic Music". The article itself makes no such claims; its focus is simply the Barrons.
If you do have an interest, there are plenty of great resources out there for one to peruse. Yes, Theremin was way ahead of his time, as was Cage, Schaeffer, and on and on.
For computer music in specific, look at Lejaren Hiller and Max Mathews. I had the great honor of meeting Max Mathews and man is he interesting. He was speaking to a class I was taking and he said "digital computer". Every time instead of saying computer, he said "digital computer". This confused me at first, but I thought about that and realized that he has a bit more perspective and history on these things and began working on analog computers.
Bach they were not.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Out of the major contributors to the world of electronic music, none has done more to shape the technique of composition than Stockhausen. Take a look at the score for Studie II, http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco2/Rec/Stockhausen/I RStudieII.jpg. His timeline visualization on the horizontal axis coupled with the frequency spectrum and amplitude on the vertical is a precursor to all of the major Digital Audio Workstation applications currently in use. Whereas his approach focused on the parameters that he was able to work with, in a contemporary application such as Logic, http://images.apple.com/logic/images/prologicindex graph20040930.jpg, a large number of parameters can be controlled or automated in such a timeline based visual method.
While his approach, known as total serialization, has since been abandoned in aestetic, it's fundamentals are present in practically all electronic music produced today. Obviously, some groups and individuals such as Autechre and Aphex Twin, to name a couple, employ a greater ammount of such modernist Stockhausean aestetic. However, the majority of electronic music borrows most of it's aestetic and form from club and disco music of the past.
William
I've always prefered a command line interface. GUIs are such a cursory way to interact with a computer.
This story wasn't about them being the first to make electronic music. It was about them being the first to compose an all electronic movie soundtrack...
What?
I, for one, welcome our new fascist interstellar-UN robot overlords.
I'll get my coat....
"Never trust a computer you can't throw." -- The Mac
I've heard that before, but as far as I can see, it's absolutely bogus. For example, FP has absolutely none of the web of pre-existing relationships (Antonio is the brother of Prospero etc) that are central to the Tempest. Nor does the Tempest have anything like the ancient tragedy of the Krell as a plot device.
"Forbidden Planet" stands quite well on its own as a story; the music is amazing.
"The Barrons: Forgotten Pioneers of Electronic Music"
the article dosen't say they invented electronic music
and its sad that they were cheated out of their oscar
nomination and film credit.
Anyone who's interested in a sampling from the history of electronic music should check out a CD set called Ohm: The early gurus of electronic music.
. html
Well worth the price, I think.
Review here: http://www.classical-music-review.org/reviews/OHM
Where else can you find more than one person aware :)
of Theremin in one convenient discussion ?
Hrmm, I don't know anyone that associates electronic music with the gay scene. Now "disco" maybe. But in the US disco and electronic are completely different things.
And yes there was a backlash against disco, mainly because most disco sucks. It was synthesized pop. Pop music sucks. But "disco" kept evolving here as well. I'm sure if your a fan you know of the constant bickering about whether techno was "invented" in Detroit/Chichago or in Europe. Either way it invalidates your point. While electronic music might not enjoy as much of the mainstream as it does in Europe, to say it has no roots in the US is just plain wrong.
I hereby dub the comments on this article "The Slashdot encylopedia of electronic music". You've all created quite a good reference for the electonic music enthusiat, or novice alike. Many thanks to all the contributors.
Technically, this wouldn't be digital music. Digital music is sampled at finite periods. I believe the music they are talking would be analog.
Here is another source for the history of electronic music.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
And before that there was Elisha Gray's Singing Telegraph of 1876 (IIRC).
The person who posted the article should have done a little bit of research on he subject...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
not first to compose electronic music, just "the first major motion picture to feature an all-electronic film score"
The attempts at myth making aside, does anyone really care who was first? There are plenty of composers and musicians who experimented wih different hardware and ideas. Folks like Edgar Varese, Andre Popp, Atileo Minneo and Holger Czukay (and many others) show a range of styles and influences expressed by electronic means. Does the chronological appearence of an artist's work have much relevance to if one likes it or not? Just enjoy music and keep listening to different things: it doesn't matter when it came out if you think it is bitchin'.
Where would we be without it?
:)
In the jazz club, down the road
Why is this modded insightful?
I'm not trying to knock jazz, I love it. But let's face it, like every other musical movement, it got stale. Other music (mainly soul and rock) took its place long before electronic music became mainstream.
It's a shame too, as if the world needs yet another guitar rock band. It seems so fully explored and done.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The sibling posts are a bit confused.
Sure the Theremin from the early 1920's (1919 on) was influential, but it was not the birth of electronic music. Electronic music was around long before the vacuum tube and radio electronics (which were the technologies of the Theremin era).
In some senses, the real birth of electronic music could be seen as Thomas Edison's invention of the "talking tinfoil device" in 1877 which he called the phonograph.
If you are talking synthesis for music instruments you could cite Elisha Grey's "musical telegraph" created in 1887. It had a one octave keyboard and was designed to play music directly to peoples homes over the telegraph lines. That is over 30 years before the Theremin, and 60 years before "the Barrons" (RTFA) recieved their first tape recorder!
I'm sure the Barrons were influential, especially if they were working with Cage, but this wasn't the birth of electronic music. Maybe "the birth of sampling" would have been more appropriate.
Read "Electronic and Experimental Music" (Thomas B. Holmes) if you want more information.
The Real History
Pop music sucks
No it doesn't. Pop music doesn't suck, pop music that is created soley for marketing purposes sucks.
Roughly conteporary with the Dada movement were the Futurists.
;-)
Luigi Rossollo was a(the?) Futrist composer. He costructed his own instruments, of which most were mechanical, but some were electric.
He also wrote a musical manifesto, which according to some, was quite infuential on later eletronic msicians. It was called "The art of noise".
Sound familliar?
More here: http://csunix1.lvc.edu/~snyder/em/russolo.html
I don't know anyone that associates electronic music with the gay scene...But "disco" kept evolving here as well
Just add a bit to your post, the disco went underground into gay house scene, where the evolution you wrote of occurred.
Btw, it's amazing peeps still boogeying to house/disco, keeping'em locked at ~110 bpm. 20 year s later, it's still 'hip' - it's like how jazz became respectable (well, don't know if house is truly 'respectable'...)
The manipulation of recorded sounds electronically was originally known a musique concrete and was made possible by the invention of the tape recorder (though there was undoubtedly some misunderstood guy getting excited at the idea of chopping up wax cylinders before 1900). Some of this music from the 50s is truly amazing and would have required an incredible amount of tape splicing.
Presumably sound editing was possible with film in the 30s, though it would have been out of reach all but the richest avant garde composers. John Cage, who worked with the Barrons wondered what kind of sound pictures of Beethoven's head would make if placed on an optical film sound track. Probably an annoying buzz- but Cage was avant garde music's ideas man...
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
jazz never got stale. you just apparently stopped listening.
-mkb
Everyone knows that Einstein, aka Yahoo Serious, in his younger years invented the first electric guitar out of a violin and disarmed an atomic bomb with it! Geez...
(Er, yes, and sarcasm.)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Its a shame that most folks (in the US anyway) think all electronic music is all instrumental. There's a fairly big genre of music called synthpop, which is basically the descendents of the 80s new wave bands such as Depeche Mode and New Order.
I think I'd better explain something to...uh...you. Not all electronic music is that trance/hardcore/whatever stuff that they play at raves.
Electronic music is not associated with the gay scene at all. Certain kinds may be by people who don't know any better, but there is a hell of a lot more to electronic music than dance music. Associating electronic music with dance music is just as ignorant as associating dance music with the "gay scene". You obviously don't know a whole lot about electronic music if you think it's all disco-based. If you do indeed realize that it's not, please be more specific before you go on a condescending rant about how much more sophisticated and evolved European music is that us Americans just can't seem to understand.
I'm glad disco died out here so that people could invent new and interesting electronic music instead of stuff that's scientifically designed to be danced to. But don't think that noone listens to that stuff here either. There was unfortunately quite a dominant rave scene here for a while and probably still is.
I see the soundtrack on Amazon, and a bit from a CD about space films, but are there any other albums out there?
great, I finally have someone to blame for "Dance" remixes.
Werd!
I was just about to say the same thing. I have my Enkelaar Theremin in the other room and it makes lovely electronic music! My Wife even used it in her senior composition recital. Now electronic music is mostly just samplers, MIDI, and a digital audio editing suite. I know after working at many shows many so called live performers simply bring in a rack of equipment hook up their rack mounted outputs and hit play... Yes they twiddle with knobs and such but half the equipment isn't even hooked up.... Fun stuff it is all in the spirt of a show. Now back to my theremin...
He didn't say anything condenscending, or anything that would imply that us Americans "just can't seem to understand" anything.
All he said was that electronic music has been consistantly more popular in Europe than in America.
kaens.blogspot.com
Cage? Dada? I dunno, not really -- in terms of their aesthetics they're quite different.
try way before what the articles or even some answer here suggest...
Actually, I think modern digital music was inspired by early data processing rooms where a number of interpreting card punches were working. Think of a dozen or so industrial-grade washing machines all out of balance going thump-thump-thump, each in a slightly different frequency, plus a few 132 column heavy drum printers driven by forms control tapes. The beat frequencies in the next office (where I had a desk) were nearly enough to induce a person to suicide or a career in higher mathematics.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Some of the confusion here might be that a major instrument is being ignored: the Mellotron.
The Theremin was indeed the centerpiece of the Barrons' music for FP (one of my fave movies anyway) but when they go off into "eletronic tape" they are probably referring to the Mellotron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellotron) which was basically a keyboard, each key connected to a short length of magnetic tape. Basically, a very early sampler, similar to an early Emulator, but better, in that the Emu played one sound across multiple octaves, while the Mellotron could play dozens of sounds.
(I had the chance to play with a Mellotron and a real Theremin during my years producing at the Kinks' studio (Konk) in North London during the 90's. FUN stuff.)
Also, many instruments that came later that we call "analog" are really electronic. The Hammond B/C3? Needed a special rotating tweeter speaker (a Leslie)....that sure was electronic. How about an ARP 2600? As electronic as a PC.
One of my favorite early synths was the Hohner Clavinet, made famous by "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder. I had one, given to me by an old pal, and I would lend it out to anyone needing it. I waited for the invariable phone call, tinged with panic "WHERE DO YOU PLUG IT IN???" to which I would point out that it was powered by a 9v battery under a panel on the left side. Hah.
Anyway, I digress. The first electronic music? Dunno really, though I suspect FP or another film of that era was the first scored using all electronic instruments. But the first to use tape in a synth (and therefore combined analog and digital) was the Mellotron.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
well you're all right too! but wrong because the earliest known electronic sound devices are ancient chinese in origin, using magnetism. however you will need to read a LOT of books before finding the relevant info.
:)
it is certainly incorrect to say it began in the US in 47.
and no one has mentioned aussie Percy Grainger who was composing EM and inventing devices prior to WW 1.
really this kind of debate is useless in some ways, though its good to see attempts at historical perspective.
i just wish there had been so much interest in 1980 when i was being bottled by punks for daring to play a synth onstage
...for making electronic music?
t
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_instrumen
This probably brings us to another question: What is the definition of electronic music? Electricity somehow used in the process (every type of music these days)?
For most people the definition is probabaly that electronic music is something that sounds electronic, which is obviously wrong.
I just want to point out that Varese, working at Philips labs (of the consumer electronics), has also been experimenting with electronic music, publishing their first results in 1917, far ahead of the tape recording in this article.
You can read more here
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
His "Soothing Sounds for Baby" is great early electronic and probably some of the first. It's kitzche value is off the charts and makes for great bachelor pad lounge music.
You mean: "I get me coat"?
See the interesting documentary Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey which is both mysterious and tragic. The virtuosity of the aged player who learned under Mr. Theremin was impressive.
I think while we all have to give a nod to the pioneers of electronic music, the album that made EVERYONE stand up and notice its potential was Switched-On Bach, an album by Walter (neé Wendy) Carlos and Benjamin Folkman that demonstrated how to truly make great music using electronic instruments, in this case the early Moog synthesizers. The Carlos/Folkman rendition of Bach's Brandenberg Concerto #3 in G major made me appreciate what a genius Bach was when it came to writing music. :-)
Exactly right. eMusic predates by a far sight but it would quite possibly be the birth of sampling/the remix.
Take a look at the historical photos and presentation at: http://djedwhite.com/p/photo.php?dir=EMS/EMS_histo ry
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
It's loosley based on The Tempest. Not an exact copy. And yes, it stands quite well on its own, and the music is amazing (and done in only three months!)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Jeez! Lighten up!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Around 14 days ago...January 28th give or take a day...at alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.soundtracks. Looks like only 128kb rip.
If your news provider doesn't keep a month of binaries, then get a better provider. (I use easynews - no affiliation, just a happy customer - they keep 6 weeks).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
http://www.intuitivemusic.com/techno-guide-time-li ne.html/
The Barron retrospective was very good.
There is a wealth of information available on the web now. The previously mentioned Obsolete site has a good history of electronic music instruments, and there are several classic synthesizer sites for gear freaks.
Ohm - The Gurus of Electronic music collects early electronic music recordings, including the Barrons in a three-cd set. This is as good an introduction to early electronic music as you'll find. It's jarring, though, if your only exposure has been to techno and trance!
Synthtopia has a directory of electronic music resources that is worth checking out. The site also has interviews with some interesting electronic musicians. Check out the Kompressor interview!
Electro-music is an active community of people interested in more experimental electronic music. Lots of discussion of computers and programming within the world of music.
American Mavericks is a collection of interesting PBS shows on modern classical music, and it has some good shows on electronic music.