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The Birth of Electronic Music

Posted by Zonk on from the ooo-weoooooooo dept.

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."

4 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Wot? No Theremin? by igb · · Score: 5, Informative

    The claim that electronic music is all post-war seems a little hard to sustain. Theremin?
    Ondes Martineau?

    ian

  2. Hmm... by ProudClod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Amazon referrer ID is still in that address - somebody's going to become very rich tonight...

    --
    Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
  3. It's been around quite a while by k0ft · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some other groups definately worth mentioning that have been around since around the 60's:

    Tangerine Dream
    Kraftwerk
    Isao Tomita
    Vangelis

  4. For those dissing NPR over this... by sixpaw · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...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.