Electronic music

The electronic music is a Type of music which was conceived starting from the the Fifties with generators of signals and synthetic sounds.

Before being able to be used in real-time, it was originally recorded on Magnetic band, which made it possible to the type-setters to easily handle the sounds, for example in the use of superimposed repetitive loops.

Its precursors could profit from studios especially equipped or belonged to preexistent musical institutions. It should be noted that the Music for band of Pierre Schaeffer, also called Concrete music, is distinguished from this type of music insofar as its primitive material were consisted of the sounds of the everyday life. The characteristic of the electronic music of the time is to use only sounds generated by electronic devices.

History

The desire of the type-setters to build electric instruments, then electronic, date of the beginning of the XXe century. The first instruments were the fruit of often long research. This research aimed at the beginning widening orchestral instrumentarium and at allowing new searchs for stamp. Let us quote for memory: the electromusical piano and the electric toothing-stone of Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Beautiful (1876), the singing arc of William Of Wood Duddell (1899), the telharmonium (or dynamophone ) of Thaddeus Cahill (1900), the ætherophone or Thérémine of Lev Theremin (1920) and the électrophon or sphärophon of Jorg Mager (1921). These instruments drew all left the electron tubes and whose diversity of sonorities was, unfortunately for their commercial development, proportional to their obstruction.

The music studios electronics

The first experimental music research made use of the material of the various laboratories of music and the radiophonic techniques of recording which they diverted of their function first. It is at that time that constituted themselves in the studio of recording and the musical institutions (in particular radios) of the entities specialized directed by musicians and devoted to the electronic music.

In 1951, Herbert Eimert takes thus charges the electronic music studio with it with WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) to Cologne, Pierre Schaeffer transports his Club of test (become GRMC, Groupe of Search for Concrete music) and settles with R.T.F (French Broadcasting-television) in Paris and Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna founds what, four years later, will become the studio of phonology of the SPOKE (Radiotelevisione Italiana) to Milan.

In the European radios, at Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen and B.B.C (British Broadcasting Corporation) with London, also set up themselves of the studios dedicated to the electronic music.

With the United States, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening also into 1951 work begins from their center attached in 1955 to the Université from Colombia, then inaugurated in 1959 under the name of Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center (C.P.E.M.C.). Subsidies of the university will enable them to acquire synthetizers RCA.

One could not overlook either research undertaken to the studio of sonology of Utrecht as from 1961 and the contribution in the the Seventies of the studio of Stockholm (E.M.S.) which will make searchs for interfaces for musician (called " synthesis hybride").

The musical material recovered by these researchers is diversified more and more and its handiness will make it possible to the type-setters to be gradually released from its own inertia. Consequently, their requirements were done increasingly drastic. As of the first stammerings of this musical expression, the type-setters are caught with the play of a writing in conformity with this novel method, which would marry most agreeably possible the physical criteria and the esthetic criteria of sound material become musical. Released from the instrumental production, the representation can stick to the effect more than the source, to compose according to phenomenology of the sound. This is why the type-setters seek the possibility of extracting from technology a new freedom of writing, a new freedom of choice in the components of the expression and a taking into account of the problems of composition and their formal resolution.

The generation of the the Sixties tried to emerge from the tendencies of the musical writing of post-war period and to recreate a new form attached to these new instruments to allow the emergence of a new type of music. Then the sound Synthèse leaves the laboratories and enters an increasingly large number of public institutions and private dedicated to the musical experimentation. The type-setters of the generation of the Seventies will be helped by the real-time and the miniaturization of the components of the electronic instruments.

The music electroacoustic

principal Article: Music electroacoustic

At the end of the Fifties, the electronic music evolves to a joint treatment of concrete sounds (concrete music) and electronic sounds (electronic music) to give what names consequently the Musique electroacoustic. It is in this context that will be creates by Karlheinz Stockhausen work Gesang der Jünglinge im Feuerofen (Dritte Elektronische Studie) , with Cologne on May 30th, 1956. This work mixes with the geared down voices of child and the electronic sounds dispersed in space. It is conceived for five groups of loudspeakers distributed geographically and making it possible to build a spatialized polyphony.

The Sixties at the end of the Seventies

Considering the complexity of the composition with the synthetizers or the computers of the time, without counting the difficulty in reaching these instruments, the majority of the type-setters continued to explore the electronic music by the means of the concrete music until in the the Sixties. But the concrete music was somewhat awkward and some type-setters sought more adapted technologies. This research led three independent teams to develop the first electronic synthetizer easy to play.

The first of these synthetizers to be appeared was Buchla. Appeared in 1963, it was the product of the efforts led by the type-setter of concrete music Morton Subotnick. In 1962, thanks to a purse obtained with Fondacton Rockefeller, Subotnick and its associate Ramon Sender employed electric engineer Don Buchla in order to build a " box noire" with composition.

Subotnick describes its idea in the following way:

" Our idea was to build a block box which would be the pallet of the type-setter at the house. That would be their studio. The idea was to conceive it so that it is like an analogical computer. It was not an musical instrument but that would allow modulations… It would be a battery of modules of generator of envelopes with controlled tension and that would have sequencers directly included… It would be a battery of modules which you could assemble. There were no machines which were comparable for him until CBS buys it… Our goal was that is less than 400$ for the whole and we arrived enough close to that. This is why the instrument of origin for which I collected melt was worth less 500$."

Another synthetizer easy to play, the first to use a keyboard like that of the piano, was the brainchild of Robert Moog. In 1964, it invites the type-setter Herb Deutsch to visit it with its studio of Trumansburg. Moog had known Deutsch the previous year, had listened to its music and had decided to follow the suggestion of the type-setter to design modules of electronic music. When Deutsch comes to visit it in 1964, Moog has just created the prototypes of two oscillator with controlled tension. Deutsch played with the apparatuses during a few days and Moog found its experiments so much interesting musicalement which it built a controlled tension filter. Then, by stroke of luck, Moog was invited in September with the convention AES ( Audio Engineering Society , sound company of engineering) where it presented a conference on " Modules of the music électronique" and sold its first modules of synthetizer with modules to the choreographer Alwin Nikolais. Before the end of this convention, Moog had entered of full foot the market of the synthetizer.

Also in 1964, Paul Ketoff, a sound engineer for the RCA Italiana in Rome contacted William O. Smith, director of the electronic music studio of the American Academy of the city, while proposing to him to design for the studio of the Academy a small synthetizer which would be easy to play. Smith consulted Otto Luening, John Eaton and other type-setters resident with the Academy at the time. Smith accepted the proposal of Ketoff and Ketoff could deliver its synthetizer Synket (for Synthesizer Ketoff ) at the beginning of 1965.

Even if the electronic music were born in the world of the music " savante" , it entered thereafter the popular culture with different degrees of enthusiasm. One of the first electronic signature was on television American for the topic of the emission Doctor Who in 1963. It had been created by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (radiophonic workshops of the BBC) by Ron Grainer and Untied Derbyshire.

At the end of the Sixties, Wendy Carlos popularized the music of the first synthetizers with two albums: Switched one Bach and The Well-Tempered Synthesizer , which reproduced pieces of music baroque using a Moog synthetizer. Moog generated at the time only one note at the same time, so that, to produce multi-layer pieces like those of Carlos, several hours of studio were necessary. The first machines were known to be unstable and were désaccordaient easily. All the same, some musicians such as Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake and Palmer all the same brought them in round. The thérémine, an instrument excessively difficult to play, was even used in certain popular musics. Of aucuns think that it was used in the piece " Good Vibrations" Beach Boys, even if the instrument used were rather electro-thérémine. Let us quote also the mellotron which appeared in the piece " Strawberry Fields Forever " of Beatles and the pedal with tonal volume which was used as instrument of background in " Yes It Is".

As technology developed and that the synthetizers became less expensive, more robust and more portables, they were adopted by more and more rock'n'rolls groups. Examples of these of precursory users in the music rock'n'roll are groups such as United States off America, Silver Apples and Pink Floyd, and even if all their music were not electronic (except for Silver Apples), most of the sounds depended on the synthetizer even if this one replaced often simply an organ. In the the Seventies, the electronic style was revolutionized by the group of Dusseldorf Kraftwerk, which used electronics and robotics to symbolize and even celebrate the alienation of the modern world to technology. To date, their music remains one of the rare electronic musics without compromise with other instrumentations. In Germany, electronic sounds have summers incorporated in the popular music by groups like Cluster, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, Edge, Popol Vuh, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (D.A.F.) and well of others. Jean Michel Jarre (wire of the type-setter Maurice Guard hair) will popularize the electronic music in France by the means of its first album Oxygène .

Several pianists of important Jazz, in particular Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul (Weather Carryforward) and Jan Hammer (Mahavishnu Orchestrated), will start to use the synthetizers in their recording of Jazz fusion in the years 1972-1974. The recordings I Sing the Body Electric of Weather Report and Crossings of Herbie Hancock used synthetizers, even if it were more at ends of sound effects than to replace the piano. Moreover, neither Herbie Hancock, nor Joe Zawinul played themselves of the synthetizer on these albums. But as from 1973, the synthetizers used as an instrument solo started to form integral part of the her jazz fusion, as heard in the album Sweetnighter of Weather Report and the well-known album The Headhunters of Herbie Hancock. Chick Corea and Jan Hammer quickly followed the step by developing each one a single way to play of the synthetizer, using the effects slide , Vibrato, boxing ring modulators , Distortion and Whawha. Later in the the Eighties, Herbie Hancock will leave the album Future Shock , in collaboration with the producer Bill Laswell, album which will be a great success with the piece Rockit in 1983.

End of the year 70 at the end of the Eighties

At that time, there was much innovation in the electronic development of the musical instruments. The analogical synthetizers made place with the numerical synthetizers and the sampleurs. The first sampleurs, like the first synthetizers, were expensive and cumbersome material. Companies deprived such as Fairlight and New England DIGITAL sold instruments for more than 75.000 € (100 000 $US). In the medium of the the Eighties however, the introduction of numerical sampleurs at moderate price returned the technological accessible one to more musicians.

From end of the year 70, much of popular music developed on these numerical machines. Group and musicians such as Ultravox, Gary Numan, The Human League, Landscape, Face, Daniel Miller, Heaven 17, Eurythmics, John Foxx, Thomas Dolby, Orchestral Operations in the Dark, Yazoo, Erasure, Alphaville, Art off Noise, Yello, Fart Shop Servant boys, Depeche Mode and New Order developed new manners of making music by electronic means. Fad Gadget (Frank Tovey) is quoted like the father of the electronic music New Wave , although Ultravox, The Normal (Daniel Miller), The Human League and Cabaret Voltaire produced all of individual of this kind before Fad Gadget.

New the electronic noises that the synthetizers allowed contributed to the formation like the industrial Musique, of which the pioneers have summers Throbbing Gristle in 1975, Wavestar, Esplendor Geométrico and Cabaret Voltaire. Musicians like Nine Inch Nails in 1989, KMFDM and Severed Heads took for model the innovations of the Concrete music and the acousmatic art, and applied them to the music Dance and Rock. Other groups, such as Test Department and Einstürzende Neubauten, took these new sounds to create electronic compositions of them bruitists. Other groups still, such as Robert Rich, Zoviet France and Rapoon have to create sound environments by using the synthesized noises. Lastly, others still, such as Face 242 and Skinny Puppy combined this sound aridity with the pop music and dance, thus creating the Electronic body music (E.B.M.).

During this time, musicians of Dub, such as the group of industrial Funk Tackhead, the singer Stewart Mark and other musicians of the label UNO of Adrian Sherwood integrated the industrial design and of the Musique noise into the music on tape and the samples. That opened the way to a large extent of the interest which was carried to the music dub in the the Nineties, initially with groups such as Happy Meat Manifesto and later the producers of Downtempo and trip-hop Kruder & Dorfmeister.

Recent developments: from 1980 with the beginning of the year 2000

The development of the music House in Chicago, of the sounds Techno and Electro with Strait in the Eighties and, later, the movement Acid house English of end of the year 80 and the beginning of the the Nineties has all contributed to the development and the diffusion of the electronic music.

Among the House artists who influenced the kind, it is advisable to quote Frankie Knuckles, Marshall Jefferson, Jesse Saunders, Larry Heard, Kerri Chandler or the Masters At Work. For the electro one, Juan Atkins and for the techno, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Carl Craig, Richie Hawtin or the collective of Underground Resistance with artists like Mad Mike, Jeff Millets or Robert Hood.

Highlights

Kinds

principal Article: List of kinds of electronic music

The electronic music, in particular during the Nineties, gave rise to so much kinds and styles and under-styles which they are too numerous to be quoted here. Even if one cannot speak about rigid or clearly definite borders, one can summarily identify in an not-extensive way

  • of the contemporary styles: electroacoustic or Acousmatique, music for band, concretes and impromptu;

Technique

Analogical synthetizers

In 1954-1955 took place one of the first big steps towards a new process of electronic musical production: check programmed (some say numerically, in reference to the nature of the tensions of control) in real-time of sound equipment of Synthèse. Then the first Synthétiseur S appeared (the electronic music synthesizer ): mark I follow-up in 1958-1959 by Mark II. These apparatuses were imagined and built by Harry F. Olson and Herbert Belar for the RCA. They will equip thereafter the studio with the C.P.E.M.C where Milton Babbitt, which had obtained appropriations raised by the University, will adopt them to create and develop its technique of complex and mathematized writing ( Composition for synthesizer and Vision and prayer for soprano and made up sounds of synthesis in 1961 and Songs off Philomel in 1964).

Musics in real-time

In 1960 in Stony Not, John Cage composes Cartridge Music , one of the first works of electronic music played on line. Play-back heads of Phonographe S were used like Transducteur S during the production of work and either via the recording on tape.

See too

Correlated articles

External bonds

  • Modulations Delivers audio incipit book " Modulations, a history of the music électronique"
  • 120 Years off Electronic Music a history of the electronic music
  • the handbook of the acousmates simple Manual junior of the studio and its techniques, initially intended for students in composition electroacoustic (France).

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