Electronic music history pre-dates the rock and roll era by
decades. Most of us were not even on this planet when it began its often
obscure, under-appreciated and misunderstood development. Today, this
'other worldly' body of sound which began close to a century ago, may no
longer appear strange and unique as new generations have accepted much
of it as mainstream, but it's had a bumpy road and, in finding mass
audience acceptance, a slow one.
Many musicians - the modern
proponents of electronic music - developed a passion for analogue
synthesizers in the late 1970's and early 1980's with signature songs
like Gary Numan's breakthrough, 'Are Friends Electric?'. It was in this
era that these devices became smaller, more accessible, more user
friendly and more affordable for many of us. In this article I will
attempt to trace this history in easily digestible chapters and offer
examples of today's best modern proponents.
To my mind, this was
the beginning of a new epoch. To create electronic music, it was no
longer necessary to have access to a roomful of technology in a studio
or live. Hitherto, this was solely the domain of artists the likes of
Kraftwerk, whose arsenal of electronic instruments and custom built
gadgetry the rest of us could only have dreamed of, even if we could
understand the logistics of their functioning. Having said this, at the
time I was growing up in the 60's & 70's, I nevertheless had little
knowledge of the complexity of work that had set a standard in previous
decades to arrive at this point.
The history of electronic music
owes much to Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). Stockhausen was a German
Avante Garde composer and a pioneering figurehead in electronic music
from the 1950's onwards, influencing a movement that would eventually
have a powerful impact upon names such as Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream,
Brain Eno, Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, not to mention the
experimental work of the Beatles' and others in the 1960's. His face is
seen on the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the
Beatles' 1967 master Opus. Let's start, however, by traveling a little
further back in time.
The Turn of the 20th Century
Time
stood still for this stargazer when I originally discovered that the
first documented, exclusively electronic, concerts were not in the
1970's or 1980's but in the 1920's!
The first purely electronic
instrument, the Theremin, which is played without touch, was invented by
Russian scientist and cellist, Lev Termen (1896-1993), circa 1919.
In
1924, the Theremin made its concert debut with the Leningrad
Philharmonic. Interest generated by the theremin drew audiences to
concerts staged across Europe and Britain. In 1930, the prestigious
Carnegie Hall in New York, experienced a performance of classical music
using nothing but a series of ten theremins. Watching a number of
skilled musicians playing this eerie sounding instrument by waving their
hands around its antennae must have been so exhilarating, surreal and
alien for a pre-tech audience!
For those interested, check out the
recordings of Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore (1911-1998). Lithuanian
born Rockmore (Reisenberg) worked with its inventor in New York to
perfect the instrument during its early years and became its most
acclaimed, brilliant and recognized performer and representative
throughout her life.
In retrospect Clara, was the first celebrated
'star' of genuine electronic music. You are unlikely to find more
eerie, yet beautiful performances of classical music on the Theremin.
She's definitely a favorite of mine!
Electronic Music in Sci-Fi, Cinema and Television
Unfortunately,
and due mainly to difficulty in skill mastering, the Theremin's future
as a musical instrument was short lived. Eventually, it found a niche in
1950's Sci-Fi films. The 1951 cinema classic "The Day the Earth Stood
Still", with a soundtrack by influential American film music composer
Bernard Hermann (known for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", etc.), is rich
with an 'extraterrestrial' score using two Theremins and other
electronic devices melded with acoustic instrumentation.
Using the
vacuum-tube oscillator technology of the Theremin, French cellist and
radio telegraphist, Maurice Martenot (1898-1980), began developing the
Ondes Martenot (in French, known as the Martenot Wave) in 1928.
Employing
a standard and familiar keyboard which could be more easily mastered by
a musician, Martenot's instrument succeeded where the Theremin failed
in being user-friendly. In fact, it became the first successful
electronic instrument to be used by composers and orchestras of its
period until the present day.
It is featured on the theme to the
original 1960's TV series "Star Trek", and can be heard on contemporary
recordings by the likes of Radiohead and Brian Ferry.
The
expressive multi-timbral Ondes Martenot, although monophonic, is the
closest instrument of its generation I have heard which approaches the
sound of modern synthesis.
"Forbidden Planet", released in 1956,
was the first major commercial studio film to feature an exclusively
electronic soundtrack... aside from introducing Robbie the Robot and the
stunning Anne Francis! The ground-breaking score was produced by
husband and wife team Louis and Bebe Barron who, in the late 1940's,
established the first privately owned recording studio in the USA
recording electronic experimental artists such as the iconic John Cage
(whose own Avante Garde work challenged the definition of music
itself!).
The Barrons are generally credited for having widening
the application of electronic music in cinema. A soldering iron in one
hand, Louis built circuitry which he manipulated to create a plethora of
bizarre, 'unearthly' effects and motifs for the movie. Once performed,
these sounds could not be replicated as the circuit would purposely
overload, smoke and burn out to produce the desired sound result.
Consequently,
they were all recorded to tape and Bebe sifted through hours of reels
edited what was deemed usable, then re-manipulated these with delay and
reverberation and creatively dubbed the end product using multiple tape
decks.
In addition to this laborious work method, I feel compelled
to include that which is, arguably, the most enduring and influential
electronic Television signature ever: the theme to the long running 1963
British Sci-Fi adventure series, "Dr. Who". It was the first time a
Television series featured a solely electronic theme. The theme to "Dr.
Who" was created at the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop using tape
loops and test oscillators to run through effects, record these to tape,
then were re-manipulated and edited by another Electro pioneer, Delia
Derbyshire, interpreting the composition of Ron Grainer.
As you
can see, electronic music's prevalent usage in vintage Sci-Fi was the
principle source of the general public's perception of this music as
being 'other worldly' and 'alien-bizarre sounding'. This remained the
case till at least 1968 with the release of the hit album "Switched-On
Bach" performed entirely on a Moog modular synthesizer by Walter Carlos
(who, with a few surgical nips and tucks, subsequently became Wendy
Carlos).
The 1970's expanded electronic music's profile with the
break through of bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and
especially the 1980's when it found more mainstream acceptance.
The Mid 1900's: Musique Concrete
In
its development through the 1900's, electronic music was not solely
confined to electronic circuitry being manipulated to produce sound.
Back in the 1940's, a relatively new German invention - the reel-to-reel
tape recorder developed in the 1930's - became the subject of interest
to a number of Avante Garde European composers, most notably the French
radio broadcaster and composer Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) who
developed a montage technique he called Musique Concrete.
Musique
Concrete (meaning 'real world' existing sounds as opposed to artificial
or acoustic ones produced by musical instruments) broadly involved the
splicing together of recorded segments of tape containing 'found' sounds
- natural, environmental, industrial and human - and manipulating these
with effects such as delay, reverb, distortion, speeding up or slowing
down of tape-speed (varispeed), reversing, etc.
Stockhausen
actually held concerts utilizing his Musique Concrete works as backing
tapes (by this stage electronic as well as 'real world' sounds were used
on the recordings) on top of which live instruments would be performed
by classical players responding to the mood and motifs they were
hearing!
Musique Concrete had a wide impact not only on Avante
Garde and effects libraries, but also on the contemporary music of the
1960's and 1970's. Important works to check are the Beatles' use of this
method in ground-breaking tracks like 'Tomorrow Never Knows',
'Revolution No. 9' and 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite', as well as
Pink Floyd albums "Umma Gumma", "Dark Side of the Moon" and Frank
Zappa's "Lumpy Gravy". All used tape cut-ups and home-made tape loops
often fed live into the main mixdown.
Today this can be performed
with simplicity using digital sampling, but yesterday's heroes labored
hours, days and even weeks to perhaps complete a four minute piece! For
those of us who are contemporary musicians, understanding the history of
electronic music helps in appreciating the quantum leap technology has
taken in the recent period. But these early innovators, these pioneers -
of which there are many more down the line - and the important figures
they influenced that came before us, created the revolutionary
groundwork that has become our electronic musical heritage today and for
this I pay them homage!
1950's: The First Computer and Synth Play Music
Moving
forward a few years to 1957 and enter the first computer into the
electronic mix. As you can imagine, it wasn't exactly a portable laptop
device but consumed a whole room and user friendly wasn't even a
concept. Nonetheless creative people kept pushing the boundaries. One of
these was Max Mathews (1926 -) from Bell Telephone Laboratories, New
Jersey, who developed Music 1, the original music program for computers
upon which all subsequent digital synthesis has its roots based.
Mathews, dubbed the 'Father of Computer Music', using a digital IBM
Mainframe, was the first to synthesize music on a computer.
In the
climax of Stanley Kubrik's 1968 movie '2001: A Space Odyssey', use is
made of a 1961 Mathews' electronic rendition of the late 1800's song
'Daisy Bell'. Here the musical accompaniment is performed by his
programmed mainframe together with a computer-synthesized human
'singing' voice technique pioneered in the early 60's. In the movie, as
HAL the computer regresses, 'he' reverts to this song, an homage to
'his' own origins.
1957 also witnessed the first advanced synth,
the RCA Mk II Sound Synthesizer (an improvement on the 1955 original).
It also featured an electronic sequencer to program music performance
playback. This massive RCA Synth was installed, and still remains, at
the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York, where the
legendary Robert Moog worked for a while. Universities and Tech
laboratories were the main home for synth and computer music
experimentation in that early era.
1960's: The Dawning of The Age of Moog
The
logistics and complexity of composing and even having access to what
were, until then, musician unfriendly synthesizers, led to a demand for
more portable playable instruments. One of the first to respond, and
definitely the most successful, was Robert Moog (1934-2005). His
playable synth employed the familiar piano style keyboard.
Moog's
bulky telephone-operators' cable plug-in type of modular synth was not
one to be transported and set up with any amount of ease or speed! But
it received an enormous boost in popularity with the success of Walter
Carlos, as previously mentioned, in 1968. His LP (Long Player) best
seller record "Switched-On Bach" was unprecedented because it was the
first time an album appeared of fully synthesized music, as opposed to
experimental sound pieces.
The album was a complex classical music
performance with various multi-tracks and overdubs necessary, as the
synthesizer was only monophonic! Carlos also created the electronic
score for "A Clockwork Orange", Stanley Kubrik's disturbing 1972
futuristic film.
From this point, the Moog synth is prevalent on a
number of late 1960's contemporary albums. In 1967 the Monkees'
"Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd" became the first
commercial pop album release to feature the modular Moog. In fact,
singer/drummer Mickey Dolenz purchased one of the very first units sold.
It
wasn't until the early 1970's, however, when the first Minimoog
appeared that interest seriously developed amongst musicians. This
portable little unit with a fat sound had a significant impact becoming
part of live music kit for many touring musicians for years to come.
Other companies such as Sequential Circuits, Roland and Korg began
producing their own synths, giving birth to a music subculture.
I
cannot close the chapter on the 1960's, however, without reference to
the Mellotron. This electronic-mechanical instrument is often viewed as
the primitive precursor to the modern digital sampler.
Developed
in early 1960's Britain and based on the Chamberlin (a cumbersome
US-designed instrument from the previous decade), the Mellotron keyboard
triggered pre-recorded tapes, each key corresponding to the equivalent
note and pitch of the pre-loaded acoustic instrument.
The
Mellotron is legendary for its use on the Beatles' 1966 song 'Strawberry
Fields Forever'. A flute tape-bank is used on the haunting introduction
played by Paul McCartney.
The instrument's popularity burgeoned
and was used on many recordings of the era such as the immensely
successful Moody Blues epic 'Nights in White Satin'. The 1970's saw it
adopted more and more by progressive rock bands. Electronic pioneers
Tangerine Dream featured it on their early albums.
With time and further advances in microchip technology though, this charming instrument became a relic of its period.
1970's: The Birth of Vintage Electronic Bands
The
early fluid albums of Tangerine Dream such as "Phaedra" from 1974 and
Brian Eno's work with his self-coined 'ambient music' and on David
Bowie's "Heroes" album, further drew interest in the synthesizer from
both musicians and audience.
Kraftwerk, whose 1974 seminal album
"Autobahn" achieved international commercial success, took the medium
even further adding precision, pulsating electronic beats and rhythms
and sublime synth melodies. Their minimalism suggested a cold,
industrial and computerized-urban world. They often utilized vocoders
and speech synthesis devices such as the gorgeously robotic 'Speak and
Spell' voice emulator, the latter being a children's learning aid!
While
inspired by the experimental electronic works of Stockhausen, as
artists, Kraftwerk were the first to successfully combine all the
elements of electronically generated music and noise and produce an
easily recognizable song format. The addition of vocals in many of their
songs, both in their native German tongue and English, helped earn them
universal acclaim becoming one of the most influential contemporary
music pioneers and performers of the past half-century.
Kraftwerk's
1978 gem 'Das Modell' hit the UK number one spot with a reissued
English language version, 'The Model', in February 1982, making it one
of the earliest Electro chart toppers!
Ironically, though, it took
a movement that had no association with EM (Electronic Music) to
facilitate its broader mainstream acceptance. The mid 1970's punk
movement, primarily in Britain, brought with it a unique new attitude:
one that gave priority to self-expression rather than performance
dexterity and formal training, as embodied by contemporary progressive
rock musicians. The initial aggression of metallic punk transformed into
a less abrasive form during the late 1970's: New Wave. This, mixed with
the comparative affordability of many small, easy to use synthesizers,
led to the commercial synth explosion of the early 1980's.
A new
generation of young people began to explore the potential of these
instruments and began to create soundscapes challenging the prevailing
perspective of contemporary music. This didn't arrive without battle
scars though. The music industry establishment, especially in its media,
often derided this new form of expression and presentation and was
anxious to consign it to the dustbin of history.
1980's: The First Golden Era of Electronic Music for the Masses
Gary
Numan became arguably the first commercial synth megastar with the 1979
"Tubeway Army" hit 'Are Friends Electric?'. The Sci-Fi element is not
too far away once again. Some of the imagery is drawn from the Science
Fiction classic, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The 1982 hit
film "Blade Runner" was also based on the same book.
Although 'Are
Friends Electric?' featured conventional drum and bass backing, its
dominant use of Polymoogs gives the song its very distinctive sound. The
recording was the first synth-based release to achieve number one chart
status in the UK during the post-punk years and helped usher in a new
genre. No longer was electronic and/or synthesizer music consigned to
the mainstream sidelines. Exciting!
Further developments in
affordable electronic technology placed electronic squarely in the hands
of young creators and began to transform professional studios.
Designed
in Australia in 1978, the Fairlight Sampler CMI became the first
commercially available polyphonic digital sampling instrument but its
prohibitive cost saw it solely in use by the likes of Trevor Horn,
Stevie Wonder and Peter Gabriel. By mid-decade, however, smaller,
cheaper instruments entered the market such as the ubiquitous Akai and
Emulator Samplers often used by musicians live to replicate their
studio-recorded sounds. The Sampler revolutionized the production of
music from this point on.
In most major markets, with the
qualified exception of the US, the early 1980's was commercially drawn
to electro-influenced artists. This was an exciting era for many of us,
myself included. I know I wasn't alone in closeting the distorted guitar
and amps and immersing myself into a new universe of musical expression
- a sound world of the abstract and non traditional.
At home,
Australian synth based bands Real Life ('Send Me An Angel', "Heartland"
album), Icehouse ('Hey Little Girl') and Pseudo Echo ('Funky Town')
began to chart internationally, and more experimental electronic outfits
like Severed Heads and SPK also developed cult followings overseas.
But
by mid-decade the first global electronic wave lost its momentum amidst
resistance fomented by an unrelenting old school music media. Most of
the artists that began the decade as predominantly electro-based either
disintegrated or heavily hybrid their sound with traditional rock
instrumentation.
The USA, the largest world market in every sense,
remained in the conservative music wings for much of the 1980's.
Although synth-based records did hit the American charts, the first
being Human League's 1982 US chart topper 'Don't You Want Me Baby?', on
the whole it was to be a few more years before the American mainstream
embraced electronic music, at which point it consolidated itself as a
dominant genre for musicians and audiences alike, worldwide.
1988
was somewhat of a watershed year for electronic music in the US. Often
maligned in the press in their early years, it was Depeche Mode that
unintentionally - and mostly unaware - spearheaded this new assault.
From cult status in America for much of the decade, their new high-play
rotation on what was now termed Modern Rock radio resulted in mega
stadium performances. An Electro act playing sold out arenas was not
common fare in the USA at that time!
In 1990, fan pandemonium in
New York to greet the members at a central record shop made TV news, and
their "Violator" album outselling Madonna and Prince in the same year
made them a US household name. Electronic music was here to stay,
without a doubt!
1990's Onward: The Second Golden Era of Electronic Music for the Masses
Before
our 'star music' secured its hold on the US mainstream, and while it
was losing commercial ground elsewhere throughout much of the mid
1980's, Detroit and Chicago became unassuming laboratories for an
explosion of Electronic Music which would see out much of the 1990's and
onwards. Enter Techno and House.
Detroit in the 1980's, a
post-Fordism US industrial wasteland, produced the harder European
influenced Techno. In the early to mid 80's, Detroiter Juan Atkins, an
obsessive Kraftwerk fan, together with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson -
using primitive, often borrowed equipment - formed the backbone of what
would become, together with House, the predominant music club-culture
throughout the world. Heavily referenced artists that informed early
Techno development were European pioneers such as the aforementioned
Kraftwerk, as well as Yello and British Electro acts the likes of
Depeche Mode, Human League, Heaven 17, New Order and Cabaret Voltaire.
Chicago,
a four-hour drive away, simultaneously saw the development of House.
The name is generally considered to be derived from "The Warehouse"
where various DJ-Producers featured this new music amalgam. House has
its roots in 1970's disco and, unlike Techno, usually has some form of
vocal. I think Giorgio Moroder's work in the mid 70's with Donna Summer,
especially the song 'I Feel Love', is pivotal in appreciating the 70's
disco influences upon burgeoning Chicago House.
A myriad of
variants and sub genres have developed since - crossing the Atlantic,
reworked and back again - but in many ways the popular success of these
two core forms revitalized the entire Electronic landscape and its
associated social culture. Techno and House helped to profoundly
challenge mainstream and Alternative Rock as the preferred listening
choice for a new generation: a generation who has grown up with
electronic music and accepts it as a given. For them, it is music that
has always been.
The history of electronic music continues to be
written as technology advances and people's expectations of where music
can go continues to push it forward, increasing its vocabulary and
lexicon.
Alien Skin is one modern proponent of electronic music and if you
are keen to explore the development of this art form and how it has
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