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Music Media

120 Years of Electronic Music 203

Posted by michael from the organ-grinder dept.
Ant writes "This web page has a list of 120 years of electronic music from 1870 to 1990."
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120 Years of Electronic Music More

120 Years of Electronic Music

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  • Greatest instrument ever! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 12, 2004 @08:06AM (#9673326)
    would Doctor Who, and bad Sci-fi movies have been without Where one of these [obsolete.com] for the sound effects?

  • No, (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dysprosia ( 661648 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @08:06AM (#9673331)
    it's 120 years of electronic musical instruments... For example, Steve Reich's Pendulum Music [wikipedia.org] is pretty much electronic music, but doesn't involve an electronic musical instrument.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @08:07AM (#9673336)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 12, 2004 @08:09AM (#9673347)
    Might make a nice addition to the Wikipedia page on the same topic [wikipedia.org], with the author's permission, of course. Dunno why this is on the front page of Slashdot, though...

  • discogs (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Dreadlord ( 671979 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @08:10AM (#9673352) Journal
    Discogs [discogs.com] is my favorite source for info on electronic music.

  • Re:Greatest instrument ever! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @08:28AM (#9673439)
    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! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @08:34AM (#9673474) Homepage
    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:List of instruments, yes, influence, no. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nosher ( 574322 ) <simon@nosher.net> on Monday July 12, 2004 @08:53AM (#9673603) Homepage
    There's an interesting article about the creators of the Dr. Who theme, the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, here [glias.org.uk] (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.

  • Ok then - who here plays? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @08:59AM (#9673646) Homepage
    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 [eruvia.org]. Don't laugh too loudly please...I've written better. Honest.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • Re:My message to techno handbaggers. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 12, 2004 @10:14AM (#9674293)
    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....

  • They miss one of the most important ones. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by illectro ( 697914 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @11:04AM (#9674813)
    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 [obsolete.com] which has a photo of the tiny machine, but you should check out this page for a more detailed history [tb-303.org] of this accident in electronic music evolution.

  • Re:Ok then - who here plays? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zoeblade ( 600058 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @02:26PM (#9677239) Homepage

    So, who else then? Any links to music?

    Shameless plug: my music [beautifulfreak.net], my synthesizer encyclopedia [synthguide.co.uk]. Feel free to download and copy them :)

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