What Is Electronic Music?

Electronic music is music produced using electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology; musicians who create or perform this type of music are called electronic musicians. In general, you can use electromechanical technology to distinguish it from sound produced using electronic technology. Devices that use electronic machinery to produce sound include electric reed organs, Hanmen electric organs, and electric guitars; while pure electronic sound manufacturing equipment includes Tremen, sound synthesizers and computers.

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Electronic music was almost completely connected to the art music in the West, especially in Europe, but since the late 1960s, because

Mid to late 1950s

In 1954, Stockhausen created his "Research 2"-the first electronic music work published in sheet music. In 1955, more experimental electronic recording studios began to appear. More noteworthy are the creation of the Milan Radio Acoustic Music Studio, the NHK Recording Studio established by Demin Lang in Tokyo, and the Philips Recording Studio in Enhofen, the Netherlands. Sonorgi Institute.

The soundtrack for the 1956 film "Forbidden Planet" was composed by Louis and Bebe Bellon, using custom electronic circuits and tape recorders.

The world's first computer to play music was CSIRAC, designed and manufactured by Trevor Pierce and Maston Beard. Mathematician Geoff Hill has written programs for CSIRAC since the early 1950s to play popular music melody. In 1951, it publicly played "The Colonel of Bogey" (the theme song of the movie "Kwai River Bridge"), but no recordings have survived. However, CSIRAC is only used to play standard repertoire, not to extend musical ideas or composition practice. CSIRAC has never been recorded, but the way music is played has indeed been reconstructed. The earliest recordings of computer-generated music were performed by Ferranti Mark 1 computers, a commercial version of the "Baby Machine" developed by the University of Manchester Victoria in the fall of 1951. The music program was written by Christopher Strachey.

The impact of computers continued in 1956. Reginald Hiller and Leonard Isaacson created the "Ilyak Suite" for the String Quartet, the first complete work to use computer-assisted composition (including a composition algorithm). "... Hiller assumed that computers could be educated with certain forms of rules, and then called out to compose music." Subsequent developments included Max Matthews' work at Bell Labs, which he developed Influential MUSIC I program. In 1957, MUSIC became one of the first computer programs to play electronic music. Vocal encoder technology is also an early major development project in this area. In 1956, Stockhausen created "The Song of Youth", the first major work in Cologne's recording studio, inspired by a passage from the Book of Daniel. An important technological development that year was the invention of the Clavivox synthesizer, which was created by Raymond Scott and assembled with the assistance of Robert Moog.

Also in 1957, Gide Baltan (Dick Remax) and Tom Desservert released their debut album "Song Of The Second Moon", which was recorded at the Philips studio carry out. The public remained highly interested in the new sounds created around the world, and continued until the performance of Varez's work "Electronic Poems" in the Philips Pavilion at the World Expo in Brussels, Belgium. The show used a total of 400 speakers . In the same year, Argentine composer Mauricio Carguer created "Transición II". The work was produced in the WDR studio in Cologne. Two musicians performed on a piano, one performed traditionally, and the other performed on steel strings, frames and boxes. Two other performers used tape recorders to integrate live sound and pre-recorded past performance recordings.

In the 1960s, it was an era of prolific electronic music-not only in academia, but also with independent artists, because synthesizer technology became easier to operate. During this period, a strong community of composers and musicians established and thrived to create new sounds and instruments. 1960 witnessed the premiere of Lu Ning's "Gargoyles" for violin and audio tapes, and Stockhausen's "Contact" for electronic sounds, pianos, and percussion instruments. There are two versions of the work-one is a 4-channel audio tape; the other is a crowd performance. "In" Contact ", Stockhausen gave up the traditional form of music based on linear development and dramatic climax. He called this new method a" moment form "similar to the film editing technology developed in the early 20th century. "

The first such synthesizer was Buchrah, which appeared in 1963 and was a pioneering product of specific music composer Morton Subernick.

Tremen has been in use since the 1920s, but it has been very popular because it was used in sci-fi movie soundtrack music from the 1950s (for example, Bernard Herman's classic score for "Day of the Earth Stopped") song).

During this period in the United Kingdom, the BBC Broadcasting Studio (founded in 1958) gradually became the world's most productive and well-known electronic music recording studio, thanks to their large contributions to the BBC science fiction series, Dr. Macross. One of the most influential British electronic artists at the time was the studio's employee Dalia Derbyshire, who was best known for practicing electronic music in 1963 as a symbolic theme song of "Dr. Macross", a theme song by Lang · Greiner composed.

In 1961, Joseph Tal established the "Israel Electronic Music Center" at the Hebrew University, and in 1962 Hugh Le Cain arrived in Jerusalem and installed his "innovative tape recorder" there. Later in the 1990s, Thar and Dr. Shlomo Markel co-led a joint research project (Talmark) with the Israel Institute of Technology and the Volkswagen Stiftung to develop a set of electronics Musical notation system.

Milton Babbitt used a synthesizer to create his first electronic work, "Composing for a Synthesizer" (1961), using an RCA synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

For Babbitt, there are three reasons for him to think that RCA synthesizers have achieved their dreams. First, the ability to precisely control every musical element. Second, it took time to practice elaborate creation, but now it can be achieved in a simple and practical way. Third, the question is no longer "What are the limits of human performers?" But "What are the limits of human hearing?"

Some cooperation cases also cross the ocean and continent. In 1961, Yusachevsky invited Varez to the Columbia-Princeton Recording Studio (CPEMC). Upon arrival, Varez embarked on a revised version of his work Desert, assisted by Mario Davidowski and Billen Ariel.

The enthusiastic activities that took place in CPEMC and other places inspired Morton Sabonik, and in 1963 he and Pauline Olivello, Ramon Sender, Anthony Martin, Lee Riley and others co-founded the San Francisco Band Music Center. Riley used a variety of electronic keyboard instruments in his work "Rainbow in a Bending Atmosphere" (1967) added to the original band, all improvised by the composer.

The center was later relocated to Mills College, under the direction of Pauline Olivello, and is now known as the "Contemporary Music Center".

In San Francisco at the same time, composer Stan Shaff and equipment designer Doug McEachern delivered the first "Audium" concert (1962) at San Francisco State College. Then he created another work (1963) at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), which can be imagined to control the flow of sound in space immediately. A total of 12 horns surround the audience, and another 4 horns are mounted in a rotating, seemingly movable structure above. In a performance at SFMOMA the following year (1964), the music critic Alfred Frankenstein of the San Francisco Chronicle commented: "The possibility of a stereo sound continuum is rare Explore it extensively. " In 1967, the first Audia theater, the "stereophonic continuum", opened and performed weekly until 1970. In 1975, a new Audiium theater was funded by the National Art Foundation, designed from the floor to the ceiling for stereo sound creation and performance. "In contrast, some composers operate stereo sound by switching or screening each sound source through multiple speakers set in the performance space. In this method, the composition of the space operation depends on the position of each speaker, and usually uses The acoustic characteristics of the field. Examples include Varez's work "Electronic Poems" (tape music performed at the Philips Exhibition Hall at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958) and Stanley Schaff (as it is) still alive in San Francisco The Audium facility. "Through a weekly regular program (more than 4,500 shows in 40 years), Shave's" sculpture "sounds, and now 176 speakers perform a three-dimensional, digital work.

A well-known use case for full-size Moog-tuned synthesizers is Wendy Carlos's "Receiving Baja" album, which triggered the frenzy of synthesizer music.

Pietro Grossi is an Italian pioneer of computer composition and band music. He first experimented with electronic technology in the early 1960s. Grossi was a cellist and composer and was born in Venice in 1917. He founded the Florence Rhyme Music Studio (Italian: Studio de Fonologia Musicale di Firenze, abbreviated S 2F M) in 1963 to experiment with electronic sounds and composition.

Electronic music synthesizer

1970s to early 1980s: In 1970 Moog Music released Mini Moog, one of the first synthesizers that was widely available, portable, and relatively affordable. It became the most widely used synthesizer in pop and electronic art music. Patrick Gleason and Herbie Hancock used it to broadcast live music together from the beginning of the 1970s, and became pioneers in using synthesizers in touring concerts, but they were also incomplete for the functional design of early machines. Feel the pressure.

In 1974, the EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer was acquired at the West German Broadcasting (WDR) studio in Cologne, and many composers used it to create famous electronic music works-including "Five German Dances" by Rolf Gijal (Fünf deutsche Tänze, 1975), Karl Heinz Stockhausen, Sirius (1975-76), and John Margell's Pulse Music III (Pulse Music III, 1978) .

In the early 1980s, people saw the rise of bass synthesizers. The most influential was the Leland TB-303. It was a bass synthesizer and sequencer, which was published in late 1981, and later became an essential device for electronic dance music, especially the psychedelic house music school. One of the first users was Charanjit Singh in 1982, but it was not popular at that time, and it did not change until 1987 when the Future Orchestra released "Psychedelic Tracks".

IRCAM, STEIM and EMS

IRCAM, located in Paris, France, became a major computer music research and practice center, developing the Sojitec 4X computer system, featuring revolutionary real-time digital signal processing. Pierre Blaze's "Response" (1981) was written for 24 musicians and 6 soloists, using 4X conversion and placing the soloists on a speaker system.

STEIM is a new instrument research and development center for electronic performing arts, located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. STEIM has been in existence since 1969 and is made up of Michael Mannberger, Louis Andreessen, Peter Shatt, Dick Remax, Jean Van Freeman, Rainbert Di Leigh And co-founded by Conrad Bermer. This group of Dutch composers is struggling to reform the closed music environment of Amsterdam; they strongly support the appointment of Bruno Madina as the music director of the Royal City Hall Orchestra and the first public fundraising for experimental and improvised electronic music in the Netherlands Information.

The Electronic Music Research Institute (EMS), formerly known as "Swedish Electroacoustic Music", is the national center of Swedish electronic music and sound art. The research organization was founded in Stockholm in 1964.

Electronic music popular electronic music

In the late 1960s, pop and rock musicians, including the Beach Boys and the Beatles, began using electronic instruments such as the Tremen and Magic Piano to reinforce and define their voices. At the end of these 10 years, Moog's synthesizer has gained leadership in the emerging avant-garde rock. Some bands such as Pink Floyd, Yes, Emerson, Rick and Parma, and the Genesis Orchestra all use It comes to create part of the music. Instrumental avant-garde rock is particularly prominent in continental Europe, allowing some orchestras such as power plant orchestras, orange dream orchestras, canned orchestras and Faust orchestras to avoid language barriers. Their heavy use of the "German Rock" style of synthesizers, accompanied by the creation of Brian Ino (formerly the keyboardist of Rossi music), had a significant impact on later synthetic rock.

Electronic rock has also been produced by some Japanese musicians, including Tomita's "Electronic Samurai: Knowing the Latest Rock" (1972), which uses Moog synthesizers to play contemporary pop and rock songs; and avant-garde Kitano Rock album "The Mandala" (1974). The mid-1970s witnessed the rise of electronic musicians, such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, and Tomita, the latter and Brian Ino had a huge impact on the development of music in the new century.

After the advent of punk rock, a basic synthetic rock style arose, and new digital technologies were increasingly used to replace other instruments. Leading orchestras include the supersonic orchestra that released the single `` Hiroshima Love '' in 1977, the yellow magic orchestra from Japan, Gary Newman, the cutting-edge pop, the Human League Choir, the midnight marching band, and the British pipeline Army Orchestra, and Devo Orchestra from the United States. The Yellow Magic Orchestra has made a special contribution to the progress of synthesizing pop music through their eponymous album (1978) and "Solid Survivor" album (1979). The definition of MIDI and the development of digital audio make the development of pure electronic sound easier. These developments led to the proliferation of synthetic pop music, which was later adopted by the neo-romantic movement, leading to synthesizers dominating pop and rock music in the early 1980s. Playing key roles are Duran Duran, Spendou Ballet Choir, Seagull Orchestra, Cultural Club, Talk Talk, Japanese Orchestra and Dance Dance Orchestra. Synthetic pop music sometimes used synthesizers to replace all other instruments until this form began to fall out of favor in the pop world in the mid-1980s.

Electronic music sequencer and drum machine

The sequencer began to be used around the mid-20th century, and Tomita's album from the mid-1970s became a later example. In 1978, the Yellow Magic Orchestra used computer-based technology to link a synthesizer to produce popular music, completing their early applications on the microprocessor-based Roland MC-8 microprocessor sequencer.

The drum machine, also known as the rhythm machine, was also used around the late 1950s. An example that appeared later was Kita Sho's avant-garde rock album Mandala (1974), which used a rhythm machine accompanied by electronics Drums and a synthesizer. In 1977, "The Love of Hiroshima" was one of the earliest singles using the metronome-like percussion instrument Lelan TR-77 drum machine. In 1980, Leland introduced the Leland TR-808 drum machine, which was the earliest and most popular programmable drum machine. The earliest band to use it was the Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1980, and it was later widely used due to the release of Marvin Gay's "Sexy Healing" and Africa Bambata's "Planetary Rock" in 1982. In the later 1980s Detroit Tickano trend, the TR-808 became the basic tool and was the drum machine of choice for Derek May and Juan Atkins.

MIDI Electronic music MIDI is born

In 1980, a group of musicians and music dealers met to promote a new interface standard that allowed the new instrument to communicate control instructions with other instruments and computers. This standard is called the Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), and is the result of cooperation between several leading manufacturers such as sequential circuits, Oberheim, Leland, and Yamaha. Later participants also include, Lego and Hehe. In 1981, Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits submitted a paper to the Audio Engineering Society. Then in August 1983, the MIDI standard version 1.0 was finalized.

MIDI technology allows a single keystroke, knob action, pedal action, or instructions from a microcomputer to start all devices from a remote studio and synchronize them so that each device operates in accordance with conditions predetermined by the composer.

MIDI instruments and software can effectively control complex musical instruments, and the price is affordable for many recording studios and individuals. With music sampling and sample read-only memory-based instruments, acoustic effects can be reconstructed in the recording studio.

Miller Puquette developed a graphical signal processing software called Max (in the name of Max Matthews) for 4X computers, which was subsequently introduced into Macintosh computers (by Dave Zikari Zicarelli) (developed for Opcode Systems) for real-time MIDI control, bringing the possibility of algorithmic composition to most composers without a computer programming language background.

Digital Music Digital Synthesis

In 1975, Japan's Yamaha Corporation was licensed by John Jonin for an FM synthesizer (FM synthesizer) algorithm. Jonin has been experimenting with the technology at Stanford University since 1971. Yamaha's engineers adjusted his algorithm to be suitable for digital synthesizers, adding a method similar to "button scaling" to enhance performance. This method can be used to avoid distortion that would normally occur during analog system FM. However, the first commercially available digital synthesizer should be Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) from Fairlight Australia in 1979, which was the first practical multi-sound digital synthesis / sampling. system.

In 1980, Yamaha finally released the first FM digital synthesizer, the Yamaha GS-1, but it was expensive. In 1983, Yamaha launched the first independent digital synthesizer DX-7, which also uses FM synthesizers and should be one of the best-selling synthesizers in history. The DX-7 is known for its easily recognizable bright tones, thanks in part to the 57kHz oversampling rate.

Berry Foco describes one of his experiences with early computer sounds:

At IRCAM in Paris in 1982, Larry Bollegard, flute player, had connected his flute to DiGiugno's 4X audio processor to keep up with the pitch. In the Guggenheim Award that year, I extended this concept to follow the music in real time through automatic synchronized accompaniment. In the following two years, Larry and I took the computer as a chamber musician and gave many demonstrations. Including the performance of Handel's flute sonata, Blaze's "Sonata" for flute and piano, and my own "Synapse II" for flute and computer in 1984-the first one A composition created by this installation. A major challenge is finding the right software architecture to support highly sensitive and vulnerable accompaniments. These were all things that happened before MIDI. Even though the high specific gravity elastic speed continued to surprise my "synthesizer performer", the results were still impressive. In 1985, we solved the problem of elastic speed by adding "self-learning by audition" (every time you play this way, the machine will become better). We are also trying the violin because our outstanding and young flutist gets deadly cancer. In addition, this version uses a new standard called MIDI, and here I have the assistance of a former student Miller Puquet, who later extended the initial concept of this task into a program called MAX.

Electronic music chip music

New capabilities in low-cost home computers led to the rise of chip music in the 1980s and 1990s. Chip music is music written in sound format. With the sound chip of a computer or electronic game machine, many sound materials are synthesized and sequenced in real time, sometimes including sample-based synthesis and playback of low-bit samples. The lo-fi (low-fax) sound characteristics of chip music are the result of early sound card technology limitations; however, with its own power, this sound has since become one of the goals pursued.

The rise of electronic music dance

In the late 1980s, dance music recordings made only with electronic instruments became more and more popular. This music has a strong and rapid rhythm. With the combination of electronic tones, the melody has a very novel feel and can be mixed multiple times. Keep the works of each performance slightly different and unique. This trend continues to this day, and nightclubs around the world regularly play electronic dance music. At present, electronic dance music is very popular, and there are exclusive radio and television channels.

Electronic Music Progress

Other developments include the synthesizer song "Begin Again Again" by Todd Macpherd (from MIT and IRCAM) for the hypercello, which has multiple sensors to allow An interactive system for measuring the physical movements of a cellist. Max Matthews has developed a "conductor" program that can input electronic scores in advance for real-time beat, dynamics and tone control. Morton. Sabnik released a multimedia CD-ROM "All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis".

2000's and 2010's; in recent years, as computer technology has become more accessible and music software has improved, technology that interacts with music production is now practical, thus supporting practices that are different from traditional music and music performance styles : For example, laptop shows (laptronica) and live coding. Generally, the term live PA specifically refers to any live performance of electronic music, whether or not accompanied by a laptop, synthesizer, or other device.

In the last ten years, some software-based virtual studio environments have emerged, using products such as Proberhead's Reason and Ableton Live to find popular appeal. This type of software provides a viable and cost-effective alternative to the typical hardware-based creative recording studios, and thanks to advances in microprocessor technology, it is now possible to create high performance with slightly more equipment than a single laptop. Quality music. This advance has popularized music creation, leading to a significant increase in the amount of electronic music produced at home and being made available to the public via the Internet.

Artists can now personalize their work by creating personalized software synthesizers, effect modules, and various composition environments. Various professional devices that used to exist in the hardware field in the past can easily have virtual versions. Some of the more popular software tools to achieve these goals are commercially released, such as Max / Msp and Reaktor; others are open source software, such as Csound, Pure Data, SuperCollider, and ChucK.

Electronic music circuit disturbance

Circuit perturbation is a method of creating custom circuits inside electronic devices, such as low-voltage battery-powered guitar sounds, children's toys, and small digital synthesizers for creating new music, visual instruments, and sound generators. Emphasizing natural occurrence and randomness, these circuit-disturbing techniques have been commonly associated with noisy music, although more traditional contemporary musicians and music groups have been known to experiment with "disturbing" musical instruments. Circuit disturbances often involve disassembling the machine and adding components such as switches or potentiometers (variable resistors) to modify the circuit. Along with the resurgence of interest in analog synthesizer circuit perturbations, this technology has become an inexpensive solution for many experimental musicians to create their own individual analog sound generators. Many illustrations can be found today to construct noise generators such as the Atari Punk console or Dub Siren. The same effect can also be obtained by simply modifying the child's toy. For example, the well-known Speak & Spells are often disturbed by circuits. To modify. Reed Gazara is often considered the "Father of Circuit Disturbances" because he was first discovered by Speak & Spell, and he has qualified as an apprentice since he began his work.