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Introduction
ong before the computer was invented there came a major breakthrough that changed the world forever - electricity. Electricity gave way to many things like the light bulb, the telephone, the phonograph, and eventually what would be known as electronic music. The first electronic instrument was created in 1899 by a physicist named William Duddell. Duddell was commissioned to investigate the new electric street lights, which had a tendency to emit an irritating whistle. In researching this phenomena, Duddell discovered that an electric arc lamp produced a note when a coil and capacitor were placed in parallel with it, and by adding a keyboard to control the oscillations in the circuit, he was able to play music. He called his creation the Singing Arc. Duddell’s Singing Arc was the first of many electronic instruments that were to be invented in the years to come. After Duddel’s invention came Thaddeus Cahill’s Telharmonium - a 200 ton synthesizer designed to broadcast over the telephone, Leon Theramin’s Theramin – featured in the sci-fi film The Day The Earth Stood Still, Jorg Mager’s Kurbelsphaerophon and Partiturophon, and many more including the Hammond Organ which “remains the standard by which all other electronic organs are measured” (Newquist p12). These instruments marked the beginning of electronic music, but it wasn’t until the advent of the tape recorder and the voltage controlled synthesizer that electronic music really started to take off. “The first man to draw sound directly onto film was the Australian Jack Ellit, working in London in 1933” (Mackay p22), and in 1950 tape recorders became generally available. It was around this time that artists like Pierre Schaeffer, Otto Luening, and Vladimir Ussachevsky began what was called “tape music”. “Tape music” was achieved by recording music and manipulating the waveform either with the recorder itself or with the aid of other electronic devices. While “tape music” was very interesting, the more important thing to note about the tape recorder is the ability to overlay multiple tracks on one tape and play them back simultaneously. It was this capability that allowed musicians to begin creating whole compositions by themselves, “tape music” being the first example of this new technical ability. Hence, “tape music” was like the first wave of electronic music. The second wave began when Robert Moog, a doctoral student at Cornell University, working closely with Wendy Carlos, a physicist and musician, invented the voltage controlled synthesizer, named the Moog. Wendy Carlos went on to popularize the Moog and electronic music in general with her platinum album Switched On Bach, a selection of Bach’s famous works performed with the Moog. Still today, the Moog remains the most popular analog synthesizer ever created and is used by many popular musicians. Stage 1: Digital Introduced While analog synths were recognized for their unique sounds, they still had not been able to live up to the title “synthesizer”. Both Musicians and researchers were waiting for the day when synthesizers would be able to more closely mimic the sounds of acoustic instruments, and some believed the dawn of computers was going to be that day. Computers in their early stages were no where near powerful enough to “synthesize” sounds, that is model and manipulate waveforms in real-time. They were, however, put to other uses. It was discovered early on that computers could be used as synth controllers and the first computer controlled synthesizer, the Mark I, was built in 1955 by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). The Mark I used paper tape to control changes in its oscillators and, based loosely on the ENIAC computer design, was easily as big as a room. Its predecessor, the Mark II, wasn’t any smaller. These machines were only available for musical research and it was quite apparent that “something better and more workable had to be developed for the creative musician” (Newquist p15). In fact, one of the reasons RCA stopped making the Mark I and the Mark II was because of the difficulty in controlling the information on the punched paper tapes. They were not readable to the human eye, and out of place holes produced wrong sounds. Its sheer size and cost were, of course, another factor. Roughly ten years later, around the time of the Moog, computers became small enough and fast enough to effectively control analog synthesizers and cheap enough to sell commercially. Tristram Cary discusses his involvement in one of the first computer studios:
Stage 2: Digital Makes an Impact Computers had come a long way from the ENIAC, but they still had a long way to go before they would become a practical consideration by even the wealthiest musicians. Of course, pioneers and musical researchers like Wendy Carlos were still twiddling away, but it wasn’t until the early 1980’s that computers made a really big impact. Stanford University’s, John Chowning, had been experimenting with the digital production and control of frequency modulation (FM) since the 1970’s, and it was in 1983 that FM synthesis put computer technology at the forefront of mainstream music. The details of this new technology in its relation to analog technology are explained very nicely by physicist and musician, Wendy Carlos.
Stage 3: Digital Today After its heyday in the late 80’s early 90’s, synth pop mysteriously disappeared from the mainstream, and pop music reverted back to the four man band. Somehow synth pop lost something in its performance value. Most of the performances consisted of two guys playing a bunch of keyboards over a few sequences of pre-recorded music and people simply lost interest in that, the sound too. After Roland introduced linear arithmetic synthesis, the sounds didn’t progress much further. Listeners became overly familiar with contours of the “digital model”, which began to sound flat and boring. However, synth music didn’t disappear completely, it just stepped down for a while. There were still more people than ever using synths and computers to produce solo albums, people like Phill Collins and Paul Simon, but they certainly didn’t dominate the “top 10”. Pop music turned from the deep melodramatic sounds of Tears for Fears and the punchy grooves of Paula Abdul to band music like heavy metal, grunge, and alternative, or progressive rock. But, while band music was leading the scene in the early to mid 90’s, the beginnings of rap and techno were creeping out of the underground. It was artists in these genres that were exploring the new advancements in computer instrument technology and ultimately paving the way for the next wave of pop music. By that time computer technology was traveling full steam ahead. Personal computers were becoming a norm in the workplace and at home. The boundaries of time and space were being stretched farther than anyone could possibly imagine. Hundreds of millions of transistors were now being packed onto one small chip. Disk drives were almost quadrupling in size every six months, and even more importantly, main system memory was becoming very cheap and very fast. Electronic instruments were now entering a new kind of dimension, one that had been in the dungeons of research laboratories for the past thirty years, but was now emerging in the underground; the “sampler” was born. Sampling technology had already been incorporated in older machines like the drum machine and the digital synth (mentioned earlier), however the “samples” in these machines were hard coded into their memory banks. “A sampler” actually allows end users to record their own sounds into the machine and arrange them for playback, i.e. sequence, then in whatever order they pleased. Not only that, multiple samples can be playing at the same time. Ten, twenty, thirty years ago this was barely possible. Consider this. If you record one minute of your voice onto a computer at 44,100 samples per second and 16 bits per sample you would need aproximately 5 megabytes (MB) of space. That is approximately three 1.44 (MB) floppy diskettes. Floppy disks from the early 90’s were only able to store half this much information, which is only half the problem. It also takes quite a bit of processing power just to play the sound back. But, as computer technology progressed and prices came down, sampling technology became more and more practical. In the late 90’s sampling technology introduced a whole new way of making music. People actually started programming music. Programming music is not too different than composing music, except composers don’t have an orchestra on hand ready to go for immediate playback. Programmers, on the other hand, do. Artists who program music start by building a sample base, which they load into a sampler. Then, they arrange the samples in some fashion to create a song. Simple. Not so simple. If you’ve ever programmed a computer, you can appreciate the mass number of details that must be tackled to accomplish something that is conceptually very simple. Programming music is the same way. Nevertheless, artists still do it. In fact, the vast majority of popular music today is programmed. If it weren’t for the computer, rap artists like Puff Daddy, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dog probably wouldn’t exist, the new albums by Modonna, Cher, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, The Backsteet Boys, and N’Sync would never have been released. More and more the artists of today are making the computer their instrument of choice. Analysis of The Total Impact This look into how computers have influenced the creation of music clearly illustrates the slow transition that many artists have made from using conventional instruments to using computer instruments. The first stage of computer influence began in 1950 with the Mark I, which was only available to a few researchers. Then the mini-computer was introduced and a handful of musicians began using it as a synth controller; a few even sequenced whole musical scores on the computer. In Stage two we saw the computer grow from a giant behemoth of a machine like the ENIAC to something that could fit in the palm of your hand. With this change came the beginnings of digital synthesis, where a computer was used to model waveforms and their changes over time. This sent a surge through the music community. One and two man groups dominated the music scene. Synth-pop shot to the top of the charts and nearly every producer was itching to get their hands on a new digital synth. In stage three we came all the way to the present day, starting with the birth of the sampler. Incredible advancements were being made in computer technology. One and two man collaborations were already a norm, but many new styles were beginning to emerge. Rap and techno paved the way for sample-based music. Whole songs are programmed on a machine with incredibly sound quality and super precision. Sample-based music dominates the music scene, and almost every musician has made the computer their instrument of choice. Conclusion The computer has had a tremendous impact on the creation of music. It was used all through the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, in jazz, rock, disco, synth-pop, rap, techno, and modern-pop. Today, most of the music we here is programmed on a computer, and the term electronic music has acquired a new meaning. Most people think of electronic music as music that is made completely with computers, i.e. samplers, synths, and desktop machines. But, does this mean that all music that is made with computers is electronic music. In looking back at all the styles that have been influenced by the computer I think it is quite clear that electronic music is not computer music. As Wendy Carlos so boldly states,
References Haas, Kimberly. Totally Wired. Newquist, H.P.. Music & Technology. New York, NY: Billboard Books, 1989 Mackay, Andy. Electronic Music. Minneapolis, MN: Control Data Publishing, 1981 Cary, Tristram. Dictionary of Musical Technology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992 Theberge, Paul. Any Sound You Can Imagine. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997 Chadabe, Joel. Electric Sound The Past and Promise of Electronic Music. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1997 Appleton, Jon H.. The Development and Practice of Electronic Music. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975 |
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