A Tribute to Electronic Music Pioneers


In the 20th century electronic music was born. It could be argued that it was born in 1876 with the telephone, but let’s not get into that argument. In 1876 the telephone was a novelty and it wasn’t until years later when people began to think of ways to use the telephone that music began to evolve. If you can remember back to when you were a child and your mom or dad would hold the receiver up to your ear so you could hear someone else’s voice, you will remember how excited you were by this new discovery.

Well, imagine what it was like for those who came before you. They didn’t have any knowledge of what the future held for them and their inventions. They were just trying to make something work, something that would be useful and enjoyable for others. Electronic music is one of those things that has come out of the mind of an inventor and become a part of our everyday lives. When I listen to electronic music today, I am reminded of all the people who made it possible for me to do so.

In my opinion there are three major contributors to modern day electronic music; Thomas Edison, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Robert Moog. Although there are others who made significant contributions such as Georges

Electronic music is a genre that has been around for quite some time now. Many people don’t even realize how long it has actually been around. I’m sure that most of you were surprised to find out that electronic music has been around longer than the electric guitar. As far as what qualifies as “electronic music”, it’s pretty much anything with synthesizers, samplers, drum machines and the like.

The first artist to release an album entirely made up of electronic music was Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1955. This album was titled “Studie II”. After this release there were a few other groups and artists who released albums with all forms of electronic music on them. One of these was The BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1963. This particular album contained a lot of sounds and effects from the Doctor Who series among other things. A few years later in 1970, an album was released by Pink Floyd called “Atom Heart Mother”. This particular album contained two instrumentals which contained synthesizers and tape-based sound recordings.

The 20th century was the era when electronic music made its mark on the world of music. It also led to the creation of more musical instruments and more variety in musical styles. The 20th century is also known as the Electronic Era, and it is no wonder that it has become so popular with most people around the world.

Electronic music began to be used in the early 20th century by composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, who pioneered a new genre of classical music composed for electronic instruments. Since then, many composers, including John Cage and Gyorgy Ligeti, have used electronic instruments to create their own unique sounds. These sounds are often very complex and interesting.

During this time period, many other artists created their own unique sound by using different types of electronic instruments and equipment. One of these artists was Igor Stravinsky, who is known for his use of synthesizers and computers in composing some of his most famous works. Another popular artist during this time period was Jean-Michel Jarre, who used many different kinds of electronic equipment to create his own unique sound.

Electronic music is a broad range of contemporary music that utilizes an array of electronic musical instruments, computer hardware and digital audio workstations. It is generally produced by the use of a computer, but can also contain other elements such as synthesizers, samplers and sequencers.

In the early 1950s, composers like Stockhausen used magnetic tape to create rich layers of sound. In the late 60s, Wendy Carlos and Isao Tomita utilized new technology to create music using synthesizers. In the 1970s, artists like Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder combined electronic music with elements of rock and pop music.

Electronic dance music (EDM), also known as dance music, club music or simply dance, is a set of percussive electronic music genres produced primarily for dance-based entertainment environments, such as nightclubs. It is generally produced for playback by disc jockeys who create seamless selections of tracks, called a mix by segueing from one recording to another. EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. In Europe, EDM is more commonly called ‘dance music’, or simply ‘dance’.

The term “electronic

As the 20th century took off, so did the world of electronica. It was a time of trial and error. The pioneers in this genre broke barriers between genres and set the groundwork for what we hear today. The use of synthesizers and other electronic instruments have become commonplace in nearly every genre, from jazz to rock to pop.

It was a time where technology and music became one. Using new forms of recording equipment, such as reel-to-reel tape machines, engineers and musicians could layer sounds on top of each other to create new textures of sound. Using these new technologies also enabled musicians to record noises that would be impossible to produce with traditional instruments. Artists like Pierre Schaeffer were able to take sounds from everyday life and manipulate them using tape machines. This technique is known as musique concrète (concrete music).

The invention of the Moog synthesizer by Robert Moog opened up new possibilities for electronic musicians in the 60s and 70s. Synthesizers were used in movies like A Clockwork Orange, Dr Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey, which helped to popularize electronica outside of experimental music circles.

Electronic music is born in the 20th century with the invention of new musical instruments and technologies such as synthesizer and sequencer.

The first electronic musical instrument was invented in 1897 by Thaddeus Cahill called “Telharmonium” (also known as Dynamophone). It was a huge machine that weighted 200 tons. The original Telharmonium is lost, but its replicas are on display at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix and at the Tekniska museet in Stockholm.

In 1928, Joseph Schillinger developed a system of music composition called “Schillinger System” which paved a way for electronic music in that time.

The next step was made by Leon Theremin with his invention of Theremin in 1920. It was an early electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact from the player. It was used later in many movie soundtracks, such as Miklos Rozsa’s Spellbound (1945), Bernard Herrmann’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992).

It remained mostly theoretical until 1954 when it became commercially available.

One of the most important events in 20th century musicoccurred in 1950 when the composer Pierre Schaeffer introduced the world to a new musical genre called “musique concrete.”

Composers had been working with tape recorders and found sounds prior to this, but no one had thought to categorize these experiments as a separate kind of music. Schaeffer’s work would give birth to an entirely new field of music, and would set off decades of experimentation in electronic sound and audio technology.

All of this was preceded by decades of work in electronic instruments, radio and sound recording technologies, as well as a myriad of experiments with synthesizing sounds through various means. This is the first installment in a series that will explore some early milestones in electronic music. We will be mostly skipping over the events that led up to musique concrete (such as Xenakis’ use of mathematical models and Stockhausen’s experiments with tape), but since those events are largely on the same path as musique concrete, you can learn about them by studying the roots of musique concrete. We will instead focus on pre-musique concrete events that were not directly related to creating concrete music.


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