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Electronic and Academic Music , Culture and Turntables

Eoin Smith NUI Maynooth Republic of Ireland [email protected]

In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) Proceedings of Sound, Sight, and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, , 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/

Abstract

‘Found sound’ has become a more prominent element in electronic in recent years. Artists such as Mum, Fourtet, , , and include elements from the world of ‘found sound’ into their music, either as full compositions or minute gradients of field recordings incorporated into more rhythmic based tracks. This leads to a blurring of and sound worlds; however, an interesting anomaly is that while these artists seem to embrace this blurring of genres, it is my belief that the same cannot be said for the more academic side of sonic art. Within academic institutes who cater for the sonic arts, the influence of is not always noticeable. An instrument which seems to have transcended genre is the turntable. It is now accessible in both the world of sonic art and culture. But how is this so? What intend to look at in this paper is why this dichotomy of sound worlds exists, concluding with a look at how the turntable could act as an intrinsic element of performance and composition but also as a milestone instrument in the fusing of genres and cultures.

In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 56! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/

Eoin Smith: Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music: Genre Culture and Turntables

Electronic Dance Music and Aca- explores an instrument which has ap- demic Music: Genre, Culture and parently transcended genre. It is import- Turntables ant to note that some generalisations are made in discussing terms like aca- Introduction demic music or electronic ‘dance’ music, in order to keep from deviating too much Prior to entering the academic world of from the topics in question. music, I was unaware of any major di- chotomy between genre and culture in relation to Electronic Music. As a turn- Electronic Music: In the Beginning tablist and electronic , I was (and still am) interested in sound/music The introduction of the in as an art form, a means of expression the early twentieth century by Dr Thad- and a communicative force, regardless deus gave the world its first elec- of genre, context in which it is appreci- tronic instrument. The Telharmonium ated, or culture associated with it. As I was a cumbersome instrument which progressed through the world of aca- was originally designed to transmit elec- demia and ‘became’ a of aca- tronically generated tones from a demic music (electro- ‘central station to translating instruments, acoustic/) or partici- located at different points in nearby con- pated in more sonic art based practices cert halls. Cahill’s plan was to build an (such as installations), a divide became 'electronic music device and pipe live mu- apparent between the cultures and son- sic to remote locations’ (Holmes 2002, orities of academic ‘art’ music and the p. 45) electronic music culture to which I was with the aid of telephone signals. The accustomed. Having examined the his- Telharmonium was essentially a piano- tory of both, it was interesting to find like, keyboard based, tone generator how closely the two cultures co-existed. which allowed the user to shape and en- At this point in my studies and career I velope sounds dynamically. Due to this, feel that there is a specific space in the coining of the term synthesis can be music where academic/art music and attributed to Cahill, to describe what he electronic dance music co-exist, where was doing, in terms of combining ‘indi- the precise sonorities and performances vidual tones to create composite sounds’ associated with academic music fuse (Holmes 2002, p. 46), as was described with the heaving mass of sound associ- in his original patents for the Telharmo- ated with electronic dance acts. Within nium. Performances from the instrument this domain there is no cultural divide were aired over telephone wires, to and there is little one can do in terms of nearby halls, and although it imposing a genre on the sound. I believe was an initial success and provided in- that it provides a valuable insight into the terest for of the day, the in- future of music and will continue to push strument was largely an impractical the boundaries of our perception of mass of machinery, ‘60 feet wide, 20 genre and music cultures. Where I feel I feet tall and weighs 200 tons’ (Shapiro can incorporate elements from the world 2000, p. 4). This, along with the financial of academic music into electronic aspect of building and maintaining such (dance) music, the same cannot be said a , made it redundant. for incorporating electronic ‘dance’ The practice of performing over tele- music into the academic domain. Why is phone wires was also made obsolete this so? This paper attempts to explore with the invention of the triode (a this anomaly, exploring it from the per- that allows the transmis- spective of an aficionado of this emer- sion of sound through electrical signals) ging hybrid of sound and cultures and around 1906, which heralded a new be- In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 57! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/ Eoin Smith: Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music: Genre Culture and Turntables ginning for electronic instruments. These which begins to ensue this notion of ‘art instruments no longer had to rely on the music’ within the domain of found sound technology of telephone signals to composition. After experiments in the transmit or perform music. This technol- field of ‘found sound composition’, the ogy resulted in the creation of more Radiodiffusion Télévision Française compact instruments, which resulted in (RTF) funded Schaeffer and Pierre more accessible Electronic Music in- Henry in order to assist them in setting struments, for the public and audience up their own studio. Groupe de Recher- alike, as they could now see the instru- ches Musicales (GRM) established a ments which were producing the audio. studio where one could hear lectures on Instruments like the , devel- Musique Concrète and also have the oped by Leon Theremin, and the Ondes opportunity to compose. Martenot, produced by Maurice The thirst for knowledge in Electronic Martenot, began to emerge: the ethereal Music, led young composers to seek sounds of such instruments, contributed institutions like the GRM or the to the eerie of this period in Electronic Music Studio, to gain more Electronic . insight into the technical and musical Toward of the forties, the sonic processes of Electronic Music. Aside terrain of Electronic Music was begin- from the institutionalised realm of Elec- ning to change. Opposed from the tronic Music, there were important and purely synthesised sounds of the early historic developments . The pioneers of Electronic Music, such as evolution of the Moog synthesiser (cre- Thaddeus Cahill or Leon Theremin, a ated by Bob Moog, an avid fan of Leon new ideology was born in Music Con- Theremin and subsequent manufacturer crète, where one did not need synthesis of the instrument) gave to compose ‘music’. the means to produce the first com- began utilising sound samples, as op- pletely synthesised record, using the posed to traditional instrumentation, as Moog. Her 1968 , Switched On material for compositions. Bach, in which she interpreted some of ‘1948 to 1951 – European composers ’s keyboard broke through the ‘sound barrier’ into two, music, ‘became the top selling album at initially quite distinct, areas of electronic that time’ (Holmes 2002, p. 168) and music: the French variety, music concrète, ‘dragged the synthesiser by its patch cords which used sounds of an everyday acous- out of the chilly atmosphere of academic tic or environmental origin, and Elec- into the spotlight tronische Musik, the German brand which of public awareness’ (ibid). used only electronically generated sounds as its raw (or rather, smooth) material’ The basis for the next thirty years in (Nymann 1999, p. 48) Electronic Music had been cast. The concepts and ideologies in synthesised Both genres were helped immensely by music and Musique Concrète, became the introduction of tape in the early fifties co-opted by the underground move- which allowed composers to overdub ments, most notably Hip-Hop. The idea and edit sounds in a quicker and more of re-contextualising sound samples with creative manner and performances did the use of turntables became a notable not require human performers and ‘the characteristic of Hip-Hop in the early work could be played over and over seventies, as the DJ gained rock-star again’ (Holmes 2002, p. 93): This her- status. Away from the academic insti- alded the the ‘Tape Piece’. Mike tutes, which researched the processes Berk (see Shapiro 2000, p. 171) notes in Electronic Music, Hip-Hop artists and that early pioneers such as Cage and DJs were re-contextualising earlier Stockhausen ‘made tape editing and and soul records, creating new compo- processing, art forms in themselves’, In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 58! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/ Eoin Smith: Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music: Genre Culture and Turntables sitions with technical processes such as composition. In the fifties and sixties, the and beat juggling. The ethos two schools of thought in composition, of the counter culture instilled by genres Musique Concrète and Elektronische such as Hip-Hop followed through to the Musik, produced opposing ideas in early nineties and was helped by the production concepts and sonic results. production of pieces of hardware such At this time the practice of composing as the range of samplers and Ro- within the sphere of Electronic Music land’s hugely influential range of synths would have been confined to either aca- and drum- such as the TB 303 demic/research institutes or serious or TR-808. The make-up and desires of composers, primarily due to the cost of the artist were changing. equipment associated with producing such music. The focus begin to shift from the pio- neering electronic artists and composers It wasn’t until the introduction of the of the early 1900s, whose revolutionary Moog Synthesiser in the mid sixties that research and inventions changed Elec- Electronic Music became truly commer- tronic Music. Now, artists and producers cialised and accessible to the public. Al- had machines to make the sounds for bums like Switched on Bach, defined a them and cared little for the inner work- new breed of artist such as Wendy Car- ings of their machines as Matt Black los, who wanted to make accessible and (see Shapiro 2000, p. 190), of beautiful music, which contrasted with artists , explains the music being made by established ‘ want to lie down and let the machines composers of the time. get on with it. We want to slack off a bit. ‘When I tried to do had anything like a We’ve got the DNA-ROM which or a recognizable chord progres- stands for “do no art – run our machine”’. sion or the same meter in three measures in a row, it was all considered demeaning This contrasts greatly with the earlier and laughable and not nearly serious en- reference to the art involved in making ough because it wasn’t designed to be Tape Music and the meticulous technical profound art and befuddling to the average processes involved in the composition of person’ (Carlos in Holmes 2002, p. 169). early Electronic Music. Inventors and artists like Moog and Car- Throughout the last three decades, it los were embracing a notion of making seems that as the hardware became Electronic Music accessible. Carlos was more accessible to the commercial mar- making music which contrasted with the ket, one did not need to know the con- dissonant abstract sounds of ‘estab- cepts behind the device. Regardless of lished composers’ which she refers to as how negative this might be, this ideology ugly music (ibid, p. 168), while Moog contributed to some of the boldest musi- was paving the way for accessible and cal and cultural revolutions in history and affordable musical instruments. With this one could view this as a primary point as shift in the commercial aspect of Elec- to why this dichotomy emerged within tronic Music, a difference in the sonori- Electronic Music, in content and context. ties and a further divide from the more institutionalised aspect of Electronic Electronic ‘dance’ Music and Institu- Music was imminent. A significant shift tionalised/Academic Music: Content in culture and context of Electronic and Context Music emerged as different hybrids of the genre became popular, the most What becomes apparent from the previ- evident being the , as it was ous discussion is the divide in the son- co-opted by the world of rock and pop. orities which began to emanate as a ‘Electrically synthesized music had be- consequence of different approaches to come public property. Commercial manu-

In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 59! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/ Eoin Smith: Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music: Genre Culture and Turntables

facturers quickly learned that most pop was inspired by the evolution of the Akai wanted portable, easy to use range of samplers machines that could be readily blended into an acoustical texture dominated by the – the sounds by Ro- electric ’ (Pennycook in Emmerson land’s synth, the TB 303, were used first 1984, p. 123). over house records in the late eighties. The pioneer of the genre, , re- Academic institutions, at the time, acted leased , whose steady 4/4 as places where the science of Elec- beat and squelching bass sounds tronic Music could be studied, where spurred on a new generation of under- young enthusiasts got the chance to op- ground and . erate equipment and learn compositional concepts which would otherwise be un- ‘[Electro] started by Afrika Bambataa’s available to them. However, while an Planet Rock in 1982, was a branch of Hip- Hop that featured drum machines, video ‘increasing number of students chose game imagery and a general funky robotic Electronic Music courses the musical lan- feel’ (Shapiro 2000, p. 218). guage which they used was based on electronically generated rock or styles – described Techno which they were most familiar with’ as a complete mistake, joking that it was (Emmerson 1984, p. 124). a result of and George Clinton Students and artists alike were embrac- stuck in an elevator with only a sequen- ing new hybrids, merging familiar genres cer to keep them company. With its ori- and compositions with instruments and gins in the likes of Kraftwerk and funky concepts from the electronic world. , it soon became co- opted by the generation. By then The hip-hop movement which took place in the ghettos of New York in the seven- ‘techno bore almost no resemblance to the funky beats and of house music ties relied on re-contextualising funk and as it took on more drug influenced hyp- soul records to make new compositions, notic tribal beats’ (Snoman 2004, p. 286). while inventing new and original artistic mean of expression utilising turntable The context and content of music had technology such as beat-juggling and changed dramatically since the days of scratching, an art form in itself. Elec- the early electronic pioneers as artists tronic music was on the streets (Hip-Hop wanted to appeal to there audience pri- block ), in clubs ( Music) marily through making them dance. and available to a larger demographic They no longer wanted to make, as with it being featured in and on the Wendy Carlos says, abstract ugly music, , it was no longer the culture of the and it is in these differences where one elite, of composers or academics. This can find the defining characteristics new empowering mind frame carried which divides electronic ‘dance’ music through to the eighties as a flurry of new and academia/institutionalised music. genres emerged, seemingly overnight, all formed by a strong symbiotic rela- tionship with electronic instruments, Digitalism: The rise of the Personal most notably: , Jungle, Breakbeat – The meticulous works of the early elec- these genres were heavily influenced by tronic pioneers, inventors and artists like the sampling culture which emerged as Cahill, , Bob Moog, Stock- a result of the growing use of the Akai hausen, Kool Herc, Grandwizard Theo- range of samplers. This hardware made dre and and - re-contextualising old break beats and ware manufacturers like Roland or Ya- other samples easier and faster to do. maha have all now been appropriated by the generation. Instead of rooms In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 60! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/ Eoin Smith: Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music: Genre Culture and Turntables of hardware equipment, artists now have ‘few institutions with PDP-10s in general access to programs like Propel- use by the university community were pre- lerhead’s Reason, Ableton, Fruity Loops, pared to support at these Acid, /MSP and and can costs’ (Emmerson 1984, p. 126). avail of synthesis concepts and pro- Towards the end of the seventies and cesses implemented by the early pio- into the eighties, digital sampling be- neers. However, this era of computer came a popular concept and machines music would never have been possible like the Fairlight CMI and the had it not been for the work of early exploited the analogue synthesiser de- computer musicians and programmers. sign while incorporating internal com- Holmes (2002) describes digital synthe- puters which aided the production of sis as being concerned with producing digital synthesis since one could store tones using solid-state oscillators on samples on the internal memory. integrated computer circuits, then using a digital to analogue converter to convert An equally important development, the binary numbers from the computer to which aided the evolution of the home analogous electrical waves that can studio was the introduction of in the drive a system. It’s not sur- mid-eighties. MIDI (Music Instrument prising that the powerful computer sys- Digital Interface) acted as a protocol for tems of today have their origins in more computer instruments to communicate primitive computer systems. Consider with synthesisers and drum-machines the early experiments by and which allowed users of the popular per- Max Matthews in the late fifties, with sonal of the time such as IBM systems such as MUSIC V or Barry Ver- and Apple Computers (which became coe’s adaption of this system Music 360: prevalent in the early eighties as more these programs commercial versions of original systems such as the IBM 360) synchronise their ‘required access to large mainframe com- hardware with a computer, which can be puters which could accommodate digital to seen as a milestone event in the world analog conversion hardware for real-time of computer based performance and playback’ (Pennycook in Emmerson 1984, production. p. 122). In the last two decades, as technology The primary system of the early days and computers advanced, the recording was the IBM 360 which could take days studio and production environment be- or even weeks to render and produce came commercialised, with companies audio which was not only inconvenient like Steinberg and Propellerhead, Cyc- for the composer but also made the ling 74, and Ableton exploiting the commercialisation of this type of system , contributing to a new completely impossible. This, once again, breed of bedroom producers and DJs. left experimentation with such equip- ment up to composers who had suffi- This meant that academic institutions and large recording studios were no cient institutional or academic privileges longer necessary to record, produce or that access to such a system would be learn about . Once, the available (e.g. The Center For Research only places that provided access to in Music and Acoustic-CCRMA at Stan- equipment such as were ford University, MIT or IRCAM). The research institutions but now the power introduction of the Digital Equipment Corporations PDP-11 computer system of the studio was in the hands of the and the everyday artists. gave composers a lower cost and port- This liberating concept gave birth to able computer system with which to equally liberating genres and continues compose. However, even then to do so, to this day.

In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 61! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/ Eoin Smith: Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music: Genre Culture and Turntables

The Turntable: A Cultural Mediator Within the realm of Hip-Hop and turntab- lism, artists like Q-bert and DJ Spooky The turntable has been a creative cata- developed techniques pioneered by lyst in many of the genres discussed up Grandmaster Flash and Grandwizard to this point. Consider the Hip-Hop Theodre to develop scratch music and movement in the and defining the DJ culture as a Twentieth Century electronic dance genres such as Disco, art form, while turntablists/composers Acid House and Electro. As early as like Janek Schaeffer, Phillip Jeck and 1930, there were explorations into turn- table based composition: Christian Marclay championed turntable sound within the art music cul- In , and ture. made preliminary studies in Advances in computer technology in the ‘made for- record music as last century brought with them an influx early as 1930, 18 years before Schaef- of computer software for DJs, VJs (video fers’s leap into musique concrète’ (Kahn in jockeys), programmers and turntablists Emmerson 2007, p. 15). alike. Software such as Ableton, Traktor, John Cage’s early experiments also ex- Serato and MsPinky challenged the ploited turntable technology as in his place of turntables in both social and 1939 composition Imaginary Land- musical contexts as DJs opted for com- scapes No 1. However, it was not until puter orientated interfaces to create and of Musique Concrète in the mix music. Computer Based late 1940s that the symbiotic relationship (Smith 2009) can be seen as the resul- between turntable and genre became tant hybrid culture of this technological apparent. The turntable was an intrinsic climate. The ethos behind such a genre element in Pierre Schaeffer’s studio, al- is using time-coded vinyl to control audio lowing him to , loop and re- files on a computer. More in-depth pro- verse samples to create the founding grams, like Ms Pinky, used in conjunc- production processes which formed the tion with the programming environment basis for numerous genres in years to of Max/MSP, can control more minute come. From the seventies, the turntable parameters such as pitch, direction and became accessible to a different demo- speed with information retrieved from graphic, as a for playing music, the time-coded vinyl. As this genre is in and with the rising importance of the DJ its infancy, there is not a clearly defined in genres like Hip-Hop (with its offshoots group of computer-based turntablists, into turntablism) and Disco the ‘sha- although there are online communities manic role of the conductor which act as a forum for these artists has translated to become the DJ’ (Em- who are otherwise internationally dis- merson 2007, p. 16). With the introduc- persed. One such forum is the Alterna- tion of the CD, the turntable as a house- tive Turntable Forum which features the hold commodity waned but was still kept use of turntables in various disciplines, alive by turntablists. including visual and audio performance Turntablism is concerned with using and some fixed media pieces. turntables as musical instruments, re- The context of the turntable continually contextualising records and samples as morphs as it is co-opted by different the source material. Turntablists’ genres and cultures. Where, in one re- ‘primary interest is to generate sounds spect, a cultural climate might be un- from the turntable and DJ mixer, rather favourable toward the instrument, an- than playing pre-recorded music as the other social or musical paradigm intro- typical DJ does’ (Lippit 2004, p. 211). duces it and a new context in which it is appreciated is created, contributing to its ebb and flow presence within culture. In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 62! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/ Eoin Smith: Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music: Genre Culture and Turntables

This restates the instrument’s unique- values for pitch, direction and speed are ness and conveys its cultural mediating relayed to the computer. This allows the qualities, as an engaging instrument for user to control filters and effects like re- aficionados of the music world, aca- verb feedback and, with the use of con- demic and electronic dance cultures, ditionals, allows me to turn on buttons and the general public alike. and trigger events, such as a record but- ton.

The adaptive synthesis model is applic- The Turntable in an Adaptive Synthe- able in a number of ways. The numeric sis System: A New Model for Com- values outputted from the vinyl to the puter laptop, affect the ways the instrument Based Turntablists will generate audio, in the sense of im- posing different characteristics on the Computer based turntablism relies on audio files controlled by the laptop, with the symbiotic relationship between per- regard to filtering or effects. Equally, if I former and computer. If the performer triggered a buffer to record this pro- does not act as an input source (in the cessed audio, I could then control the sense of supplying a computer system pitch, direction and speed of this buffer with physical gestures to create sound) from the turntable, again restating the to the computer instrument, no sound ethos of adaptive synthesis. ‘In a sense, will be produced. This ethos can be adaptive synthesis is all about construct- viewed in parallel with that of the adap- ing musical automata’ (Holopainen, p. tive synthesis concept described by 3). Within the system above there is a Risto Holopainen in his PhD project de- presence of autonomous instruments: scription, ‘Building Autonomous Instru- the interactive computer environment ment: Aesthetic, Psychoacoustic and can be designed to be better behaved Musico-Technologic Perspective on Ad- and responsive to a musician’s actions, aptive Synthesis’. as opposed to merely acting as an in- ‘Adaptive Synthesis or self modifying syn- strument that the musician doesn’t con- thesis works by analysing the instrument’s trol, once started. These are the two ma- output, while the analysis simultaneously jor differences in instruments within the influences the way the instrument gener- realm of autonomous instruments and ates sound’ (Holopainen 2008, p. 1). adaptive synthesis, distinctly separated In the context of a computer-based turn- by Holopainen, the former of which I tablist system this style of synthesis is is more applicable to computer highly relevant. Without delving too based turntablism. much into the technical aspect of the This hybrid of turntablism and laptop system one can view this style of syn- performance is a genre which, I believe, thesis with a relatively simple computer will in a new era of appreciation instrument using Max/MSP and Ms and interest for the turntable from both Pinky. The configuration in my current the academic world and Electronic system allows me to control numerous Music culture alike. The history of the audio files from my computer by using turntable conveys that while the instru- one turntable. With the ability to control ment itself remains relatively unchanged the audio similar to that of any record, in design and functionality, the context in pitch, direction and speed are easy to which it is used calls for a new approach manipulate via the vinyl. However, one and way of appreciating the instrument. huge advantage of using Ms Pinky soft- Given the current technological climate, ware in the programming environment of it would seem to be a logical conclusion Max/MSP is the ease with which one for the instrument to be introduced to a can make the vinyl control other aspects computer or laptop system. Artists such of the computer instrument, as numeric In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 63! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/ Eoin Smith: Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music: Genre Culture and Turntables as DJ Sniff, Daito Manabe and a selec- strument of choice. The rise of the per- tion of students from academic institu- sonal computer widened the gap further tions worldwide are embracing this hy- between institutions and electronic brid and are fusing an instrument which dance music culture as once again, due they have used for many years in a dif- to cost of early computer systems, only ferent context with more institutionalised academic facilities could afford such styles of music and production process- equipment. ing on the computer. These divisions have been accentuated Conclusion in the current technological climate with the development of software and com- The divide between electronic dance puters which alleviate the need for stu- music and academic/institutionalised dios and the absolute necessity for the music is most obvious in the early days technology to be taught in academic in- of the genre. Financially, Electronic stitutions. In parallel with the evolution of Music was not accessible to the public Electronic Music, the turntable has re- until the commercialisation of the syn- mained prevalent, whether as a domes- thesizer, toward the end of the sixties. tic commodity or creative tool. In the age Institutions such as GRM or the Cologne of the laptop performer, manufacturers Electronic Music Studio allowed for re- realise the desire to use turntables and search into the science of Electronic an influx of software has emerged, some Music by established composers and of which caters for the role of the DJ, young enthusiasts and allowed these whereas others lean toward an interest- aficionados ‘hands on’ experience with ing mix of programmer and DJ, which equipment which would otherwise be seems to transcend genre and context. inaccessible, the more prominent divide emerged in the early seventies as the This paper was by no means meant to co-opted concepts and be a concise history of Electronic Music practices made famous by early pio- or the turntable: instead, it was a look at neers and with hardware becoming genres and cultures which have influ- more available, the science of Electronic enced the way we produce, perform and Music became less important and the appreciate Electronic Music today. electronic dance culture evolved as a Some genres, artists and manufacturers result of this shift. Notable genres in this have been overlooked not out of ignor- era such as Disco, House Music and ance, but in order to keep my focus my- Hip-Hop placed more emphasis on the opic and centred around the ideas I performance of the DJ and his/her in- wanted to explore.

In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 64! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/ Eoin Smith: Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music: Genre Culture and Turntables

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Discography Wendy Carlos (1968), Switched on Bach, Music LP, USA, .

In: Motje Wolf & Andrew Hill (Eds.) 65! Proceedings of Sound, Sight, Space and Play 2010 Postgraduate Symposium for the Creative Sonic Arts De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom, 2-4 June 2010 http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2010/