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Home , Analog synthesizer, Digital synthesizer, Hammond organ, Moog synthesizer, Multitrack recording, Robert Moog

~. HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC

TEACHER UNIT GUIDE NOTES

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS One of the first electronic instruments was built between 1897 and 1906 by Thaddeus Cahill (1867-1934). Called the Telharmonium, the instrument was an immense structure weighing about 200 tons and extremely expensive to produce. Itoccupied the entire floor of "Telharmonic Hall" in for about twenty years, and a "portable" version took up thirty railroad boxcars. Itconsisted of a series of specially geared shafts connected to electric inductors (devices that produce ) which produced various alternating currents whose frequencies were set to match the desired pitches. The instrument was polyphonic (i.e., capable of playing multiple notes simultaneously) and was controlled by a set of velocity-sensitive keyboards. The actual was produced by a series of telephone receivers fitted with special acoustic horns.

Cahill envisioned a plan to transmit music from the Telharmonium through the telephone network to hotels, restaurants, and private homes. Due to numerous difficulties the venture did not succeed. Although this visionary achievement in was soon largely forgotten, the design principles were later used in the . His vision for transmitting music over phone lines has been realized with current technologies including "Muzak" and the internet.

Theremin The was invented in 1919 by Leon Theremin (1896-1993) and remains popular in experimental and electronic music circles today. Developed in Russia, the first production model of the Theremin was introduced to the public at the Moscow Industrial Fair in 1920. A few companies still manufacture , including Big Briar, owned by (of the Moog ). Its design included two metal antennae: a horizontal loop to control volume and a vertical rod to control pitch. The instrument is played by moving one's hands in the air around the loop and the rod. The closer each hand gets to its antenna, the higher the pitch or the higher the volume. The sound output is a continuous monophonic tone that resembles a female voice or string sound. An excellent listening example can be found on song, "."

Hammond Organ The Hammond Organ was invented by Laurens Hammond in 1935. Like the Telharmonium, it used mechanical means to create electric signals of various frequencies, but it was able to do so in a fairly compact instrument. Various were achieved as the fundamental and up to eight were controlled by means of preset keys or manually through a series of drawbars. Each is added as its corresponding drawbar is pulled out. A Hammond console organ included two 61- manuals (keyboards) and a 25-note pedal board. The lower manual is called the Great and the upper is the SwelL The Model B-3 Hammond Organ became very popular with and rock groups in the 1970s (e.g., Chicago; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; ).

Musique Concrete Musique Concrete was an approach to music production developed primarily by Frenchmen and in the late 1940s and 1950s. Their music was created by manipulation of recordings of natural acoustic . Their early work was done on vinyl recordings, but when the was developed, it proved to be a more flexible medium.

Their techniques included changing tape speed or direction, tape looping, tape splicing, and addition of external electronic effects like filters or reverb. Many of the techniques that they pioneered are still used in one form or another in today's studios. Current examples include the 'rap' technique of "" records, the use of pre-produced libraries of drum beat loops in 'house' music, and the ' technique of digitally rearranging and adding parts to an existing song.

Early Electronic Music At the same time that the French were working with musique concrete, a studio in Germany was developing a different approach. Their goal was to create music by purely electronic means without the use of recorded sound. The most famous composer at this studio was . Many of the approaches and devices used in the German studio became the building blocks for the development of music .

Les Paul, Inventor of the and The name is probably most recognized for the electric guitar named after him. He designed and built the first solid body electric guitar in 1941, and in 1952 the Gibson Company agreed to produce and market the instrument. The Gibson "Les Paul" was the best-selling guitar in the world for many years and is still a popular choice for professional guitarists.

In 1948, Capitol Records released a single consisting of two songs by Les PauL The record was the first to employ multitrack recording. Working in his studio, Paul developed a way to synchronize eight separate tape recorders together. This allowed him to record multiple parts, one at a time, while listening to previously recorded tracks. Paul sold the design concept for the eight-track tape recorder in 1954, and by the late 1950s manufacturers were seriously marketing multitrack recording decks.

The RCA Synthesizer The first true studio synthesizer, in the modern sense, was the RCA Synthesizer (Mark 1). Itwas introduced in 1955 and was also called the Olson-Belar sound synthesizer after it's inventors, Harry Olson and Herbert Belar. It was a large instrument (virtually filling the studio) and was a complete modular system that could generate, modify, process, record and play back complex sounds. Initially RCA had envisioned commercial applications for the instrument, hoping to use it to imitate traditional instruments for the purpose of popular music production. However, composers like , , and saw the potential for serious electronic and composition. This led to the establishment of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City.

The RCA Mark 2 Synthesizer, an improved version of the instrument, was funded by RCA and installed at the Columbia-Princeton studio in 1959. Like its predecessor, it was a non-real-time instrument; that is, a performer could not simply sit down to play the instrument. The composer would encode each desired sound onto binary-coded paper tape. This tape would be fed into the synthesizer which would then interpret the coding and play the sounds. This was the first instrument that was actually called a "synthesizer" .

THE AGE OF MODERN SYNTHESIS With the arrival of the affordable , a revolution in the design of electronic musical instruments began in the mid-1960s. The most important development of that period was Robert Moog's invention of the Moog Synthesizer. (The name Moog should be pronounced so that it rhymes with vogue.)

Moog's approach was to take all of the modules that form the basic building blocks ofelectronic sound (oscillators, , envelope generators, filters, etc.) and put them together into one box which was called a . To create a sound, the synthesist would manually set the knobs of each module to the desired settings, and then would connect the modules together into various configurations using short wires called patch cords. (Each particular configuration was referred to as a "patch," and although patch cords are no longer used in synths, the term patch is still used to refer to a sound on a synth.) Once a patch was created, notes could be played from the keyboard in real time. The only way to remember a patch was to draw a diagram of the module settings and patch cord connections. (Not until the 1970s did synthesizers come pre-wired with typical configurations, allowing the user to store sounds and recall them instantaneously.) The instrument was monophonic; that is, it could only play one note at a time. The only way to create chords or polyphony was to make multiple passes (overdubs) on a multitrack tape recorder.

A famous example of one such recording of the Moog Synthesizer is ' S'witched-On Bach, recorded in 1968. With this innovative electronic interpretation ofJ. S. Bach's music, the word synthesizer quickly became a household word. The record was one of the fastest-selling classical at the time of its release and remains one of the best-selling electronic music recordings of all time. It generated an interest in synthesizers that soon led to their use in many genres of music.

Digital Technology in an Analog World The components in the Moog Synthesizer were analog, voltage-controlled components. Through the 1970s, more and more synthesizers began using digital components. The difference between analog and digital is that analog allows for completely continuous change while digital, being based on numbers, changes by discrete steps. An example of analog is a clock with a sweep second hand. The hand moves continuously through all points between each second. A digital clock, on the other hand, displays time as a series of numbers, moving discretely from one second to the next with no steps in between.

Another way to understand the difference between analog and digital is to think of a light fixture with two -a dimmer and a 3-way switch. The dimmer switch is analog- the amount of light is continuously adjustable. The 3­ way switch is digital-there are only three possibilities with no steps in between.

Analog synthesizer components are capable of producing continuous electrical changes or fluctuations that are directly analogous to the . Digital components, on the other hand, store and retrieve information about a sound in the form of numbers. When an analog signalis digitized, the signal is quantized (rounded off) into discrete steps and stored as a series of numbers.

One of the first applications of digital technology in commercial synthesizers was the 1970s development of polyphonic synthesizers; Le., instruments capable of playing more than one note at a time. This was accomplished by using a digital scanning technique on the keyboard to detect which keys were pressed and assigning each note to one of the sound-producing modules in the synthesizer. Polyphonic synthesizers from this time period could only play four to eight notes at a time. (Now having 32 or 64 notes of polyphony in a synth is common.)

By the late 1970s digital memory systems were developed that allowed the various parameters and settings in an to be stored in a memory location and later recalled at the push of a button. These programmable synthesizers eliminated the time-consuming and often unreliable process recreating all the settings for a sound or 'patch' each time the musician wanted to recall the sound. Synthesizersofthis type were referred to as digital-analog hybrids because the sound producing circuitry used analog components and the memory systems were digital. In 1978 the first completely programmable, polyphonic synthesizer, the Circuits Prophet 5 Synthesizer, was produced.

Since that time, nearly all components used in synthesizers have become digital. In addition to the advantage of being able to easily and reliably store settings, digital components tend to be more accurate and consistent in their sound production than analog components. Still, there are some people who prefer analog components. The argument is that analog components sound 'warmer' or 'fatter'. Analog synthesizers, guitar amplifiers, and analog signal processors are still quite popular in some circles.

MORE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS MIDI Certainly the most important development in during the was the advent of MIDI. First introduced in 1983,:MIDI ( Digital Interface) is a set of standardized messages which allow different pieces of electronic music gear (including ) to communicate with one another. Since the messages are standardized, any MIDI-compatible device can send information to another MIDI-compatible instrument. MIDt with its universal acceptance and adaptability, literally revolutionized the electronic music industry.

The Personal During the 1980s the first personal computers were developed. A number of different platforms by manufacturers such as Apple, Atari, Commodore, and IBM competed in the music market into the early 1990s. Eventually only two platforms would survive: the Apple and the PC (Microsoft Windows/DOS).

While early models were very limited and slow compared to today's personal computers, rapid developments would soon allow computers to serve as the center of a complex music production system. With the introduction of MIDI, the link was provided to allow communication between computers and electronic music instruments. was soon written to take advantage of the vast musical potential including sequencing, notation, and educational programs. Within a decade the had become an indispensable tool of the music industry.

Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer The real revolution in digital synthesis began in 1983 with the introduction of the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. The DX7 was the first reasonably priced on the market. Since then, every major manufacturer of synthesizers has developed a digital synthesizer, and many new and different approaches to digital synthesis have been introduced. The Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer used FM (frequency ) algorithmic digital synthesis as a means of sound production. FM synthesiswas used throughout Yamaha's DX and TXseries of synthesizers and was later used with their SY77 and SY99 instruments (then referred to as AFM - Advanced ). One of the down sides of FM synthesis is that it is considerably more difficult to and create sounds than earlier analog type synthesis. But, because of the clarity and flexibility of its sound, along with an affordable price, the DX7 became one of the most popular synthesizers ever sold, with world-wide sales reaching over 200,000.

Multi-Timbral Keyboards Rcalca~(;:pr11n 1QR4 hv SPnllpntiRl ril'rllih:< R ~vnthp~i7.pr rrll1pcl thp Sh-Tl'Rk lATR~ onp of the first multi-timbral keyboards on the market. Multi-timbral instruments allow for more than one sound or 'patch' to be played simultaneously by a performer or computer. When coupled with the power of MIDI, a single multi­ timbral instrument could perform all of the instrumental parts of an . Multi-timbral keyboards also allow the performer to layer different sounds together or assign them in zones across the keyboard. By the late 1980s, most MIDI keyboards and sound modules had multi-timbral capabilities.

Digital Sampling During the early 1980s, digital sampling became available to musicians. The first "affordable" digital sampler was the E-mu Emulator released in 1981 at a list price nearly $10,000. By early 1982 the price had been lowered to about $8,000, but only about 500 units were ever produced. The Mirage, introduced in 1984, was the first -produced sampler at a truly affordable price-under $2,000. Digital samplers record a sound by representing itwith a string of numbers. (Several thousand numbers must be stored each second to accurately represent a sound.) Once the sound is digitally recorded, it can be played back from a keyboard or other type of controller. Since the sampler actually allows for recording of natural acoustic sounds, it has been widely used for the imitation of acoustic musical instruments.

Digital sampling technology was also applied to the consumer market with the introduction of compact discs. Within a few years of their advent CDs had virtually replaced analog records and turntables. Computers also made use of sampling in the form of recording. This allowed CD quality audio tracks to be recorded, edited and stored in the computer.

Digital Synthesis With the introduction of the Yamaha DX7 in 1983, affordable digital synthesis had come of age. By the mid-1980s other manufacturers were introducing a variety of models that employed new types of digital synthesis. Digital sampling technology was also incorporated into many of these synthesizers. Some of the highlights are listed below:

Phase was first used by Casio in their CZ line of synthesizers including the popular CZ-101 and the CZ-1000. With phase distortion synthesis, the digital (numerical) representation of a is played back at varying rates during the course of a cycle of the wave. By varying the playback rate of a single cycle, the shape of the , and thus the of the sound, is altered. Envelope generators are used to make timbral shifts over time.

Sample Playback Synthesizers use digitally sampled that are permanently stored in ROM. The sampled waveforms are used as a sound source for the digital version of . This combination of sample playback and subtractive synthesis served as the foundation for many popular synthesizers and has continued to remain so with a number of current models. Popular models of the late 1980s and early 1990s included the Ensoniq ESQ-1, Kawai K4, and the M1.

Linear Arithmetic (LA) Synthesis, a specific type of hybrid synthesis, was developed by and made popular with their D-SO and D-70 Synthesizers. The approach combines sampling with digital subtractive synthesis. The samples are used for the attack transients (the first few milliseconds of a sound), and the synthesis is used for the sustained portions of the sound.

Wavetable synthesis utilizes lists of numbers (i.e., tables) stored in memory to represent various waveforms. For playback, a particular waveform is called up and modified by digital filters and envelope generators. Wave Sequencing is an advanced application that combines or links together multiple tables so that the sound moves from one waveform to another over time. This is the approach that was used in the .

CONCLUSION Technology in the music industry is constantly evolving. New electronic instruments and devices are developed at a rate faster than even most professional musicians can keep up with. In 1975, Robert Moog was quoted:

Circuitry, producing sound, that's not the problem anymore. What is a problem is designing preset schemes that allow the performer to program his own presets, modify them in performance, and return immediately to them at the touch of a button. We don't expect any startling breakthroughs in any of these areas, but every step we make approaches the solution... more and more closely. (Contemporary Keyboard Magazine, Sept./Oct. 1975)

By 1978, only three years later, the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 Synthesizer had all of these capabilities. This shows the speed at which technological developments in music have met our dreams and expectations. -t-2000 1990s - Digital format becomes the primary medium for workffig with audio mcluding synthesizers, mid 1980s - Digital sampling and recording, processmg, CDs ... multi-timbral instruments - f-1990 become available. .. 1980s - Modem personal 1983 - MIDI is mtroduced. .. computers are developed . The Yamaha DX-7 Synthesizer 'h,.." """" .... is released. 1978 - The Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 Synthesizer is introduced. 1968 - Wendy Carlos records _ f-1970 Switched-on Bach. ... ~,,,~=,,,~~,~~.~~~====:t:=::::~---i.., _ 1964-1965 - Robert Moog 1959 - The RCA Mark II ...... 1-----1 develops the analog synthesizer. ' Synthesizer is installed at the _~~CO:IUD1;:~b~1·a~-p~r:m:c~e~t~on~s~tu~d;i;O~.~ __-~~.. ~1960 .... ~"'TC5_' late 19405-19505 - Musique 1955 - The RCA Synthesizer ' .. Concrete is developed ~ is mtroduced. primarily by Frenchmen Pierre -f-1950 Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. b ., ,. ", .. =-I::

-f-1940 1935 - The Hammond ... Organ is mvented by ... Laurens Hammond. ',k .. -f-1930

,. 1919 - Leon Theremm .".. f-1920 mvents the Theremm. .. -, .~

- f-1910 1897-1906 - Thaddeus Cahill develops the ......

Telharmonium. ~\

,. ',,, ~ ~': '",'WM'" ""we· -1900

Figure 1 - 1. History of Electronic Music Timeline. HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC

ADDmONAL RESOURCES

LISTENING: ofthe Moon Morton Subotnik H-7174 This recording will give the students an idea of some of the "experimental" or avant-garde electronic music that came from the early 1970s.

Switched-On Bach Wendy Carlos CBS Records MK-7194 This recording is considered to be the classic that made the Moog Synthesizer a household word. Recorded in 1968, it contains transcriptions of several works by J. S. Bach. Carlos recently recorded a 25th anniversary digital version of the , titled Switched on Bach 2000 (Telarc CD-80323).

Sum Serious Blues Jimmy Smith Mile Stone Records MCD-9207-2 Good examples of the Hammond B-3 organ in a jazz/blues setting.

The Art ofthe Theremin Delos International, Hollywood, CA 90028 Recordings of Classical music by the world's foremost Thereminist.

"Good Vibrations" Their Twenty-Two Greatest Hits The Beach Boys TC Axis 8 Good example of the use of a Theremin in a popular setting.

Pictures at an Exhibition Emerson, Lake & Palmer Cotillion Records ELP 66666 Emerson, Lake, & Palmer was considered to be a very high-tech rock group during the 1970s. This rock version of Mussorgsky's famous work demonstrates the use of the Hammond B-3 Organ and the Moog Synthesizer in a 1972 .

READING:

;1; The Art ofElectronic Music Keyboard Magazine • l-I",l Tprm:1rrl Pnhl1Qhlna 1QR4. Electronic and Peter Manning Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1987.

Electronic and Experimental Music Thomas B. Holmes New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1985.

Electroacoustic Music: The First Century Herbert A. Deutsch CPP Belwin, Inc. EL03804, 1993.

Electric Sound: The Past and Promise ofElectronic Music Prentice Hall. 1996.

Vintage Synthesizers Mark Vail GPE Books/Miller Freeman Books. 1993

The Hammond Organ: Beauty in the B Mark Vail Miller Freeman Books. 1997.

VIDEO: Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey VHS - available from Big Briar (http://www.bigbriar.com/)

TIre HammondologtJ Series (Six Volumes on the Hammond Organ) B.T. Productions

INTERNET RESOURCES: 120 Years of Electronic Music '., http://www.obsolete.com/120~years/ This is a great source for extensive infonnation on electronic musical instruments.

Big Briar http://www.bigbriar.com/ This company is a source for Theremins and innovative electronic musical instruments designed by Bob Moog.

A Brief History of Electronic Music Instruments http://wwwjef.u-psud.fr/~thierry/history/history.html Brief summaries of the major electronic music instrument developments are highlighted at this site. The History of Electronic Music @ pHinnWeb http://www.scLfi/..... philUlweb/history/ This site provides numerous links to other sites including historical, personalities, and the music industry.

The Hammond Grounds http://theatreorgans.com/grounds/ This is a great source for Hammond Organ links and information.

P AlA: Theremax Theremin http://www.qns.com/paia/theremax.htm For those who are interested in building their own Theremin, this site has information on a kit from P AlA Electronics.

The Synthesizer Picture Archive http://www.code404.com/synths/ This site serves as a repository for images of various synthesizers and other electronic instruments.

Synthmuseum.com http://www.synthmuseum.com/ This virtual synthesizer museum is the largest online museum of its kind, displaying vintage electronic musical instruments from all over the world.

The Theremin Home Page http://www.nashville.net/....theremin/ An extensive list of Theremin-related links and information can be found here.

Vintage Synth Explorer http://www.vintagesynth.com/ Here are various archives including audio and image files and other useful information. HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC

VOCABULARY LIST

analog digital digital-analog hybrid synthesizers digital sampling Hammond Organ linear arithmetic (LA) synthesis MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) monophonic Moog Synthesizer multi-tirnbral multitrack recording Musique Concrete patch cords personal computer phase distortion synthesis polyphonic programmable synthesizers RCA Mark 2 Synthesizer sample playback synthesizers synthesizer l1 patch" Telharrnonium Therernin Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer