The history of electronic music

Electronic music, what is it ? The common thought is that it is the “ party music” you hear at the clubs or for the people who don't like it, it's just noise. My aim with this post is not changing your opinion if you don't like this music gene, which is my favourite, but instead I want to show you the large history behind it. And that is everywhere , at commercials, movies, stores, even pop music or hip hop. The history  goes up to the beginning of the 20th century, yes that´s crazy.

The dictionary definition for electronic music is : Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments and circuitry-based music technology. It´s a very vast definition but basically electronic music borned as a new way of making music, using the new technology that was being developed and finding new sounds to use.

The genesis of the music recording was thanks to Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner with the invention of the phonograph . This revolutionary invention was the proof music could be captured and be reproduced in the future.

 Electronic instruments:

There were many “ proto” instruments of electronic ones. For instance the most known are the telharmonium and the theremin.

Thaddeus Cahill, a lawyer, developed the telharmonium in 1867, and this one is considered the first electronic instrument . It was born like an idea of Thaddeus of making money with the creation of the telephone.  This electric organ basically used rotating electromagnetic generators (and thus was a predecessor of the Hammond organ) to produce electric impulses that were converted into sound by telephone receivers.   The telharmonium made use of the telephone networks and transmitted music to restaurants, houses , hotels. The subscriber called the central, asked for the telharmonium and chose the song they wanted to hear. However this creation led to various struggles because it interfered with  the telephone service in the area.

The theremin was created in the early 1930s by the russian Leon Theremin, literally you can play this instrument without touching it , i t works with “electromagnetic fields that create sounds at different pitches when the musician moves her hands around the theremin.”

 

Early history:

Another influence was dadaism who was not only present is visual art but had a crossover with music . Dadaism wanted to break the esthetic canons of art, to put the chaos over the order, basically it wanted to break with all it was established.

The emancipation of noise also played an important role. What is music? What can be music? These questions led to reconsider the idea of music and what sounds can compose it .

                                     

Musique concrète (Paris): 

This movement, more precisely it was a study carried by Pierre Schaeefer originary  from Strasbourg. He wanted to experiment and find new ways of sampling sounds and put them together.  He founded the “ Groupe de recherche de musique concrète”(Concrete music research group) in the French Radio Institution  in 1951. Also he collaborated with the percussionist composer on many different musical compositions.They were making music with existing sounds such as train noise for example. Pierre Shaefer invented sampling, which is the reuse of an existing  sound in a new record, this is very popular in all music genres like hip hop and of course electronic music.

Elektronische Musik( Cologne,Germany) :

All the way around to Cologne in Germany a new movement of electronic music is borned, and it's one with a different perspective. Elektronische Musik was started by a team who wasn´t really integrated by musicologists but by  speech researchers, radar technicians, etc .They saw science as the future and how they could integrate technology in music. Germans were very intrigued and impressed with the american invention the vocoder , which was a speech analysis machine that you could also use to alter speech and to analyze the components . Serialism was the base of this pursuit to electronic music creation , they wanted pure and objective music.  Some major representatives are Stockhausen, Werner Meyer-Eppler, Hebert Eimert .

Music for Magnetic Tape (USA):

At the end of the Second World War USA was intrigued by the advanced  audio technology used by germans, so they decided to send militaries to find  more about it. It was John T. Mullin who was sent to research them. What the germans used to  transmit Hitler speeches were tape records, who at the time were unknown and a secret for other countries. These techniques enable composer to record any sound whatever on tape and then manipulate the tape to achieve desired effects. Sounds can be superimposed upon each other ( mixed) , altered in timbre by means of filters , or reverberated.

 From The 70's : 

In those years a lot of artists mostly in Europe started to exploit the new sounds that we´re able to do with synthesizers. Undoubtedly Kraftwerk, a german electro-pop band, is one of the electronic music pillars . They liked to experiment a lot with their music, with synthesizers. At the beginning their tracks were more melodic but with albums like “ Man Machine” we can see their approach with techno. This band was integrated  by  Florian Schneider, Ralf Hutter,Wolfgang Flur and Karl Bartos , and until today is a big influence in the music industry.  It's unavoidable to talk about disco music , the name comes from “ discotheque” in french which means library of phonograph records. At this time was  when the terms “dj” or “ disc jockey” began to be used.  It´s a mix of funk, salsa,soul and pop.  Disco was very popular in the gay , african american and hispanic community. This new genre of music reached his edge at the middle of the 70´s ,“ Love Train” was the first disco song to reach the first place at the Billboard Hot 100. This era was characterized by colorful and shining clothes, dancing at the clubs dancefloors, free love and well drugs. Disco leads to the creation of two major genres , house and techno. The place of birth of techno is Detroit, where young people sick and tired of economic problems and the difficulties went to abandoned factories and started doing music, those parties  were crazy. The pioneers of techno are Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Sauderson. House was borned in Chicago and it comes from disco music. The club “ The Warehouse” where Frankie Knuckles was the dj resident , is where house music originated. This music genre was characterized by the combination of sounds, remixes, adding drums and synths. House spread all over the world and also lead to new subgenres such as deep house or acid house.

Nowadays:

Nowadays there are a lot of electronic music genres that it is impossible to name them all but the famous ones are: house,minimal,techno,drum and bass,progressive, acid,experimental,edm. Thanks to computer programs like Ableton, anyone is capable of creating their own tracks.

Thanks to the advance of technology and the growing electronic music scene all over the world we can enjoy all kinds of music and it keeps developing it.  Raves and festivals take place all over the world ( even if sadly  due to the actual crisis we cannot enjoy them) 

Personally I love Soundcloud where I can find tracks  and sets from a lot of different artists, and  a big part of them are independent ones or not streaming ones  . Also if you like listening to sets of this music a good alternative is the youtube channel “ Cercle”. The videos are stunning, the views, the crowds, the artists. And if you are into lo-fi music , minimal  and kind of experimental music you should check the channel EELF. It's awesome because they take videos from the 70's,80`s,90`s from movies, parties, schools, movies everything and they put them with the music. And the best of all is they premiere videos almost everyday.

Electronic music is much more than raves , and it's not only about partying or “ taking drugs”. Those are big misconceptions. Electronic music is freedom to express you through music, it's love and appreciation for artist, it´s music at his pure state, it's getting out of this world, it's dancing all night and listing track of time because you´re having the best time of your life  , it's PLUR ( Peace, Love, Unity and Respect).