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The History of music technology
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Donaueschingen Festival
The Donaueschingen Festival was founded in 1921 in Southwestern Germany. It is a yearly festival held in October. It is very prestigious and well known festival. It is considered to be the oldest festival that is based around contemporary classical music in the world.
This is important to the timeline because it was on of the first festivals to ever include electroacoustic instruments and performance pieces in it. -
Homer Dudley vocoder
IN 1932 Homer Dudley invented the vocoder at Bell Labs. It was originally being used as a way to synthesize human speech. It allowed the for the reproduction of human speech and for it to be transmitted over long distances, like on the telephone. The machine was know to be difficult to operate unless done by a skilled operator.
This is important to the timeline because it was the first machine and vocoder ever and successfully helped us advance technology for musical use and everyday use too. -
The Novachord
In 1938nproduction started on the Novachord. It wasrn debueted until 1939 and the New York Worlds Fair. The Novachord was the first commercial polyphonic synthesizer in the world. The Novachord was used widely in movies for such as Gone with the wind. It is also most commonly found on recordings of songs by Vera Lynn who were accompanied by the Novachord and played by Arthur Young.
This is important to the timeline because it was the first of its kind and held big importance during its time. -
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Schaeffer was a French composer, acoustician and electronics engineer. He was the first person to introduce Musique concrete in 1984 with his staff through Radio-diffusion et Télévision Française. This is a technique where natural sound produced y ether animate or inanimate objects is recorded and manipulated to be used in a musical fashion.
This is important to my timeline because it the first use of Musique Concrete and was a big advancement in the history of music technology. -
Herbert Eimert
From 1949 to 1951 composer Herbert Eimert pioneered electronic music alongside physicist Werner Meyer-Eppler. At the time it was completely focused on synthetic and generated sound. It was very focused on sine waves. This was all done through recording the sounds of acoustic instruments and changing the timbre of them electronically. This would then be played through a loud speaker.
This is important to the timeline because these two pioneered the Electro-acoustic genre. -
Symphonie pour un homme seul
In 1950 Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry collaborated on Schaeffers 10 movement Symphonie pour un homme seul (Symphony for one man only). This was the first major music piece involving Musique Conrete. It laid the aesthetic and technical foundations for future tape music.
This is impotant to my timeline because it was the firts song of its kind and created a large sensation amongst audiences and inspired future musicians and sound engineers. -
Les Paul - The Les Paulverizer
The first loop pedal used in a live performance was in 1953. Created by acclaimed Jazz guitarist Les Paul, it was known as the Les Paulverizer. This is important to my timeline as it is the first recorded use of a live loop pedal. -
IBM 704
The IBM 704 was introduced IBM in 1954. It was the first mass produced computer and it had floating-point arithmetic hardware. I think it is important to the timeline because its a big part of computer music history. It was the system that Max Matthews developed the first computer music programme was developed on, it also was the first computer to synthesise speech and music with the song Daisy Bell in 1962. -
Max Matthews-MUSIC
In 1957 Max Matthews wrote one of the first, most widely used sound generation programs. He did this while working at Bell Labs. He is known as being one of the biggest pioneers in computer music. The program 'MUSIC', was the first of its kind and used direct synthesis to generate the waveform's of the audio. This is important to my timeline because Matthews is an important part of the history of computer music and without his input we wouldn't have the same advanced technology we have today. -
Daisy Bell-Vocoder
Originally composed by Harry Dacre in 1892 and recorded in 93' by Dann W. Quinn, Daisy Bell was the first demonstration of computer speech synthesis using a vocoder. In 1961 Max Matthews teamed up with John Larry Kelly, Jr to arrange an accompaniment for Daisy Bell on the IBM 704. This allowed Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder to recreated the song in a computer synthesised human voice. This is important to my timeline because this is one of the biggest moments in music technology -
Dr Who Theme Tune
The original Dr Who Theme piece from 1963 is known to be regarded as one of the most significant piece of electronic music. The composition was formed by Ron Grainer and made through Musique Concrete by Delia Derbyshire and Dick Mils at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. All sounds were created through the editing of analouge tape containing recordings of sounds like white noise and a single plucked string.
This is impotant to my timeline because it is a signifacnt piece known by many people today. -
Moog Synthesizer
The Moog Synthesizer was debuted in 1964 by American engineer Robert Moog. It was the first commercial synthesizer and it was known to be much smaller and cheaper then previous models. It was attractive to a lot of musicians because unlike other designs it could be played in real time via a keyboard.
It is important to the timeline because it is was the first of its kind and it is credited for its help in creating the analog synthesizer as it is known today. -
Pollard Syndrum
In 1976 Joe Pollard and Mark Barton created the first commercially available electronic drum known as the Pollard Syndrum. They had three different types known as The Syndrum 1, the Syndrum TwinDrum, and the Syndrum Quad. The Syndrum Quad was the famous. It garnered interest from high profile drummers such as Carmine Appice it was a financial failure resulting in the company failing in the following years.
This is important to my timeline because it is the first advancement in electronic drums. -
Simmons
In 1978 another company by the names of Simmons started to produce commercial electronic drums sets. They were a pioneers in the British manufacture of electronic drum sets. It was founded by Dave Simmons and supplied electronic drum kits from 1980 to 1994. The distinctive sound of their kits can be heard on many song through the 80's such as Chant No. 1" by Spandau Ballet.
This is important to the timeline as it was one of the major companies in the 80's producing commercial electronic kits. -
The Roland VP-330 Vocoder +
This vocoder was manufactured by Roland Corporation. It was a paraphonic ten band vocoder and string machine. It was one of the most popular vocoders ever made. It was used by many notable people such as Micheal Boddicker on Micheal Jackson's sixth single Pretty Young Thing (P.Y.T).
This is important to the timeline as it is a much beloved piece of music technology history and was used a lot in the music scene at the time. -
Fairlight CMI
Fairlight CMI is short for computer musical instrument. It was introduced as a digital synthesizer in 1979. It also allowed sampling and for it to be used as a digital audio workstation. It gained prominence n the industry during the 80's and was a big competitor with Synclavier by New England Digital.
It is important to the timeline because it one of the earliest music workstations that allowed variety with synthesizers and sampling.It is credited for coining the term sampling. -
SDS-V (5)
The SDS-V was created by Simmons and was the worlds first fully electronic drum set. It famously featured its hexagonal pads and distinctive sounds that can be described as almost lightsabre sounding. It was a big success with bands such as Duran Duran and Rush. It was also featured on many live shows with Dave Simmons' band 'Twelve drummers drumming' for example Rockpalast Germany.
This is one of the most famous commercial kits of the 80's that is why I think it is important to the timeline. -
Canadian Electroacoustic Community
The Canadian Electroacpustic Community is the national sonic arts organisation of Canada. It is an organisation that dedicates itself to promoting electro-acoustic music as an expressive art form. It is based or young and emerging artists as seen with its projects such as the electronic journal eContact!.
This is important to the timeline as this is an organisation that aims to maintain the connection and communication of electroacoustic music. -
Ableton Live
Co-founders Gerhard Behles, Robert Henke had created homemade software for their live performances under Monolake. This was then developed by Bernd Roggendorf into Ableton Live.In 2001 it was first released as commercial software. It is a digital audio software and is designed to be used for music production but it also to use as an instrument during live performances compared to other software.
This is important because it is a one of the main used software's used in live performances today. -
Boss RC-20 Loop Station
First shown in the January the Boss RC-20 loop station began shipping on May 26th of the same year. It helped revolutionise the use of the loop pedal. It was the first of its kind, with loop quantize functions and real time tempo change. Its full potential wasn't seen until it was used by KT Tunstall on Jay Leno in 2006. -
KT Tunstall - The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
This was one off the performances that really showcased the full potential of the Boss RC-20 loop station. It is a performance of 'Black horse and The cherry tree' by KT Tunstall. It was performed on 'The Tonight show with Jay Leno' in 2006. The Boss RC-20 loop station allowed her to start her performance with simple rhythm guitar and slowly add in counter melodies and harmonies, etc. This performance allowed the Boss RC-20 to be placed on the map and democratise the one-man-band.
