How Music affects life

2011-07-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

Late 1980s to 1990s - Rise of dance music

In the late 1980s, dance music records made using only electronic instruments became increasingly popular. The trend has continued to the present day with modern nightclubs worldwide regularly playing electronic dance music. Nowadays, electronic/dance music is so popular, that dedicated genre radio stations and TV Channels (e.g., NRJ Dance, MUSIC FORCE EUROPE) exist.

Electronic dance music has enjoyed popularity in many nightclubs, and is the predominant type of music played in discothèques as well as the rave scene. As such, the related term club music, while broadly referring to whichever music genres are currently in vogue and associated with nightclubs, has become synonymous with all electronic dance music, or just those genres—or some subset thereof—that are typically played at mainstream discothèques. It is sometimes used more broadly to encompass non-electronic music played at such venues, or electronic music that is not normally played at clubs but that shares attributes with music that is. What is widely considered to be club music changes over time, includes different genres depending on the region and who's making the reference, and may not always encompass electronic dance music. Similarly, electronic dance music sometimes means different things to different people. Both terms vaguely encompass multiple genres, and sometimes are used as if they were genres themselves. The distinction is that club music is ultimately based on what's popular, whereas electronic dance music is based on attributes of the music itself

2011-07-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

1980 - The Birth of MIDI

In 1980, a group of musicians and music merchants met to standardize an interface by which new instruments could communicate control instructions with other instruments and the prevalent microcomputer. This standard was dubbed MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) and resulted from a collaboration between leading manufacturers Roland, Yamaha, Korg, Kawai, Oberheim, and Sequential Circuits. A paper was authored by Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits and proposed to the Audio Engineering Society in 1981. Then, in August 1983, the MIDI Specification 1.0 was finalized.

The advent of MIDI technology allows a single keystroke, control wheel motion, pedal movement, or command from a microcomputer to activate every device in the studio remotely and in synchrony, with each device responding according to conditions predetermined by the composer.
MIDI instruments and software made powerful control of sophisticated instruments easily affordable by many studios and individuals. Acoustic sounds became reintegrated into studios via sampling and sampled-ROM-based instruments.

Miller Puckette developed graphic signal-processing software for 4X called Max (after Max Mathews) and later ported it to Macintosh (with Dave Zicarelli extending it for Opcode) for real-time MIDI control, bringing algorithmic composition availability to most composers with modest computer programming background.

2011-07-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

1970s to early 1980s - Synthesizers

Released in 1970 by Moog Music the Mini-Moog was among the first widely available, portable and relatively affordable synthesizers. It became the most widely used synthesizer in both popular and electronic art music. In 1974 the WDR studio in Cologne acquired an EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer which was used by a number of composers in the production of notable electronic works—amongst others, Rolf Gehlhaar's Fünf deutsche Tänze (1975), Karlheinz Stockhausen's Sirius (1975–76), and John McGuire's Pulse Music III (1978).

The early 1980s saw the rise of bass synthesizers, the most influential being the Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer and sequencer released in late 1981 that would later become synonymous with electronic dance music,particularly acid house. One of the first to utilize it was Charanjit Singh in 1982, though it wouldn't be popularized until Phuture's "Acid Tracks" in 1987.

2011-07-26T04:54:00.000-07:00

So people, I'm back with new and fresh info.

Today, my topic is Electronic Music of the late 19th century to early 20th century.

The ability to record sounds is often connected to the production of electronic music, but not absolutely necessary for it. The earliest known sound recording device was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. It could record sounds visually, but was not meant to play them back.

In 1878, Thomas A. Edison patented the phonograph, which used cylinders similar to Scott's device. Although cylinders continued in use for some time, Emile Berliner developed the disc phonograph in 1887.A significant invention, which was later to have a profound effect on electronic music, was Lee DeForest's triode audion. This was the first thermionic valve, or vacuum tube, invented in 1906, which led to the generation and amplification of electrical signals, radio broadcasting, and electronic computation, amongst other things.