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Electronic music
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For other uses, see Electronic music (disambiguation).
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments since 1955, with the aim of creating ones capable of producing monophonic melodies. During the late 1950s, he produced theramins, Ondes Martenots, and electronic keyboards, and by 1959, a Hawaiian guitar amplifier and electronic organs.[46][neutrality is disputed]
[edit] American electronic music
In the United States, sounds were being created electronically and used in composition, as exemplified in a piece by Morton Feldman called Marginal Intersection. This piece is scored for winds, brass, percussion, strings, 2 oscillators, and sound effects of riveting, and the score uses Feldman's graph notation.
The Music for Magnetic Tape Project.[49] The group had no permanent facility, and had to rely on borrowed time in commercial sound studios, including the studio of Louis and Bebe Barron,[59] was entirely composed using custom built electronic circuits and tape recorders in 1956.
The world's first computer to play music, did so publicly in August 1951 (reference 12).[74] One of the most productive and widely known electronic music studios in the world,[citation needed] thanks in large measure to their work on the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who. One of the most influential composers associated with the studio included Toshiro Mayuzumi, Minao Shibata, Joji Yuasa, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and Toru Takemitsu. The studio's first electronic compositions were complete in 1955, including Mayuzumi's 5-minute pieces "Studie I: Music for Sine Wave by Proportion of Prime Number" and "Invention for Square Wave and Sawtooth Wave" produced using the studio's various tone-generating capabilities, and Shibata's 20-minute stereo piece "Musique Concrète for Stereophonic Broadcast".[45]
Ikutaro Kakehashi founded a repair shop called Kakehashi Watch Shop in the late 1940s repairing watches and radios, and then in 1954 founded Kakehashi Musen ("Kakehashi Radio"), which eventually grew into the company Ace Tone by 1960 and later the Roland Corporation by 1972. Kakehashi began producing electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic means became increasingly common in the popular domain.[3] Today electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from experimental art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music.
Contents
1 Origins: late 19th century to early 20th century
1.1 Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music
Main article: Ferruccio Busoni
In 1907, just a year after the invention of the triode audion, Ferruccio Busoni published Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, which discussed the use of computers to compose pieces like ST/4 for string quartet and ST/48 for orchestra (both 1962).[citation needed]
[edit] Mid-to-late 1950s
In 1954, Stockhausen composed his Elektronische Studie II—the first electronic piece to be published as a score. In 1955, more experimental and electronic studios began to appear. Notable were the creation of the Studio de Fonologia (already mentioned), a studio at the NHK in Tokyo founded by Toshiro Mayuzumi, and the Phillips studio at Eindhoven, the Netherlands, which moved to the University of Manchester in the autumn of 1951. The music program was written by Christopher Strachey.
The impact of computers continued in 1956. Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson composed Iliac Suite for string quartet, the first complete work of computer-assisted composition using algorithmic composition. "... Hiller postulated that a computer could be taught the rules of a particular style and then called on to compose accordingly."[61] Later developments included the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent synth rock.[86] Electronic rock was also produced by several Japanese musicians, including Isao Tomita's Electric Samurai: Switched on Rock (1972), which featured Moog synthesizer renditions of contemporary pop and rock songs,[87] and Osamu Kitajima's progressive rock album Benzaiten (1974), which used a rhythm machine along with electronic drums and a synthesizer.[88] In 1977, Ultravox's "Hiroshima Mon Amour" was one of the world's leading electronic music facilities in Tokyo, the NHK Studio, in 1954, equipping it with technologies such as tone-generating and audio processing equipment, recording and radiophonic equipment, Ondes Martenot, Monochord and Melochord, sine wave oscillators, tape recorders, ring modulators, band-pass filters, and four & eight channel mixers. Musicians associated with the studio included Toshiro Mayuzumi, Minao Shibata, Joji Yuasa, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and Toru Takemitsu. The studio's first electronic compositions were complete in 1955, including Mayuzumi's 5-minute pieces "Studie I: Music for Sine Wave by Proportion of Prime Number" and "Invention for Square Wave and Sawtooth Wave" produced using the studio's various tone-generating capabilities, and Shibata's 20-minute stereo piece "Musique Concrète for Stereophonic Broadcast".[45]
Ikutaro Kakehashi founded a repair shop called Kakehashi Watch Shop in the late 1940s repairing watches and radios, and then in 1954 founded Kakehashi Musen ("Kakehashi Radio"), which eventually grew into the company Ace Tone by 1960 and later the Roland Corporation by 1972. Kakehashi began producing electronic musical instruments and then superimposing them on one another."[50] Ussachevsky said later: "I suddenly realized that the tape recorder could be treated as an instrument of sound transformation."[50] On Thursday, May 8, 1952, Ussachevsky presented several demonstrations of tape music/effects that he created at his Composers Forum, in the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University. These included Transposition, Reverberation, Experiment, Composition, and Underwater Valse. In an interview, he stated: "I presented a few examples of my discovery in a public concert in New York together with other compositions I had written for conventional instruments."[50] Otto Luening, who had attended this concert, remarked: "The equipment at his disposal consisted of an Ampex tape recorder . . . and a simple box-like device designed by the brilliant young engineer, Peter Mauzey, to create feedback, a form of mechanical reverberation. Other equipment was borrowed or purchased with personal funds."[51]
Just three months later, in August 1952, Ussachevsky traveled to Bennington, Vermont at Luening's invitation to present his experiments. There, the two collaborated on various pieces. Luening described the event: "I improvised some [flute] sequences for the tape recorder. Ussachevsky then and there put them through electronic transformations."[52]
1954 saw the advent of what would now be considered authentic electric plus acoustic compositions—acoustic instrumentation augmented/accompanied |