Electronic

Electronic music is a term for music created using electronic devices. As defined by the IEEE standards body, electronic devices are low-power systems and use components such as transistors and integrated circuits. more...

Home
Brass
DJ Gear & Lighting
Electronic
Drum Machines
Other
Samples, Samplers
Synth
Equipment
Guitar
Harmonica
Instruction Books, CDs,...
Keyboard, Piano
Other Instruments
Percussion
Pro Audio
Sheet Music, Song Books
String
Wholesale Lots
Woodwind

Working from this definition, distinction can be made between instruments that produce sound through electromechanical means as opposed to instruments that produce sound using electronic components. Examples of an electromechanical instrument are the teleharmonium, Hammond B3, and the electric guitar, whereas examples of an electronic instrument are a Theremin, synthesizer, and a computer.

History

Late 19th century to early 20th century

Before electronic music, there was a growing desire for composers to use emerging technologies for musical purposes. Several instruments were created that employed electromechanical designs and they paved the way for the later emergence of electronic instruments. An electromechanical instrument called the Teleharmonium (or Telharmonium) was developed by Thaddeus Cahill in 1897. Simple inconvenience hindered the adoption of the Teleharmonium: the instrument weighed seven tons and was the size of a boxcar. Several more refined versions were also constructed a few years later (the final and most refined model arriving in 1907, weighing in at 200 tons). The first electronic instrument is often viewed to be the Theremin, invented by Professor Leon Theremin circa 1919 - 1920. Another early electronic instrument was the Ondes Martenot, which was used in the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen and also by other, primarily French, composers such as Andre Jolivet.

Post-war years: 1940s to 1950s

The tape recorder was invented in Germany during World War II. It wasn't long before composers used the tape recorder to develop a new technique for composition called Musique concrète. This technique involved editing together recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds. Frequently, composers used sounds that were produced entirely by electronic devices not designed for a musical purpose. The first pieces of musique concrète were written by Pierre Schaeffer, who later worked alongside such avant-garde classical composers as Pierre Henry, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen has worked for many years as part of Cologne's Studio for Electronic Music combining electronically generated sounds with conventional orchestras. The first electronic music for magnetic tape composed in America was completed by Louis and Bebe Barron in 1950.

Two new electronic instruments made their debut in 1957. Unlike the earlier Theremin and Ondes Martenot, these instruments were hard to use, required extensive programming, and neither could be played in real time. The first of these electronic instruments was the computer when Max Mathews used a program called Music 1, and later Music 2, to create original compositions at Bell Laboratories. CSIRAC in Australia was a computer which played music in real time much earlier than this (1950 or 1951) and it was similarly difficult to program, but musical developments stalled and it was not used to develop new computer music, instead playing popular tunes. Other well-known composers using computers at the time include Edgard Varèse, and Iannis Xenakis. The other electronic instrument that appeared that year was the first electronic synthesizer. Called the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, it used vacuum tube oscillators and incorporated the first electronic music sequencer. It was designed by RCA and installed at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center where it remains to this day.

Read more at Wikipedia.org