Electronic Express

During the 1990s, with the proliferation of increasingly affordable music technology, electronic music production became an established part of popular culture. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from experimental art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music. Pop electronic music is most recognizable in its 4/4 form and more connected with the mainstream than preceding forms which were popular in niche markets. The first electronic musical devices were developed at the end of the 19th century.

Digital Circuits

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. In 1980, a group of musicians and music merchants met to standardize an interface that new instruments could use to communicate control instructions with other instruments and computers. This standard was dubbed Musical Instrument Digital Interface and resulted from a collaboration between leading manufacturers, initially Sequential Circuits, Oberheim, Roland—and later, other participants that included Yamaha, Korg, and Kawai. A paper was authored by Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits and proposed to the Audio Engineering Society in 1981. Elektronmusikstudion , formerly known as Electroacoustic Music in Sweden, is the Swedish national centre for electronic music and sound art.

Origin Of Electronic

"In Kontakte, Stockhausen abandoned traditional musical form based on linear development and dramatic climax. This new approach, which he termed 'moment form', resembles the 'cinematic splice' techniques in early twentieth-century film." In the 1950s, Japanese electronic musical instruments began influencing the international music industry. Ikutaro Kakehashi, who founded Ace Tone in 1960, developed his own version of electronic percussion that had been already popular on the overseas electronic organ. At NAMM 1964, he revealed it as the R-1 Rhythm Ace, a hand-operated percussion device that played electronic drum sounds manually as the user pushed buttons, in a similar fashion to modern electronic drum pads. Synth-pop sometimes used synthesizers to replace all other instruments but was more common that bands had one or more keyboardists in their line-ups along with guitarists, bassists, and/or drummers.

Takemitsu had ideas similar to musique concrète, which he was unaware of, while Shibata foresaw the development of synthesizers and predicted a drastic change in music. Sony began producing popular magnetic tape recorders for government and public use. "By the 1990s, electronic music had penetrated every corner of musical life. It extended from ethereal sound-waves played by esoteric experimenters to the thumping syncopation that accompanies every pop record" (Lebrecht 1996, p. 106). STEIM is a center for research and development of new musical instruments in the electronic performing arts, located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Journal Browser

Jam the device’s cables into pieces of fruit—apple, banana, orange, whatever—then touch them, and the toy plays a different note for each piece of fruit. (If you don’t feel like wasting fruit, you can also use Silly Putty.) They seem to have gone off the market in the U.S. (though Spain’s Eurekakids still has them). But Playtronica’s Playtron takes the same functionality and, paired with its computer app, lets you use objects—fruit, vegetables, glasses of water, house plants—as an ad-hoc MIDI controller for sampling, performing, and sequencing sounds. It’s pricier than the Tap & Play Magic Piano was, but the creative possibilities are considerably greater. Fortunately, there’s been a recent explosion of synthesizers and other musical gadgets aimed expressly at kids. Some they can figure out on their own, some will require parental supervision, and some are so cool that even non-parents might end up wanting one for themselves.

Articles In Press

This section contains information of unclear or questionable importance or relevance to the article's subject matter. A well-known example of the use of Moog's full-sized Moog modular synthesizer is the 1968 Switched-On Bach album by Wendy Carlos, which triggered a craze for synthesizer music. The intense activity occurring at CPEMC and elsewhere inspired the establishment of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1963 by Morton Subotnick, with additional members Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Anthony Martin, and Terry Riley. Following the emergence of differences within the GRMC (Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète) Pierre Henry, Philippe Arthuys, and several of their colleagues, resigned in April 1958. Schaeffer created a new collective, called Groupe de Recherches Musicales and set about recruiting new members including Luc Ferrari, Beatriz Ferreyra, François-Bernard Mâche, Iannis Xenakis, Bernard Parmegiani, and Mireille Chamass-Kyrou.