Electronic Music:
“Electronic music: Music made by producing, modifying and recording sounds, and reproducing it by electroacoustical means. Electronic music has become very important since World War II” (Willi Apel 1969).When we talk of the evolution of music today it is inevitable to refer to electronic music. Electronic music is interwoven with the past, present and future of music. We may return to pure acoustic music, we may combine acoustic with electronic sounds or we may indulge in pure electronic music. Nothing can stop us going back and forth in time. However, acoustic sounds are not being lost or forgotten. The acoustic instruments, the piano, the guitar, the brass, the harp, the fiddle can by no means be permanently replaced. This is not the purpose of electronic music. Although acoustic instruments are often substituted by digital or electronic ones either for aesthetic or for financial reasons (e.g. using string samples is much cheaper than recording a whole strings ensemble) in more than a few cases the acoustic instruments are preferred to anything digital because the lack of them would sound fake, unnatural.
The tools available to the musician and sound engineer to produce new, progressive, sounds, samples, midi, synth and plug-ins created with software, are the consequence of the technological booming. “Musical concepts that were once considered radical-the use of environmental sounds, ambient music, turntable music, digital sampling, computer music, the electronic modifications of acoustic sounds, and music made from fragments of speech-have now been subsumed by many kinds of popular music”. (Thomas B. Holmes 2002). There are several examples of bands and musicians who have successfully combined acoustic and electronic sounds such like David Bowie and Brian Eno in the albums Earthlink and Outside, Hooverphonic etc.
The electronic music itself is very diverse. Peter Manning in his book Electronic and Computer Music from Oxford University Press points out different stages of evolution of the electronic music from 1945: Paris and Musique Concrete, Cologne and Elektronische Musick which has inspired a lot, Milan and elsewhere in Europe, America, the voltage-controlled synthesizer, the electronic repertory from 1960 and the digital revolution of 1980 with the software revolution which is the most important stage of the electronic music. “The most important development in computer music in the 1980s is the proliferation of powerful and inexpensive personal computers and digital synthesizers. Activity in computer music has spread far beyond the laboratories of academic and research institutions. The technology is now so accessible that virtually any musician can set up a home studio for research, composition, or playing” (Curtis Roads 1992). We have already given a few tips about how could somebody easily set up a home recording studio and how with some good sampling and programming knowledge can produce and record music.
The myth of the “pure”:
Some music fans tend to disapprove of the electronic music supporting that the acoustic sound is pure thus stronger. As mentioned above, the electronic samples did not appear to replace the natural instruments but the result experimentation. Looking back through time the medieval guitar was much different than the modern acoustic or classical guitar which came from the Spanish culture. This means that even the acoustic instruments cannot resist evolution. The harpsichords became pianos, the structure of a 60s electric guitar amp is massively different to one of the 90s. These changes have occurred by experimentation and mixes after using all the means the musicians have to produce new sounds. Therefore it is in vain to believe that the electronic music is inferior as there is nothing completely ?pure? and untouched.
Bad music is everywhere:
Just like in any other type of music the same happens in the electronic music. There is a lot of meaningless material produced by DJs, mostly being played in the clubs. It is often nothing more than looping the same music phrase of an existing song without adding an interesting sample or giving it any character but turning it into something very na?ve, to be consumed by the masses. It is all a matter of implication of ideas and what the purpose is. Good DJs can create good stuff if they take the trouble. Some club-dance, soft psychedelic products become very interesting with their experimentations or can improve a song with a remix. We can identify this in the following song, Aquamarine by Heather Nova.
According to Aaron Copland, Alan Rich “By the mid 1950s, Webern’s vision of a music tightly organized in all aspects brought about this rediscovery by a generation of young Europeans obsessed with exploring new modes of expression. At Cologne the West German Radio had set up a laboratory to investigate the potential of music electronically produced through oscillators and other tone-generating devices and electronically processed though tape editing. The young composer Karlheinz Stockhausen saw the possibilities of maintaining total control over the substance and stricture of a musical work by pressing the right buttons of an electronic console. At Cologne he was joined for a time by a similarly revolution minded French man Pierre Boulez who within a few years would convince the French government to finance a studio of his own in Paris (IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music)”.
From the above analysis we understand that the electronic music was a very strong movement and was supported by important personalities and is not meaningless as a lot of people support.
Can electro music affect the inspiration and interpretation?
The main reason why people experiment with new sounds is to produce new, groundbreaking music material and create and explore unknown paths in music. Two different sounds from a keyboard require different interpretations even if they play the same melody and this happens because the timber of each sample-sound has different atmosphere, resonance, color etc which affects the way it should be played. Let’s imagine, a piece played by a violin and then the same piece by an electric guitar. In each case they require different interpretation. “Composers now think differently about the music they make. Their aural vocabulary has no bounds, and structures they impose, or choose to avoid, are all made possible by technology”. (Thomas B. Holmes 2002)
The power of the song:
Would a man of the middle ages ever imagine how music would be like in the 21st century? He could definitely not have imagined the coming of the electronic age. The variety of sounds and instruments, the potential we have today. But even more surprising for this man, if he listened to a modern song, would have been the fact that he would be able to recognize the very basic elements of human music creation: the melody and the song. “Virtually all styles of music-even folk idioms- have been ?computerized. Digital synthesizers and MIDI technology now dominate popular music, and a healthy diversity of styles coexist in the various new music scenes. It has also been pointed out that ?computer music? is not a style in itself, rather, It is a generalized means of music production”. (Curtis Roads 1992).
The scales, instruments, structures of the song and of music change through time but the essence remains the same. The song is a story about humanity, love, war, life, set to fit in a brief music occurrence. People have always and will always sing their joys and troubles. The Celtic song, the opera aria, the English rock and pop song are all made of one substance regardless their differences. When we talk about the future of music it is safe to talk about the evolution of the song, about the various means we have to enrich, elaborate, alter the song structure and melody, weather it is electronic or not.
Bibliography:
Apel Willi: 1969 Harvard Dictionary of Music, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Holmes B. Thomas: 2002 Electronic and Experimental Music, pioneers in technology and composition. Routledge, New York
Manning Peter: 2004, Electronic and computer music, Oxford University Press.
Aaron Copland, Alan Rich: What to Listen for in Music (found in Google books, click here)
Roads Curtis: 1992 The Music Machine: Selected Readings from Computer Music Journal, Halliday Lithograph, USA. Curtis Roads is a composer, a producer, and associate editor of Computer Music Journal.
Notice: The copyright of the quotes is owned by the author of each extract.
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December 28th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I agree with Adam. Music is endless…
December 17th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Great post. I think there is still a lot of potential in electronic music. I’m constantly seeing new things that people have created through experimentation, from running a guitar or mic through various effects boxes to circuit bending a Game Boy. lol
I agree that most club music is stale with little innovation. That really is the worst case of electronic music. I really prefer avant-garde composers who mix acoustic instruments with great electronic styles and techniques to create rich soundscapes. That’s pretty much what I try to do with my music.