Early Electronic Music

            Early electronic music, before modern synthesizers and virtual instruments, was a very narrow endeavor. Mostly, the musicians who produced electronic music were experimental composers, engineers, and academics. Making electronic music was an expensive hobby and was limited to certain facilities. One of the earliest electronic instruments, the Telharmonium, was so large it was impractical for home use (there were three versions of the Telharmonium, one weighing in at 7 tons and the other two weighing around 200 tons). Other instruments such as the Theremin and the Hammond organ were smaller but they still had a long way to go to capture the hearts and ears of the public.

 

Ever wonder what early audio electronics looked like? Here is a picture of just part of the 200 ton Telharmonium.

            Another early form of electronic music involved magnetic tape recorders slowing down, speeding up, reversing, or even splicing the tape together to perform such tasks as looping. Now in the digital realm, looping is an easy task that takes seconds, where-as before it was a painstaking process. Trying to find an early tape recorder (Introduced post World War II) was no easy task either; they were usually reserved for universities and big budget studios.

            Even when Moog and Buchla came out with their first synthesizers, they weren’t all that popular. The idea was that these synthesizers would be geared for the academic electronic community, to think that we, the consumer, were an after thought. The fact of the matter was that most of the early designs were made with only a few people in mind. At that time there were no focus groups, or grand plan in mind. Moog and Buchla were inventing to invent, to please themselves and a few of their friends or business partners.

            It wasn’t till Wendy Carlos came out with “Switched-On Bach” that an electronic recording even had some sort of influence on the Billboard charts. But once that album came out, the music community slowly started opening their eyes to new possibilities. The possibility that instruments can be radically different and the public would accept it. Little by little, artists started incorporating synthesizers in their recordings, artists like the Grateful Dead and Keith Emerson.

            In the early days of the synthesizer, it was viewed as a solo instrument, not as a lead. Then artists like Kraftwerk came along and used only electronic instruments in their band; they were even moderately successful. Pretty soon, just about every big name band wanted a synthesizer, even The Beatles wanted that sound, and pretty soon synthesizers were accepted as instruments.

            Amazing how, an instrument that wasn’t intended for the masses, but instead for a few experimental performers, slowly gained popularity and crept into the hearts of music lovers everywhere. Along the way there was some superb marketing, but it just goes to show that, sometimes, to be extraordinary, you don’t need to have a plan or a direction, you just need to be Extra-Ordinary.

Wendy Carlos from her album "Switched-On Bach" incorporating Classical music and contemporary synthesis.

...My mistake in "Player Piano" was my failure as a futurist. I did not foresee transistors, and so imagined that super computers would have to be huge, with bulky vacuum tubes taking up a lot of space. -Kurt Vonnegut in "Letters"