Hang around this site long enough and you’ll learn a thing or two about elec­tron­ic music, whether it’s a very brief his­to­ry of the Moog syn­the­siz­er, or the Theremin, or an enor­mous, obscure ancient ances­tor, the Tel­har­mo­ni­um. These mini-lessons are dwarfed, how­ev­er, by the amount of infor­ma­tion you’ll find on the site 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music, where­in you can read about such strange crea­tures as the Choral­celo, the Stac­ca­tone, the Pianorad, Cellu­phone, Elec­tronde, and Vibroex­pona­tor. Such odd­i­ties abound in the very long his­to­ry of elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ments, which the site defines as “instru­ments that gen­er­ate sounds from a pure­ly elec­tron­ic source rather than elec­tro-mechan­i­cal­ly or elec­tro-acousti­cal­ly.”

Despite these rather strict tech­ni­cal para­me­ters, the site’s author Simon Crab admits that the bound­aries “do become blurred with, say, Tone Wheel Gen­er­a­tors and tape manip­u­la­tion of the Musique Con­crete era.” Then there are pre­cur­sor instru­ments that pre­date the dis­cov­ery and har­ness­ing of elec­tric­i­ty, such as the Clavecin Mag­ne­tique, above, invent­ed by Abbé Bertholon de Saint-Lazare in 1789, a “sim­ple instru­ment which pro­duced sounds by attract­ing met­al clap­pers to strike tuned bells by rais­ing and low­er­ing mag­nets oper­at­ed by a key­board.”

Yet the pri­ma­ry focus of 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music is a peri­od of growth and devel­op­ment from the late 1800s to the 1970s, when ear­ly dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­ers like the Fairlight (top) appeared. Thus, we should not expect here “an exhaus­tive list of recent com­mer­cial syn­the­siz­ers or soft­ware packages”—the stuff of mod­ern dance, pop, hip-hop, etc. Crab’s intent is aca­d­e­m­ic, “ency­clo­pe­dic, ped­a­gog­i­cal,” and pitched to musi­col­o­gists as well as “Syn­the­siz­er Geeks” like­ly to appre­ci­ate the niceties of the 1961 DIMI & Helsin­ki Elec­tron­ic Music Stu­dio.

But even non-aca­d­e­mics and non-geeks can learn much from the his­to­ry of such unusu­al instru­ments as the Klaviatur­sphäraphon (above), one of sev­er­al cre­ations of Ger­man com­pos­er Jörg Mager in his pur­suit of “a new type of utopi­an ‘free’ music by means of new elec­tron­ic cath­ode-ray musi­cal instru­ments.”

Amidst the weird obscu­ri­ties and high-con­cept musi­cal the­o­ry, you’ll also find old favorites that rev­o­lu­tion­ized pop music, like the Ham­mond Organ (see a mak­ing-of pro­mo­tion­al video above), the var­i­ous iter­a­tions of Moog syn­the­siz­ers, and of course the Fairlight CMI (short for Com­put­er Musi­cal Instru­ment). Invent­ed by Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel in Aus­tralia in 1979, the Fairlight is affec­tion­ate­ly known as the “moth­er of all sam­plers,” and its tech­nol­o­gy jump­start­ed the rev­o­lu­tion in com­put­er music from the 80s to today. You can see Vogel demon­strate the first ver­sion of his Fairlight in this video, or—for a slight­ly less geeky intro—see Peter Gabriel demon­strate it below (or watch Her­bie Han­cock and Quin­cy Jones show you how it’s done in a clip from Sesame Street.)

The Ham­mond, Moogs, and Fairlight aside, very few of the instru­ments fea­tured on 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music had any kind of direct impact on pop­u­lar music. But many of them, like Hugh Le Caine’s 1945 Elec­tron­ic Sack­but, influ­enced the influ­encers, and they all rep­re­sent some evo­lu­tion­ary step for­ward, or side­ways, in the devel­op­ment of the sounds we hear all around us now in every pos­si­ble genre.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Crab’s his­tor­i­cal project explores what he calls “the dichoto­my between rad­i­cal cul­ture and rad­i­cal social change,” with dis­cus­sions on the links between Bol­she­vism and the avant-garde and mod­ernism and fascism—discussions of keen inter­est to cul­tur­al his­to­ri­ans and crit­i­cal the­o­rists. Oh, and the name? “The project,” Crab explains, “was begun in 1996; con­sid­er­ing elec­tron­ic music start­ed around 1880 this was quite an accu­rate title for the time.” It’s now “a bit out of date but… some­thing of a brand-name.” We’ll for­give him this minor chrono­log­i­cal inac­cu­ra­cy for the tremen­dous ser­vice his open access ency­clo­pe­dia offers to schol­ars and enthu­si­asts alike. Explore it here.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet the “Tel­har­mo­ni­um,” the First Syn­the­siz­er (and Pre­de­ces­sor to Muzak), Invent­ed in 1897

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

Hear the Great­est Hits of Isao Tomi­ta (RIP), the Father of Japan­ese Elec­tron­ic Music

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

It is the end of term this week and my film pro­duc­tion stu­dents asked me to name my favorite part of film­mak­ing. I told them it’s direct­ing, as it’s some­thing I so rarely get to do (com­pared to writ­ing) yet so involv­ing that an entire day goes by in a flash. Regard­less, I always pop out the oth­er side know­ing I was at my absolute cre­ative best. I was in the “zone” or as Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi called it in 1990, “the flow state.” And in a won­der­ful bit of syn­chronic­i­ty, not a lit­tle while lat­er, I have been charged with pre­sent­ing to you this exam­ple of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) cre­ativ­i­ty. It sim­i­lar­ly uses this under­stand­ing of the flow state to cre­ate.

In the above video, the Flow Machine devel­oped by François Pachet at Sony CSL-Paris has been fed Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, and then asked to orches­trate “cov­er ver­sions” fol­low­ing the rules set down by a genre–say bossa nova or elec­tron­ic chill music–or a song itself, in this case being the Bea­t­les’ “Pen­ny Lane.”

Pre­vi­ous attempts to cre­ate ran­dom com­put­er music have result­ed in exact­ly that–random notes, drawn from a selec­tion deter­mined by a pro­gram­mer. But that isn’t how cre­ativ­i­ty works. When we cre­ate, we under­stand our para­me­ters already, sub­con­scious­ly, and not only that, we know what we and oth­ers have done before, what “push­es the enve­lope” com­pared to using a com­plete­ly wrong ele­ment, and what makes our own cre­ativ­i­ty unique. (If we dis­cov­er it and empha­size the lat­ter over and over, it’s called style.)

The Flow Machine project aims to under­stand style and treat it as a com­pu­ta­tion­al object through which oth­er infor­ma­tion can pass. That’s what we’re see­ing in the above video. For a more thor­ough expla­na­tion of Flow Machine, watch this video.

Sup­pos­ed­ly, this will help us poor human beings in the end, as it might (it’s nev­er explained how) help us get into our own flow state more read­i­ly.

But real­ly, that’s not what I’m think­ing about. I’m more imag­in­ing a night club some­time in the future where Bea­t­les androids play not just their hits, but the hits of oth­ers as if John, Paul, George and Ringo wrote them instead. (Yes, I know that has already been done. By humans.) And your local used record shop will have a lot of LPs full of clas­si­cal ver­sions of Bea­t­les hits.

It’s an inter­est­ing video, but I wouldn’t pack up your gui­tars yet folks!

via Tech Crunch

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

Slavoj Žižek: What Ful­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

There is a per­pet­u­al argu­ment among stringed instru­ment afi­ciona­dos about the eso­teric val­ue of so-called “tonewoods.” Cer­tain­ly, to most dis­crim­i­nat­ing ears, the dif­fer­ences between an acoustic gui­tar, man­dolin, or vio­lin made of sol­id spruce or maple and one made of ply­wood seem son­i­cal­ly obvi­ous. When it comes to elec­tric gui­tars, the dis­tinc­tions between mate­ri­als can seem more neg­li­gi­ble. In blind tests many of us might have some dif­fi­cul­ty telling the dif­fer­ence between an elec­tric gui­tar made of the finest woods and one made of cheap bal­sa, lucite, or even an oil can. (Not that dif­fer­ences don’t exist!) It’s hard­ly con­tro­ver­sial to point out that acoustic instru­ments depend upon their mate­ri­als and work­man­ship in ways elec­tric instru­ments don’t.

So how might dis­crim­i­nat­ing ears respond to an elec­tric, dig­i­tal­ly 3‑D print­ed acrylic vio­lin, based loose­ly on a real Stradi­var­ius? Can such an instru­ment repli­cate the sweet sus­tain of an acoustic vio­lin, Strad or oth­er­wise? You can judge for your­self in the demon­stra­tions here. Cre­at­ed by French engi­neer and musi­cian Lau­rent Bernadac, the “3Dvarius”—the world’s first 3‑D print­ed vio­lin—is per­haps, reports Wired, “a har­bin­ger of what’s to come for musi­cal instru­ments.” Crit­ics have shown how it falls far short of recre­at­ing the sound of a tra­di­tion­al instru­ment. (See vio­lin­ist Joan­na Wronko com­pare the two at a TEDx Ams­ter­dam talk here). And yes, the 3Dvarius may look “more like an avian skele­ton than a stringed instru­ment.” But it does have some advan­tages over tra­di­tion­al vio­lins made of wood.

For one thing, syn­thet­ic instru­ments are high­ly durable and light­weight (vio­lins and cel­los made of car­bon fiber have been on the mar­ket for sev­er­al years). For anoth­er, the 3Dvarius can indeed make some pret­ty sweet sounds when plugged into Bernadac’s rig, con­sist­ing of var­i­ous effects ped­als and loop­ers. At the top, see how he uses his set­up to cre­ate jazzy mul­ti-lay­ered, mul­ti-track arrange­ments of pop­u­lar songs with the 3Dvarius. And hear a few of those songs here, along with snazzy videos—including U2’s “With or With­out You,” the Game of Thrones and X‑Files themes, and “Se Bas­tasse Una Can­zone” by Ital­ian singer/songwriter Eros Ramaz­zot­ti. (See many more on Youtube.) The 3Dvarius web­site has a step-by-step expla­na­tion of how the instru­ment is made, from ini­tial design to sur­face treat­ment and final assem­bly.

Despite its name and inspi­ra­tion, the 3Dvarius does­n’t claim to actu­al­ly dupli­cate a Stradi­var­ius, a feat long thought impos­si­ble by even the finest mod­ern luthiers. Even com­put­er sci­en­tists admit: no mat­ter how good machines get at repli­ca­tion, replac­ing tra­di­tion­al, hand­made vio­lins with print­ed copies “would lead to dig­i­tal­ly cloned instru­ments,” writes Wired, “and the loss of son­ic char­ac­ter that makes music, well, music.” And it isn’t only son­ic char­ac­ter that mat­ters to musi­cians. Sur­pris­ing­ly enough, in blind tests, many vio­lin­ists can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between a Stradi­var­ius and a high-qual­i­ty new­er mod­el vio­lin, but these find­ings do not dimin­ish the Stradi­var­ius mys­tique. The look and feel of an instru­ment and its make and pedi­gree mat­ter. As musi­cian and writer Clemen­cy Bur­ton-Hill points out, much of our fas­ci­na­tion with the Stradi­var­ius vio­lin has to do with the “sto­ry of Stradi­vari,” as well as those of the musi­cians who have owned and played his instru­ments.

And though it may be pos­si­ble to come close to their tones with cheap­er mod­ern copies and dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, we still gush over Jimi Hen­drix’s Stra­to­cast­er or Jim­my Page’s Les Paul. The 3Dvarius, I’ll admit, is a very cool idea, but it’s hard to imag­ine a dig­i­tal­ly-pro­duced plas­tic arti­fact ever acquir­ing the same intan­gi­ble aura of not only the most famous instru­ments in the world, but also of unique, hand-craft­ed new instru­ments on their way to mak­ing his­to­ry. As Wal­ter Ben­jamin argued in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­ducibil­i­ty,” it’s the authen­tic­i­ty of “aura”—the spe­cif­ic traces of his­to­ry and the fin­ger­prints of artists and mas­ter craftsmen—that we trea­sure in art. These are qual­i­ties that elude the most advanced tech­no­log­i­cal process­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Musi­cian Plays the Last Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness