Music Definitions
Electronica : history : 1960s to late 1970s
How it began:
At the Radiophonic Workshop, the sound special effects unit
of the BBC, Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire created one of
the first electronic signature tunes for television as the
theme music for Doctor Who in 1963. A short OGG file
sample of this can be found here.
Although electronic music began in the world of classical
(or "art") composition, within a few years it had
been adopted into popular culture with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
In the 1960s, Wendy Carlos popularized early synthesizer music
with two notable albums The Well Tempered Synthesiser and Switched
On Bach, which took pieces of baroque classical music
and reproduced them on Moog synthesizers. The Moog generated
only a single note at a time, so that producing a multilayered
piece, such as Carlos did, required many hours of studio time.
The early machines were notoriously unstable also, and went
out of tune easily. Still, some musicians, notably Keith Emerson
of Emerson Lake and Palmer did take them on the road. The theremin,
an exceedingly difficult instrument to play, was even used
in some popular music, most notably in "Good Vibrations" by
The Beach Boys. There was also the Mellotron which appeared
in the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever, and the volume tone
pedal was uniquely used as a backing instrument in Yes It Is.
Moog was not the only early synthesizer developer. On the
West Coast, Donald Buchla developed synthesizers that were
not keyboard-based, unlike the Moog.
Technological revolution:
As technology developed, and synthesizers became cheaper,
more robust and portable, they were adopted by many rock bands.
Examples of relatively early adopters in this field are bands
like The United States of America, The Silver Apples and Pink
Floyd, and although not all of their music was primarily electronic
(with the notable exception of The Silver Apples), much of
the resulting sound was dependent upon the synthesised element.
In the 1970s, this style was mainly popularised by Kraftwerk,
who used electronics and robotics to symbolise and sometimes
gleefully celebrate the alienation of the modern technological
world; to this day their music remains uncompromisingly electronic.
In Germany particularly electronic sounds were incorporated
into popular music by bands such as Tangerine Dream, Can, and
others.
Electronica & jazz:
In jazz, amplified acoustic instruments and synthesizers
were mixed in a series of influential recordings by Weather
Report. Joe Zawinul, the synthesizer player in that group,
has continued to field ensembles of the same kind. The noted
jazz pianist Herbie Hancock with his band The Headhunters in
the 1970s also introduced jazz listeners to a wider palette
of electronic sounds including the synthesizer, which he further
explored with even more enthusiasm on the Future Shock album,
a collaboration with producer Bill Laswell in the 1980s, which
spawned a pop hit "Rockit" in 1983.
Electronica & film:
Musicians such as Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, Vangelis, Jean
Michel Jarre, the Japanese composers Isao Tomita, Kitaro also
popularised the sound of electronic music. The film industry
also began to make extensive use of electronic music in soundtracks;
an example of a film whose soundtrack is heavily dependent
upon this is Stanley Kubrick's film of Anthony Burgess's novel A
Clockwork Orange.
The score for Forbidden Planet had used an electronic
score, although not synthesizers per se, in 1956 and, once
electronic sounds became a more common part of popular recordings,
other science fiction films such as Blade Runner and
the Alien series of movies began to depend heavily
for mood and ambience upon the use of electronic music and
electronically derived effects. Electronic groups were also
hired to produce entire soundtracks, in the same way as other
popular music stars.
3345, the Vinyl Records Home.
|
