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The Origins of Electronic Music

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The Origins of Electronic Music Electronic music is produced using mainly electronic instruments in such a way that the focus of the production is mostly on those instruments. Vocals may also be a part of the music, and if they are included they only go together with the electronic aspects to aid the music and are not considered the main focus. Electronic music is very popular today, but what many people don't know is that people were engaged in electronic music even a hundred years ago. Today electronic music is a broad term used for everything that is produced using electronic devices. The surfacing of electronic music started with Thaddeus Cahill in 1897. He invented the teleharmonium, which was seen as the first electronic instrument of the time. This machine was huge and weighed a few tons and it was almost as big as a car. Thaddeus Cahill designed the instrument to listen to music through telephone receivers. It was Thaddeus Cahill's idea to broadcast music in restaurants, hotels, and in people's homes. What he did not realize was that his plan was actually pretty well thought out. Because of him we make massive use of streaming media. In 1919, an instrument for electronic music production called the theremin was invented by a Russian inventor Leon Theremin. The Beach Boys used this theremin instrument in their song "Good Vibrations". With simply moving a right hand along an aerial move , they were able to change the pitch of this instrument. After the World War II, electronic production went into production more than ever. This was because of the invention of the tape recorder and these primitive synthesizers. Groups of composers saw new possibilities, and noticed that they could make sounds and composition that were not possible with normal instruments. They tested all kinds of processes and functions on magnetic tapes. In 1957, one of those groups, The American Max Mathews began the Bell Laboratories to compose music using a computer. Even though electronic music started as classical composition in the sixties, it increasingly went towards pop culture. Back then Moog synthesizers were used that could only play music one note at a time and these devices were not very stable, and could not very tone. In the early seventies, Germany experimented with many forms of electronic music. Their most famous electronic music group from this time was Kraftwerk. This group had a major influence on the development of electronic music. Kraftwerk broke in 1974 worldwide with the album "Autobahn" This album used a minimoog that was extremely sophisticated at that time. After their release of this album, Kraftwerk started experimenting with the possibilities offered by electronic music. In the early eighties, the electronic instruments were developed and artists were able to use digital instead of analog synthesizers and samplers. the first samplers were extremely expensive devices that were priced around $100,000. Around that time Detroit was famous for the techno music, and Chicago was famous for its house music. These two are known to be the origins of the contemporary "dance" music. In the nineties, the price of equipment started falling down and this form of music became increasingly accessible to everyone. Electronic music got much bigger when the personal computer was introduced. It was the time period when everyone started engaging themselves in the electronic music.

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