Heidegger

Electronic technology allows one to pay directly with sound. You can start with a sine wave and mold it into a new sound. Or you can use an electronic instrument, and express some music with it.

Electronics have been used that way musically since men figured out how to make sounds electronically.

In the 1970s, electronics became cheap enough to make machines that could synthesize any sound, so long as the sound’s physical characteristics could be calculated. Bands could afford to buy machines that produced the sounds programmed into them by the manufacturers.

In the 1980’s sampling technology dropped in price along with the price of computer technology. It became possible to take a sample of any piece of music, store it in standing-reserve, and call it back, along with other samples, and organize them in a sequence, to produce new music.

Hip hop started with DJs using turntables to play short bits from different records together and rapping over the mix. In the mid-eighties hip hop groups moved to electronic samplers and sequencers, and in the nineties personal computers became powerful enough to replace dedicated electronic devices. Computers also made it easier to edit and manipulate samples, and also to create new sounds. Musical cultures sprang up around particular electronic sounds (Acid House’s use of a particular setting on the Roland TB-303) and samples (drums from the break in The Winston’s Amen Brother are the basis of Jungle, and many genres that followed).

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Posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 6:03 am
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