Music technology (electric)

cabinet

.

Electric music technology refers to

or similar cabinet) and most electric pianos. Some electric organs and electric pianos include the amplifier and speaker cabinet within the main housing for the instrument.

Electric sound recording and reproduction are electrical or mechanical techniques and devices for the inscription and re-creation of

The next major technical development was the invention of the , a pocket-sized cassette player introduced in 1979, which allowed consumers to listen to their favourite albums outside of their home.

Electric instruments

Electric piano

guitar amp

to be heard by the performer and audience.

An

company.

Early electric piano recordings include Duke Ellington's in 1955 and Sun Ra's India as well as other tracks from the 1956 sessions included on his second album Super Sonic Jazz (aka Super Sonic Sounds). The popularity of the electric piano began to grow in the late 1950s after Ray Charles's 1959 hit record "What'd I Say", reaching its height during the 1970s, after which they were progressively displaced by more lightweight electronic pianos capable of piano-like sounds without the disadvantages of electric pianos' heavy weight and moving mechanical parts. Another factor driving their development and acceptance was the progressive electrification of popular music and the need for a portable keyboard instrument capable of high-volume amplification. Musicians adopted a number of types of domestic electric pianos for rock and pop use. This encouraged their manufacturers to modify them for stage use and then develop models primarily intended for stage use.

Digital electronic

Electric guitar

An

.

Invented in 1931, the electric guitar became a necessity as jazz guitarists sought to amplify their sound in the big band format. Early proponents of the electric guitar on record included Les Paul, Lonnie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, T-Bone Walker, and Charlie Christian. During the 1950s and 1960s, the electric guitar became the most important instrument in pop music.^[3] It has evolved into an instrument that is capable of a multitude of sounds and styles. It served as a major component in the development of electric blues, rock and roll, rock music, and many other genres of music.

Electric guitar design and construction vary greatly in the shape of the body and the configuration of the neck, bridge, and pickups. Guitars have a fixed

guitar playing. There are several types of electric guitar, including the solid-body guitar, various types of hollow-body guitars, the seven-string guitar, which typically adds a low B string below the low E, and the twelve-string electric guitar, which has six pairs of strings.

Popular music and rock groups often use the electric guitar in two roles: as a rhythm guitar, which provides the chord sequence or progression and sets the beat (as part of a rhythm section), and as a lead guitar, which is used to perform melody lines, melodic instrumental fill passages, and solos.

Hammond organ

The

.

The organ was originally marketed and sold by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano. It quickly became popular with professional jazz musicians, who found it a cheaper alternative to the big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a generation of organ players, and its use became more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in rhythm and blues, rock and reggae, as well as being an important instrument in progressive rock.

The Hammond Organ Company struggled financially during the 1970s as they abandoned tonewheel organs and switched to manufacturing instruments using

, which proceeded to manufacture digital simulations of the most popular tonewheel organs. This culminated in the production of the New B-3 in 2002, which provided an accurate recreation of the original B-3 organ using modern digital technology.

Hammond-Suzuki continues to manufacture a variety of organs for both professional players and churches. Other companies, such as Korg, Roland and Clavia, have also achieved success in providing emulations of the original tonewheel organs. The sound of a tonewheel Hammond can also be emulated using modern software such as Native Instruments B4.

Electric bass

The

for live performances.

Since the 1960s, the bass guitar has largely replaced the

and other rock and metal styles.

Electric sound recording and reproduction

Electric sound recording and reproduction are electrical or mechanical techniques and devices for the inscription and re-creation of

).

Phonautograph

The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air (but could not play them back—the purpose was only visual study) was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The earliest known recordings of the human voice are phonautograph recordings, called phonautograms, made in 1857. They consist of sheets of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a vibrating stylus that cut through a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it.

Phonograph

Phonograph cylinder

The first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical phonograph cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878.^[9] The invention soon spread across the globe and over the next two decades the commercial recording, distribution and sale of sound recordings became a growing new international industry, with the most popular titles selling millions of units by the early 1900s. The development of mass-production techniques enabled cylinder recordings to become a major new consumer item in industrial countries and the cylinder was the main consumer format from the late 1880s until around 1910.

Disc phonograph

The next major technical development was the invention of the

overtook the cylinder ca. 1910, and by the end of World War I the disc had become the dominant commercial recording format. In various permutations, the audio disc format became the primary medium for consumer sound recordings until the end of the 20th century, and the double-sided 78 rpm shellac disc was the standard consumer music format from the early 1910s to the late 1950s.

The long-playing 331⁄3 rpm microgroove

in 1949. In the US and most developed countries, the two new vinyl formats completely replaced 78 rpm shellac discs by the end of the 1950s, but in some corners of the world the 78 lingered on far into the 1960s. Vinyl was much more expensive than shellac, one of several factors that made its use for 78 rpm records very unusual, but with a long-playing disc the added cost was acceptable and the compact 45 format required very little material. Vinyl offered improved performance, both in stamping and in playback. If played with a good diamond stylus mounted in a lightweight pickup on a well-adjusted tonearm, it was long-lasting. If protected from dust, scuffs and scratches there was very little noise. Vinyl records were, over-optimistically, advertised as unbreakable. They were not, but they were much less fragile than shellac, which had itself once been touted as unbreakable compared to wax cylinders.

Electrical recording

Between the invention of the phonograph in 1877 and the advent of digital media, arguably the most important milestone in the history of sound recording was the introduction of what was then called electrical recording, in which a microphone was used to convert the sound into an electrical signal that was amplified and used to actuate the recording stylus. This innovation eliminated the horn sound resonances characteristic of the acoustical process, produced clearer and more full-bodied recordings by greatly extending the useful range of audio frequencies, and allowed previously unrecordable distant and feeble sounds to be captured.

Sound recording began as a purely mechanical process. Except for a few crude telephone-based recording devices with no means of amplification, such as the

-based audio devices in the 1950s.

Magnetic tape

Main article:

Magnetic tape sound recording

An important field of invention during this period was the tape recorder. Magnetic tape recording uses an amplified electrical audio signal to generate analogous variations of the magnetic field produced by a tape head, which impresses corresponding variations of magnetization on the moving tape. In playback mode, the signal path is reversed, the tape head acting as a miniature electric generator as the varyingly magnetized tape passes over it.^[12]

Magnetic tape brought about sweeping changes in both radio and the recording industry. Sound could be recorded, erased and re-recorded on the same tape many times, sounds could be duplicated from tape to tape with only minor loss of quality, and recordings could now be very precisely edited by physically cutting the tape and rejoining it. Within a few years of the introduction of the first commercial tape recorder—the

.

The ease and accuracy of tape editing, as compared to the cumbersome disc-to-disc editing procedures previously in some limited use, together with tape's consistently high audio quality finally convinced radio networks to routinely prerecord their entertainment programming, most of which had formerly been broadcast live. Also, for the first time, broadcasters, regulators and other interested parties were able to undertake comprehensive audio logging of each day's radio broadcasts. Innovations like multitracking and

broadcast cartridge

led to significant changes in the pacing and production style of radio program content and advertising.

Stereo and hi-fi

Magnetic tape enabled the development of the first practical commercial sound systems that could record and reproduce high-fidelity

in 1938.

The first commercially released movie with a stereo soundtrack was Walt Disney's

Cinemascope

four-track magnetic sound system.

EMI (UK) was the first company to release commercial stereophonic tapes. They issued their first Stereosonic tape in 1954. Others quickly followed, under the His Master's Voice and Columbia labels. 161 Stereosonic tapes were released, mostly classical music or lyric recordings. RCA imported these tapes into the US. Two-track stereophonic tapes were more successful in America during the second half of the 1950s. They were duplicated at real time (1:1) or at twice the normal speed (2:1) when later 4-track tapes were often duplicated at up to 16 times the normal speed, providing a lower sound quality in many cases. Early American 2-track stereophonic tapes were very expensive. A typical example is the price list of the Sonotape/Westminster reels: $6.95, $11.95 and $17.95 for the 7000, 9000 and 8000 series respectively. Some HMV tapes released in the USA also cost up to $15. Record companies mixed most popular music singles into monophonic sound until the mid-1960s—then commonly released major recordings in both mono and stereo until the early 1970s. Many Sixties pop albums now available only in stereo were originally released only in mono, and record companies produced the stereo versions of these albums by simply separating the two tracks of the master tape.

Magnetic tape transformed the recording industry. By the early 1950s, most commercial recordings were mastered on tape instead of recorded directly to disc. Tape facilitated a degree of manipulation in the recording process that was impractical with mixes and multiple generations of directly recorded discs. An early example is Les Paul's 1951 recording of How High the Moon, on which Paul played eight overdubbed guitar tracks. In the 1960s Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, and The Beatles (with producer George Martin) were among the first popular artists to explore the possibilities of multitrack recording techniques and effects on their landmark albums Pet Sounds, Freak Out!, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The compact cassette became a major consumer audio format and advances in electronic and mechanical miniaturization led to the development of the Sony Walkman, a pocket-sized cassette player introduced in 1979. The Walkman was the first personal music player and it gave a major boost to sales of prerecorded cassettes, which became the first widely successful release format that used a re-recordable medium: the vinyl record was a playback-only medium and commercially prerecorded tapes for reel-to-reel tape decks, which many consumers found difficult to operate, were never more than an uncommon niche market item.

Timeline

Main article: Timeline of music technology

• 1874 : Elisha Gray's Musical Telegraph
• 1876 : Alexander Graham Bell completed his designs for the telephone
• 1877 : Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner simultaneously invented the first prototypes of the phonograph
• 1888 : Thomas Edison introduces the electric motor-driven phonograph
• 1896 :
  Pianola
• 1898 :
  Telegraphone
• 1906 : Thaddeus Cahill introduces the Telharmonium to the public
• 1906 :
  Lee De Forest invented the Triode, the first vacuum tube
• 1910 :
  Vladimir Baranoff-Rossine
  constructed the Piano Optophonique
• 1912 : Major Edwin F. Armstrong is issued a patent for a regenerative circuit, making radio reception practical
• 1915 : Lee de Forest created the Audion Piano
• 1917 : Leon Theremin invented the prototype of the Theremin
• 1921 : First commercial AM radio Broadcast made by KDKA, Pittsburgh, PA
• 1926 : Jorge Mager presented his electronic instruments, in the Spharaphon line
• 1927 : Pierre Toulon and Krugg Bass invent the Cellulophone
• 1928 : René Bertrand invents the Dynaphone
• 1928 :
  tape
  .
• 1929 :
  Nikolay Obukhov
  commissioned Michel Billaudot and Pierre Duvalie to design the Sonorous Cross
• 1929 : Peter Lertes and Bruno Helberger developed the Hellertion
• 1930 : Robert Hitcock completes the Westinghouse Organ
• 1931 : George Beauchamp, the general manager of the National Guitar Corporation, developed one of the earliest electric guitars.
• 1934 :
  Hammond Organ
• 1935 :
  electrostatic reed organ^[13][14]
• 1935 :
  Precision Bass
  in the 1950s

See also

• EBow
• Frippertronics
• Gizmotron
• Moodswinger
• Prepared guitar
• Tape loop
• Third bridge

References