The 1920s Theremin is a unique device in electronic music making, not so much used to create sounds, but perform them. OK, its eerie tone is a bit of a one-off, but it has claimed its part in music history – particularly in early sci-fi and Beach Boys tunes – largely down to this rather atmospheric tone and the way it is produced. A performer can alter the pitch and volume of the sound merely by moving their hand up and down and further away from the device. The story behind its invention and popularity is like something out of a film, and deserves its own book. As fascinating as it is, though, this story runs on a different course to that of the synth (almost, in fact, in a parallel dimension), although, like the synth, you can now create the sound of the Theremin in software and there are also up-to-date hardware versions, notably the Moog Theremini.
The concept of musique concrète is an important one in the history of electronic music production, not least because it got people thinking and composing along very different paths compared to using traditional notes, timbres and scales. Initially popularised by Pierre Schaeffer in the mid-20th century, whose work would lead to the formation of the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète and Groupe de Recherches Musicales, it would attract the likes of Pierre Boulez, Pierre Henry, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis to compose works using found sound and a more constructive approach to music creation. Stockhausen and Boulez would also use principles of chance in composition, something also adopted by the likes of John Cage (who also famously flipped the whole experimental musique concrète philosophy on its head – or foundations – by releasing a recording of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Well, why not?).
Raymond Scott has been described as the ‘audio version of Andy Warhol’ yet has largely remained behind the scenes of electronic music history. He was a composer and technologist, and while he had his music licensed in cartoons, films and musicals, it’s perhaps his electronic research that is his biggest legacy. He was one of the first people to come up with the idea of sequencing notes together, with a machine capable of producing tones. He invented the Electronium during the 60s, a device shrouded in mystery, but it was a combined synth and generative music producer – perhaps the first workstation, but almost certainly one of the first keyboard synths.
Jean-Michel Jarre must have felt pretty alone in the 70s. While Emerson, Wakeman and Downs were playing synthesisers like be-cloaked keyboard wizards, and the ’League and Cabs were exploring the machines’ innards like scientists, Jarre just wanted to create pure synth music, with lush melodies, chords and memorable tunes; nothing too experimental, but nothing too noodly. He wanted to use early sequencing, and he wanted to be popular without the pop, and with the album Oxygene, he certainly got what he wished for.
The 90s was great for electronic dance music, of course, but there was also another movement of down-tempo trip-hop that might not have always been as electronic in nature – samples came from everywhere – but its DIY ethos certainly took it cues from electronica. As well as the more obvious protagonists – check out anything from Massive Attack – you can find amazing productions by artists including DJ Shadow, Air, Björk, Howie B, Laika, Lamb and many more.
Our history concentrates on some of the main directions that electronic music took this century like dance music and EDM, but many other artists also deserve a mention and there are, of course, many more underground acts to search for.