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Historical Content

  • 500 BCE

    Western Art Music

    Western Art Music
    Western art music, also known as classical music nowadays, is art music produced or rooted in the traditions of western culture, including both liturgical and secular music.
  • Phonograph Disk / Record

    Phonograph Disk / Record
    A photograph record is an analog sound storage, medium in the form of a flat desk with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The photograph can record any sound and play back. It consists of a tin foil which is wrapped round a cylinder and a very thin membrane. This is called a diaphragm which is attached to a needle.This is called a diaphragm, which is attached to a needle
  • Carbon Button Microphone

    Carbon Button Microphone
    A carbon button microphone is a type of microphone that converts sound to an electrical audio signal. It consists of two metal plates which are separated by granules of carbon. One plate is a very thin and faces the person speaking. Sound waves strike the diaphragm and it causes it to vibrate, this exerts a varying pressure on the granules, and in turn, changes the electrical resistance between the plates.
  • Gramophone

    Gramophone
    gramophone is a device for recording and reproduction of sound. It can read the sound with a small needle which fits into the groove is in the recording. That needle is attached to a diaphragm, which is attached to a horn. Gramophones can play vinyl which can be looped. Live ‘vinyl’ looping is doable by using the right effects and softwares. You can sample a phrase playing on a vinyl record and loop it.
  • Tape Recorder

    Tape Recorder
    A tape recorder is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds using magnetic tape for storage. Tapes can be looped by taping the ends of a short piece of magnetic ribbon and a tape loop and sticking it back together inside the cassette tape. Tape recorders can be rewind it which means that you can listen to the recording over and over again in a loop. Terry Riley is one of the first few people who used a tape recorder in his performance.
  • Radio

    Radio
    The radio is the technology of signals and communication which is used to create by radio waves. In the mid 1890s, Guglielmo Marconi developed the first ever apparatus for long-distance radio communication. On 31 August 1920, the first known radio news program was broadcasted by station 8MK. Over the years, the radio was developed and used not only for communication to other citizens, but also for music and entertainment.
  • Telharmonium

    Telharmonium
    The telharmonium was an early electrical organ developed by Thaddeus Cahill circa 1896 and patented in 1897. The electrical signal from the telharmonium wa transmitted over wired; it was heard on the receiving end by means of “horn” speakers.
  • Shellac Recorder

    Shellac Recorder
    A shellac recorder is like a flat disc recorder, made between 1898 and the late 1950s. Schallac wasn’t only used to produce records full of sweet - sounding melodies. It was also used to produce explosives when World War II began. A shellac recorder is very similar to a vinyl nowadays.
  • Dance Music

    Dance Music
    Dance music is music composed specifically to accompany dancing. It can either be a whole musical piece or a part of a larger musical arrangement. Dance music is usually heard in live dance performances and recorded dance music. It all started around the 19th century.
  • Magnetic Tape

    Magnetic Tape
    Magnetic tape is a magnetic recording which is made of thin magnetisable coating on a long narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on magnetic wire recording. Magnetic tape is used to capture a speech and music.
  • Theremin

    Theremin
    The theremin is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the thereminist. It is named after its inventor, Leon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928.
  • Talk Box

    Talk Box
    Talk box is an effects unit that allows musicians to modify the sound of a musical instrument by shaping the frequency content of the sound, and to apply speech sounds on to the sounds of the instrument. Many guitarists used a talk box at the time such as Peter Frampton, who used one on his rock hit ‘Show Me The Way’, as well as Bon Jovi, where he featured a talk box on the introduction to Living On A Prayer.
  • Musique Concrete

    Musique Concrete
    Musique concrete is a type of music composition that utilizes recorded sounds as raw material. Sounds are often modified through the application of audio effects and tape manipulation techniques, and may be assembled into a form of montage. The technique was developed about 1948 by a french composer Pierre Schaeffer and his associates at the studio d'Essai of the french radio system. Schaeffer was one of the very known artists who used musique concrete.
  • Pop Music

    Pop Music
    Pop is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. Artists like Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and many more, create and perform songs around that genre of music.
  • Rock Music

    Rock Music
    Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as ‘’rock and roll’ in the US in the late 1940 and early 1950s. It developed into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the US and the UK. One of the most famous rock bands of all time is The Beatles, who formed in Liverpool in 1960.
  • Electroacoustic

    Electroacoustic
    Electroacoustic music is a genre of western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonising, on acoustic instruments. Artists like Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis and Pauline Oliveros created electroacoustic music.
  • RCA Mark 2 Sound Synthesizer

    RCA Mark 2 Sound Synthesizer
    The RCA Mark 2 Sound Synthesizer was the first programmable electronic synthesizer and the flagship piece of equipment at the Columbia - Princeton Electronic Music Centre. It was designed by Herbert Belar and Harry Olson at RCA, and installed at Columbia University in 1957.
  • Max Mathews

    Max Mathews
    Max Mathews is known as a computer music’s greatest pioneer. His one of the early achievements was writing music programs while at Bell Labs in USA. This was used to create a 17 second piece that was performed in New York City on an 1BM 707 compute.
  • REDD 17

    REDD 17
    The EMI REDD 17 is a vacuum tube-based mixing desk, which was designed by EMI for their Abbey Road studio. They were used to mix several albums, which included the Beatles’ albums and the first two Pink Floyd albums. REDD 17 has eight channels that can create a basic template with a row of faders, bass, and tremble EQs.
  • Ace Tone Rhythm Box

    Ace Tone Rhythm Box
    In the 1967, a drummer who played in the Dutch pop band the VIPs, called Felix Visser, DIY modified one of the pre-Roland music era Ace Tone electronic rhythm box drum machine. It was supposed to play simple preprogrammed rhythms so that it could be played as a life instrument. The Ace Tone rhythm box was designed by Ikutaro Kakehashi, and the box had a metronomic machinelike sound.
  • Kraakdoos

    Kraakdoos
    A Kraakdoos, also known as a cracklebox, is a custom made instrument, in the form of a noise making electronic device. It is a small box with six metal contacts on top, which generate various unusual sounds and tones when pressed by the performers singers. This little toy was invented by Michel Waisvisz from 1960s to 70s.
  • Mellotron

    Mellotron
    The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England in 1963. It’s involved from the similar Chamberlin, but could be mass-produced more efficiently.
  • Terry Riley

    Terry Riley
    In 1963, Riley released Music For The Gift, a collection of work in which he used tape delay to fragment, attenuate and return time, looping the music of Chat Baker’s quartet using a twin-tape recorder. It was a world first. In 1969, Riley composed ‘A Rainbow In Curved Air’, using tape loops in a live performance. He used a melodic base and layered repetition, setting a lead for how loop pedals structure songs and live performances nowadays.
  • Clavinet

    Clavinet
    The clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord that was invented by Ernst Zacharices and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany from 1964 to the early 1980s. Hohner produced seven models over the years, designated I, II, L, C, D6, E7, and Duo.
  • Moog Synthesizer

    Moog Synthesizer
    The Moog Synthesizer Is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog’s company R.A. Moog Co. produced numerous models from 1965 to 1980. It was the first commercial with creating the analog synthesizer as it is known today.
  • Electro - Harmonix ( EHX )

    Electro - Harmonix ( EHX )
    Electro - Harmonix loop pedals record your guitar as you play a riff or a chord sequence and it plays back to you in a loop.
  • New Wave

    New Wave
    New Wave is a musical genre that encompasses numerous pop styles from the late 1970s and the 1980s. It was originally used as a catch-all for the music that emerged after punk rock, including punk itself, but may be viewed retrospectively as a more accessible counterpart of post-punk. Some popular artists such as Duran Duran, Talking Heads and Blondie have experience creating New Wave music.
  • Industrial Music

    Industrial Music
    Industrial music is a genre of music that started in the early mid-1970s. It draws on harsh, transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. All music defines industrial music as the ‘most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music’ that was ‘initially a blend of avant-garde electronics experiments and punk provocation.'
  • Post Punk

    Post Punk
    Post Punk is a musical genre performed by artists like The Cure. It is a broad genre of rock music which emerged in the late 1970s as artists departed from the raw simplicity and traditionalism of punk rock, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-rock influences.
  • Graeme Edge

    Graeme Edge
    The first ever electronic drum was created in the early 1970s by Graeme Edge, who was a drummer of a band called Moody Blues. The electronic drum was used in a song ‘Procession’ from the 1971 album, ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour’.
  • Minimoog

    Minimoog
    Minimoog is an analog synthesizer which was first manufactured by Moog Music between 1970 and 1981. In the 1960s, synthesizer, (in the form of large, expensive, and complex modular synthesizers), were inaccessible to most musicians. A keyboardist named Rick Wakeman was one of a few performer who played on a minimoog.
  • Birotron

    Birotron
    The Birotron is a tape replay keyboard conceived by American musician and inventor Dave Biro of Yalesville Connecticut, and funded by English Keyboardist Rick Wakeman in the 1970s, and Ruskin-Wiley of Pepperidge Farm Foods and Air Shield in the early 1980s.
  • Pollard Syndrum

    Pollard Syndrum
    Pollard Syndrum was first advertised and released by Pollard Industries in 1976. It consisted of an electronic sound generator and one or more drum pads. Pollard Syndrum caught some drummers eyes, such Carmie Appice and Terry Bozzio. However, the Syndrum was a financial failure and its company failed the following years.
  • Yamaha CS - 80

    Yamaha CS - 80
    Yamaha CS - 80 is a polyphonic analog synthesiser which can support eight voice polyphony, with two independent synthesiser layers per voice each with its very own front panel controls. It’s ribbon controller allows polyphonic pitch bends and glissandos to happen.
  • SDS-5

    SDS-5
    SDS-5 has hexagon shaped pads that were first used by Richard James Burgess on From the Tea-rooms Mars, ‘Chat No.1 Spandau Ballet and ‘Angel Face’ by Shock. The sound of the SDS-5 was often described as ‘awful‘ and even ‘sounded like trash can lids’ by those who and bought them at the time. Despite all the negative comments, SDS-5 were still used by musicians in the 1980s by pop/rock and synthpop groups such as Duran Duran and progressive rock bands such as Rush and many more.
  • Commondore 64

    Commondore 64
    In the 1960s and 70s, technology slowly started to change and develop into better. When Commondore 64 launched, home computer music making became easier for artists and more popular. C46’s SID Sound chip allowed to create music using a whopping three channels of synthesis. This device is still popular nowadays and can be found on Macs and PCs. This device is still popular nowadays and can be found on Macs and PCs.
  • MIDI

    MIDI
    MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI is mostly used by high-tech music makers. it enables computers, synths and other hardware, to communicate with each other. Without MIDI, music making would be very different nowadays.
  • Atari ST

    Atari ST
    Back in the 80s, Atari ST was a machine that every computer musician wanted to own and use. The idea of Atari ST was to fit it with any MIDI ports, which could make a perfect platform for those who were looking to bring external hardware under the control of their computer.
  • Gravikord

    Gravikord
    The gravikord is a modern, 24 string, electric double bridge-harp, invented by Robert Grawi in 1986, which is closely related to both the west African Kora and the Kalimba.
  • Sampler - Akai MPC60

    Sampler - Akai MPC60
    A sampler is an electronic or digital musical instrument which uses sound recordings of real instrument sounds, excerpts from recorded songs or found sounds. Some recordings used from a sampler are piano, violin and trumpet sounds. Akai MPC60 was designed by Roger Linn. It is usually used in hip hop. The sampler was used by professional artists such as DJ Shadow and Jimmy Edgar.
  • Cubase

    Cubase
    Cubase is a music software released by Steinberg. The first version introduced the concept of the ‘arrange page’ with its vertical list of tracks. It was a design that very quickly became the standard interface for all commercially develop sequences. Later on in 1997, Steinberg came out with a new version of Cubase: Cubase VST, which allowed to not only record multiple audio tracks on the computer, but also to process them with plug-in affects. [continuation >>> 1999]
  • J-pop

    J-pop
    J-pop has been a musical genre from 1990s. It is a genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan. J-pop is known for voice samplers, drum machines, synthesizers and keyboards.
  • Roland TD-10

    Roland TD-10
    TD-10 has two major musical and electronic innovations. The drums method of providing noises for the drums and/or pads trigger, instead of generating its sound by using samples of either an acoustic drum or cymbal. TD-10 uses mathematical models that allow to generate tones using synthesises.
  • Cubase [continuation]

    Cubase [continuation]
    In 1999, Steinberg released Cubase VST 3.7. This new version of Cubase gave an option to plug software instruments directly into the DAW.
  • Reason

    Reason
    Reason is a digital audio workstation for creating and editing music and audio developed by a Swedish software company Called Reason Studios. Reason emulates a rack of hardware synthesisers, samplers, digital processors, sequences and mixers, all of which can be freely interconnected in a casual manner.
  • Boss RC - 20 XL

    Boss RC - 20 XL
    Weather for use at home or on stage, RC - 20 XL allows musicians to create multi - layered performances in real time. Loops and riffs can be stacked repeatedly until the 16 minutes of ample recording space is full.
  • Ableton Live

    Ableton Live
    Ableton Live is the digital audio workstation developed by Ableton for MacOS and Windows. In difference to other software sequences, Ableton Live is designed to be an instrument for life performances, as well as a tool for composing, recording, arranging, mixing and mastering. Many artists nowadays use Ableton for their life performances on stage.
  • Boss RC - 30

    Boss RC - 30
    The RC - 30 allows you to create and layer two loops that can be easily switched back and forth during a performance. The two twin loops have individual volume faders so you can ensure both loops match in volume. Ed Sheeran is a very known for using a RC - 30 in nearly every live performance that he performs at. He performed one of his popular songs He performed one of his popular songs ‘Shape Of You‘, at Glastonbury festival in 2017, using only an acoustic guitar, a keyboard and a loop station.
  • Logic Pro X Loops

    Logic Pro X Loops
    You can loop regions so that they play repeatedly, and extended them to fill any amount of musical time in the tracks area. When playing the project, the region repeats the number of times you have extended or even looped. You can also loop to a region that has been resized.