alt Hacker NewsThe History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)
Comments
I'd not heard of UbuWeb before, but it sounds likr an interesting project for curating a cross-media avant-garde art collection (although it has now finished?)
"Electronic Music" is a bit of a misnomer. I think most people would think of Electronic Music as genres like rave, acid, techno, house, trance, jungle, drum and bass, dubstep, and so on. For that, you want Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music (https://music.ishkur.com/) and its branching history for how all these genres influenced and evolved from eaxh other
But this collection is just the avant-garde parts - the roots of Ishkur's tree. It's the musique concrete and theremins and radiophonic workshop type music. Those early genres only get a brief look in Ishkur, but here they are in detail.
Sadly, no mention of Louis and Bebe Barron, who together created the first all-electronic soundtrack for the 1956 movie "Forbidden Planet".
This was before the invention of the synthesizer a few years later: Louis created so-called "cybernetic circuits", which apparently had a life-cycle similar to living organisms, while Bebe arranged the resulting sounds into music.
And, to this day, no one knows exactly how they created their music... (Almost no one, that is - it's my PhD topic ;-)
A bit snobbish isn't it? No computer singing "Daisy Daisy". No Doctor Who theme. No Wendy Carlos. No Jean Michel Jarre, just to name a few.
This collection was an opener in my interest to really old electronic sound, it is called musique concrete. There are some of it on torrents, Pauline Oliveros and others are common guests in my playlist now.
A list more notable for its glaring omissions than what it includes.
The list is missing a handful of true pioneers in electro-acoustic and electronic music. I'm not thinking about composers of popular synthesizer music, which don't really fit this specific list, but people like Henk Badings, Tom Dissevelt, Jean-Jacques Perrey, Kid Baltan and Morton Subotnick.
If you ignore Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Wendy Carlos, Kraftwerk, or any of the genre defining moments/movements (like Brian Eno, The Normal, Laurie Anderson, The Belleville Three, Frankie Knuckles, LTJ Bukem, Aphex Twin, …) then the list is at best incomplete.
This is second openculture list I've seen on HN recently, and when I visit the link, I may be dumb but I cannot see a list, playlist or anything corresponding the actual title of the post.
Is it even "music" at that point? It has nothing that I associate with music: rhythm, melody, scale, etc... I don't mean these are unpleasant or uninteresting, but we are stretching the definition of music a bit here.
For example you won't call a recording of a a busy café, a thunderstorm, a jungle or a conversation "music". Foley and sound effect artists are not making music either.
These tracks felt to me more like a movie, but without the image, dialogue, and score, leaving only the ambiance sounds and effects.
Related:
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music
Previously:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44470331
Raymond Scott was left off of the list: https://youtu.be/s87cYlMInwE?feature=shared
Raymond Scott and Desmond Leslie were missing from their collection but worth seeking out.
Been listening to it for the last four hours - definitely good for focussing.
No Plastikman? Sigh
This is a bit incorrectly titled, as the source denotes that the tracks are "Electroacoustic" music, not general "Electronic".
The collection is clearly aimed at presenting music where electronic triggers and some synthesis is used in concert with acoustic instruments or spaces, and is super biased towards "Musique concrète", and concert-hall, classical compositions for what I can hear, ala Luc Ferrari.
You're not going to see an appearance of Kraftwerk, Suzanne Ciani, Wendy Carlos, or Model 500.
This is less a "history", and more an "eclectic subgenre list by date".