Origins of Electronic Music Technology
In the early 20th century, people were keen to develop electronic and electromechanical instruments for the production of music. The first all electronic instrument is widely regarded to be the Theremin, an instrument that can be played without touching it - consisting of two radio oscillators and two metal loop antennas (pictured right). It was invented by Léon Theremin in Russia in 1919, originally it was the product of Russian government-sponsored research into proximity sensors. The instrument remains unique to this day, and has been used by performers & musicians seeking its eerie, mystical, alien sound.
Robert Moog, when he was a student in the 1950's was so intrigued by the Theremin instrument that he set up a business selling them, and kits for people to make their own. This company, later called Moog Music, helped him launch his Minimoog Model D Synthesizer in 1971. You can buy do-it-yourself kits to build your own Theremin, see http://www.thereminworld.com/shop_theremins.asp for details on a kit designed by Robert Moog. 
While the Theremin was certainly extraordinary, it eventually did not go down well with serious musicians in the West. The next big thing was magnetic recording tape, used on reels and later in cassette tapes. Developed in Germany by Fritz Pfleumer in 1926, it was based on the invention of magnetic wire recording in 1898 by Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen. The early magnetic tape was used in reel-to-reel recorders during the 1930's in Germany, but it was not until after the war when an American audio engineer, Jack Mullin, was sent to investigate German radio and electronics activities, he discovered early reel-to-reel machines and many reels of tape at a German radio station near Frankfurt. He shipped these back home to America and set to work developing the commercial potential of the technology, he demonstrated his reel-to-reel tape recording machine to Hollywood in 1947.
Musical composers around 1950 adopted a technique of recording natural and industrial sounds and using them in their music, sometimes with orchestral classical pieces. The recording tape facilitated this with its potential for editing, where the tape is physically cut and joined together to put the music together, tape could record longer than previous technology and multi-track recording was possible, this gave musicians a lot of possibilities. Continued in Part 2: 'History of Synthesizers.'. Email this story to a friend  Add this link to:            
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