Investigation of Electronic Music, Research Paper Example

Synthesizer-Music Instrument

Live electronic music came up in 1960s to react against the use of tape music, seen by many people as rationalistic and technocratic activity. It was believed by many composers that, the elements that were central to live music creation in studios were lacking. They included dialogue, spontaneity, group interaction and discovery. The live music became a major area of innovation in electronic music in 1970s. Live electronic music often makes use of electronic or instrumental sounds excluding those prerecorded. Various sounds timbres may be transformed during performance by use of devices like filters, amplifiers and ring modulators. Fine music detail is determined by electronic processing (Brent 34).

Synthesizer is an electronic instrument which is capable of producing several sounds by generating signals and then combining them at different frequencies. The synthesizers create signals that are electric other than acoustic sounds that are direct and of which are played through headphones or loudspeakers. They are controlled by piano style key board thus making the instrument be called keyboard by many people (Brent 33).

Voltage controlled synthesizer was invented in 1945 by Hugh Le Caine although he did not receive much commercial success with this invention. This success was received by Robert Moog, an American engineer. He finely crafted the synthesizer modules that were solid state which he did introduce at mid-1960s and sold them successfully. Although Moog was not the inventor, he has become most recognized in the world. Moog synthesizer which was produced in both performance and modular designs was commonly used instrument during 1960s and 1970s in electronic music studios. This essay is going to look in the history of electronic and music instruments from the time of voltage controlled synthesizer.

In the 1960s i.e. electronic music fertile years, synthesizer technology became even more accessible. Strong musicians and composers community who were working with new instruments and sounds grew and became established. At Czechoslovakia in 1964, Electronic music first seminar was held in Plzen at Radio Broadcast station. Electro-acoustic music studios were sanctioned by four governments which were later established under the auspices of extant television and radio stations. Development of new instruments continued as Robert Moog introduced Moog synthesizer. Moog music introduced smaller synthesizer later, which had built in keyboard and a hardwired signal path known as Minimoog. It was introduced to universities as many composers and popular musicians widely used it (Hal 24).

Wendy Carlos album Switched on Bach is an example of well known Moog Modular synthesizer user. This triggered synthesizer music craziness. More than 50 music studios that were electronic were constructed in USA and especially in universities.

An Italian pioneer of tape music and computer composition called Pietro Grossi was first to experiment electronic techniques in early sixties. Pietro founded S 2F M in year 1963 so as to experiment electronic sound and the composition.

Early 1960s, live electronics were pioneered by Milton Cohen’s Space Theater members at Ann Arbor, Michigan USA. They included Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma. John Cage in 1960 composed cartilage music which was one of earliest works of live electronics. Karlheinz Stockhausen in1964 at Europe composed mikrophonia 1 for the tam-tam, filters, hand held microphones, four ring modulators, potentiometers, four sine wave generators and mixture for orchestra. He composed mikrophonia II in 1965 for choir, ring modulators and Hammond organ.

In 1964 first voltage controlled synthesizer which was portable was designed by Paul Ketoff in Rome Italy, it was called the Synket.

Reed Ghazala in 1966-67 discovered circuit bending, which had a creative short circuit application, chance short circuiting process, and experimental electronic instruments creation, sonic elements like timbre exploration with less regard to the rhythm or pitch. It was influenced by aleatoric music concept of John cage.

In 1969 peter Zinnovieff an English electronic engineer created EMS an electronic music instrument. Its products included VCS 3: which is a VCO monosynth with a joystick and a routable pinball. It had created a software synthesis forerunner which was a computer synthesis language.

Charles Wuorinen in 1970 composed Time’s Encomium which was Pulitzer prize winner in overall electronic composition. Synthesizers were also used in mainstream rock music in 1970s with examples like Tangerine Dream, Yes and Emerson, Pink Floyd and others. The Mini-Moog was released by Moog music in 1970 and it was widely available, relatively affordable and portable among the first synthesizers. It was most extensively used synthesizer in electronic and the popular art music.

Minimoog control panel was divided into 3 sections which include; sound generator (voltage-controlled oscillator), filter (voltage controlled filter) and the amplifier or voltage controlled amplifier. For sound to be produced, a sound shape was first chosen by musician and was to be generated from voltage controlled oscillator or sound generator.

In Paris, IRCAM became a research major headquarter for computer music, and also development and realization of computer system called Sogitec 4X (workstation developing digital sound), which was featuring real time digital processing signal. Pierre Boulez used 4X to change and route soloists to a system of loud speaker.

In 1970s, a novelty instrument called Optigan was designed, build and marketed by Optigam Corporation in Compton USA. The Optigan’s unusual feature was sound synthesis method. Optigan read waveforms graphical representations optically from a series of celluloid LP 12” discs therefore the word optigan. It read discs by passing a beam of light through transparent discs which was reduced by a printed waveform shape and picked by photoelectric cell causing voltage that was variable, which it amplified and passed to speakers.

In 1978, a synthesizer called Conbrio was introduced. It had a dual manual split keyboard, a large control cube for the disk drives, CRT video display for sound envelopes viewing and computer hardware. The 200 model was more compact and smaller version of 100 models. The CRT display had included score notation and the instrument, which boasted four track sequencers and five microprocessors to generate sound which or that allowed phase modulation, additive synthesis, nested phase and frequency modulation.

In 1972, Roland Corporation was established in Japan. It released the first musical instrument in 1973 called Japans first synthesizer SH1000. It was affordable and portable analogue synthesizer. Roland released in same year (1973) an electronic Combo piano. Roland in 1976 released 700 modular studio system synthesizers which aimed broadcasting market. Roland continued in producing innovative instruments, with GR500 series analogue synthesizer (guitar) and first rhythm machine (compurhytm CR78). In1980s, a range of inexpensive sequencers, drum machines and synthesizers were released by Roland.

In 1973, Trevor G Marshall of Australia built synthesizers kits. The first models were 3600 and 4600 analogue and hybrid digital synthesizers.

In 1970s, the Can and Residents band lead in the movement of music that had electronic sounds. Can used tape loops for rhythm sections while Residents bands created their own drum machine that was custom built. Kraftwerk, a German band took a pure electronic approach on the records like 1974’s Autobahn. They were other musicians like Jean Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream and Vangelis who composed electronic instrumental music in 1970s.

The prototype Synclavier was developed at the Dartmouth College in New Hampshire USA in 1975. Hardware designs was developed by Sydney Alonso, Cameron Jones developed the software while Jon Appleton was musical advisor in that project. It was a digital synthesizer that was self contained and based on integrated circuits network and microprocessors. The users were shielded from complexities of software by push button keypads that were comprehensive. Video display units, hard disk and QWERTY keyboard were incorporated in latter models.

EDP (electronic dream plant) Wasp was released in 1978 in UK as budget monosynth. It was a high performing and low cost instrument and advanced synthesizer design. It was built in yellow plastic and garish black with a flat yellow laminated two octave keyboard. The instrument’s sound came from two digital voltage controlled oscillator which were running through an analogue voltage controlled filter that gave instrument powerful and distinctive sound.

Yamaha CS80 polyphonic Synthesizer of 1976 was a modification of GXI model. It had very complex polyphonic synthesizer with 32 filters, 16 oscillators and 32 envelopes which allowed voices to split, layered and then stored in a six part allocated memory. It had velocity sensitive keyboard with a sensitivity of poly after touch.

In Hamburg Germany 1975, Palm Productions GmbH was made by Wolfgang Palm. The earliest models were model 300 synthesizers, 360 wave computer and PPG 1002. In 1977, all digital synthesizer designs started being experimented by Palm. Palms choose for digital wavetable oscillators due to prohibition of an all digital design due to the technical limitations of that time. He fed it into analogue filters and voltage controlled analogue. The instrument that resulted was PPG wave 2 which later developed to wave term and wave 2.3 in 1985. Realizer (16-bit/44.1 kHz hard disk recorder) was last product by Palm in 1986. Palm went on with his work in a company in German called Waldorf Electronics in which he supplied designs to them for wavetable chips which were used in Waldorf Microwave.

The Fairlight CMI was designed by Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie who were Australian engineers. They had established a manufacturing company called Fairlight, it manufactured and sold video special boxes. Prototype was called QASAR M8 of 1978 which later developed to Fairlight Computer Music Instrument in the year 1979. This instrument was first commercially digital sampling instrument that was available, which instead generated the sounds from the wave data that was mathematical.

Casio synthesizers were made by electronic company in Japan. It was a digital instrument with menu driven programming interface. Phase Distortion synthesis was CZ line used. The first available MIDI keyboards were the CZ line.

E-mu systems was innovative digital audio products leading developer, it was based on the digital sampling technology for computer controlled and music instrument sound markets. The E-mu products had features like CD quality sound with high resolution; ease of use was superior and extensive programming. It was based at Scott’s valley, CA in 1980.

In 1986, Waldorf Company was established in Germany near Waldorf village. It released its first product in 1988 called Microwave wavetable synthesizer which was followed in 1992 by Wave synthesizer.  It has 16, 32 to 48 voices with 2 oscillators each, 2 wavetable generators in addition with 1 noise generator, multimode Filter, panorama, amplifier, ADSR Amplifier envelope, control delay etc.

Oscar analogue synthesizer was made by Electronic Dream Plant Ltd in oxford UK. Oscar was compact dual oscillator synthesizer built into a casing of rubber. It had 2 wide range DCO’S which had capability of producing digital additive waveforms that are programmable and analogue style waveforms. Oscar came with the inbuilt of 580 step sequencer, it had 12 RAM/24 ROM memory for your sounds, sequences and waveforms storage. MIDI and EPROM upgraded version was released in 1984 (Ziff 53).

In 1983, Raymond Kurzweil founded Kurzweil Music Systems Inc. which developed revolutionary reading machine to scan written materials for blind and read them aloud in a voice that was synthesized. An electronic instrument which blended acoustic sound richness with control and modification of sound in electronics was created later. The engineers developed a sampling keyboard with ROM to reproduce full complexity of the sounds acoustic instrument successfully in 1983.

In 1984, Alesis Corporation in Hollywood, California by former MXR engineer Keith Barr. It aimed at creating instruments and audio instruments which were affordable and of high quality. Digit effect units like XT Digital Reverb were first products of that company in 1985. In 1993, Alesis released first keyboard synthesizer called Quadra Synth which was a 64 voice 76 key digital synthesizer which did came as a keyboard version and the S4 64 voice sound Module. Quadrasynth had onboard sample ROM of 16 MB (Ziff 54).

Psychoacoustics is study of human perception of the sound or study of psychological correlates of acoustics physical parameters.

Hearing is not only a mechanical wave propagation phenomenon, but it is perceptual and sensory event. When something arrives in, it is changed into the neural action potentials. The pulses of the nerve then travel to brain to be perceived. Therefore it is important to take into consideration when designing the electronic instruments (synthesizers) that both ear and brains are involved in sound detection. The inner ear converts sound wave forms to neural stimulus which makes some differences between the waveforms that are imperceptible. This fact is used by audio compression and MP3 techniques. Ear has got a response that is non linear with different loudness levels of the sound. Systems of audio noise reduction do make use of this fact by compressing data samples nonlinearly before transmission and then expands them for playback. Ear’s nonlinear response effect is that, sounds close in frequency that does produce distorted intermodulation products or phantom beat notes.  Human ears hear sounds of between 20 HZ to 20000 HZ in which the upper limit decrease with time. Frequencies below 20 HZ are not responded to by the ears but only by body’s sense of touch. Sounds above 20000 HZ have hypersonic effect and cannot be heard consciously and have some adverse effects to the listeners. The design of these music technology thus to a great extent are designed in such a way that they do not exceed those parameters or don’t go below them so as to avoid any damages or inconveniences that may occur when using them (Aage 43).

Ear’s frequency resolution is 0.36 HZ within an octave of 1000 to 2000 HZ. If any pitch is larger than 0.36 HZ, it can only be perceived through a clinical setting.

The hearing absolute threshold is pure tone sound level which is minimum noise that can be heard in a noiseless environment by an average ear in normal hearing. To conclude the design of the music electronics in relation to human anatomy, there are some limitations to be considered which include; high frequency limit, absolute threshold of hearing, simultaneous masking and temporal masking. Any unwanted frequencies should be masked out so as to enhance other frequencies. Any designed electronic music should take into consideration those elements (Aage 43).

Analogue recording does the work of transforming sound waves energy into physical imprints or into electronic waveforms and that follow the sound waves shape.  Digital recording samples the waves of the sound and breaks them to a stream of numbers. A device known as Analogue-to-digital converter does the work of conversion. A stream of numbers is changed back to or transformed to analogue wave by a device called digital-to-analogue converter (DAC). Analogue waves that are produced by DAC are amplified and then fed to the speakers for sound production. Synthesizers that allowed the musician to create sounds in music started to appear on the rock records in early 1970s. Digital synthesizer uses the technique of digital signal processing (DSP) in making music sound. Electronic keyboards create music through the sound waves. Analogue synthesizer generates sound electronically using the analogue computer and analog circuit’s techniques (Tom 25).

Frequency Modulation (FM) is used to transmit the information by varying its frequency over a carrier wave. In the analogue application, the carrier instantaneous frequency is proportional to instantaneous value of input signal. FM is used at the audio frequencies in synthesizing of the sound in a technique called FM synthesis which was made popular by the early digital synthesizers. The Digital data can be sent to the shifting of the carrier frequency between a set of discrete values and a frequency shift keying technique. Hybrid is a mixed signal of both analogue and digital to make a processor for solving problems in various systems (Martin 35).

The modern synthesizers have different prices depending with the type and model (Andy 1). Some of the synthesizers include Yamaha Tyros 3 Professional Keyboard costs around $3999 including a speaker and stand.

Works Cited

Aage R. Hearing: anatomy, physiology and disorders of auditory system. London: Academic Press.

Andy. Andy’s Music. 9 Sept. 2009. 12 Nov. 2009 <http://www.andysmusiconline.com/categories/keyboard-synthesizers/5.html>.

Brent H. Synthesizer basics. New York: H. Leonard Books, 1998.

Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation. Synthesizer technique. New York: H. Leonard Pub. Corp, 1984.

Martin R. Sound synthesis and sampling. New York: Focal Press, 1996.

Tom D. The Art of electronic music. New York: W.Morrow, 1984.

Ziff D. Popular electronics, volumes 7-8. Michigan: Ziff-Davis pub, Co, 2008.