David Byrne discusses the effect that contemporary listening spaces have had on music composition throughout history.
Kraftwerk and the Electronic RevolutionJune 5, 2010
A sprawling, 3 hour history of electronic music centred on Kraftwerk and their contemporaries. Great stuff.
Kraftwerk 1/18:
Chronology of Computer Music and Related Events 1906 – 2010June 3, 2010
Paul Doornbusch has posted an interesting summary of how technological developments since 1906 relate to musical developments during the same timeframe.
This is a somewhat extended and updated version based on the same item originally published in The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music late in 2009. When attempting such a chronology or timeline, even one such as this which mostly ignores the commercial music world, it quickly becomes apparent that there is so much activity that it will necessarily be incomplete. It is impossible to list all of the events which have taken place in any locale or time. Given these limitations, perhaps this is still of some limited use as some sort of chronological overview of computer music research and related events.
Chronology of Computer Music and Related Events 1906 – 2010
Bassline Baseline Roland TB-303 DocumentaryMay 17, 2010
Bassline Baseline is a short documentary about the development and impact of the Roland TB-303 by Nate Harrison.
The production values are weak, the narration sounds a bit like a speech synthesizer and there are some mistakes (the TB-303 didn’t have a sine oscillator, it had a pseudo-square wave created by modifying a sawtooth), but the history makes it worth watching.
Today we have computer software, consisting of representations of a three-dimensional interface on a two-dimensional screen, being controlled by third-party software so as to emulate the sound of a machine built twenty years ago, which was itself built to emulate the sound of a machine built 30 years before it.
NonSonic: Radio Shack Catalogs 1939-2005May 15, 2010
RadioShackCatalogs.com is an archive of every Radio Shack catalog published from 1939 to 2005. Awesome.
Homer Simpson: “We’ll search out every place a sick twisted solitary misfit might run to.”
Lisa Simpson: “I’ll start with Radio Shack.”