Pioneering Instruments

The electronic instruments we are so familiar with today evolved from the ideas of a few visionary pioneers. Mark Brend goes back in time...

These days, technology moves at such a rapid pace it seems like your latest gizmo is rendered obsolete before you’ve even had time to unpack it. So imagine, if you can, a time when things moved at a more sedate pace. A time before software synths, before MIDI, before sequencers, before solid-state technology – even before voltage control, when music was made by little more than a collection of valves housed in a wooden box. That’s how it was for the first half-century of electronic music – a triumph of imagination over technology, when corralling even a handful of notes into something akin to a tune took painstaking care, and creating a full-blown score was as ambitious as flying a Tiger Moth to the moon.

This feature first appeared in Music Tech Magazine issue 52
Filed under General Features

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