Electronic Dance Music

History of electronic music

It may come as a surprise to many of you, but electro music is not an invention of the second half of the 20th century. And it was not originally popular music. Plans to create self-playing and even self-composing devices are much earlier. The first electronic instrument was the musical telegraph, invented in 1876 by Elisha Gray. Of course, the inventors did not stop there and invented more and more new instruments, which in the early days were treated with a pinch of salt and no special attention was paid to them.

The beginning of the 20th century

The development of electronic music had its next stage in 1907 with the publication of Ferruccio Busoni's "Sketch of a New Aesthetic in Music," in which he predicted the development of electronic musical instruments and their impact on the emergence of new directions in modern music. From 1912 it was called futuristic music, and its first concert took place in 1914 in Milan. In 1929, the first studio for recording electronic music was established, the Studiogesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik in Darmstadt, Germany, using instruments constructed by Jörg Mager, including the electrophon.

1940s - 1960s

This is a time of slow yet systematic development of this type of music. Major achievements in this field were made by Pierre Schaeffer. Musicians of this time sought to modify the sound of musical instruments and to use extra-musical sounds. During this period, music studios began to be established on a large scale, engaged in recording this genre of music. Famous for this period was the French composer Olivier Messiaen, who also used acoustic instruments and classical orchestra composition. His works using Martenot waves (such as the Turangalila symphony) contributed to Messiaen's developing aesthetic of synthesis of the arts. Other artists include Edgar Varese, Maurice Jarre, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Robert Beyer, Luis Baron, Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussashevsky, Lajaren Hiller, John Cage, Luigi Nono.

The 1970s and the popularization of electronic music

When the Minimoog, the first portable and reasonably affordable synthesizer, appeared on the market in 1970, electronic music began its rapid journey into mass culture.

The first electronic single to become a hit was the 1971 track recorded by Hot Butter, "Popcorn." Later came other productions such as the 1974 album by the group Tangerine Dream "Phaedra," Jean-Michel Jarre's 1976 "Oxygene" and "Autobahn" (1974) and "Die Mensch-Maschine" (1978) by Kraftwerk.

By the mid-1970s, electronic music genres such as ambient (music that imitates or replaces natural ambient sounds) and industrial (more aggressive, energetic, criticizing the post-industrial era, paying no attention to human beings) are already crystallizing. This is also the time of adaptation of electronic music into underground technical music, the sampling method appears, and turntablism, which is the art of processing pre-recorded sounds live with a turntable, also emerges. Electronic music also gets into the New Wave rock movement at the end of the 70s, it is at this time that the first electronically recorded popular music albums begin to appear and its biggest stars at this time are the bands DEVO, Ultravox, Gary Numan, Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and the song "I Feel Love" performed by Donnę Summer is considered the first techno song.

The 1980s

The musical 1980s saw rapid technical development, which also manifested itself in the creation of new musical instruments. Electronic music dominated popular music for good, with representatives of genres such as electropop, new romantic, synth pop and italo disco reaching the top of the charts. Their songs have become a symbol of the decade. The fashion for electronica did not bypass Poland either, and it was in the 1980s that artists such as Marek Biliński, Władysław Komendarek, Konrad Kucz, Artur Lasoń and Slawomir Łosowski created in our country, but interestingly enough, already established artists of the Polish music scene such as Czesław Niemen also reached for electronics. As is not hard to guess, various typically electronic styles such as Techno (in Detroit) or House in Chicago also emerged from electronica, in Europe all this was called electronic technical music and played in clubs, thanks to which such music became very popular.

The 90s

The musical 90s was a time of electronic technical music and everything related to it including culture and dance. Traditional factions such as ambient and industrial are slowly being absorbed into this trend. The 90s is also the period of the next wave of well-known, great Polish performers Bookovsky, Cargo, Daniel Bloom, Dariusz Kalinski, Deliver, Ireneusz Dreger, Kerygma, Michel Delvig, EQ, Piotr Grinholc, Robert Kanaan, Sample Edit, Thomas Gruberski, Tomasz Kubiak, Tomasz Ostrowski.

Electronic music is not Techno

Finally, a few words about electronic technical music itself. It is often mistakenly called Techno, while in fact it is a much broader genre that includes, among other things, techno music. It uses such musical instruments as drum machines, synthesizers and sequencers. There are many divisions for electronic techno music, but the most popular is the division into the following categories: Breakbeat, Drum and bass (characterized by a fast tempo, usually in the range of 160-180 beats per minute, a syncopated drum line and deep bass), Hardcore (a group of electronic music genres characterized by a heavier sound and faster tempo compared to the other genres), House (characterized by a dance rhythm, sung interludes and a melodic line based on the sound of classical instruments such as violin, piano, piano and also guitar), Techno (electronic music with a steady, regular rhythm in 4/4 meter, classic techno has a relatively fast tempo of about 130-140 beats per minute, it is also characterized by electric sound processing), Trance (based on a developed, sometimes solemn, anthem-like melody, rhythmic bass line usually supported by a higher, developed, dynamic backing line). Collapse