The document discusses how technology has influenced the development of popular music in the 20th century. It led to both a broadening of creative opportunities and listening access for mass audiences, but also fragmented the music industry by allowing the rise of specialized subcultures. New technologies like recording devices, electric guitars, synthesizers, sampling, and digital tools opened up new possibilities for music creation but also raised issues around the role of talent versus technology in music.

1. Week 14
• 1. Influence of technology on development
of popular music in the 20th century.
• 2. Late 60s early 70s progressive rock –
‘The Dark Side’.
• 3. Case Study – The Velvet Underground.
• 4. The Punk Phenomena – 1976-79.

2. Technology and the creation of
subcultures
The advance of technology within music in the 20th
century has had a liberating effect – broadening
creative and listening opportunities to a mass
audience.
At the same time it has reduced the sense of any
mainstream in music – classical, popular or folk –
in which we all participate.
We can all remain within our chosen musical
subculture(s) and remain closed to everything
else. We live in a musical postmodernism where
every thing is relative and value judgements are
difficult to make.

3. Issues
• Raises economic issues – technology gets
cheaper and easier to use - so new
refinements and complexities are needed to
keep selling the products.
• Raises creative issues – people using it use
it less and less creatively – so much is
possible we use it to do only the simplest
things

4. Nineteenth Century Mainstream
• Idea that before the onset of the 20th century and
the development mass culture there was more of a
sense of a mainstream style.
• European art music – general consensus on style –
led in the 19th century by Germans – Beethoven,
Brahms to Wagner, Bruckner, etc.
• Popular music also had a general uniformity of
style – Waltzes and other dance music,
nationalistic music, Music Hall traditions etc.
• Technology of music widespread and fairly
uniform. Based on playing instruments live.

5. 20th century fragmentation
• Music technology in 20th century both develops a
mass industry and a mass market – but also
separates and allows sub-genres and subcultures
that detract from the mainstream.
• Today the mass music industry allows us to follow
and consume only the sort of music we like – Rap,
Classical, Medieval, Thrash Metal, etc.
• There is no mainstream – but a mosaic of
subcultures in music – of which arguably all
classical music is but one.

6. Pop Industry and Technology
• Pop music industry
predicated by technology and
there is an argument that
technological development,
more than anything else,
determines the success of the
industry in general.

7. • Phonograph (wax) to Shellac (78s) to Vinyl (45s
and 33s)
• Crucial part played by the 45 vinyl single in the
50s
• 70s album sales increasingly important
• 80s 12 inch singles and CD singles introduced as
the importance of the single declines
• CDs take over from vinyl
• 90s DVDs
• Blue Ray DVD?
Formats

8. Recording
• Phonograph
• Electronic mics - 1925
• Electro-magnetic tape - commercially
available from the late 40s
• Stereo sound developed for the cinema first
available with tape in the 50s - by 60s home
stereo record players become available -
records increasingly in stereo

9. Cassettes and CDs
• 70s saw compact cassettes widely available for
home taping - particularly of radio - in-car radio/
cassette players and `hifidelity’ home stereos now
easily affordable. Dolby enhanced appeal
• By end of 80s cassettes outselling other formats
three to one
• Digital age and CDs from 1982. CD-Roms by
1990s. MP3s and Internet late by 1990s
• Now DVDs.

10. Recording
• The sound engineer/mixer `represents the
point where music and technology meet’
• sound mixers initially technicians - now
`artists‘
• 70s and 80s opened up the creative
possibilities of new technology and the
musician/sound engineer/mixer could be
one and the same. E.g. Brian Eno

11. Case of Brian Eno

12. Consumer Playback
• Gramophone, Radio, Reel to reel, Stereo
hifi, in-car sound systems, compact cassette
and radio, walkman, Ghetto-blaster (boom
boxes), CD players, portable digital
recorders, mini-disc players, home
computers - all have influenced the music
industry in various ways. Their sales an
important part of the overall industry. Sony
a company with interests in all areas.

13. Multitracking
• Les Paul and the 2-track recording. Tape
Delay. Close mic-ing
• Late 50s slapback delay - Sam Philips
• Over-dubs - e.g.- Good Vibrations
• 2-track to 8-track - Sergeant Pepper and Pet
Sounds
• 32-tracks and more

14. Electric Guitar
• Grows out of hawaiian guitar by Leo Fender
1936
• Acoustic guitars with amplifiers in the
1940s - Charlie Christian a pioneer
• Les Paul and `the log’. The Les Paul
Gibson
• 1948 Fender Broadcaster and 1954
Stratocaster – humbucking pickups

15. Synths
• Analogue (subtractive) synths from the
mid-50s
• Commercially available from late 60s -
Here Comes the Sun - switched on Bach
(Moog IIIc)
• 1970s affordable but still monophonic
• Kraftwerk

16. Fairlight and Linn Drum

17. Polyphonic Synths
• Opened up many new possibilities
• Kraftwerk (Autobahm first all-pop hit)
• Other forms of synths mid 80s
• then - MIDI - digital revolution
• 90s manufacturers trying to use digital
technology to emulate classic early synths

18. Sampling
• The Australian produced the Fairlight – cost
around £50,000 but could do it all and was an
instrument that could be played
• Buggles - Video killed the radio star 1979 -
Trevor Horn/Art of Noise
• Sampler allowed non-instrument sounds to be
used musically - Kate Bush - Baboushka.
• Sampling could do away with live musicians

19. Buggles 1979 – First MTV video
in America

20. Sequencing and more
• Sequencing, sampling and multi-tracking
together on Michael Jackson’s Thriller
(1984)
• All digital recording (DDD) Dire Straits
Brothers in Arms 1985
• Cut and Paste audio/sampling, Fatboy
Slim’s Praise and Paul Hardcastle’s
Nineteen

21. Economics of Technology
• It gets cheaper. Early Moogs £10,000 now
equivalent technology £200.
• Early 60s multi-tracks could only be done
by pro studios – now all digital 8-track costs
around £400 with effects. Its possible to
have all the technology to do a Sergeant
Pepper for less than £1000.

22. Musical Marxism
• Means of production in the hands of the
people - but now they seldom have the skills
to use it!
• Previous generations would have filtered
out poor musicians/singers and amateur
music who would never have got to the
public - now they can and do all the time.

23. Talent?
• Anyone can make a CD-quality 16-bit digital
recording - there is no talent filter but the listeners
ear. Also technology can correct anything!
Quantising and Vocoder.
• Musicians/singers do not need to be trained - is
this good or bad?
• Live element of performance ever diminishing.
Especially since 1980s. Miming to recorded
tracks increasingly the norm in pop industry.

24. New ways of making music
• Using technology’s strengths to inspire new
developments
• Machine-like timbre of analogue synths developed
into experimental pop that was deliberated
mechanical – e.g. Tangerine Dream
• Software sequencers encouraged copying chunks
of music - repetitive dance music where special
effects had to maintain the interest - filters, etc

25. Subcultures
• From a high in the 1960s the pop music
sales and progressively reduced – there is
no real mainstream pop culture as there was
in the 1960s.
• Music is a global industry that is in crisis –
how to get people to pay for their music
when it is possible to get free off the
internet.

26. Subcultures
• In the post modern age – everything is
relative and value judgments are not PC.
• We consume music in a very narrow range
– each compartmentalised subcultures
knows and cares little about each other.
• This was not the case in the 1960s – and
even less the case in the 1860s.