history of electronic music

This is the audio from a 1971 ARP synthesizers demo record.

Side A lays it on pretty thick, but Side B has some choice vintage synth music demos. Read more…

The Electric Music Machine takes a behind the scenes look at what happens at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Parts 2 &3 below. Read more…

Laurie Spiegel’s Concerto for Self-Accompanying Digital Synthesizer.

The instrument is possibly the first realtime digital synthesizer, built at Bell Telephone Labs, NJ by Hal Alles and team, with C language software written by Laurie that processes the player’s live input into an ongoing accompaniment that will continue to be played live against.

via MusicMouse

Just about everybody’s familiar with the synthpop classic, Popcorn, above.

Composer Gershon Kingsley first recorded the track Popcorn for his 1969 album Music to Moog By. In 1971 the song was re-recorded by Kingsley’s band First Moog Quartet. Stan Free, member of the First Moog Quartet, rerecorded the instrumental with his band Hot Butter in 1972, and it was a huge hit – probably the most recognizable track from the Moog explosion of the late 60’s and early 70’s.

Popcorn has since been covered by an insane variety of artists, ranging from DJ Voyager to a pre-fame Jean Michel Jarre to Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops to Richard D. James, AKA Aphex Twin to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. There are more than 500 cover versions Popcorn!

Here are nine flavors of Popcorn from over years, including a vocal version, a trance version and a set of piano variations that may surprise you.

Which one do you think is the most interesting cover? Read more…

Earlier in the day, we brought you the Jonzun Crew – what Daft Punk would have looked like in 1983.

Little did we know that Torley would dig up a proto-Daft Punk from 6 years earlier!

This is Space, performing Magic Fly in 1977. More Space madness below! Read more…