The Electronic Century

Some nice reflections and history by Joel Chadabe – composer, author, interactive music systems pioneer and president of the Electronic Music Foundation. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of electronic music, in this four part series published by Electronic Musician, Chadabe explores the instruments, artistic ideas, business concepts, musicians and entrepreneurs, and technical breakthroughs of the century—from the first technological achievements to the synthesizers of tomorrow.

The Rangertone was an early tape recorder developed by Colonel Richard Ranger, who played a key role in bringing German recording technology to the United States at the end of World War II.

The focus throughout the series is on the technologies that have been used by musicians to expand on the resources available in traditional, acoustic instruments. Each article documents important musical compositions that have employed these technologies and provides a reference list of texts about this first era of electronic music technology.

Part I: The Electronic Century – Beginnings
Part II: Tales of the Tape
Part III: Computers and Analog Synthesizers
Part IV: The Seeds of the Future

Pierre Schaeffer established the first electronic-music studio in France in the 1940s. Schaeffer is shown here in 1952 with two versions of the phonogene, a variable-speed tape recorder built by Jacques Poullin.

Robot Conducts Orchestra

Weird stuff from the web. Honda recently dispatched its miniature humanoid robot Asimo to conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The concert took place on May 13, with a master class for students from the Detroit School for the Arts.

The robot's performance was part of a Honda initiative to improve music education (!), donating $1 million to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's "Power of Dreams" educational fund, partnering with the orchestra to offer classes and performances for young musicians.

Apparently, Honda will also partner with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra over the next five years to offer training in string instruments, a scholarship program, an educational concert series, support for live classical performances and a fundraiser.

Optimizing Speaker Performance in Your Studio

The editors of Mix Magazine, Electronic Musician and Remix have posted a Webinar, “Optimizing Speaker Performance in your Studio,” hosted by veteran acoustic consultant Bob Hodas who has tuned many professional recording studios around the world, from Abbey Road to the Record Plant to Lucasfilm.

In this webcast, Hodas explains how to set up stereo speakers and the listening position in a given room to optimize system performance. He shares tips for selecting acoustic treatments and determining where those treatments should be placed, he explains techniques for choosing and applying equalization, and demonstrates how to improve accuracy with EQ measurement tools.

You can sign up for the free webcast here,  while Hodas also has some other studio tips on his website.