electronic music

I was hearing a fair amount of Global Communication and Reload in chill-out sessions when I was still going out to clubs in the 90's. I gave away tickets regularly on my radio show to an event in SF chill event called the Gardening Club, where you could hear most anything. It was run by Charles Uzzel-Edwards, who ran the US arm of Fax records.
 
Kraftwerk use Texas Instruments IC chips formant speech sounds on his album " Computer World "

Texas Instruments created a simple speech synthesizer chip called the TMC0280 or the TMS5100 depending on what it was used in. The TMS5100 was designed for the popular Speak and Spell kids learning toy in 1979. This chip was intended only for speech synthesis, and did not find much other use. It's distinctive sound did find its way into a few games and some music, including Kraftwerk.

Myself and many others bought one of these toys and hacked it into a popular 8 bit computer of the day. I used a SWTPC (of Tiger amps fame) MC6800 computer from 1975.

The chip was offered to DIYers as the TMS5200, and a plug in card for the Apple II computer that featured this chip was available in the early 80's.

A different company, General Instruments created the AY-3-8910 specifically for game sounds in the late 70's. It was the most popular "sound effects" chip for about 10 years, and the technology was licensed to several other companies including Yamaha. You could buy these from Digikey and other popular electronics distributors throughout the 80's.

TI tried to play catch-up in this game with several sound chips designed for video games. The SN76489 and its family were quite popular, but the GI AY-3-8910 and its brothers remained king of the 80's game sounds.

By the time the 90's rolled around there were several different ways to create, store and play sound and music in digital format, so the specialized sound chips faded away.

The most notable of these with the music hacking crowd was the ISD series of single chip voice recorders. New versions of these are still being made today.
 
yes 100 years it is:


100 Years of Theremin (The Dub Chapter) | GAUDI


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I have built two Theremin devices in my lifetime. The first was a simple vacuum tube based device built when I was in high school. The second was quite complex using Phase Locked Loop chips, built in the mid 80's when top octave divider chips were common.

The chip version could operate in "free run" much like a true Theremin, or it could be synced (adjustable "snap") to one of several pre-selected musical scales.......I never could play either beyond the "cats fighting" stage, so I gave them to people who could. I never could do well on any non-fretted instrument.

It takes true talent....and a lot of practice to play a Theremin.

Claravox Centennial | “Clair de Lune” Performed by Gregoire Blanc & Orane Donnadieu - YouTube

Can you change Theremin players in the middle of a song without missing a note? Watch this performance from the 41 minute mark to find out. Handoff occurs around 42:00.

Wintergatan live at Debaser Strand - YouTube
 
Just found this thread! As I begin checking out every link I thought Id see if anyone here heard of Nigel Stanford ? I played the heck out of Cynmatics and thought it was the best sounding recording I own, than I bought Automatica and wow.. Im blown away with just how good it sounds.



I have always liked any good sounding music. That said, recording quality is everything to me. I for the most part stay clear of live recordings, but there are exceptions...


The ultra lows, to the harmonizing mids really blew me away with both of the two mentioned above... One song in cymatics has ultra low lows... analogous to thunder far off... It rolls in quickly...
My Elsinore's have made me hear a lot of music for the first time. Regardless of setup I highly recommend those two cd's..


If anyone likes the above as I do, and knows of others sounding as good (or better if even possible) Id really love to know !!!