Electronic Music

Lets go back to 1916 where Hugo Balle, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, and Richard Hue- Isenbeck are finding the Dada artistic movement. These guys are a bunch of anarchists living in Zurich, Switzerland. The Dada movement preaches the “essence of spirit” the freedom of expression, hatred to “the great war” (or what we later called World War 1) , with a want to preserve the middle class, while humankind was degrading morally, with little or no hopes for a bright future. This goes in context with this CS3 course in how before world war 1, man thought so much was to come. The Dada movement expressed the deterioration or our civilizations due to wars through sound and not words. They thought sound was more sincere and liberal.

These guys noticed that music doesn’t have a specific language, so more people can relate to it. They would rebel against what was happening in the world by creating music based on industrial noises. You have to think that back then everyone listened to polka, piano, and Stravinsky. When all of a sudden this “Dada” movement started using tools to bang on pots and pans to create music. It was not in any way popular, but these guys contributed the base for “Electronic Music”.

Electronic Music is basically making noises into music not by instruments, but rather through alternative sources. The Dada Movement didn’t use electricity to make their music mainly because it’s the early 20th century and electricity was somewhat a luxury. So to be honest it was in the 1920’s that the worlds first synthesizer was born officially launching an era still very active today in all of our lives, yes, called electronic music. The first instrument was made by a Russian electronics genius named Leon Theremin and he called his synthesizer a “Theremin”. The cool thing about this synth is that it didn’t have a keyboard like synths do now; it was simply a device that senses changes in electromagnetic waves. Basically you stand in front of it and wave your...