MU3100: 19th thru 21st Centuries

By sjwallin

  • Orchestrions first appear

  • First successful valve system for brass instruments

  • Modern piston valve system for brass instruments is invented

  • Morse code first sent over telegraph wire

  • 1853:

    • phonautograph is invented
    • US Navy comes to Japan, introducing current Western music (military bands)

  • Modern Piano is invented

    c. 1860

  • First transcontinental telegraph line in U.S.

  • First cardboard book is invented

    for "programming" automated music machines

  • Carbon microphones are invented

    invented at nearly the same time in Berliner in 1876 and David Edward Hughes in 1878

  • Edison's phonograph

  • Mounted Telephone Receivers

    Originated from headsets for use by telephone switchboard operators

  • Bell & Tainter's wax cylinder gramophone

  • Paper rolls overtake cardboard books in popularity

  • Berliner's gramophone with flat wax disc

  • Illustrated songs debut

  • Pianolas appear

    The original home-based start of player pianos

  • Marconi sends first Morse Code message wirelessly

  • Telharmonium is invented

  • Fessenden sends first audible voice message over radio wave

  • Ives' Symphony No. 2

  • “head telephones”

    Wireless telegraph inventors like Lee de Forest were regularly using two head-mounted telephone receivers joined with a headbow. By 1909 they are called “headphones”.

  • 1906:

    • Fessenden’s widespread radio broadcast (the first of its kind)
    • Lee de Forest’s Audion tube

  • Military start of Headphone Usage

    Utah native Nathaniel Baldwin invented a much improved model of headphones and sent a prototype pair to the U.S. Navy.

  • 1913:

    • Vacuum tube is invented
    • Russolo’s Futurist manifesto is written

  • First condenser microphone

    ...with major improvements made by 1923

  • 1920:

    • Theremin is invented
    • KDKA radio broadcast of election returns
  • Period: to

    Radio's "Period of Awe"

  • Westrex Recording System

  • First radio advertisement

  • First electrostatic pickup

    ...put on a harp guitar

  • 1925:

    • First recording using the Westrex System is released by RCA
    • the 78 becomes standard and pushes cylinders out of production by 1929
    • “The Banshee" (increasing specificity in standard notation)

  • First recorded jazz guitar solo

    \Acoustic guitar solo recorded any Lonnie Johnson

  • Spooney Melodies

    using Vitaphone technology
  • Period: to

    Radio's period of Escape and Entertainment

  • Frying Pan lap steel guitar

  • The FCC is formed

  • Hammond Organ is invented

  • Gibson ES-150 hollow-body electric guitar released

  • NBC radio orchestra debuts

  • 1939:

    • Germans invent the Magnetophon
    • First uses of the Talk Box

  • Sampling first appears

    New styles of sampling emerge, using pre-recorded material for the first time

  • Les Paul produces first solid body guitar

    (though Gibson doesn't release The Log commercially until 1952)
  • Period: to

    AFM radio strike

  • 1944:

    • El-Dabh's "The Expression of Zaar"
    • sound spectrograph views sound as data

  • Hanert Electrical Orchestra

  • Period: to

    AFM TV strike

  • Car radios are widespread

  • Bing Crosby produces the first radio show to be prerecorded using tape

  • 1948:

    • Pierre Schaeffer's "Railway Etude"
    • Grainger's Free Music Machines (playing back sound using visualized data)
    • Les Paul introduces multitracking
  • Period: to

    Columbia vs. RCA

    Columbia releases the LP & RCA releases the 45

  • 1950:

    • Fender Esquire introduced
    • Carter's String Quartet No. 1, using metric modulation (increasing specificity in standard notation)
    • (1950s) Guitar Slim starts using feedback artfully (on a hollow- body guitar)

  • 1953:

    • TV has taken over American households
    • Phonogene

  • Transistor radios

  • 1955:

    • RCA's Electronic Music Synthesizer first demonstrated (they gave it to Columbia- Princeton Music Center in 1959)
    • Stockhausen's "Gesang..."

  • 1956:

    • Elvis's TV debut
    • "Flying Saucer"

  • "Atlas Eclipticalis" (graphic notation)

  • 1963:

    • Mellotron is invented
    • Tape cassette and 8-track introduced
    • Cardew's "Treatise" (graphic notation)
  • Period: to

    Tape cassette and home tape recorder appear

  • Reich's "It's Gonna Rain"

  • Period: to

    Pet Sounds/Sgt. Pepper

  • Moog starts selling his synth as a mass-produced, standard system

  • 1968:

    • "Switched on Bach" by Wendy Carlos
    • "Revolution 9" by the Beatles
    • "Stimmung" (graphic notation)

  • Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock

  • First recording using a vocoder (soundtrack for “Clockwork Orange”)

  • Birth of hip-hop

  • Digital Editing System--a predecessor of the DAW that used an oscilloscope to view waveforms

    (Sometime in the late '70s)

  • 1979:

    • Home cassette recorders introduced
    • Sony Walkman and boomboxes introduced
    • First digital audio player is invented
    • "Rapper's Delight"
    • First Fairlight CM

  • MTV debuts

  • CDs are introduced

  • 1983:

    • MIDI is unveiled (starts being used in guitars, and in violins by 1987)
    • "Thriller" music video

  • Paul Simon's "Graceland"

  • First Akai MPC (MPC60)

  • 1989:

    • MP3 invented
    • "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy

  • The MP3 is fully functional

  • 1996:

    • Portable MP3 players come to market
    • First pirated MP3

  • 1997:

    • ProTools proves the viability of the DAW
    • Auto-Tune first hits the market

  • "Praise You" by Fatboy Slim

  • 1999:

    • "Livin' La Vida Loca" by Ricky Martin
    • Napster launches (then shuts down in 2001)

  • The first iPod

  • iTunes opens

  • YouTube debuts

    ...(with Vevo created in 2009)

  • Spotify launches

  • Apple Music launches

  • Music Modernization Act passes