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John Cage, in his 1937 monograph Credo: The Future of Music, wrote this elliptical doctrine: Luigi Russolo, the futurist composer, wrote in his 1913 manifesto The Art of Noises of a futurist orchestra harnessing the power of mechanical noisemaking (and phonographic reproduction) to “liberate” sound from the tyranny of the merely musical. Many composers of the time were, not unreasonably, entranced by the potential of these new mediums of transcription, transmission, and performance. 2 New electronic musical instruments, from the large and impractical telharmonium to the simple and elegant theremin multiplied in tandem with recording and broadcast technologies and prefigured the synthesizers, sequencers, and samplers of today. Emile Berliner's gramophone record (1887) and the advent of AM radio broadcasting under Guglielmo Marconi (1922) democratized and popularized the consumption of music, initiating a process by which popular music quickly transformed from an art of minstrelsy into a commodified industry worth tens of billions of dollars worldwide. Thomas Edison's 1857 invention of the phonograph and Nikola Tesla's wireless radio demonstration of 1893 paved the way for what was to be a century of innovation in the electromechanical transmission and reproduction of sound. As a result, the artist today working with sound has not only a huge array of tools to work with, but also a medium exceptionally well suited to technological experimentation. 1 The ability to create, manipulate, and reproduce lossless sound by digital means is having, at the time of this writing, an equally revolutionary effect on how we listen. Indeed, the development of phonography (the ability to reproduce sound mechanically) has, by itself, had such a transformative effect on aural culture that it seems inconceivable now to step back to an age where sound could emanate only from its original source. Unsurprisingly, therefore, we find that in the machine age these same people found themselves first in line to take advantage of the new techniques and possibilities offered by electricity, telecommunications, and, in the last century, digital computers to leverage all of these systems to create new and expressive forms of sonic art. From developments in the writing and transcription of music (notation) to the design of spaces for the performance of music (acoustics) to the creation of musical instruments, composers and musicians have availed themselves of advances in human understanding to perfect and advance their professions. The history of music is, in many ways, the history of technology. If you see any errors or have comments, please let us know. This tutorial is “Extension 3” from Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, Second Edition, published by MIT Press.
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