Chapter 1 - Science and Sensibility

Who this book is for

In 1837, a Dr. Page of Massachusetts created a ringing tone using an apparatus involving a horseshoe magnet and a coil of copper wire. He called his creation "galvanic music". Although his contribution to the world of electronic music is neither noteworthy as the invention of a serious instrument or as a work of musical art, it does demonstrate an original mind at work. One that sought to break the barriers of conventional thinking and indeed of conventional culture. A mind that sought to cross the desert that exists between the arts and the sciences. Page started down the long road which, starting as a dirt track, lead to the Theremin and the loudspeaker. A track which had turned into a "two-lane black-top" by the time of the invention of the electric guitar and the Hammond organ, and had become an Interstate by the time it reached the multi-track tape recorder and the MINIMOOG synthesiser. Even to today, when music and electronics race along together on an eight-lane Freeway.

Each step along this route betrays yet another restive mind at work and interestingly, neither the arts or the sciences appear have the monopoly on restlessness! No better example exists of this than the two men who are immortalised in the names of the world's first two electric guitars: Leo Fender was an electronics technician who turned his skills to musical ends, inventing the Telecaster; Les Paul was a musician who turned his prolific mind to technology. Same motivation, very different men, very different guitars. This book is full of the inventions of fertile, enterprising minds and I hope that it will be of interest to electronics engineers who, like Leo Fender, have acquired an interest in music and for musicians who, like Les Paul, have become fascinated in the technology of electric and electronic music making and who wish to learn more. For all these individuals, I have adopted the collective term musician-engineer, the two parts of which define the ends of the spectrum of people to whom I hope the book will appeal.

Music and the Twentieth Century

As I write this, there are less than 800 days until the next century - the next millennium. Who knows, or can know, what the future will bring? But looking back, any author choosing to write a history of the world would have to devote a long chapter to the last one-hundred years. It would not make easy reading either. Within fourteen years of the beginning of this century, the mechanical genius of the previous hundred years had been turned upon ourselves in a war of unspeakable horror. A war that lasted (according to the theory that the Second World War was a re-kindling of the First) nearly fifty years. It is a century in which we have come face to face with the dark-side of ourselves. From mustard gas to work-camps, from ethnic-cleansing to the atomic bomb, the "post-Hiroshima" citizens of the world have a unique - and uncomfortable - vision of what it is to be human. This is the century during which, to quote W.H. Auden, "the Devil broke parole". It is also the century during which, due to a kind of intellectual "trickle-down effect", the philosophical certainties which have underpinned society for hundreds of generations have evaporated. The widespread beliefs in God and in the immutability of His creation are gone. In an age during which politics has summoned the power to smash whole cities and the families that lived in them, is it any wonder that the belief systems which had underpinned stable societies should be smashed as well? And throughout this troubled century, the science electronics has graced us with ambiguous blessings, like an ambivalent angel. The technology of our century is the technology of electronics. From the field-telephone to the smart bomb, electronics has been our dark companion. From television to the X-ray, our friend. It has also made each of us a part of a far bigger world. The global village is far too cosy a name for the factionalised, polluted, half-starving world community to which we are all members, but who cannot now not be aware of what it is to be part of this community with all the benefits and disadvantages that brings?

In order to depict in music a unique vision of this most unconventional century, composers have sought ways of breaking the conventional bounds of music. The twentieth century is a century of "movements" as groups of musicians have struggled to express the bewildering litany of new experiences the age has brought. These are legion, especially since the end of the 1939 - 1946 war. Integral serialism (a movement which attracted composers such as Boulez, Berio and Nono) sought to break the mould of traditional musical ideas and associations by taking the ideas of serialism1, developed by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, and applying these concepts to all elements of a musical structure; to rhythm, dynamics and so on. Other groups, the aleatorists and the followers of Fluxus, sought - by introducing indeterminacy and chance into their compositions - to redefine what is art and what is not. Indeed the slogan of Fluxus was, "Art is Life and Life is Art". Even to the extent, as in the case of John Cage and La Monte Young, of seeming to resign from the process of composition altogether! Others, whilst retaining conventional musical instruments, have sought to capitalise on bizarre instrumental uses; encouraging the exercise of split-notes in the brass and the woodwinds or have emphasised ancillary instrumental sounds, key noise for instance. Fortunately for us - and for future generations of concert goers - not all composers have succumbed to the philosophy of Adorno (1958) who believed, "Only out of its own confusion can art deal with a confused society". They have taken a different path - the one that concerns us here. They opted to exploit the new "sound-world" fostered by electronics, to explore and explain the Zeitgeist.

Lest I give the impression that this book will concentrate on, so-called, art-music. Let me "come-clean" at once as to my own preferences: I believe there can hardly be a better sound-world than that produced by electronics to describe our unparalleled age. Listen to that film-soundtrack, doesn't the drone of the engines of a squadron of bombers sound like an electronic tone? And what better aural sensation better symbolises our fragmented cosmic life-raft than the swoosh, splash, crackle and cacophony of a tuning short-wave receiver? But these sounds are not the sole province of high-art. One of the frustrations of the impossible "discipline" of aesthetics is that the learned opinions of one generation are often laughable in the next. The artists, writers and musicians who are lauded in their own day often slip unnoticed into history leaving subsequent generations to discover intellects ignored and misunderstood in their own time. Never is this inability accurately to judge the "half-life" of music more true than in cases where music appears, on the surface, to "slip the bonds" of its own conception2. In our own time, popular, rock and dance music - which often appears to ignore our own time - may ultimately most eloquently express it. History proves that art does not have to prick our consciences to speak to our hearts.

Ironically, the examples of the electronic sound-world discovered by the post war avant-garde composers remain largely unknown and un-liked. Possibly history will judge these composers differently, but I doubt it. They probably tried too hard to depict the harsh, exigent realities of our times in music which is, itself, too abrasive and demanding. But - and this is the crucial point - their legacy has found a vital place in all sectors of today's music industry and, most importantly of all, via this, in our collective consciousness; precisely because of the resonances electronic music finds in our hearts and souls. History, as always, will be the judge but, I believe the 25th century Mars-dweller is more likely to regard the characteristic sound of our age as a coruscating electric guitar than that most noble invention of the nineteenth century - the orchestra - being asked to tap, rasp and otherwise abuse their instruments in a grotesque parody of orchestral technique! Couple with that the undeniable fact that electronics, in the form of recording and reproduction technology, has brought about a revolution in the dissemination of music and its cultural significance is almost beyond comprehension. For electronics is not just the messenger, it's the message itself.

The Messenger and the Message

This idea that electronics is both messenger and message is more than a mere poetic conceit. For it implies, with some degree of accuracy, that this book is two books in one. A book about recording (and by association - reproduction) technology and a book about electronic musical instruments and effect technology. Clearly a well-informed recording engineer, design engineer or musician-engineer must be aware of both and both are included for completeness. Furthermore, it is not strictly necessary to distinguish a pattern separating the two disciplines. However, the unmistakable motif which emerges between these two strands of technology illuminates the subject in a fresh and distinctive way and it also sheds light on debates ranging from valve amplifiers versus transistor amplifiers to that "hardy perennial" - the analogue versus digital controversy. It explains why musicians treasure ancient, flagging Hammond organs rather than opt for modern, sampling "equivalents" and other Objectivist versus Subjectivist conundrums where "worse" is considered "better". In short, it explains why musicians hear success where engineers often see failure!

This pattern concerns the adoption or rejection traditional values of engineering excellence in electrical circuits: For instance, electronics for recording has traditionally placed a high degree of emphasis on the inherent linearity of the transfer function. Not so musical electronics where, for creative and aesthetic reasons, circuits which either inadvertently or deliberately introduce some form of non-linearity are often preferred and sought after. The most obvious example is the guitar distortion-pedal whose only duty is to introduce gross non-linearity into the system transfer function. But there are many less conspicuous examples. The rearguard action against digital processing, and the recent renaissance in valve equipment, both bear witness to this real distinction between the electronics of the message bearer and the message creation itself. Virtually all the debates in audio arise as a consequence of failing adequately to distinguish between these two opposing philosophies.

But which is right? The answer is neither - but a change is at hand. Traditional wisdom has it that the message bearer must "cosset" a musical signal, it must do it justice - think of the term fidelity in high-fidelity. The same wisdom never constrained the instrumental amplifier and loudspeaker designer. She has always had the freedom to tailor performance parameters to her taste in the hope of winning sales from like-minded (or like-eared!) musicians. Interestingly, recent work in audio electronics and perceptual psychology suggests that the age of a slavish commitment to "pure engineering" specifications may not be what is ultimately required. Not because these are not valuable in themselves but because human perception may require different cues and a more "open-minded" philosophy. If there is a lesson, it is that engineers need to listen. (For this reason, the psychology of auditory perception figures in the following; especially in Chapters 2 and 11.)

A perfect example of this more open-minded approach, concerns left-right channel crosstalk. For years the reduction of this effect has been a primary aim of recording system's designers and one of the "triumphs" of digital audio mooted as its elimination. Unfortunately we now know that there exist beneficial effects of left-right crosstalk. So, crosstalk, long a feature of analogue recording systems, has been largely misunderstood and the deleterious results from its elimination in digital systems similarly mistaken. This has nurtured much of the debate between analogue and digital recording systems and explains many of the apparent "shortcomings" of digital recording. (This particular issue is discussed at length in Chapter 11.)

New threats..... New opportunities

Being a time of great change, the twentieth century has demanded a new mutable art to describe it. Many vicissitudes are now mentally assimilated with the help of that art. For those people who are lucky enough to be part of the music business, being involved in that creative process is a daily thrill. A thrill that many crave who have not yet had their "break". But, from the agricultural revolution to the Pentium chip, change brings new opportunities and new threats. We live in the middle of a time of undeniable sociological and demographical transformation. Digital technology is altering our lives in untold ways. Both in our leisure time; wherein exploding markets for television, computer games and the Internet compete for our attention. And in our work; where new methodologies must evolve in the face of new, global pressures.

That's where this book aims to help. To introduce the broad range of skills the world-wide, multi-media driven music-scene will demand. To that end, in the following, you will find sections on all the traditional knowledge-base demanded of the musician-engineer; the technology of microphones (Chapter 3), of electric and electronic instruments (Chapters 5 and 7) of electronic effects (Chapter 6) of consoles, amplifiers and loudspeakers (Chapters 12 through 14) and sound recording (Chapter 9). As well as sections on the new technology of audio workstations and hard disk editing, and an extended section on digital concepts and digital interfaces (Chapter 10), as well as MIDI and multi-channel and multi-dimensional audio (Chapters 8 and 11 respectively) and a crucial last chapter on the world of television, television concepts and synchronisation issues.

As so often in a technological revolution, the paradigm shift always originates with an outsider; Faraday was a lab-technician, Einstein was a patent clerk. So it is with music and recording technology; we must look outside the industry to see the forces which will shape the next millennium. Central to the future, is the concept (dubbed by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte, as convergence) as digital technology destroys the boundaries between computing and traditional media. The dramatic growth of the world-wide entertainment market that these changes foretell, presents real challenges for musicians and engineers alike. The model for this "Brave New World" is gleaned from another media; from paper publishing. Today's book and magazine production is not a centralised, capital-concentrated business; but a wide-area networked, geographically-irrelevant business wherein authors, illustrators, sub-editors, typesetters and production finishers all work remotely using PCs and modems. To use a buzzword, if modern book production happens anywhere, it's in cyberspace. These developments point to the future of music production being a diversified, wide-area networked future. A future which is indeed paper-publishing's present. The only difference is bandwidth. The music industry is just like any other, if you want to survive in a world of increased competition, you have to rely on higher productivity and - most crucially of all - on new skills. The good news is, with the right skill-set, these changes mean more opportunities for us all.

Adorno, T.W. (1958) Philosophy of New Music (Philosophie der neuen Musik), Ullstein Bucher.

1 Serialism takes as its starting point a pre-determined (pre-composed) sequence of the twelve possible chromatic tones on a piano (all the white and black notes in one octave). This basic compositional cell may be used backwards or in various transpositions and inversions, but it always determines the choice of the notes in use at any one time; sometimes melodically, sometimes harmonically.

2 Think of Beethoven. His music speaks so elequently in works which so heroically transcend his own misery.