Music technology


Music technology is the study or the use of any device, mechanism, machine or tool by a musician or composer to make or perform music; to compose, notate, playback or record songs or pieces; or to analyze or edit music.

History

The earliest known applications of technology to music was prehistoric peoples' use of a tool to hand-drill holes in bones to make simple flutes.
Ancient Egyptians developed stringed instruments, such as harps, lyres and lutes, which required making thin strings and some type of peg system for adjusting the pitch of the strings. Ancient Egyptians also used wind instruments such as double clarinets and percussion instruments such as cymbals.
In ancient Greece, instruments included the double-reed aulos and the lyre.
Numerous instruments are referred to in the Bible, including the cornu, pipe, lyre, harp, and bagpipe. During Biblical times, the cornu, flute, horn, pipe organ, pipe, and trumpet were also used.
During the Middle Ages, music notation was used to create a written record of the notes of plainchant melodies.
During the Renaissance music era, the printing press was invented, allowing for sheet music to be mass-produced. This helped to spread musical styles more quickly and across a larger area.
During the Baroque era, technologies for keyboard instruments developed, which led to improvements in the designs of pipe organs and the harpsichord, and the development of a new keyboard instrument in approximately 1700, the piano.
In the Classical era, Beethoven added new instruments to the orchestra such as the piccolo, contrabassoon, trombones, and untuned percussion in his Ninth Symphony.
During the Romantic music era, one of the key ways that new compositions became known to the public was by the sales of sheet music, which amateur music lovers would perform at home on their piano or other instruments. In the 19th century, new instruments such as saxophones, euphoniums, Wagner tubas, and cornets were added to the orchestra.
Around the turn of the 20th century, with the invention and popularization of the gramophone record, and radio broadcasting, there was a vast increase in music listening, and it was easier to distribute music to a wider public.
The development of sound recording had a major influence on the development of popular music genres because it enabled recordings of songs and bands to be widely distributed. The invention of sound recording also gave rise to a new subgenre of classical music: the Musique concrete style of electronic composition.
The invention of multitrack recording enabled pop bands to overdub many layers of instrument tracks and vocals, creating new sounds that would not be possible in a live performance.
In the early 20th century, electric technologies such as electromagnetic pickups, amplifiers and loudspeakers were used to develop new electric instruments such as the electric piano, electric guitar, electro-mechanical organ and electric bass. The 20th-century orchestra gained new instruments and new sounds. Some orchestra pieces used the electric guitar, electric bass or the Theremin.
The invention of the miniature transistor in 1947 enabled the creation of a new generation of synthesizers, which were used first in pop music in the 1960s. Unlike prior keyboard instrument technologies, synthesizer keyboards do not have strings, pipes, or metal tines. A synthesizer keyboard creates musical sounds using electronic circuitry, or, later, computer chips and software. Synthesizers became popular in the mass market in the early 1980s.
With the development of powerful microchips, a number of new electronic or digital music technologies were introduced in the 1980s and subsequent decades, including drum machines and music sequencers. Electronic and digital music technologies are any device, such as a computer, an electronic effects unit or software, that is used by a musician or composer to help make or perform music. The term usually refers to the use of electronic devices, computer hardware and computer software that is used in the performance, playback, composition, sound recording and reproduction, mixing, analysis and editing of music.

Mechanical technologies

Prehistoric eras

Findings from paleolithic archaeology sites suggest that prehistoric people used carving and piercing tools to create instruments. Archeologists have found Paleolithic flutes carved from bones in which lateral holes have been pierced. The disputed Divje Babe flute, a perforated cave bear femur, is at least 40,000 years old. Instruments such as the seven-holed flute and various types of stringed instruments, such as the Ravanahatha, have been recovered from the Indus Valley civilization archaeological sites. India has one of the oldest musical traditions in the world—references to Indian classical music are found in the Vedas, ancient scriptures of the Hindu tradition. The earliest and largest collection of prehistoric musical instruments was found in China and dates back to between 7000 and 6600 BC.

Ancient Egypt

In prehistoric Egypt, music and chanting were commonly used in magic and rituals, and small shells were used as whistles. Evidence of Egyptian musical instruments dates to the Predynastic period, when funerary chants played an important role in Egyptian religion and were accompanied by clappers and possibly the flute. The most reliable evidence of instrument technologies dates from the Old Kingdom, when technologies for constructing harps, flutes and double clarinets were developed. Percussion instruments, lyres and lutes were used by the Middle Kingdom. Metal cymbals were used by ancient Egyptians. In the early 21st century, interest in the music of the pharaonic period began to grow, inspired by the research of such foreign-born musicologists as Hans Hickmann. By the early 21st century, Egyptian musicians and musicologists led by the musicology professor Khairy El-Malt at Helwan University in Cairo had begun to reconstruct musical instruments of ancient Egypt, a project that is ongoing.

Indus Valley

The Indus Valley civilization has sculptures that show old musical instruments, like the seven-holed flute. Various types of stringed instruments and drums have been recovered from Harappa and Mohenjo Daro by excavations carried out by Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

Ancient Greece

In ancient Greece, instruments in all music can be divided into three categories, based on how sound is produced: string, wind, and percussion. The following were among the instruments used in the music of ancient Greece:
  • the lyre: a strummed and occasionally plucked string instrument, essentially a hand-held zither built on a tortoise-shell frame, generally with seven or more strings tuned to the notes of one of the modes. The lyre was used to accompany others or even oneself for recitation and song.
  • the kithara, also a strummed string instrument, more complicated than the lyre. It had a box-type frame with strings stretched from the cross-bar at the top to the sounding box at the bottom; it was held upright and played with a plectrum. The strings were tunable by adjusting wooden wedges along the cross-bar.
  • the aulos, usually double, consisting of two double-reed pipes, not joined but generally played with a mouth-band to hold both pipes steadily between the player's lips. Modern reconstructions indicate that they produced a low, clarinet-like sound. There is some confusion about the exact nature of the instrument; alternate descriptions indicate single reeds instead of double reeds.
  • the Pan pipes, also known as panflute and syrinx, is an ancient musical instrument based on the principle of the stopped pipe, consisting of a series of such pipes of gradually increasing length, tuned to a desired scale. Sound is produced by blowing across the top of the open pipe.
  • the hydraulis, a keyboard instrument, the forerunner of the modern organ. As the name indicates, the instrument used water to supply a constant flow of pressure to the pipes. Two detailed descriptions have survived: that of Vitruvius and Heron of Alexandria. These descriptions deal primarily with the keyboard mechanism and with the device by which the instrument was supplied with air. A well-preserved model in pottery was found at Carthage in 1885. Essentially, the air to the pipes that produce the sound comes from a wind chest connected by a pipe to a dome; air is pumped in to compress water, and the water rises in the dome, compressing the air, and causing a steady supply of air to the pipes.
In the Aeneid, Virgil makes numerous references to the trumpet. The lyre, kithara, aulos, hydraulis and trumpet all found their way into the music of ancient Rome.

Roman Empire

The Romans may have borrowed the Greek method of enchiriadic notation to record their music if they used any notation at all. Four letters indicated a series of four succeeding tones. Rhythm signs, written above the letters, indicated the duration of each note. Roman art depicts various woodwinds, "brass", percussion and stringed instruments. Roman-style instruments are found in parts of the Empire where they did not originate and indicate that music was among the aspects of Roman culture that spread throughout the provinces.
Roman instruments include:
  • The Roman tuba was a long, straight bronze trumpet with a detachable, conical mouthpiece. Extant examples are about 1.3 metres long, and have a cylindrical bore from the mouthpiece to the point where the bell flares abruptly, similar to the modern straight trumpet seen in presentations of 'period music'. Since there were no valves, the tuba was capable only of a single overtone series. In the military, it was used for "bugle calls". The tuba is also depicted in art such as mosaics accompanying games ' and spectacle events.
  • The cornu was a long tubular metal wind instrument that curved around the musician's body, shaped rather like an uppercase G. It had a conical bore and a conical mouthpiece. It may be hard to distinguish from the buccina. The cornu was used for military signals and on parade. The cornicen was a military signal officer who translated orders into calls. Like the tuba, the cornu also appears as accompaniment for public events and spectacle entertainments.
  • The tibia, usually double, had two double-reed pipes, not joined but generally played with a mouth-band capistrum to hold both pipes steadily between the player's lips.
  • The askaules — a bagpipe.
  • Versions of the modern flute and panpipes.
  • The lyre, borrowed from the Greeks, was not a harp, but instead had a sounding body of wood or a tortoise shell covered with skin, and arms of animal horn or wood, with strings stretched from a cross bar to the sounding body.
  • The cithara was the premier musical instrument of ancient Rome and was played both in popular and elevated forms of music. Larger and heavier than a lyre, the cithara was a loud, sweet and piercing instrument with precision tuning ability.
  • The lute was known by several names among the Greeks and Romans. In construction, the lute differs from the lyre in having fewer strings stretched over a solid neck or fret-board, on which the strings can be stopped to produce graduated notes. Each lute string is thereby capable of producing a greater range of notes than a lyre string. Although long-necked lutes are depicted in art from Mesopotamia as early as 2340–2198 BC, and also occur in Egyptian iconography, the lute in the Greco-Roman world was far less common than the lyre and cithara. The lute of the medieval West is thought to owe more to the Arab oud, from which its name derives.
  • The hydraulic pipe organ ', which worked by water pressure, was "one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity". Essentially, the air to the pipes that produce the sound comes from a mechanism of a wind-chest connected by a pipe to a dome; air is pumped in to compress water, and the water rises in the dome, compressing the air and causing a steady supply to reach the pipes. The hydraulis accompanied gladiator contests and events in the arena, as well as stage performances.
  • Variations of a hinged wooden or metal device, called a scabellum used to beat time. Also, there were various rattles, bells and tambourines.
  • Drum and percussion instruments like timpani and castanets, the Egyptian sistrum, and brazen pans, served various musical and other purposes in ancient Rome, including backgrounds for rhythmic dance, celebratory rites like those of the Bacchantes and military uses.
  • The sistrum was a rattle consisting of rings strung across the cross-bars of a metal frame, which was often used for ritual purposes.
  • Cymbala were small cymbals: metal discs with concave centres and turned rims, used in pairs which were clashed together.