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The Tone Generation
By Simon James | April 24, 2008
I’m currently producing a 10 part radio series that looks at the history of electronic music. Presented by artist and musician Ian Helliwell, ‘The Tone Generation’ features music from the pioneers of the experimental electronic scene such as Stockhausen, Xenakis, Daphne Oram and Tristram Cary (who sadly passed away this week, as did Bebe Baron, electronic composer of the Forbidden Planet sound track amongst others), with each show focusing on a different country.
See Matrixsynth and Create Digital Music for Tristram Cary obituaries.
It is interesting to listen back to early work like this and consider the impact it has had on modern music production techniques. Most of the material was produced on basic purpose built equipment, and fx that can now be realised in seconds with modern audio plug ins would have taken hours and hours of painstaking experimentation. But these pioneers really led the way and its true to say that that elements of their experimenting still surround us in popular music, sound design, film scores and advertising (especially car ads).
The Tone Generation is broadcast on Resonance FM every Friday evening at 19.30 GMT and you can subscribe to the podcast here.