“We live in an digital age and electronics is altering the world.” This bold-for-the-time declaration, from the June 24, 1967, subject of Billboard, got here from an unlikely supply: Limeliters banjo participant Alex Hassilev. For an acoustic musician, he was savvy about electronics: Through the years since, we’ve gone from classical compositions performed on synths to music created by synthetic intelligence. What’s subsequent? Simply ask ChatGPT!
Come On, Moog!
A 12 months after the Summer season of Love, Billboard hailed the age of pc love. The Oct. 12, 1968, subject predicted that “computer systems would sometime permit operators to acquire in a single day, or not less than weekly, experiences of file recognition on jukeboxes.” A month later, Billboard reported that “[a]n digital Bach album is being issued by Columbia Masterworks this month,” which “employs a specifically tailored Moog synthesizer as its musical instrument.” That recording, Wendy Carlos’ groundbreaking Switched-On Bach, turned “solely the second classical file in historical past to promote greater than 1 million items,” based on the June 8, 1974, subject.
Talking of the Moog within the Dec. 20, 1969, subject, jazz drummer Chico Hamilton opined, “it’s as much as the listener to determine if it’s music or not,” however quipped, “some folks flip electrical energy off.”
Synths Within the Key of Life
Whereas the Sept. 30, 1972, Billboard reported that skeptics noticed synthesizers as merely a “cheaper various to an actual string part,” the Sept. 9, 1973, subject proclaimed that keyboards have been now the “scorching instrument” because of synthesizers turning into an “integral half” of Sure and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. By the late ’70s, Giorgio Moroder taught the Moog to maneuver, and the July 30, 1977, subject praised the “incessant, spacey, machine-like beat” on Donna Summer season’s “I Really feel Love.”
One-Means Ticket
Synths have been inescapable on the Billboard Scorching 100 by the point of the March 24, 1984, subject, and Billboard ran a prescient headline with a phrase from Steve Jobs: “Computer systems Certain to Turn into ‘The Second Phone.’ ” One other piece in the identical subject coated the rise of “computerized [ticket-selling] shops like Ticketron, Bass, Choose-A-Seat, Ticketmaster and others,” noting that “the logistics of promoting tickets turns into smoother; the service cost, nonetheless, is divvied up between extra events.”
Prog Rock and Prog-ROM
After Peter Gabriel launched the musical pc recreation XPLORA1, the Jan. 8, 1994, Billboard hailed him as “the primary main pop artist to actively take part within the creation of an interactive CD-ROM title integrating substantial quantities of music, video, nonetheless images, textual content and ‘digital touring.’ ” Not everybody was able to get with this system, although. “We don’t see the purpose of taking part in one thing if ‘the medium is the message,’ ” mentioned The Remedy’s Robert Smith about E-CDs within the Aug. 17, 1996, subject. “It’s an attention-grabbing concept, however is that artwork in itself?”
AI Assume, Due to this fact AI Jam
A function on digital recording within the Oct. 9, 1993, subject addressed fears of “sterile” mixes and “pc management supplanting the human contact.” “There may be nothing spookier than dealing with one thing completely unfamiliar,” mentioned producer John Hampton. “[But] you’ll be able to let expertise achieve this a lot of the give you the results you want you can sit again and take a look at the massive image.” A Berklee dean agreed: “What computer systems basically have completed, is allowed us to take our minds off the mundane and focus on the inventive.”
The identical concern got here again in a bit within the March 18, 2017, Billboard, which identified that “for songwriters, the topic of synthetic intelligence is an particularly fraught one.” The beat goes on, in different phrases — even when expertise helps create it.
A model of this story initially appeared within the April 22, 2023, subject of Billboard.
