1.
Synthesizer
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A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates electric signals that are converted to sound through instrument amplifiers and loudspeakers or headphones. Synthesizers may either imitate instruments like piano, Hammond organ, flute, vocals, natural sounds like ocean waves, etc. or generate new electronic timbres. Synthesizers without built-in controllers are called sound modules, and are controlled via USB, MIDI or CV/gate using a controller device. Synthesizers use various methods to generate electronic signals, synthesizers were first used in pop music in the 1960s. In the 1970s, synths were used in disco, especially in the late 1970s, in the 1980s, the invention of the relatively inexpensive, mass market Yamaha DX7 synth made synthesizers widely available. 1980s pop and dance music often made use of synthesizers. In the 2010s, synthesizers are used in genres of pop, rock. Contemporary classical music composers from the 20th and 21st century write compositions for synthesizer, the beginnings of the synthesizer are difficult to trace, as it is difficult to draw a distinction between synthesizers and some early electric or electronic musical instruments. One of the earliest electric musical instruments, the telegraph, was invented in 1876 by American electrical engineer Elisha Gray. He accidentally discovered the sound generation from a self-vibrating electromechanical circuit and this musical telegraph used steel reeds with oscillations created by electromagnets transmitted over a telegraph line. Gray also built a simple loudspeaker device into later models, consisting of a diaphragm in a magnetic field. This instrument was a remote electromechanical musical instrument that used telegraphy, though it lacked an arbitrary sound-synthesis function, some have erroneously called it the first synthesizer. In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill invented the Teleharmonium, which used dynamos, and was capable of additive synthesis like the Hammond organ, however, Cahills business was unsuccessful for various reasons, and similar but more compact instruments were subsequently developed, such as electronic and tonewheel organs. In 1906, American engineer, Lee De Forest ushered in the electronics age and he invented the first amplifying vacuum tube, called the Audion tube. This led to new entertainment technologies, including radio and sound films, ondes Martenot and Trautonium were continuously developed for several decades, finally developing qualities similar to later synthesizers. In the 1920s, Arseny Avraamov developed various systems of graphic sonic art, in 1938, USSR engineer Yevgeny Murzin designed a compositional tool called ANS, one of the earliest real-time additive synthesizers using optoelectronics. The earliest polyphonic synthesizers were developed in Germany and the United States, during the three years that Hammond manufactured this model,1,069 units were shipped, but production was discontinued at the start of World War II. Both instruments were the forerunners of the electronic organs and polyphonic synthesizers
2.
Computer Music Center
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The Computer Music Center at Columbia University is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States. The Center was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the CMC is housed in Prentis Hall,632 West 125th Street, New York City, across the street from Columbias new 17-acre Manhattanville campus. The facility consists of a graduate research facility specializing in computer music and multimedia research, as well as a number of composition. Projects to come out of the CMC since the 1990s include, originally concerned with experiments in music composition involving the new technology of reel-to-reel tape, the studio soon branched out into all areas of electronic music research. The Center was officially established with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1959 which was used to finance the acquisition of the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer from its owner, RCA. The flagship piece of Center equipment, the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, was delivered to the Center in 1957 after it was developed to Ussachevsky, the RCA were re-housed in Prentis Hall, a building off the main Columbia campus on 125th Street. In 1961 Columbia Records released an album titled simply Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the Center also acted as a consulting agency for other electronic music studios in the Western Hemisphere, giving them advice on optimum studio design and helping them to purchase equipment, etc. The staff engineers at the Center under Peter Mauzey developed a variety of customized equipment designed to solve the needs of the composers working at the center. These include early prototypes of tape delay machines, quadraphonic mixing consoles, the Center also had a large collection of Buchla, Moog, and Serge Modular synthesizers. By the late 1970s the Electronic Music Center was rapidly nearing obsolescence as the classical analog tape techniques it used were being surpassed by parallel work in the field of computer music. The original Columbia facility was re-organized in 1995 under the leadership of Brad Garton and was renamed the Columbia University Computer Music Center and it is six floors and covers 121,752 square feet. Columbia acquired it in 1949 and had used it for a chemical engineering laboratory. The architect was Frank A. Rooke
3.
Harry Olson
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Harry Ferdinand Olson was a prominent engineer at RCA Victor and a pioneer in the field of 20th century acoustical engineering. Harry F. Olson was born in Mount Pleasant, Iowa to Swedish immigrant parents, technically inclined from an early age, he built and flew model airplanes, constructed a steam engine and invented a wood-fired boiler that drove a 100-volt DC generator. Olson designed and built a radio transmitter, gaining enough proficiency to be granted an operators license. Immediately after completing his course of study in 1928, Olson moved to New Jersey to work for RCA Laboratories, Olson would remain at RCA for almost four decades. Olson had a continuing interest in music, acoustics, and sound reproduction, after the war Olson, along with Herbert Belar, developed the first modern electronic synthesizer. Equipped with electron tubes, the Mark II Sound Synthesizer was used to compose music and he also authored 135 articles and ten books including an interdisciplinary text charting the dynamical analogies between electrical, acoustical and mechanical systems. In 1949, Olson was honored by being the first recipient of the Audio Engineering Societys John H. Potts Memorial Award, an award program which was later renamed the Gold Medal. In 1953-4 Olson served as president of the Acoustical Society of America, which awarded him the very first Silver Medal in Engineering Acoustics in 1974 and the Gold Medal in 1981. He won the IEEE Lamme Medal in 1970, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1959, Olson retired from RCA in 1967, continuing as a consultant for RCA Laboratories. Shortly after World War II, Dr. Olson conducted an experiment, now considered a classic, previous experimenters had found that listeners seemed to prefer a high-frequency cutoff of 5000 Hz for reproduced music. Dr. Olson suspected that this was due to imperfections in the sound, especially in the higher frequencies. These imperfections included clicks and pops, added noise, hiss and harmonic distortion, if the sound was free of these problems, he reasoned, listeners would prefer full frequency reproduction. In his experiment, he set up a room which was divided diagonally by a visually opaque, the screen incorporated a concealed low-pass acoustical filter having an upper frequency cutoff of 5000 Hz. This filter could be opened or closed, allowing either the range of frequencies to pass or the range only below 5000 Hz. At first, a small orchestra sat and performed on one side of the screen, while a group of test subjects sat on the other, the listeners were asked to select their preference between two conditions, full bandwidth or restricted bandwidth. There was overwhelming preference in favor of the full bandwidth, next, the orchestra was replaced with a sound-reproduction system with loudspeakers positioned behind the screen instead. When the sound system was free of distortion, the listeners preferred the full bandwidth, but when he introduced small amounts of nonlinear distortion, the subjects preferred a restricted bandwidth, thus demonstrating clearly the importance of high quality in audio systems. The design and manufacture of everything from microphones, to tape recorders, vinyl records, amplifiers, harry F. Olson was born in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, on December 18,1901
4.
RCA
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RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. General Electric took over the company in late 1985 and split it up the following year, after World War I began in August 1914, radio traffic across the Atlantic Ocean increased dramatically after the western Allies cut the German transatlantic telegraph cables. In 1917 the government of the United States took charge of the owned by the major companies involved in radio manufacture in the United States to devote radio technology to the war effort. All production of equipment was allocated to the U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, U. S. Marine Corps. The War Department and the Navy Department sought to maintain a monopoly of all uses of radio technology. The wartime takeover of all radio systems ended late in 1918, the war ended in November of that year. The ending of the governments monopoly in radio communications did not prevent the War. On 8 April 1919, naval Admiral W. H. G. Bullard, the proposal presented by the government was that if GE created an American-owned radio company, then the Army and Navy would effect a monopoly of long-distance radio communications via this company. This marked the beginning of a series of negotiations through which GE would buy the American Marconi company, the Army and the Navy granted RCA the former American Marconi radio terminals that had been confiscated during the War. Admiral Bullard received a seat on the Board of Directors of RCA for his efforts in establishing RCA, the result was federally-created monopolies in radio for GE and the Westinghouse Corporation and in telephone systems for the American Telephone & Telegraph Company. The first chief officer of RCA was Owen D. Young. RCAs incorporation papers required that a majority of its stock be held by American citizens, as the years went on, RCA either took over, or produced for itself, a large number of patents, including that of the superheterodyne receiver invented by Edwin Armstrong. Over the years, RCA continued to operate international services, under its subsidiary RCA Communications, Inc. GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales from 1919, Westinghouse also marketed home radios through RCA until 1930. In 1929, RCA purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the worlds largest manufacturer of phonographs and this included a majority ownership of the Victor Company of Japan. The new subsidiary then became RCA Victor, with Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the Nipper His Masters Voice trademark. This trademark is used by the British music & entertainment company HMV. RCA began selling the first electronic turntable in 1930, in 1931, RCA Victor began selling 33⅓ rpm records
5.
Columbia University
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Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as Kings College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, after the American Revolutionary War, Kings College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M. D. degree. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción, Columbia administers annually the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally,100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, researchers, faculty, Columbia is second only to Harvard University in the number of Nobel Prize-winning affiliates, with over 100 recipients of the award as of 2016. In 1746 an act was passed by the assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the colleges first president, Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the colleges first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan, in 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queens College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777. The suspension continued through the occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The colleges library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a hospital first by American. Loyalists were forced to abandon their Kings College in New York, the Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded Kings Collegiate School. After the Revolution, the college turned to the State of New York in order to restore its vitality, the Legislature agreed to assist the college, and on May 1,1784, it passed an Act for granting certain privileges to the College heretofore called Kings College. The Regents finally became aware of the colleges defective constitution in February 1787 and appointed a revision committee, in April of that same year, a new charter was adopted for the college, still in use today, granting power to a private board of 24 Trustees. On May 21,1787, William Samuel Johnson, the son of Dr. Samuel Johnson, was unanimously elected President of Columbia College, prior to serving at the university, Johnson had participated in the First Continental Congress and been chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The colleges enrollment, structure, and academics stagnated for the majority of the 19th century, with many of the college presidents doing little to change the way that the college functioned. In 1857, the college moved from the Kings College campus at Park Place to a primarily Gothic Revival campus on 49th Street and Madison Avenue, during the last half of the 19th century, under the leadership of President F. A. P. Barnard, the institution assumed the shape of a modern university
6.
Sound synthesis
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A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates electric signals that are converted to sound through instrument amplifiers and loudspeakers or headphones. Synthesizers may either imitate instruments like piano, Hammond organ, flute, vocals, natural sounds like ocean waves, etc. or generate new electronic timbres. Synthesizers without built-in controllers are called sound modules, and are controlled via USB, MIDI or CV/gate using a controller device. Synthesizers use various methods to generate electronic signals, synthesizers were first used in pop music in the 1960s. In the 1970s, synths were used in disco, especially in the late 1970s, in the 1980s, the invention of the relatively inexpensive, mass market Yamaha DX7 synth made synthesizers widely available. 1980s pop and dance music often made use of synthesizers. In the 2010s, synthesizers are used in genres of pop, rock. Contemporary classical music composers from the 20th and 21st century write compositions for synthesizer, the beginnings of the synthesizer are difficult to trace, as it is difficult to draw a distinction between synthesizers and some early electric or electronic musical instruments. One of the earliest electric musical instruments, the telegraph, was invented in 1876 by American electrical engineer Elisha Gray. He accidentally discovered the sound generation from a self-vibrating electromechanical circuit and this musical telegraph used steel reeds with oscillations created by electromagnets transmitted over a telegraph line. Gray also built a simple loudspeaker device into later models, consisting of a diaphragm in a magnetic field. This instrument was a remote electromechanical musical instrument that used telegraphy, though it lacked an arbitrary sound-synthesis function, some have erroneously called it the first synthesizer. In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill invented the Teleharmonium, which used dynamos, and was capable of additive synthesis like the Hammond organ, however, Cahills business was unsuccessful for various reasons, and similar but more compact instruments were subsequently developed, such as electronic and tonewheel organs. In 1906, American engineer, Lee De Forest ushered in the electronics age and he invented the first amplifying vacuum tube, called the Audion tube. This led to new entertainment technologies, including radio and sound films, ondes Martenot and Trautonium were continuously developed for several decades, finally developing qualities similar to later synthesizers. In the 1920s, Arseny Avraamov developed various systems of graphic sonic art, in 1938, USSR engineer Yevgeny Murzin designed a compositional tool called ANS, one of the earliest real-time additive synthesizers using optoelectronics. The earliest polyphonic synthesizers were developed in Germany and the United States, during the three years that Hammond manufactured this model,1,069 units were shipped, but production was discontinued at the start of World War II. Both instruments were the forerunners of the electronic organs and polyphonic synthesizers
7.
Rockefeller Foundation
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The Rockefeller Foundation is a private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. It was established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, the Foundation was started by Standard Oil owner John D. Rockefeller, along with his son John D. Rockefeller Jr. Its stated mission is promoting the well-being of humanity throughout the world, as of 2015, the Foundation was ranked as the 39th largest U. S. foundation by total giving. By year-end 2008 assets were tallied at $3.1 billion from $4.6 billion in 2007, on January 5,2017, the Board of Trustees announced the unanimous selection of Dr. Rajiv Shah to serve as the 13th president of the foundation. Shah became the youngest person, at 43, and first-ever Indian-American to serve as president of the foundation. He assumed the position March 1, succeeding Dr. Judith Rodin who served as president for twelve years and announced her retirement, at age 71. Rodin in turn had succeeded Gordon Conway in 2005, a former president of the University of Pennsylvania, Rodin was the first woman to head the foundation. It was in that year he gave the first $100,000 to fund the University of Chicago, over the next two decades, $35 million dollars were gifted to the institution by Rockefeller. It was also in 1906 that the Russell Sage Foundation was established, though its program was limited to working women, Rockefellers would thus not be the first foundation in America, but it brought to it unprecedented international scale and scope. On May 14,1913, New York Governor William Sulzer approved a charter for the foundation - two years after the Carnegie Corporation - with Junior becoming the first president. With its large-scale endowment, a part of Seniors fortune was insulated from inheritance taxes. On December 5, the Board made its first grant of $100,000 to the American Red Cross to purchase property for its headquarters in Washington, D. C. At the beginning the foundation was global in its approach and concentrated in its first decade entirely on the sciences, public health and medical education. In 1913 the foundation set up the International Health Commission, the first appropriation of funds for work outside the US and its early field research on hookworm, malaria, and yellow fever provided the basic techniques to control these diseases and established the pattern of modern public health services. In 1913 it also began a 20-year support program of the Bureau of Social Hygiene, whose mission was research and education on birth control, maternal health and sex education. Also in 1914, the set up a new Department of Industrial Relations. The foundation henceforth confined itself to funding responsible organizations involved in this and other controversial fields, during its first few years of work, the LSRM awarded funds primarily to social workers, with its funding decisions guided primarily by John D. Rockefeller Jr. In January 1929, LSRM funds were folded into the Rockefeller Foundation, John D. Rockefeller Jr. became the foundation chairman in 1917
8.
Telharmonium
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The Telharmonium was an early electrical organ, developed by Thaddeus Cahill circa 1896 and patented in 1897. The electrical signal from the Telharmonium was transmitted over wires, it was heard on the end by means of horn speakers. Like the later Hammond organ, the Telharmonium used tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis and it is considered to be the first synthetic instrument due to its ability to generate sounds electromechanically because the sound is produced by moving parts rather than electronic oscillators. Cahill built three versions, The Mark I version weighed 7 tons, the Mark II version weighed almost 200 tons, as did the Mark III. Each was an advancement over the features of its predecessor. A small number of performances in front of an audience were given in addition to the telephone transmissions. Performances in New York City were well received by the public in 1906, the Telharmonium foreshadowed modern electronic musical equipment in a number of ways. For instance, its sound came in the form of connecting ordinary telephone receivers to large paper cones — a primitive form of loudspeaker. Indeed, Cahill was noted for saying that electromagnetic diaphragms were the most preferable means of outputting its distinctive sound, the Telharmoniums demise came for a number of reasons. Its immense size, weight and power consumption caused obvious problems, in addition, problems began to arise when telephone broadcasts of Telharmonium music were subject to crosstalk and unsuspecting telephone users would be interrupted by strange electronic music. By 1912, interest in this instrument had changed. Cahill died in 1934, his brother retained the Mark I for decades. This was the last version to be scrapped, in 1962, Telharmonium tones are clear and pure — referring to the electronic sine wave tones it was capable of producing. However, it was not restricted to such simple sounds, each tonewheel of the instrument corresponded to a single note, and, to broaden its possibilities, Cahill added several extra tonewheels to add harmonics to each note. The Telharmonium needed 670 kilowatts of power and had 153 keys that allowed it to work properly, refining Sound, A Practical Guide to Synthesis and Synthesizers. Patent Telharmonium, Audion Piano, Luigi Russsolo et les bruitistes sonhors. free. fr, French The Telharmonium the Telharmonium on 120 years Of Electronic Music
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