Electronic music is a group of music styles that use electronic instruments, technology, and software to create sounds. It includes music made with electronic methods and music that uses both electronic and mechanical parts. Pure electronic instruments, like synthesizers and theremins, make sound entirely through electronic circuits without any physical parts that create sound first. Electromechanical instruments, such as electric guitars and Hammond organs, have mechanical parts like strings or hammers that create sound, along with electronic parts like amplifiers and speakers that help process and play the sound.

The first electronic musical tools were made at the end of the 1800s. In the 1920s and 1930s, early electronic instruments were introduced, and some of the first music using them was written. By the 1940s, magnetic tape allowed musicians to record sounds and change them by adjusting the tape’s speed or direction, leading to new types of music in Egypt and France. In 1948, a style called musique concrète was created in Paris by combining recorded sounds from nature and machines. In 1953, Germany produced the first music made only from electronic generators. Electronic music also began in Japan and the United States in the 1950s, and computers were first used to create music in the same decade.

In the 1960s, digital computers were used to make music, and new electronic instruments influenced the music industry. In the early 1970s, Moog synthesizers and drum machines helped electronic music become more popular. During the 1970s, electronic music started to shape popular music styles like disco, synth-pop, and hip-hop. In the 1980s, widely available digital synthesizers, such as the Yamaha DX7, led to the creation of MIDI, a system that connects electronic instruments. In the same decade, electronic music became a major part of popular music. In the 1990s, as music technology became cheaper, electronic music became a common part of culture. In Berlin, the Love Parade began in 1989 and grew into one of the largest street parties in the world.

Today, electronic music includes many types, from experimental music to popular styles like electronic dance music. In recent years, electronic music has become popular in the Middle East, where artists from Iran and Turkey mix traditional instruments with modern styles like techno. Pop electronic music, often in a 4/4 rhythm, is more widely known than earlier forms that were only popular in small groups.

Origins: late 19th century to early 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists and inventors tested new electronic technology to create the first electronic musical instruments. These early devices were not sold to the public but were used in shows and performances. Audiences heard copies of existing music, not new pieces written for the instruments. Some instruments made simple sounds, but the Telharmonium combined sounds from several orchestral instruments with good accuracy. It gained public interest and helped send music through telephone lines for the public to listen to.

People who questioned traditional music saw value in these new inventions. Ferruccio Busoni encouraged the creation of music using smaller tones made possible by electronic instruments. He wrote a famous essay in 1907 predicting that machines would shape future music. Futurist composers like Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo used sounds from machines to create music that mimicked noise, as described in their 1913 manifesto called The Art of Noises.

Improvements in vacuum tube technology led to smaller, louder, and more practical electronic instruments. By the early 1930s, the theremin, ondes Martenot, and trautonium were being sold to the public.

From the late 1920s, composers like Joseph Schillinger and Maria Schuppel began using these instruments in their work. They were often played alongside traditional orchestras, and many composers wrote parts for the theremin that could be played by string instruments instead.

Some avant-garde composers criticized the use of electronic instruments for traditional purposes. These instruments allowed for more tones, which composers like Charles Ives, Dimitrios Levidis, Olivier Messiaen, and Edgard Varèse used in their work. Percy Grainger used the theremin to create music without fixed pitches, while Russian composers like Gavriil Popov used it to make noise in otherwise-acoustic music.

Early recording technology developed alongside electronic instruments. In the late 19th century, the mechanical phonograph was invented to record and play back sound. By the 1920s, record players were common in homes, and composers used them to play short recordings during performances.

In 1925, electrical recording methods were introduced, leading to more creative use of record players. Composers like Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch created music in 1930 by combining recordings of instruments and voices at different speeds. Inspired by these techniques, John Cage made Imaginary Landscape No. 1 in 1939 by changing the speed of recorded tones.

Composers also used new sound-on-film technology to create music. Recordings could be cut and rearranged to make sound collages, as seen in works by Tristan Tzara, Kurt Schwitters, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Walter Ruttmann, and Dziga Vertov. This technology also allowed sounds to be drawn and changed visually. These methods were used to make soundtracks for films in Germany, Russia, and the United States, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Norman McLaren continued experimenting with graphical sound techniques from the late 1930s.

Development: 1940s to 1950s

The first practical audio tape recorder was introduced in 1935. A method called AC biasing improved the sound quality of recordings. As early as 1942, test recordings were made in stereo. These developments began in Germany, but after World War II ended, recorders and tapes were brought to the United States. These tools led to the creation of the first commercially produced tape recorder in 1948.

In 1944, before magnetic tape was used for music, Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh, while still a student in Cairo, used a heavy wire recorder to capture sounds from an ancient zaar ceremony. Using equipment at the Middle East Radio studios, El-Dabh edited the recording with effects like echo, reverb, and re-recording. The result, called The Expression of Zaar, was presented in 1944 at an art gallery in Cairo. Although his early work was not widely known outside Egypt, El-Dabh later contributed to electronic music at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in the late 1950s.

After working with Studio d'Essai at Radiodiffusion Française (RDF) in the early 1940s, Pierre Schaeffer developed the theory and practice of musique concrète. In the late 1940s, Schaeffer experimented with sound-based compositions using shellac record players. In 1950, magnetic tape machines allowed for new techniques in musique concrète, such as changing the speed of recordings (to alter pitch) and splicing tape together.

On October 5, 1948, RDF broadcast Schaeffer’s Etude aux chemins de fer, the first movement of Cinq études de bruits. This marked the start of studio-based musique concrète (or acousmatic art). Schaeffer used a disc cutting lathe, four turntables, a four-channel mixer, filters, an echo chamber, and a mobile recording unit. Soon after, Pierre Henry began working with Schaeffer, and their partnership greatly influenced electronic music. Another collaborator, Edgard Varèse, created Déserts, a work for chamber orchestra and tape. The tape parts were made in Schaeffer’s studio and later revised at Columbia University.

In 1950, Schaeffer gave the first public (non-broadcast) concert of musique concrète at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. He used a PA system, turntables, and mixers, but the performance was difficult because live sound editing with turntables had never been tried before. Later that year, Schaeffer and Henry created Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950), the first major work of musique concrète. In 1951, RTF established the first studio for electronic music in Paris. That same year, Schaeffer and Henry produced an opera, Orpheus, using concrete sounds and voices.

By 1951, the work of Schaeffer, composer-percussionist Pierre Henry, and sound engineer Jacques Poullin was officially recognized. The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète, part of the Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF), was formed in Paris. This group became the ancestor of the ORTF.

In 1952, Karlheinz Stockhausen briefly worked in Schaeffer’s studio and later joined the WDR Cologne’s Studio for Electronic Music.

In 1954, authentic compositions combining electric and acoustic elements began to appear. Three major works premiered that year: Varèse’s Déserts for chamber ensemble and tape, and two works by Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky: Rhapsodic Variations for the Louisville Symphony and A Poem in Cycles and Bells for orchestra and tape. The tape part of Déserts includes concrete sounds, such as factory noises and ship sirens, played through two loudspeakers.

At the German premiere of Déserts in Hamburg, conducted by Bruno Maderna, Karlheinz Stockhausen operated the tape controls. Varèse explained that the title Déserts referred not only to physical deserts but also to the emptiness of the human mind and the loneliness of inner space.

In 1953, the famous electronic music studio in Cologne was officially opened at the radio studios of the NWDR. It had been planned as early as 1950, and early compositions were made and broadcast in 1951. Created by Werner Meyer-Eppler, Robert Beyer, and Herbert Eimert (its first director), the studio later included Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig. In his 1949 thesis, Meyer-Eppler proposed creating music entirely from electronically generated signals, which distinguished elektronische Musik from French musique concrète, which used recorded sounds.

In 1953, Stockhausen composed Studie I, followed by Elektronische Studie II in 1954—the first electronic piece published as a score. In 1955, more electronic music studios were established, including the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano, the NHK studio in Tokyo (founded by Toshiro Mayuzumi), and the Philips studio in Eindhoven, Netherlands, which later became the Institute of Sonology at the University of Utrecht.

With Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel working there, Cologne became a hub for avant-garde music. Stockhausen combined electronic sounds with orchestras in Mixtur (1964) and Hymnen, dritte Region mit Orchester (1967). He said his electronic music made listeners feel like they were in "outer space" or a "fantastic dream world."

In the United States, electronic music began in 1939 when John Cage created Imaginary Landscape, No. 1, using turntables, frequency recordings, piano, and cymbal. Cage composed five more Imaginary Landscapes between 1942 and 1952, mostly for percussion ensembles. No. 4 used twelve radios, and No. 5, written in 1952, used 42 recordings on magnetic tape. Otto Luening said Cage performed Williams Mix at the Donaueschingen Festival in 1954, using eight loudspeakers. The performance was well-received.

The Music for Magnetic Tape Project was formed by members of the New York School (John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, David Tudor, and Morton Feldman) and lasted until 1954. Cage described the group’s work as "a brilliant light" in a time of "social darkness," noting its influence on notation

Expansion: 1960s

These were important years for electronic music—not only in schools, but also for independent artists, as synthesizer technology became easier to use. By this time, a strong group of composers and musicians working with new sounds and instruments had formed and was growing. In 1960, Otto Luening composed Gargoyles for violin and tape, and Karlheinz Stockhausen's Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano, and percussion premiered. This piece had two versions—one for 4-channel tape, and the other for tape with human performers. In Kontakte, Stockhausen stopped using traditional musical form based on a clear beginning, middle, and end. Instead, he used a new method called "moment form," which is similar to techniques used in early twentieth-century films where scenes are cut together quickly.

The theremin had been used since the 1920s but became more widely known in the 1950s because it was used in science-fiction movie soundtracks, such as Bernard Herrmann's score for The Day the Earth Stood Still.

In the UK during this time, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (founded in 1958) became well-known for its work on the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who. One of the most influential British electronic artists was Delia Derbyshire, a member of the Workshop, who created the famous 1963 electronic version of the Doctor Who theme composed by Ron Grainer. Other composers active in the UK included Ernest Berk (who started his first studio in 1955), Tristram Cary, Hugh Davies, Brian Dennis, George Newson, Daphne Oram, and Peter Zinovieff.

During the UNESCO fellowship for electronic music studies (1958), Israeli composer Josef Tal traveled to the United States and Canada. He wrote two articles for UNESCO summarizing his findings. In 1961, he created the Centre for Electronic Music in Israel at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1962, Canadian composer Hugh Le Caine arrived in Jerusalem to install his Creative Tape Recorder at the centre. In the 1990s, Tal worked with Dr. Shlomo Markel, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and the Volkswagen Foundation on a research project called "Talmark" to develop a new musical notation system for electronic music.

Milton Babbitt composed his first electronic piece, Composition for Synthesizer (1961), using the RCA synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

Collaborations happened across the world. In 1961, American composer Vladimir Ussachevsky invited French composer Edgar Varèse to the Columbia-Princeton Studio. Varèse revised his work Déserts with help from Mario Davidovsky and Bülent Arel.

The busy work at Columbia-Princeton and other places inspired the creation of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1963 by Morton Subotnick, with members including Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Anthony Martin, and Terry Riley.

Later, the Center moved to Mills College, led by Pauline Oliveros, and was renamed the Center for Contemporary Music.

Pietro Grossi was an Italian pioneer of computer composition and tape music. He started experimenting with electronic techniques in the early 1960s. Grossi was born in Venice in 1917 and founded the S 2F M (Studio de Fonologia Musicale di Firenze) in 1963 to explore electronic sound and composition.

At the same time in San Francisco, composer Stan Shaff and equipment designer Doug McEachern presented the first "Audium" concert at San Francisco State College in 1962. Later, they worked at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in 1963, creating performances that controlled the movement of sound in space. Twelve speakers surrounded the audience, and four were placed on a rotating structure above. In 1964, the San Francisco Chronicle music critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote that the possibilities of controlling sound in space were explored more thoroughly than ever before. In 1967, the first Audium, a "sound-space continuum," opened and held weekly performances until 1970. In 1975, a new Audium opened with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, designed for spatial sound composition and performance. Some composers used multiple speakers placed in different locations and switched or moved sound between them. This method relied on speaker placement and the acoustics of the room. Examples include Varese's Poeme Electronique (a tape music performance at the 1958 World Fair in Brussels) and Stan Shaff's Audium installation in San Francisco. Through more than 4,500 weekly programs over 40 years, Shaff "sculpts" sound, performing now-digitized spatial works live through 176 speakers.

Jean-Jacques Perrey used techniques from Pierre Schaeffer on tape loops and was among the first to use the Moog synthesizer developed by Robert Moog. With this instrument, he composed music with Gershon Kingsley and alone. A famous example of the Moog synthesizer is the 1968 album Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos, which sparked a trend for synthesizer music. In 1969, David Tudor brought a Moog synthesizer and Ampex tape machines to the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad with help from the Sarabhai family, forming India's first electronic music studio. There, composers Jinraj Joshipura, Gita Sarabhai, SC Sharma, IS Mathur, and Atul Desai created experimental sound compositions from 1969 to 1973.

In 1950, the computer CSIRAC in Australia first generated musical melodies. Earlier reports in America and England claimed computers might have played music earlier, but research has shown these claims are false because no evidence supports them. Some people speculated that computers could make noise, but there is no proof they actually did.

The first computer to play music was CSIRAC, designed and built by Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard in the 1950s. Mathematician Geoff Hill programmed CSIRAC to play popular melodies from the early 1950s. In 1951, CSIRAC publicly played the "Colonel Bogey March," though no recordings of this performance exist. However, CSIRAC only played standard music and was not used to explore new ways of thinking about music, which is common in modern computer-music practice.

The first music performed in England was the British National Anthem, programmed by Christopher Strachey on the Ferranti Mark I in late 1951. Later that year, short recordings of the National Anthem, "Ba, Ba Black Sheep," and "In the Mood" were made by a BBC team and are recognized as the earliest known recordings of a computer playing music. These recordings can be heard on a Manchester University website. In 2016, researchers at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, restored the recording, and it is available on SoundCloud.

The

Late 1960s to early 1980s

In the late 1960s, pop and rock musicians, such as the Beach Boys and the Beatles, started using electronic instruments, like the theremin and Mellotron, to help create their unique sound. The first bands to use the Moog synthesizer were the Doors in their 1967 song "Strange Days" and the Monkees on their 1967 album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. In his book Electronic and Experimental Music, Thom Holmes says the Beatles' 1966 song "Tomorrow Never Knows" marked a new era in electronic music in rock and pop because the band used tape loops and sounds that were reversed or changed in speed.

Also in the late 1960s, music groups like Silver Apples, Beaver and Krause, and psychedelic rock bands such as The United States of America, Fifty Foot Hose, White Noise, and Gong were pioneers in electronic rock and electronica. They combined psychedelic rock with oscillators and synthesizers. The 1969 instrumental "Popcorn," written by Gershon Kingsley for Music To Moog By, became famous because of a 1972 version by Hot Butter.

The Moog synthesizer became popular in 1968 with Switched-On Bach, an album of Bach music arranged for the Moog synthesizer by composer Wendy Carlos. The album was very successful and won three Grammy Awards in 1970: Best Classical Album, Best Classical Performance – Instrumental Soloist or Soloists, and Best Engineered Classical Recording.

In 1969, David Borden created the world's first synthesizer ensemble called the Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company in Ithaca, New York.

By the end of the 1960s, the Moog synthesizer became central to the sound of progressive rock bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Genesis. Instrumental prog rock was especially important in Europe, helping bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Can, Neu!, and Faust avoid language barriers. Their synthesizer-heavy "krautrock" and the work of Brian Eno (a keyboard player for Roxy Music) greatly influenced later electronic rock.

Ambient dub music was created by Jamaican artists like King Tubby, who used techniques such as echo, equalization, and psychedelic effects. This music used layering and included world music elements, deep basslines, and harmonic sounds. Techniques like long echo delays were also common. Other artists in this genre include Dreadzone, Higher Intelligence Agency, The Orb, Ott, Loop Guru, Woob, and Transglobal Underground.

Dub music influenced hip-hop when Jamaican immigrant DJ Kool Herc introduced dub techniques to the United States in the early 1970s. One technique that became popular in hip-hop was playing the same record on two turntables to extend a favorite section. The turntable became a key electronic instrument in the 1980s and 1990s.

Electronic rock was also made by Japanese musicians, such as Isao Tomita with Electric Samurai: Switched on Rock (1972), which used the Moog synthesizer to play pop and rock songs, and Osamu Kitajima with the progressive rock album Benzaiten (1974). In the mid-1970s, musicians like Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Tomita, and Klaus Schulze helped shape new-age music. Their work often listed the electronic equipment used in album covers. Electronic music became common in radio and top-selling charts, with bands like Space (Magic Fly) and Jean-Michel Jarre (Oxygène) leading the way. Between 1977 and 1981, Kraftwerk released albums like Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine, and Computer World, which influenced many electronic music styles.

In this era, rock musicians like Mike Oldfield and The Alan Parsons Project used electronic effects and music. The Alan Parsons Project was the first rock band to use a digital vocoder in their 1975 song "The Raven." These techniques became more common in the mid-1980s. Jeff Wayne's 1978 electronic rock musical version of The War of the Worlds was very successful.

Electronic music was also used in film scores. Wendy Carlos composed scores for movies like A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron. In 1977, Gene Page recorded a disco version of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind theme, which reached number 30 on the R&B chart. Giorgio Moroder won an Academy Award for the Midnight Express score in 1979, and Vangelis won another for Chariots of Fire in 1981. After punk rock emerged, a simpler form of electronic rock used new digital technology to replace other instruments. The American duo Suicide, who came from the punk scene in New York, used drum machines and synthesizers on their 1977 album.

Synth-pop bands that became successful included Ultravox with their 1977 song "Hiroshima Mon Amour," Yellow Magic Orchestra with their 1978 self-titled album, The Buggles with their 1979 hit "Video Killed the Radio Star," Gary Numan with his 1979 album The Pleasure Principle, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark with their 1979 song "Electricity," Depeche Mode with their 1980 single "Dreaming of Me," and their 1981 album Speak & Spell, A Flock of Seagulls with their 1981 hit "Talking," New Order with their 1981 song "Ceremony," and The Human League with their 1981 hit "Don't You Want Me."

The development of MIDI and digital audio made it easier to create electronic music. Engineers, producers, and composers explored new electronic equipment. Synth-pop sometimes used synthesizers instead of other instruments, but many bands still included guitarists, bassists, and drummers. These changes helped synth-pop grow, especially after the New Romantic movement made synthesizers dominant in pop and rock music in the early 1980s. Key bands included Yazoo, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, Talk Talk, Japan, and Eurythmics.

Synth-pop became popular worldwide, with hits by Canadian bands Men Without Hats and Trans-X, Belgian band Telex

Late 1980s to 1990s

Synth-pop music continued into the late 1980s, with a style that became more similar to dance music. British groups like Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, and The Communards helped make this type of music popular during the 1990s.

This trend continues today, with electronic dance music (EDM) being played in nightclubs around the world. Radio stations, websites, and magazines like Mixmag now focus only on EDM. Even though the music industry tries to define EDM as a single type of music, the term is still used to describe many different styles, such as dance-pop, house, techno, electro, and trance, along with their smaller types. EDM has become important in the United States and North America, especially because of the big room house/EDM sound used in pop music and large events like Electric Daisy Carnival, Tomorrowland, and Ultra Music Festival.

At the same time, a group of electronic music styles made for listening rather than dancing became known as "electronica." This was a music scene in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s. A 1997 Billboard article said that the mix of club culture and independent record labels helped create a place where electronica artists could experiment and later become popular. American labels like Astralwerks (which worked with artists such as The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, and The Future Sound of London), Moonshine (DJ Keoki), and City of Angels (The Crystal Method) helped spread this style of music.

The term "indie electronic" (or "indietronica") describes a group of musicians who started in independent rock music but added electronic tools like synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, and computer programs. They were influenced by early electronic music, krautrock, synth-pop, and dance music. Many of these artists record music on computers using digital audio workstations.

The first indie electronic artists appeared in the 1990s, with groups like Stereolab (who used older equipment) and Disco Inferno (who used modern sampling tools). The genre grew more popular in the 2000s as home recording and software synthesizers became common. Other artists included Broadcast, Lali Puna, Múm, The Postal Service, Skeletons, and School of Seven Bells. Independent record labels connected to this style include Warp, Morr Music, Sub Pop, and Ghostly International.

2000s and 2010s

As computer technology has improved and music software has developed, people can now create and perform music using methods that do not rely on traditional musical instruments. Examples include laptop performance (laptronica), live coding, and Algorave. The term "Live PA" describes any live performance of electronic music, whether using laptops, synthesizers, or other devices.

Around the year 2000, software-based virtual studio tools became available. Products like Propellerhead's Reason and Ableton Live became widely used. These tools offer affordable and practical alternatives to traditional hardware-based music studios. Because of improvements in computer technology, high-quality music can now be created using only a single laptop. These changes have made music creation easier for more people, leading to a large increase in home-produced electronic music shared online. Software instruments and effects (called "plugins") can be used in computer-based studios through the VST platform. Some of these plugins closely copy the sounds of older hardware, such as the Roland D-50, ARP Odyssey, Yamaha DX7, or Korg M1.

Circuit bending is the process of altering battery-powered toys and synthesizers to produce unexpected sounds. This practice was started by Reed Ghazala in the 1960s, and he introduced the term "circuit bending" in 1992.

After the rise of circuit bending, musicians began building their own modular synthesizers, leading to renewed interest in designs from the 1960s. Eurorack became a popular system for these synthesizers.