What would electronic music sound like if computers had never been invented?

[enCiphered]

Imagine a world where electronic music evolved without computers. No DAWs, no plugins, no digital sampling, no MIDI as we know it. Analog tech still exists, but it’s been pushed to extremes. Tape, voltage control, mechanical sequencing, modular insanity. Everything built from physical processes and raw electricity.

What kind of music would have evolved?
How would instruments, workflows, and styles differ?
Would techno even exist? Would musique concrète be mainstream?

Would we have built physical grooveboxes the size of furniture? Would something like FM synthesis ever emerge, or would everything be subtractive and noisy and tactile? So many questions..

[mjolnir]

I think it would be surprisingly the same.
Even a simle R-F circuit with a variable resistor can yield a nice filter sweep if done right.
Other analog circuits can do oscillators. In fact the basics of analog syntheis brings us most of our contemporary sounds.
Without digital editing, there was still tape edits and tape loops and the technology kept on improving.

Even without MIDI other similar sync tools existed. But yeah, if there was no MIDI that would be a real setback.
I think the music would be very melodic and synthpoppy.
But analog sequencers can do a lot too, so maybe we'd still have decent arps and drums and stuff.

I guess what maybe would have been the most different is the PRICE.
Computers and MIDI helped bring costs down tremendously.

Right?

[Uncle E]

[whyterabbyt]

What kind of music would have evolved?

Hainbach.

[VariKusBrainZ]

It would sound like the electronic music that was made before computers came on the scene, just go and take a listen, theres decades of it on the internet free to learn from

[Bunny_boy]

Would techno even exist?

Any excuse to post that Delia Derbyshire track
(And yes, it's a bit old hat now, but is OT)



As said above - cost would be the main thing. Would that've lead to so many innovations. Probably not.

[whyterabbyt]

It would sound like the electronic music that was made before computers came on the scene

Unlikely. The first proper computer-based audio software was written in 1957, and there werent analog devices being sold as 'synthesisers' until the mid 60s.

[osiris]

Probably a lot like The Birds soundtrack. This would be your home studio:


//Chemistry professor Hiller founded the Experimental Music Studio at the University of Illinois in 1958. He and mathematician Leonard Isaacson developed the algorithms that the Illiac I computer used to compose the Illiac Suite for String Quartet.//

[markello]

What kind of music would have evolved?

Hainbach.

I like noodles as much as anyone, but not for breakfast, dinner and tea.

[Shabdahbriah]

What kind of music would have evolved?

Hainbach.

I like noodles as much as anyone, but not for breakfast, dinner and tea.

Depends on where one places his particular "style" of experimentation, discovery, and 'expression', in the "evolutionary" process. The beginning? The end? A 'bookmark/hallmark' ? Or as (merely) a personalized facet in an ever expanding cacophony of meaningful, and/or meaningless, noise. It's quite subjective, me finks.

But "evolution" is, as evolution does, and the microprocessor, is part of that process:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu_Modular_System

[added]

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/em ... -retrozone

[whyterabbyt]

nd the microprocessor, is part of that process:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu_Modular_System

Indeed. And one would have to wonder where the definition of 'computer' is within the question.
If the analog computer had never existed, we'd possibly be without a lot of analog synthesis building blocks.

And a Turing Machine module definitely isnt what most people would call a computer, but it does prove that relatively simple digital logic can produce quite complex results/behaviour we'd now expect to be computerised (as does the ancient second-hand MIDI noise gate I have where all the MIDI triggering etc is handled by discrete digital logic gates on ICs.)

[vurt]

theremin, lots of theremin.

[BertKoor]

This thread smells of THE INTRANCER.

[VOODOO U]

Everything built from physical processes and raw electricity.

Which is what circuitry is composed of and computers are made up of circuits so this thread is null and void. Next question:

What would.music sound like if theory was never invented? I think it would sound like Japanese noise rock.

[RunBeerRun]

It would be all cheap subtractive synths. Computers made it possible for 3x multiplication synths, without the hard soldering and component understandings, because you definitely can't BUY anything powerful.