Monday, March 10, 2014

Phil Spector's Wall of Sound / Max Matthews Bicycle Built For Two

Phil Spector's Wall of Sound 
The wall of sound is a musical production technique for pop and rock music. Spector created a dense, layered, reverberant sound that came across well on AM radio and jukeboxes in the era. The sound is created by having a number of electric and acoustic guitars play in unison, adding musical arrangements for large groups of musicians up to the size of the orchestras, then recording a sound using the echo chamber. The natural reverberation and echo from the hard walls of the echo chamber gave Spector's productions their distinctive quality and resulted in a rich, complex sound that, when played on AM radio, had impressive death rarely heard in mono recordings. His work can be seen in popular artists such as the beach boys, david bowie, and the beatles. 

Quiz Post: Max Matthews Bicycle Built For Two
Max Matthews figured out how to digitally synthesize sound on a digital computer, and wrote Music I, the first in a long line of music programming languages to which all digital synthesis has its root. He worked in acoustic research in Bell laboratories.  Bicycle Built For Two was made on Music 4 in 1961 and was a fully digitally synthesized version of Daisy Bell. It was the first computer singing song. In 2001 it was incorporated into a move.  He is know as the "father of computer music". Listening, it is funny to think of something so simple now yet to be so revolutionary. 



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