The great American inventor Edison invented the first tape recorder in human history at the end of the 19th century. He originally wanted to promote this cylindrical tape recorder as a dictation machine. As a result, this plan was unanimously opposed by all the secretaries who made a living by recording the boss's speech, and unfortunately it died. But the tape recorder found its way into the music market. As long as people buy a recording cylinder, they can enjoy all kinds of music from the recorder at home.

Almost at the same time, the mechanical piano (Pianola) was invented. This is a piano operated with punched paper tape. As long as you buy a roll of paper tape, you can enjoy piano solos by famous artists with "high fidelity" on your mechanical piano at home. This new gadget greatly promoted the popularity of "ragtime" music (a type of piano music that often uses syncopation) in the United States. "Ragtime" music can be said to be the first purely American style music form that is not available in Europe and is recognized as one of the predecessors of jazz.

These two inventions fundamentally changed the way we appreciate music. In the past, people either played the piano themselves or bought tickets to listen to experts, which was not that easy. With recording technology and mechanical pianos, music entered the homes of ordinary people for the first time. These two inventions also created the modern model of the music industry, attracted many talents to concentrate on music production, and laid the foundation for the prosperity of music culture.

The birth of the modern music industry also broke the survival basis of traditional folk songs. According to the generally accepted definition, folk songs refer to folk music that has been passed down orally from generation to generation and has been passed down to this day. The reason why folk song lovers love folk songs is firstly because of the long history and culture behind folk songs, and secondly because folk songs have been eliminated through competition for hundreds of thousands of years, and what remains must be excellent works that have been tested for a long time. However, some people underestimate pop music because of this, but this is not necessary. In fact, the two are completely a matter of turnip and green vegetables. Although pop music is not as historical as folk songs, pop music has a sense of modernity that folk songs do not have. Some people say that folk songs have passed the test of history, but they forget that there were no tape recorders in the past, the spread of music was very slow, and the spread was very narrow. The so-called test was limited to a specific small range. Popular music faces the test of many listeners as soon as it is born. Pop music that can withstand such tests is not necessarily worse than folk songs. In other words, recording technology has brought pop music to people, which has replaced the folk songs of the past and become the new folk songs of this era. The Edison cylinder was very bulky and inconvenient to use. A German immigrant named Emile Berliner invented the record in 1888. After improvements by many people, including Edison, it became the main carrier of recorded music in the early twentieth century. Due to technical limitations, the record speed at that time was very fast, 78 rpm. Because of the fast rotation speed, each side of this kind of record can only be recorded for less than three minutes at most. This time limit determined that popular songs at that time must be short and concise. In fact, the traditional folk music of almost all ethnic groups in the world is rarely this short. The music forms in traditional culture are originally diverse in style and length. However, the so-called "pop songs" born with the advent of 78 rpm records have since standardized people's music listening habits. Their short and concise characteristics have continued to this day, restricting the audience's appreciation taste and blunting people's musical imagination. force. The reason why popular songs have been branded with many derogatory labels such as "instant noodles" and "fast food culture" is that the original length limit of 78 rpm records was one of the main culprits.

The 78-rpm record is powered by manual winding and does not require electricity, which is an advantage in the rural southern United States where electricity is scarce. Especially since the 1920s, when radio became popular in American cities, record sales suffered a sharp decline. Record dealers had to turn their attention to the countryside and develop music types suitable for farmers' tastes. It was due to the efforts of these businessmen that American folk songs began their first revival in history, and a large number of real folk singers were discovered by record companies. , they changed the landscape of American pop music to a great extent. Early recordings did not rely on microphones. The musician plays into several large trumpets, and the sound directly enters the recording equipment, driving the recording needle to carve grooves on the record. Needless to say, recording in this way is troublesome. The quality of the recorded sound is extremely poor, and it is impossible to restore the complex structure of the human voice. Therefore, most of the early records recorded were instrumental music, and the audience just listened to it. In 1925, the world's first electric microphone was born, which relied on the sensitive response of the capacitor to changes in plate thickness. The materials that make up capacitors have also undergone improvements from metal to carbon to air, and the frequency response is getting better and better. Because of this, it is possible for the human voice to gradually replace instrumental music and become the mainstream of pop music. Only singers of popular songs can replace performers and become popular stars.

The continuous improvement of microphones and corresponding amplification equipment has fundamentally changed the way singers sing. Before that, whether it was European opera, Chinese opera, or even folk songs originating from rural areas, the singers had to sing at the top of their lungs to drown out the sound of the instruments. With the advent of the microphone, for the first time in the music industry, "gentle" singers such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra appeared who sang with real voices. Without amplification equipment, the loud volume of the orchestra would have long drowned their fleshy voices.

Starting in the 1920s, radio became increasingly popular in the United States. This new method of communication had a huge impact on record sales in its early days. The reason is very simple. The sexual nature of human beings is actually the same in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad. Free things are always the most attractive to consumers. Just as record dealers sued the Internet, the American record publishing organization ASCAP also sued the broadcast industry many times and forced the U.S. government to pass new laws to force broadcast owners to pay record dealers. Broadcasting owners initially tried their best to avoid paying bills, but in the end they were forced to form a new organization called BMI to compete with ASCAP. Since ASCAP signed most mainstream singers, BMI could only explore underground, alternative musicians. At the time, this was undoubtedly a reference to black musicians. The rise of BMI directly led to the rise of black music in the United States. Without the influence of black people, today's American pop music would simply be impossible to talk about.

Early broadcasting used the "amplitude modulation" (AM) transmission method. This method is technically simple and has a long propagation distance, but it has the fatal weakness of high noise and low fidelity. As early as 1923, an engineer named Edwin Armstrong began to study another mode of transmission: "frequency modulation" (FM). With the help of broadcasting giant RCA, he finally demonstrated the FM radio system to the public in 1936. However, at that time RCA had already changed its business strategy and turned to the more promising television industry. In order to compete with FM for channel resources, RCA lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in an attempt to squeeze FM out of the "high frequency" (VHF) band. Although the FCC still gave the first channel of VHF to FM, after the end of World War II, the FCC finally ruled that FM would be permanently excluded from VHF and could only use "Ultra High Frequency" (UHF). This ruling greatly shortened the FM transmission distance and increased the noise. As a result, sponsors have withdrawn and turned to the more profitable television industry. In despair, Armstrong committed suicide by jumping off a building.

For the above reasons, AM radio has dominated the American broadcasting industry for another thirty years. However, the FM radio station with much better sound quality has become a non-mainstream radio station and can only be broadcast in areas inhabited by poor people and ethnic minorities.

RCA's decision to switch to television at the time was not a bad one from a business perspective. From the beginning, television (and Hollywood) was well ahead of the radio and recording industries, and thus attracted the attention of most of the big monopoly capitalists with deep pockets. This phenomenon not only hindered the development of FM radio, but also caused AM radio to receive relatively little attention. In this climate, many local small AM stations have developed rapidly and occupied a considerable market. These independent radio stations, as well as the group of discerning independent DJs they hired, made great contributions to the development and expansion of black rhythm and blues and the early rock music derived from it in the United States. The history of the acoustic guitar (or acoustic guitar) is said to date back to 1200 BC. This instrument is simple and easy to learn, and players can easily sing at the same time. These two advantages make the guitar (or similar instruments) the main accompaniment instrument for many local folk singers. However, the sound of the acoustic guitar is smaller, and in early jazz, it had to play the role of beating the wind instruments (the status of the piano is similar). In 1924, the first guitar that could be connected to an amplifier was released. However, people at that time could not accept the sound produced by this primitive electric guitar, so it was not very popular. It was not until the 1930s that electric guitars began to be favored by jazz guitarists. They began to try to add guitar solos to their performances, and this completely changed the image of the guitar. Most of the early electric guitars were produced by Gibson Guitar Company.

In order to improve some of the shortcomings in the sound of early hollow electric guitars, guitarist and inventor Les Paul invented the solid body (SolidBody) electric guitar. The "Gibson Les Paul solid-body electric guitar" produced in cooperation with Gibson Guitar Company and the "Fender Stratocaster" solid-body electric guitar designed and produced by Leo Fender, another guitar pioneer, have become the favorites of guitarists. love, and soon branched out into blues territory. It can be said that without the electric guitar, there would be no rhythm and blues, and in that case, rock and roll would not exist. The main raw material used in seventy-eight rpm records is shellac, most of which comes from India. During World War II, the source of shellac was cut off, and record companies were forced to require buyers to hand over a certain number of old records in order to exchange for a new one. This policy resulted in the destruction of a large number of early 78 rpm records, and many precious recordings were also destroyed. Lost forever.

As shellac becomes more and more scarce, major record companies have to abandon the black and other ethnic minority music market and focus on the mainstream music market. This tilted policy continued until after World War II. Faced with the resulting vacuum, a large number of small record companies stepped in to fill the void. Their selection of music and restrictions on musicians are much looser than those of major record companies. Therefore, a batch of unique black music was able to be recorded on records. This is why rhythm and blues stood out and gradually became popular all over the country.

At the same time, a brand-new record was launched at Columbia Records in 1948. Its inventor was Peter Goldmark, the company's chief engineer. He himself is a classical music lover. He was very dissatisfied with the fact that when playing classical music on 78-rpm records, he had to constantly change records, and vowed to modify the records to extend the playback length. To achieve this, slowing the record down and increasing the groove count are the obvious options. Doing so will inevitably increase distortion, increase noise, and reduce the frequency response range. In order to solve these problems, after years of research, the research team led by Gedemark made fundamental reforms to the record, from the needle and tone arm to the turntable materials and many other places. They used diamond as the needle and vinyl plastic (Vinyl) as the record material, lowered the record speed to 33.3 rpm, and increased the groove density, so that a 12-inch (about 30 cm) record can hold more than 20 records on each side. minutes of music. This is what people often call LP, also called "LongPlay, LP". The audio specifications of LP records are very high, which led to a series of innovations in audio equipment from microphones to amplifiers to speakers. Coupled with the birth of stereo record technology in 1957, the modern high-fidelity audio (Hi-Fi) industry was officially Set sail. This new audio standard has had a subtle impact on the evolution of music styles in many ways. One of the more extreme examples is that many audiophiles have become monsters who only listen to audio and not music. By the way: In China, the "revival" of classical music and jazz is closely related to the fact that these two are more suitable for "fever".

Back in the 1950s, faced with Columbia's newly launched LP records, its main competitor RCA responded immediately. In fact, as early as the 1930s, RCA had launched 331/3 rpm records, but they were not accepted by the people because of poor sound quality. RCA's leadership still insisted that single records would last for a long time, so they introduced a new format: 45 rpm records. This kind of record can only play for less than five minutes per side, but the sound quality is much better than 78 rpm records, and even better than LP. At that time, a vice president of RCA once said arbitrarily to the person in charge of the company's classical department: "It actually only takes seven seconds to change sides. Consumers should not care about such a short time." The person in charge who was dumbfounded replied: " It's like you are having an affair with your buddy's wife, but the bedroom door is not always open, but it is opened every five minutes for seven seconds..." Needless to say, Columbia's LP records quickly defeated RCA in the field of classical music.

But 45 rpm records also have their own advantages. It has a small diameter, a thin record, is not easily broken, and has low transportation costs. It is very suitable for the time-sensitive single market. In addition, 45-rpm record playback technology is relatively easy. RCA mass-produced a portable turntable with its own speakers and marketed it among teenagers. It turned out to be very popular and became the best choice for them to hold parties. Teenagers simply called this turntable "Hi-Fi". The popularity of this type of "Hi-Fi" greatly promoted the prosperity of the singles market in the 1950s, while LP was only popular among those who listened to serious music and had strong financial strength, and eventually became popular music. The artisticization provides a material foundation. Although World War II caused the shrinkage of the 78-rpm record market, it also helped the pop music market in another way. It turns out that in order to better broadcast Hitler's speeches, German engineers made revolutionary progress in tape recording technology after years of research. After World War II, the United States took this technology over and quickly applied it in the field of popular music. Tape recording was convenient, reliable, cheap, and of good quality, allowing small recording companies with little investment to survive, and contributed greatly to the development of independent recording companies in the 1950s. As mentioned earlier, the rise of these small companies directly contributed to the birth of rock and roll.

In the mid-1960s, RCA invented the eight-track tape (8-Track) that could be used in cars. This invention immediately attracted the attention of many consumers who had not bought records before. Music sales also skyrocketed from this period. In the early 1970s, a group of drug addicts who called themselves "Downers" (as opposed to the traditional "Highers") found that listening to deafening hard rock in high-speed cars was very helpful in achieving their "state." This statement quickly spread among listeners and was largely responsible for the popularity of heavy rock in the early 1970s. A group of heavy rock bands have benefited greatly from this, such as "Deep Purple" (Deep Purple), "Black Sabbath" (Black Sabbath) and "AC/DC", etc. Their tape sales often account for more than 70% of total sales.

Later, the invention of Dolby technology brought recordable cassette tapes into consumers' homes. This new technology allowed pirated tapes to begin to proliferate underground. Record dealers had no choice but to resort to legal means to resist, just as they had against the broadcast industry.

However, the recording quality of tapes is not as good as that of LPs. In addition, due to various reasons, the American pop music market was extremely prosperous in the 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, the impact of piracy is not too bad, but some fans exchange privately recorded music in the underground market. The recording of the singer's live performance can make up for the shortcomings of the studio recording. These illegal recordings not only created a group of die-hard fans for the band, but also greatly helped later music historians study this history. For the first fifty years since its inception, the recording industry has been playing the role of "recorder of live recordings." Most records do not make any changes to the musicians' live performances, and the audience listens to the records as if they were listening to the music live. The emergence of the electric guitar is an anomaly. The sound produced by an electric guitar is very different from that of an acoustic guitar. At first, the audience was not used to this kind of electronic sound and did not regard it as music. Later, due to the many advantages of electric guitar, more and more musicians began to play electric guitar on stage, and people gradually became familiar with and accepted this strange sound. But this acceptance still does not leave the scope of stage performance.

The electronic engineer and guitarist Les Paul mentioned earlier improved recording technology a lot. In the late 1930s, he began to experiment with multi-track recording technology, which allowed musicians to mix separately recorded accompaniment or vocal parts together, making it sound like many musicians were playing at the same time. Paul's original purpose of doing this was just to add a guitar to the record, and there was not much innovation in musical concepts. It was not until the late 1950s that a producer named Phil Spector began to use multi-track recording technology on a large scale in pop music records. Unlike Paul, he added a large number of instruments to the recording, creating a huge sound field like a wall. Therefore, later generations called the type of music he produced "Wall of Sound" (Wall of Sound). This unprecedented fresh sound fascinated many listeners at the time and contributed greatly to the records he produced becoming frequent winners on the charts. .

But Speight's "wall of sound" technology is simply a grand effect produced by the superposition of a large number of conventional instruments. It has been in symphonies for a long time and is not new. What really revolutionized record production was the Beatles' famous "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band" record. At that time, the band members had just visited the West Coast of the United States and witnessed the rise of a number of psychedelic bands in San Francisco. Influenced by them, or inspired by psychedelics, the band returned to London's Abbey Road Studio, spending four months and spending $100,000 (only the Beatles can only afford it), produced such an album that is generally considered to be of epoch-making significance in the music industry.

The Beatles’ famous producer George Martin used the most advanced recording technology at the time (actually it was just a four-track machine, but Martin used multiple mixing methods to actually The equivalent of nine tracks), using a wide variety of quirky instruments, and extensive use of delay, distortion, echo, and splicing techniques that to modern eyes seem almost handmade, create a sonic wonderland that doesn't exist in the real world. The entire album does not have any singles, but uses sound effects to connect each song together. Many songs in the record satirize the mediocre and meaningless lifestyle of modern people. The so-called "Concept Album" (Concept Album), which does not deliberately highlight singles but expresses a certain concept through the entire record, quickly became popular in Europe and the United States after "Sgt. Papi". Without LP and without modern recording technology, all of this would be unimaginable.

The Beatles originally wanted to show the live performance of a virtual band in this record, but the result was that it ended the history of traditional records being only a substitute for live performances, making the record itself Become an independent art form. Since then, the definition of music has been greatly expanded. It is no longer just a simple combination of melody, harmony and rhythm. Many sounds such as electronic sounds, deformed sound effects, environmental noises and other machine-made sounds can be ingeniously created by artists. The combination is given some profound meaning. In a word, modern recording technology (especially the later widespread use of electronic synthesizers) liberated the imagination of artists. As mentioned earlier, due to various reasons, before the 1960s, extremely commercial AM radio stations occupied most of the country in the United States, while FM radio stations were forced to become ultra-small stations that only served ethnic minorities. However, as the Beatles completely transformed pop music, more and more American bands began to deviate from the traditional pop single style and develop in the direction of art rock. However, this type of band lacks effective channels for external publicity in the United States.

The place with the highest concentration of such bands is San Francisco, where the developed LSD culture and the unique local spirit of advocating freedom have given birth to a large number of psychedelic bands. One day in April 1967, a local AM radio DJ named Tom Tonahue was distressed that the radio station could not accommodate the avant-garde rock music he liked. One of his friends mentioned to him the FM radio station in San Francisco. There are many Chinese and Latino residents living here, and they all listen to FM radio. Donahue was inspired and began to inquire about the market.

Finally, he learned that a local FM station called KMPX was troubled by the departure of a Chinese DJ, so he volunteered to fill the vacancy. In this way, the first avant-garde rock FM radio station in the United States was officially established.

KMPX gave Donahue absolute freedom, and he just gave full play to it, playing avant-garde rock, folk songs, blues, jazz, classical music, electronic music and all he liked on his show. Types of music. Compared with popular songs, these "alternative" music have very high requirements for sound quality, and FM radio stations with stereo sound can just meet this requirement. Soon, Donahue's pioneering experiment began to catch on in San Francisco and attracted the attention of many local radio stations. Soon, a large number of pioneer FM stations popped up across the United States, and sponsors began to pay attention to FM stations. This trend greatly promoted the popularity of avant-garde rock in the United States, from many psychedelic rock bands in San Francisco to a group of avant-garde rock bands from the United Kingdom. This trend also prompted many rock bands to begin to widely borrow from other music forms, and the fusion period of rock music has arrived. The popularity of tape records and the popularity of radio and television have easily made people forget the performance function of music. In fact, the evolution of live music performance has largely influenced the evolution of music style. This evolution, in turn, depends largely on advances in performance sound. For example: would rock music exist without electronic amplification?

Early amplification equipment was all tube-based, which was bulky and not powerful enough. Therefore, rock music performances at that time could only be held indoors, and they withered when they went outdoors. Readers who are familiar with Bob Dylan may know that his first plug-in performance at the famous Newport Folk Festival in 1965 was protested by the majority of the audience, but you may not know that the poor sound system used in that performance The sound, not Dylan's rock music, is primarily responsible. It was originally a folk song concert. There were not many microphones on stage, the sound power was not powerful enough, and the sound engineer did not know how to mix rock music. Dylan suddenly brought a rock band on stage, and the sound engineer immediately panicked. He made the instruments very loud, and since there were no monitors on stage, Dylan had no way of knowing what the effect would be. As a result, the audience in the audience couldn't hear what Dylan was singing at all, and many people were actually protesting against this! Dylan fell into trouble with the stereo.

Contrary to what happened to Dylan, another great band benefited from their sound. When the Grateful Dead first formed, they were not very prominent among the psychedelic bands in San Francisco. But they had a friend who made a fortune selling drugs. This man was very proficient in sound equipment and spent a lot of money to buy the best stage sound for the band at the time. Psychedelic rock music needed good sound to increase the effect. The sound plays a big role in why this kind of live performance, which is characterized by long improvisations, has become the most popular performance.

Since the 1960s, with the popularization of transistors and printed circuit boards, performance speakers have become increasingly lighter and more powerful. The emergence of high-power performance speakers made it possible for the emergence and popularity of so-called "Arena Rock" bands, and also created conditions for many rock bands that pay attention to sound effects to tour year-round.

Modern rock music performances not only need good sound, but also good visual effects. If you are lucky enough to "hear" a performance by the Pink Floyd band, you will definitely find that you are "watching" their performance more often. The psychedelic world they use modern technology to create during live performances is the most unique scenery among European and American bands.

Not only performance speakers can influence the evolution of music, but the way individuals listen to music is also closely related to the popularity of certain music styles. In a society where everyone hides in their mosquito nets and listens to headphones, it is difficult for rock music to become popular. Similarly, in a society where everyone has a car and it is easy to make the car audio exaggerated, it is not difficult to understand why "Rap" music that emphasizes bass and drum beats has become so popular. In addition to providing a good opportunity for record dealers to make money, the emergence of CDs also had a great "result" in that it declared the death of concept albums. Because of the convenience of selecting songs, the audience is not forced to listen to an entire piece of music. This is becoming more and more obvious after the Internet became popular. If listeners are accustomed to listening to songs online in the future, concept albums will cease to exist.

When MP3 became popular on the Internet, many people predicted that pop music sales would plummet. But things are still going great for American pop music. There are two reasons for this: First, before the emergence of the emerging MP3 website Napster, free MP3s were not so easy to find online, but the new Napster has fundamentally changed the face of MP3, and people will soon see its impact. . Second, as the population continues to grow, a country’s pop music consumption should theoretically be getting better and better. Perhaps this market would have been better without the Internet.

If the Internet will not have a fatal impact on the overall music market in the short term, it has already had some impact on the distribution of music types.

Specifically, genres that are targeted primarily at young adults and male adults, who are the Internet's most loyal users, have been hit. For example, in the United States today, from the radio broadcast rate to the performance market trend, you can't see any obvious decline in the alternative rock trend. The male friends I know in their twenties and thirties are still listening to this kind of rock music, but they all I have started to learn to download it from Napster and then burn it to CD. As a result, it is difficult to find these rock bands on the record sales charts anymore. Instead, they are replaced by idol singer records aimed at boys and girls below middle school students.

Has alternative rock never recovered? Not necessarily, the key is to see how they adapt. For example, they can use the huge popularity and audience base generated by the Internet to focus their main energy and business opportunities on the performance market. The U.S. performance market this summer is filled with such bands. This trend will become more and more obvious in the future.

As Internet bandwidth increases, popular music is bound to change.