Wow, you really know your stuff. I play a bit and I can appreciate that there is structure in there.
I can see where Kraftwerk got a bunch of their influences. Check this video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWUiLJnEYJI
What I don't get is the video in the background being projected onto a screen from the camera to the left. I had NO IDEA they had live feed projectors in 1970.
Sorry for all the verbiage but it's quite rare I run into anyone who has ever heard of them or her. Not many of my friends were into music like this back then, we were all Rockin' to Zep and the Stones, et al. As you said, I could sense the structure behind it and knew it was more of a novelty. Still, I never was a huge fan of electronica but kept up with a few, like Kraftwerk. Of course the VCS3 went on to be used by so many more contemporary bands as time went on, mainly due to pioneers like these.
You said you play some. What instrument(s)? You might want to stop by one of our Friday Night Guitar Threads and let us hear what you do. Despite the name we welcome any instrument, any skill level.
Dude, you are talking to someone that takes 6 paragraphs to write out what most normal people can just say with a sentence or two. I'm stuck always being able to see the contexts that my stuff can be viewed from so I have to engineer a context to funnel readers to the point I need to make.
I am a SERIOUSLY boring person!
:)
The older I get the further back in time each decade / generation feels like the present. It is so bloody interesting seeing all the innovation happening at that time in music and art. If you have a background in IT, you will probably also know that basically everything except wireless and mobile phones were either invented or experimented with back then. The most advanced programming language on the planet is still Lisp, which was invented in the 50s, even further back.
I kind of wonder what motivated these groups to experiment and do all that electronic stuff. I suppose it was inevitable. I think I am understimating the level of sophistication of people and technology back then.
I play guitar, not very well but I can hit a chord or two. This will sound stupid, of course, but I recently watched a bunch of stuff and a documentary on Carol Kaye (oh! another idea for a post!) from the wrecking crew and was blown away by her saying things like "why don't just learn some chords instead of all that fiddly stuff". And then I found bout the circle of fifths and saw a video of a music teacher teaching seniors how to use the circle of fifths to come up with melodies.
All of a sudden a whole bunch of music makes sense. You can always hear there was a pattern behind it ... heh ... but now I can just refer to a chart.
I'll keep an eye on the Friday thing, I have to get a bunch of code out of the door.
What do you play?
I also have to put some effort into explaining things succinctly, tend to ramble a lot.
I do have a background in IT, starting back when it was fairly new. I learned COBOL in Vo Tech using an IBM Model 4 mainframe. It was tube based with a 4 KB magnetic core memory unit. I've punched thousands of Hollerith cards. It all exploded so quickly it was amazing.
My other, and most fervent, interest was the puberty of RocknRoll into Rock and was fortunate enough to live through it. I have a site, MusicFor.Us, where I'm trying to document the songs and artists that inspired what came after. Mainly the late '50's through the '70's. I also own PaddysPub here and on old Voat where I submit shorter snippets with songs from the era. My screenname is COF (not a fan of this name changing lately). I also am the archivist for the FNGT and one of the hosts. I played drums and a little guitar back in bar bands back in the '70's but time and age has drastically slowed me down. So now I try to keep the younger crowd playing and interested where it began. We've had the FNGT as a way to do that and have done it every Friday night for almost 4 years now. It starts every Friday night at 8pm et in s/guitar and we welcome every musician to share the music they make. We've had a multitude of instruments over the years from banging on pots and pans to bagpipes, kalimbas, marimbas, vocalists, and of course guitars. Some people are performing pro's and others who are just sitting around enjoying and having fun playing what they want. Drop by sometime.
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