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

Almost at the same time, the mechanical piano (Pianola) was invented. This is a kind of piano operated by punched paper tape. You can enjoy the piano solo of famous artists in "high fidelity" on the mechanical piano at home as long as you buy a paper tape. This new thing has greatly promoted the popularity of Ragtime music (a piano music that often uses syncopation) in the United States. "Ragtime" music can be said to be the first pure American-style music form that is not available in Europe, and it is recognized as one of the predecessors of jazz.

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

The birth of modern music industry also broke the survival foundation of traditional folk songs. According to the accepted definition, folk songs refer to folk music that has been passed down from generation to generation and spread to today. Folk song lovers love folk songs because of the long history and culture behind them, and because folk songs have been eliminated after hundreds of years of competition, what remains must be tried and tested excellent works. However, some people underestimate pop music, which is really unnecessary. In fact, the two are completely a problem of carrots and vegetables. Although popular music is not as rich in history as folk songs, it has a sense of modernity that folk songs do not have. Some people say that folk songs have stood the test of history, but they forget that there was no tape recorder in the past, and the spread of music was very slow and narrow. The so-called test was confined to a specific small scope. However, new pop music has been tested by many listeners since it was born. Pop music that can stand this test is not necessarily worse than folk songs. In other words, recording technology has brought people pop music, which has replaced the past folk songs and become the new folk songs of this era. Edison's cylinder is very clumsy and inconvenient to use. A German immigrant named EmileBerliner invented the record in 1888. After being improved by many people, including Edison, it became the main carrier of recorded music in the early twentieth century. Because of the limitation of technology, the speed of records at that time was very fast, 78 revolutions per minute. Because of the high speed, this kind of record can only be recorded for less than three minutes on each side at most. This time limit determines that the popular songs at that time must be short and pithy. In fact, the traditional folk music of almost all nationalities in the world is rarely so short, and the music forms in traditional culture are originally diverse in style and different in length. However, the so-called "pop songs" born with the advent of 78-turn records have standardized people's habit of listening to music since then, and their short and pithy characteristics have continued to this day, which has bound the audience's appreciation taste and passivated people's musical imagination. The reason why pop songs are branded with many derogatory brands such as "instant noodles" and "fast food culture" is that the length limit of 78-turn records was one of the main culprits.

The 78-turn record is powered by manual winding without electricity, which shows its advantages in the rural areas of the southern United States where electricity is lacking. Especially since the 1920s, radio has become popular in American cities, and record sales have fallen sharply. Record companies have to turn their eyes to the countryside and develop music types suitable for farmers' tastes. It is precisely because of these businessmen's efforts that American folk songs have been revived for the first time in history, and a large number of real folk singers have been discovered by record companies, which have greatly changed the pattern of American pop music in the future. Early recording did not rely on a microphone. Musicians play against several loudspeakers, and the sound directly enters the recording equipment, driving the recording needle to carve grooves on the record. Needless to say, this recording is troublesome, and the quality of the recorded sound is extremely poor, so it is impossible to restore the complex human voice. Therefore, most of the early records were recorded by instrumental music, and the audience just listened to a noise. 1925 The first electric microphone was born in the world, which relied on the sensitive response of the capacitor to the change of the thickness of the electrode plate. The materials that make up the capacitor have also undergone improvements from metal, carbon to air, and the frequency response is getting better and better. Because of this, it is possible for human voice to gradually replace instrumental music and become the mainstream of pop music. Only the singer of pop songs can replace the performer and become a popular star.

The continuous improvement of microphone and corresponding amplification equipment has fundamentally changed the singer's singing style. Before that, no matter European operas, China operas, or even rural folk songs, their singers had to sing at the top of their voices to drown out the sound of musical instruments. With the advent of the microphone, for the first time, there appeared "gentle" singers like Harry Lillis Crosby and Frank Sinatra who sang with their real voices. Without amplification equipment, the loud volume of orchestral music would have drowned their flesh throats. Since the 1920s, broadcasting has gradually become popular in the United States. This new mode of communication has greatly affected record sales in its early days. The reason is very simple. In fact, human beings are the same in ancient and modern times, and free things always attract consumers the most. Just like a record company suing the Internet, ASCAP, an American record publishing organization, sued the broadcasting industry many times and forced the American government to pass a new law, forcing broadcasting owners to pay the record company. At first, broadcast owners tried their best to default, but in the end they were forced to set up a new organization called BMI to compete with ASCAP. Since ASCAP has signed most mainstream singers, BMI can only explore underground and alternative musicians. At that time, this undoubtedly referred to black musicians. The rise of BMI directly led to the prosperity of black music in the United States. Without the influence of black people, American pop music today is simply impossible.

The early broadcasting used the "AM" mode. This method is technically simple and has a long transmission distance, but it has the fatal weakness of loud noise and low fidelity. As early as 1923, an engineer named EdwinArmstrong began to study another mode of communication: frequency modulation (FM). With the help of broadcasting giant RCA, he finally showed the FM broadcasting system to the public in 1936. At that time, however, RCA had changed its business strategy and turned to a more promising TV industry. In order to compete with FM for channel resources, RCA lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to try to push FM out of the VHF band. Although the FCC still gave FM the first channel of VHF, after the end of World War II, the FCC finally ruled that FM would be excluded from VHF forever and only UHF could be used. This ruling greatly shortens the transmission distance of FM and increases the noise. As a result, sponsors have withdrawn and turned to the more profitable TV industry. Armstrong committed suicide by jumping off a building in despair.

For the above reasons, AM Radio monopolized the American broadcasting industry for another 30 years. However, FM radio, which has much better sound quality, has become a non-mainstream radio station and can only be circulated in poor and ethnic minority areas.

At that time, RCA's decision to switch to TV was not bad from a commercial point of view. The television industry (and Hollywood) has been far ahead of the broadcasting and recording industry from the beginning, and thus attracted the attention of most monopoly capitalists with strong financial resources. This phenomenon not only hinders the development of FM radio, but also makes AM radio receive relatively little attention. In this climate, many local small AM radio stations have developed rapidly and occupied a considerable market. These independent radio stations, and a group of discerning independent DJs hired by them, have made great contributions to the development and growth of black rhythm and blues and the early rock music derived from it in the United States. The history of wooden guitar (or acoustic guitar) is said to date back to BC 1200. 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 wooden guitar is small, so it had to play the role of beating the wind instruments in early jazz (the piano has a similar position). 1924, the first guitar with an amplifier came out. However, people could not accept the sound made by this primitive electric guitar at that time, so it was not popular. It was not until the 1930s that electric guitars began to be favored by jazz guitarists, who began to try to add guitar solo to their performances and completely changed the image of the guitar. Most of the early electric guitars were produced by Gibson Guitar Company.

In order to improve some shortcomings of the early hollow electric guitar, guitarist and inventor LesPaul invented the SolidBody electric guitar. The "Gibson les paul Solid Electric Guitar" produced by him in cooperation with Gibson Guitar Company and the "FenderStratocaster" solid electric guitar designed and produced by LeoFender, another guitar pioneer, became guitarists' favorite, and soon expanded to the field of blues. It can be said that without electric guitar, there would be no rhythm and blues, and in that case, rock music would not exist. The main raw material used in 78-turn records is Shellac, mostly from India. During World War II, the source of shellac was cut off, and record companies were forced to require buyers to hand in a certain number of old records before replacing them with new ones. This policy led to the destruction of a large number of early 78-turn records, and many precious recordings were lost forever.

With the scarcity of shellac, major record companies have to give up the minority music market such as blacks and focus on the mainstream music market. This tilt policy continued until after World War II. Faced with the resulting vacuum, a large number of small record companies have come out to fill the gap. Their choice of music and restrictions on musicians are far looser than those of big record companies. Therefore, a group of unique black music can be recorded into records, and rhythm and blues can stand out from this and gradually become popular all over the country.

At the same time, a brand-new record came out at Columbia Records in 1948, and its inventor was PeterGoldmark, the company's chief engineer. He himself is a lover of classical music. He was very dissatisfied with the fact that he had to constantly change records when playing classical music with 78-turn records, and vowed to reform the records and extend the playing length. To achieve this, it is a natural choice to slow down the speed of the record and increase the number of grooves. Doing so will inevitably increase the distortion, increase the noise and narrow the frequency response range. In order to solve these problems, the research team led by Gedemark has carried out fundamental reforms in many places, from the needle and arm to the disc materials. They used diamond as the stylus and Vinyl as the recording material, which reduced the recording speed to 33.3 revolutions per minute and increased the groove density, so that a 12 inch (about 30 cm) record could play more than 20 minutes of music on each side. This is what people often say, and it is also called "Long Play (LP)". LP records have high audio specifications, which has led to a series of innovations in audio equipment, from microphones to amplifiers to speakers. Coupled with the stereo recording technology born in 1957, the modern Hi-Fi industry has officially set sail. This new audio standard has a subtle influence on the evolution of music style in many aspects, among which the extreme example is that many audio enthusiasts have become monsters who only listen to audio but not music. Incidentally, in China, the revival of classical music and jazz is closely related to their suitability for "fever".

Back in the 1950s, in the face of Colombia's new LP record, its main competitor RCA immediately responded. In fact, as early as the 1930s, RCA had introduced 33 1/3 turntables, but they were not accepted by the people because of the poor sound quality. The leaders of RCA still insist that single records will last for a long time, so they have introduced a new specification: 45-turn records. This kind of record can only be played for less than five minutes on each side, but the sound quality is much better than that of 78-turn record, even better than LP. At that time, a vice president of RCA arbitrarily said to the person in charge of the company's classical department: "In fact, it only takes seven seconds to change the face, and consumers should not care about such a short time." The person in charge in distress situation replied: "It's like you are having an affair with your buddy's wife, but the bedroom door is always closed loosely. Actually, it's not always on, but it's on every five minutes for seven seconds ... ". Needless to say, Columbia LP records soon beat RCA completely in the field of classical music.

But 45-turn records also have their own advantages. It is small in diameter, thin in record, unbreakable and low in transportation cost, which is very suitable for the aging single market. In addition, the technology of playing 45-rpm records is relatively easy. RCA has produced a large number of portable discs with their own speakers and promoted them among teenagers. The result is very popular and it has become the best choice for them to hold parties. Teenagers simply call this kind of CD "Hi-Fi". The popularity of this kind of "Hi-Fi" greatly promoted the prosperity of the single market in the 1950s, while LP was only popular among those who listened to serious music and had strong economic strength, and finally provided a material basis for the artistry of pop music. Although World War II caused the 78-turn record market to shrink, it helped the pop music market in another way by mistake. It turns out that German engineers have made revolutionary progress in tape recording technology after years of research in order to better broadcast Hitler's speech. After World War II, the United States took this technology as it is and soon applied it to the field of pop music. Tape recording is convenient and reliable, cheap and of good quality, which makes small recording companies with little investment survive and makes great contributions to the development and growth of independent recording companies in the 1950s. As mentioned earlier, the rise of these small companies directly contributed to the birth of rock music.

In the mid-1960s, RCA invented the 8-Track tape that can be used in cars. This invention immediately attracted the attention of many consumers who didn't buy records much before, and music sales in the United States began to soar from this period. In the early 1970s, a group of drug addicts who claimed to be "Downer" (as opposed to the traditional "Higher") found that listening to deafening heavy rock and roll in high-speed cars was very helpful to achieve "state". This statement quickly spread among the audience and largely contributed to the popularity of heavy rock in the early 1970s. A number of heavy rock bands have benefited a lot from this, such as DeepPurple, BlackSabbath and AC/DC, and their tape sales often account for more than 70% of the total sales.

Later, the invention of Dolby technology brought recordable cassette tapes into consumers' homes. This new technology makes pirated tapes begin to flood underground. Record companies have to resort to legal means to boycott as they did against the broadcasting industry in the past. However, the recording quality of tapes is not as good as LP, and for various reasons, the American pop music market was particularly prosperous in the 1960s and 1970s, so the influence of piracy was not too bad. Instead, some fans exchanged privately recorded singers' live singing recordings in the underground market, which made up for the shortage of studio records. These illegal recordings not only created groups of die-hard fans for the band, but also helped music historians to study this history later. The record industry has been playing the role of "live recording recorder" for the first 50 years since its birth. Most records don't make any changes to the musicians' live performances, and the audience listens to the records with the mood of listening to the scene. The appearance of electric guitar is an anomaly. The sound made by the electric guitar is far from the original guitar. At first, the audience was not used to this kind of electronic sound and did not treat it as music. Later, because of the many advantages of electric guitar, more and more musicians began to play electric guitar on the stage, and the people gradually became familiar with and accepted this strange sound. But this acceptance has not left the scope of stage performance.

Les paul, the electronic engineer and guitarist mentioned earlier, improved the recording technology by a big margin. In the late 1930s, he began to try multi-track recording technology, which allowed musicians to mix separately recorded accompaniment or vocal parts, making people sound as if there were many musicians playing at the same time. Paul's purpose in doing this at first was only to add a guitar to the record, and there was not much innovation in the concept of music. Until the late 1950s, a producer named PhilSpector began to use multi-track recording technology in pop music records on a large scale. Different from Paul, he added a lot of musical instruments to the recording, creating a huge sound field like a wall. Therefore, later generations called this kind of music he made "WallofSound". This unprecedented fresh sound stunned many listeners at that time, and made great contributions to the record he made becoming a winning general on the charts.

However, this "sound wall" technology of Spit is simply a grand effect produced by the superposition of a large number of conventional instruments, which has long existed in symphonies and is not new. It was the Beatles' famous Sgt. Pepper's Slonelyheartcluband that really revolutionized record production. At that time, the band members had just visited the west coast of the United States and witnessed the rise of a group of psychedelic bands in San Francisco. Influenced by them, or inspired by hallucinogens, the band returned to AbbeyRoadStudio in London, and spent four months and 100,000 dollars (only the Beatles could afford it) to produce such an album which was generally regarded as epoch-making by the music industry.

GeorgeMartin, the famous producer of the Beatles, used the most advanced recording technology at that time (in fact, it was just a four-track machine, but Martin used multiple mixing methods, which was actually equivalent to using nine tracks), used all kinds of weird instruments, and used a lot of delay, distortion, echo and almost manual editing techniques with modern eyes, creating a sound wonderland that was not available in the real world. There are no single songs in the whole album, but each song is connected by sound effects. Many songs in the album satirize the mediocre and meaningless lifestyle of modern people. Like this, the so-called "ConceptAlbum", which does not deliberately highlight the single, but expresses a certain concept through the whole record, has quickly become popular in Europe and America since Sergeant Pappy. Without LP and modern recording technology, all this would be unthinkable.

The Beatles originally wanted to show a live performance of a virtual band on this record, but the result was to end the history that traditional records could only be a substitute for live performances, making the record itself 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, distorted sound effects, environmental noises and other sounds made by machines, can be endowed with some profound meanings through the ingenious combination of artists. In a word, modern recording technology (especially the extensive use of electronic synthesizers later) liberated the artist's imagination. As mentioned earlier, due to various reasons, before the 1960s, AM radio, which was extremely commercialized, occupied most of the country in the United States, while FM radio was forced to become a subminiature radio station serving only ethnic minorities. However, with the Beatles' thorough transformation of pop music, more and more American bands began to deviate from the traditional pop single style and develop in the direction of artistic rock. However, this kind of band lacks effective channels for external publicity in the United States.

The most concentrated place of this kind of band is San Francisco, where the developed LSD culture and the unique local spirit of advocating freedom gave birth to a large number of psychedelic bands. 1One day in April, 967, a local AM DJ named TomTonahue was distressed that the station could not accommodate his favorite avant-garde rock music. A friend of his mentioned FM radio to him. There are many Chinese and Latino residents living in San Francisco, and they all listen to FM radio. Donahue was inspired and began to ask around about the market. Finally, he learned that a local FM radio station named KMPX was worried about the departure of a Chinese DJ, so he volunteered to fill the vacancy. In this way, the first pioneer rock FM radio station in the United States was formally established.

KMPX gave Donahue absolute freedom, and he just played it to his heart's content, playing avant-garde rock, folk songs, blues, jazz, classical music and electronic music in his program at will. Compared with pop songs, these "alternative" music have high requirements for sound quality, and FM radio with stereo can just meet this requirement. Soon, Donahue's pioneering experiment became popular in San Francisco and attracted the attention of many local radio stations. Soon, a large number of pioneer FM radio stations appeared all over the United States, and sponsors began to pay attention to FM radio stations. This trend has greatly promoted the popularity of avant-garde rock music in the United States, from many psychedelic rock bands in San Francisco to a number of avant-garde rock bands from Britain. This trend also prompted many rock bands to learn from other music forms widely, and the integration period of rock music came. The popularity of tape records and radio and television easily makes people forget the performance function of music. In fact, the evolution of live music performance has greatly influenced the evolution of music style. This evolution, in turn, depends to a great extent on the progress of performance acoustics. For example, can rock music still exist without electronic amplification equipment?

In the early days, the amplification equipment was all electronic tubes, which were bulky and not powerful enough, so rock music performances at that time could only be performed indoors, and they faded when they were outdoors. Readers familiar with Bob Dylan may know that his first plug-in performance at the famous Xingang Folk Song Festival in 1965 was protested by most of the audience, but you may not know that the poor sound used in that performance, not Dylan's rock music, should be mainly responsible. It was originally a folk song concert. There were few microphones on the stage, and the sound power was not big enough. Andhadhun didn't know how to tune rock music. Dylan suddenly brought a rock band on stage, and that Andhadhun immediately panicked. He made the sound of the instrument very loud, and because there was no monitor on the stage, Dylan could not know the effect. As a result, the audience couldn't hear what Dylan was singing at all, and many people were actually protesting this! Dylan was planted on the stereo.

Contrary to what happened to Dylan, another great band originally benefited from their sound. When the band "GreatfulDead" was founded, it was not very prominent among a group of psychedelic bands in San Francisco. But they have a friend who made a fortune selling drugs. This person is very proficient in audio equipment, and spent a lot of money to buy a set of the best stage sound for the band at that time, and psychedelic rock music needs good sound to increase the effect. This kind of live performance, which is characterized by a long improvisation, has become the most popular performance, and the sound has played a great role.

Since the 1960s, with the popularity of transistors and printed circuit boards, performance stereos can be made lighter and lighter, but the power is getting bigger and bigger. The appearance of high-power performance sound makes it possible for the so-called "ArenaRock" band to appear and become popular, and also creates conditions for many rock bands that pay attention to sound effects to tour all the year round.

Modern rock music performances need not only good acoustics, but also good visual effects. If you are lucky enough to "listen" to PinkFloyd's performance, you will surely find that you are "watching" their performance more often. The psychedelic world created by them in the live performance with modern technology is the most unique scenery among European and American bands.

Not only the sound of performance can influence the evolution of music, but also the way individuals listen to music is closely related to the popularity of some music styles. In a society where everyone is hiding in his mosquito net and listening to headphones, rock music is hard to catch on. Similarly, in a society where everyone has a car and the car stereo is easy to be exaggerated, it is not difficult for you to understand why "Rap" music, which emphasizes bass and drums, is so popular. The appearance of CD not only provides a good opportunity for record makers to make money, but also a great "achievement" is the declaration of the death penalty for concept albums. Because of the convenience of music selection, the audience can completely avoid being forced to listen to the whole piece of music. This is more and more obvious after the popularity of the Internet. If listeners are used to listening to songs online in the future, concept albums will no longer exist.

When MP3 became popular on the Internet, many people predicted that the sales of pop music would plummet. But the American pop music scene is still in a good situation. There are two reasons for this: First, before the emergence of the emerging MP3 website Napster, it was not so easy to find free MP3 online, but the newly emerging Napster fundamentally changed the face of MP3, and people will soon see its influence. Second, with the continuous growth of population, a country's pop music consumption should be getting better and better in theory. Perhaps this market would have been better without the Internet.

If the Internet will not have a fatal impact on the whole music market in the short term, it has already had some influence on the distribution of music types. Specifically, those kinds of music that are mainly aimed at young people and adult men have been hit, because these people are the most loyal users of the Internet. For example, in the United States today, from the broadcast rate of radio stations to the trend of performance market, you simply can't see the obvious decline of the alternative rock trend. My male friends in their twenties and thirties still listen to this kind of rock music, but they have all started to learn to download it from Napster and burn it on CDs. As a result, it is difficult for you to find the shadow of these rock bands in the record sales charts. Instead, they are all idol singer records aimed at boys and girls below middle school students.

Alternative rock never recovered from it? Not necessarily, the key is to see how they adapt. For example, they can use the huge popularity and audience generated by the Internet to concentrate their main energy and business opportunities on the performance market. This summer, the American performance market is full of such bands. This trend will become more and more obvious in the future.

With the increase of Internet bandwidth, pop music is bound to change.