That Discussion About Electronic Music…….
By Zac Langridge
But today, for whatever reason, at least over half of the 30 teenagers had decided to stick inside on that day.
Luca Halpford was sitting at his desk on his own. He had his laptop out in front of him, screen glowing, with headphones framing either side of his head. His hand subconsciously moved the mouse which was, too, attached to the computer. No one disturbed him, at it wasn’t just the fact that he was closed off from the rest of the world at that moment. It was his intense concentration, his expression taught and tense, brow furrowed and lips pressed together. He appeared to be connected to the mouse, the headphones (whatever he was bobbing his head along to), and the laptop itself. He appeared to be lost in a world of his own.
So that was when Barry Wilford stepped up and made his way over to the table where Lucas sat. Pushing a chair away, he hauled himself up and perched on the edge of the wood. Had anyone glanced their way at that moment, it would seem a pretty bizarre and unexpected sight. Barry was in many ways, in another league to Lucas, good looking and extremely social. Bright, extremely friendly and intelligent, he had a certain movement - a “swagger” - in the way he walked that simply screamed confidence, and it seemed to work well on him. Friends with almost everyone in the school it seemed, he was undoubtedly destined to do great things in his future.
Lucas meanwhile, was admittedly not entirely a world away from Barry. Reasonably social, with a moderately sized group of friends, a few extra-curricular activities. Unlike his peer though, he was certainly not as extraordinary at everything, and didn’t have one of those faces that every staff member, or student, would recognize and identify instantaneously. He was just another face in a huge crowd - certainly not someone that Barry Wilford would bother wasting his time on.
Or so someone may have thought until that very moment, when Barry sat atop the desk were Lucas worked quietly on his laptop.
“What is uuuup, Lucas?” Barry greeted in his expectedly casual manner, leaning backward and keeping his head tilted up, entirely comfortable.
Lucas glanced upward, registering his peer, his face changing from an off-guard slack-faced expression, to an easy-going smile. “Oh, hi Barry. Not much up for me.” He took off his headset. “How’re you?”
“Oh fine, I guess. The others have just been checking out some trailers for the movies. Looks like there are some interesting ones out right now.” He paused. “Wanna come to one?”
“Yeah, sure. That would be great.” Lucas’ eyes flickered to his laptop and then back again. “I’d really like that. That’d be cool.”
“Cool.” Barry pondered for a moment. “If your friends want to come, they’re welcome to.”
“I’ll tell them,” Lucas nodded.
Barry nodded, and then leaned forward trying to get a glimpse of Lucas’ computer screen. It was difficult to see as it was turned away from him.
“What’re watching on there?”
Lucas shrugged. “Oh, I’m actually not watching anything.” He turned the screen to face Barry, who peered at it for several seconds. His face wrinkled in puzzlement.
“Whoa,” he exclaimed. He found himself both impressed and baffled by the complex interface that was on the screen. Dozens of options, as well as virtual dials and knobs, what looked like a timer or some sort of clock at the top. A play, rewind, fast-forward, and pause button. A record button. In the center of the interface, placed along a grid with numbers along it’s top, was a series of coloured bars with various different patterns of dots and miscellaneous markings arranged in each bar in a linear form. Barry starred in wonderment, the dozens of details and functions that the interface displayed overwhelmed him, swallowing his consciousness. His mind was unable to make sense of the neatly, efficiently organized mess in front of him.
“What the heck is this?”
Lucas chuckled almost knowingly at his bafflement. “This is a Digital Audio Interface. Capitals and all, sir.”
Barry shook his head. “What for?”
“Making electronic music,” he replied.
Barry’s face fell. His expression immediately became a mask of scorn and disgust. “Oh.” A pause. “Yuck.”
To his apparent surprise and outrage, Lucas just laughed in response. It wasn’t a huge guffaw; it was that same knowing laugh, quiet, but full of some sort of wisdom that Barry couldn’t put his finger on. It quickly faded to be replaced by a cold mask wearing a thin smile.
“Why do you say that?” Lucas asked, genuinely interested, with just a hint of defensiveness and opposition in his voice.
“Oh I dunno,” Barry replied in a voice layered with thick sarcasm. “Because you’re a hack musician.”
There came no reply.
“Why the hell would you want to make that music?”
“Why not?” Lucas shot back.
“Because you’re not doing anything.”
Lucas leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed in a passive-aggressive manner. He gestured to the complex interface onscreen. “All this is me doing nothing to you?”
Barry nodded. “All you’re doing is pressing buttons. That doesn’t take any effort.”
“Doesn’t it?” The reply was sharper now.
Barry had expected Lucas to cave in by his harsh words, so his defensive, yet somewhat wise responses took him off guard. “No.” An awkward pause. He composed himself. “You may as well just be stealing from someone else’s song. All you’re doing is pushing some keys and letting your computer do all the work for you. I bet you can’t even sing!”
Lucas unplugged his headphones and turned the computer towards Barry. He tapped the mousepad and the song he was creating started playing. A texture of patterned tunes, beats and distorted samples started to play in a vast soundscape of synthesized electronic music. Barry shook his head in mock disgust. He himself played the piano and often performed in front of the school. He enjoyed it greatly. There was nothing else quite like it; letting your brain link with your muscles, fingers and the keys - letting pure music flow out for his peers to feast their ears on. Nothing also compared to the hours of practise and repetition and passion he had poured into it, simply to become as good as he was. And here was this kid, this wannabe “musician”, thinking he could replicate that by using software to do all the work for him. Making him famous without any of the work put in to deserve it. The song itself, wasn’t bad, but the idea that Lucas had used a laptop to churn it up made his stomach turn over.
Lucas was clearly proud of his creation. He paused the song and turned back to Barry. “I made that.”
“No you didn’t. The computer made it,” he spat accusingly.
“Nope. I made it. Using a computer,” Lucas announced, deflecting Barry’s comments off like bulletproof glass.
His peer snorted. “Like there’s any difference.” He stepped back, as if preparing to leave. “I had to practice years and years to get to wear I am. Playing the piano, or any instrument, takes skill and passion. It takes hard work and effort. You can’t just expect to become famous by churning out a bunch of noises on a piece of technology.”
“Why do you say that?” Lucas asked, genuinely interested, with just a hint of defensiveness and opposition in his voice.
“Oh I dunno,” Barry replied in a voice layered with thick sarcasm. “Because you’re a hack musician.”
There came no reply.
“Why the hell would you want to make that music?”
“Why not?” Lucas shot back.
“Because you’re not doing anything.”
Lucas leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed in a passive-aggressive manner. He gestured to the complex interface onscreen. “All this is me doing nothing to you?”
Barry nodded. “All you’re doing is pressing buttons. That doesn’t take any effort.”
“Doesn’t it?” The reply was sharper now.
Barry had expected Lucas to cave in by his harsh words, so his defensive, yet somewhat wise responses took him off guard. “No.” An awkward pause. He composed himself. “You may as well just be stealing from someone else’s song. All you’re doing is pushing some keys and letting your computer do all the work for you. I bet you can’t even sing!”
Lucas unplugged his headphones and turned the computer towards Barry. He tapped the mousepad and the song he was creating started playing. A texture of patterned tunes, beats and distorted samples started to play in a vast soundscape of synthesized electronic music. Barry shook his head in mock disgust. He himself played the piano and often performed in front of the school. He enjoyed it greatly. There was nothing else quite like it; letting your brain link with your muscles, fingers and the keys - letting pure music flow out for his peers to feast their ears on. Nothing also compared to the hours of practise and repetition and passion he had poured into it, simply to become as good as he was. And here was this kid, this wannabe “musician”, thinking he could replicate that by using software to do all the work for him. Making him famous without any of the work put in to deserve it. The song itself, wasn’t bad, but the idea that Lucas had used a laptop to churn it up made his stomach turn over.
Lucas was clearly proud of his creation. He paused the song and turned back to Barry. “I made that.”
“No you didn’t. The computer made it,” he spat accusingly.
“Nope. I made it. Using a computer,” Lucas announced, deflecting Barry’s comments off like bulletproof glass.
His peer snorted. “Like there’s any difference.” He stepped back, as if preparing to leave. “I had to practice years and years to get to wear I am. Playing the piano, or any instrument, takes skill and passion. It takes hard work and effort. You can’t just expect to become famous by churning out a bunch of noises on a piece of technology.”
Lucas chuckled. “Amazing. You claim to be of superior musical knowledge, or talent than me. And yet with those comments you just made, you just displayed how immensely ignorant you are when it comes to electronic music.”
Barry was taken aback at this response. Once again, he’d expected Lucas to display a sense of embarrassment, or shame, or guilt - his actual reactions however were the exact opposite. He opened his mouth to argue, but Lucas cut him off.
“What do you actually know about electronic music?” Lucas asked expectantly. “Do you know how it’s made? Do you know when it was invented?” What classifies as ‘real’ music?” A pause. “Well go on. Answer those three questions for me.”
Barry’s response was to look positively stumped.
Lucas looked satisfied, triumphant. Determined not to let him win, Barry sat down next to him.
“Electronic music,” he snapped, “is made by you clicking some buttons on a keyboard and autotuning your terrible singing to make it sound amazing. You then sell it to the dumb masses who eat it up without knowing that the ‘genius’ behind the song, is a fraud who doesn’t know the difference between E flat and D sharp.”
“Wrong!” Lucas exclaimed with relish. “You’ve just once again proved how misguided and oblivious you are to the principles of electronic music, and music in general, for that matter.” A pause. “And by the way, yes I do know the difference between E flat and D sharp: Nothing. Expect their names.”
Barry’s mind was racing in a puzzled state of panic. In his head, he’d had the higher moral ground from the start - knowing how to play the piano and having years of experience behind him to back his point up. In his mind, he should’ve won the argument already, by miles. And yet here he was, being outsmarted and beaten by someone who made music with a laptop, of all things.
Lucas continued. “Electronic music is made by people simply using technology. The technology doesn’t magically make it all by itself.” He gestured with his hands. “Take digital art, or digital painting for instance. That still requires skill and talent and passion. The computer doesn’t make it all by itself; the artist creates the final product. The artists simply use different tools. They paint using tablets and styluses, instead of paint and paper - but the skill and passion’s still there.”
“Tha - that's different though….”
“How?” Lucas face grew into a sly smile. “Electronic musicians simply use computers to help make music. It’s not a matter of just pressing a button. You think pressing a button structures a song? You think pressing a button comes up with melodies, harmonies? You think pressing a button creates a beat? You think a song is created magically just like that, without any human effort or imput? Or passion?”
Barry was stammering now. “Bu - but I could make a song on a laptop any day.”
“Then why haven’t you tried it?” Lucas was confident, smiling with ease. “For that matter, why aren’t kids all around the world trying it? If computer music is so easy to make, why isn’t everyone making it and becoming millionaires?”
Barry didn’t respond. He had no answer, and he was scolding himself for making his previous comment, as it had only opened him up to ridicule. Lucas was besting him calmly, cooly, and with little effort.
Lucas continued now with mechanical precision, ripping into Barry’s flawed arguments without mercy. “It took me over a year to fully get the hang of music production software, and it could’ve taken longer. And even then, my songs were amateurish and sounded terrible! I’ve been doing this for some time now, and I’m still learning and practising.” He turned the laptop towards Barry once again. “Go on, make a song.”
Barry shook his head. “What?”
“Make a song that will become a worldwide hit.”
Barry shook his head, examining the immense grid of tools, virtual instruments, samplers and drum machines on-screen. “I….. I don’t know how.” He was suddenly feeling very foolish.
“Exactly.” Lucas patted him on the back. “And even if you knew how to use the software, would you really be able to compose a smash song that breaks the charts in two? Would you even be able to create a song that will sell at all?”
Barry, realising that it was becoming pointless to argue now, tried one last ditch effort. “But you’re using technology to create music.”
Lucas’ response was so simple it was almost lazy. “A piano is a piece of technology. So is a violin, a flute, a guitar. And just like a computer where you press buttons, with a piano you press keys. With a guitar you pluck strings.”
Barry was silent now. He could feel his face burning red, both from embarrassment at Lucas’ effortless dispatching of his arguments, and high-and-mighty attitude he’d displayed towards Lucas’ song - but also from his anger at never considering Lucas’ perspective. He was right; all instruments, even the oldest ones are pieces of technology to some degree. And Barry had never considered exactly how electronic producers made their music; to some degree, he’d genuinely thought it was the touch of a few buttons that made a song.
Lucas gestured to his computer and clicked on the interface. Moving the mouse across a grid on the screen, he started clicking and holding down a button on his mouse, dragging the cursor along the lines of the grid horizontally. Green bars started to appear each time Lucas clicked and released, and he started to sketch out a pattern on the grid of various blocks. Just like digital art, Barry thought. After a while of drawing out the strange pattern, Lucas turned back.
“I just created a melody.” When Barry didn’t respond, Lucas added, “That’s how I write my music. Don’t tell me that that doesn’t require talent or passion. Why the hell would I spend hours of my life, devoting time to making music if I didn’t have any passion for it?”
Barry shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe you just wanna be famous, or rich.”
Lucas snorted. “I’d hate to be famous. It would be hell being a celebrity. And I’m certainly not making music for the money. I mean, are you playing the keyboard for money?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
A beat passed. “I still don’t think that autotuning your voice is good.”
“Neither do I, unless you can actually sing of course. Many artists that process their vocals aren’t hacks who can’t sing; many of them just think it’s a cool effect. On top of that, using autotune doesn’t automatically make it electronic music. Singers in jazz bands can use autotune. So can pop singers, and so can rock musicians, etcetera, etcetera.” Lucas pondered for a moment, then continued. “For that matter, autotune can sometimes make singing sound even worse. It doesn’t magically make everything sound great.”
Barry nodded, but still didn’t look entirely convinced. “Electronic music is still just noises from a computer though.”
“Piano music is just noises coming from a big wooden box. Flute music is just the noise of air being blown through a tube.”
There was a long silence. Then Lucas started again. “Electronic music is nothing new, Barry. It started off actually in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, believe it or not. In the late ‘40s, musicians started to develop what they called musique concrète, experimental music made by edited fragments of recordings. Effectively it was like sculpting soundscapes out of natural and artificial noises. Pretty cool, eh?” Barry nodded. “However true electronic music - music made from electronic instruments - took off in the 1950s, in Germany. It began to spread.”
Lucas opened up Google on his laptop and starting typing. “It was all very experimental stuff. People didn’t like it very much at the time, but it was pioneering. Very avant-garde.” He clicked on a video. “Here’s some Soviet-era electronic music from Russia. From 1969 too! Imagine that! Have a listen to it.”
Barry took the headphones and placed them over his ears. The video began to play. Instantly, Barry felt removed from Lucas, from the class, the school and its inhabitants. Sucked - no, teleported out of his life, and into a world far different than he had ever seen or experienced. It wasn’t just the mid 20th century, the ‘60s. No it was far more removed, like the atmosphere set by old science fiction serials long ago. A time when America landed on the moon, when the world looked towards the stars in wonder and imagined aliens, spaceships, futuristic races far more advanced than themselves. A time period when nuclear missiles were trained on two superpowers, ready to find their targets if commanded to. The music, barely hindered by the faint crackles and snaps of the old analogue tape, appeared to bubble out of the headphones into his ears. An eerie series of sounds, all layered carefully on top of one another - some swooshes, some haunting whistles, some echoing wailing. It was otherworldly, like the sonic communication of an alien species. So old fashioned, yet futuristic at the same time - old fashioned futurism, he thought with a chuckle.
He took off the headphones, and the feeling of nostalgic loneliness dissipated, like a spaceship that had been switched onto hyperdrive. “That -” He struggled to find words to fit his feelings. “That’s pretty cool.”
Lucas grinned. “Slowly, as electronic music became ingrained into films and TV shows like Doctor Who, it began to become more popular. Eventually, around the ‘70s, it hit the music charts, and then the ‘80s went to the moon and back with synthesized, artificial music.” He thought for a moment. “Ever heard of Kraftwerk?”
Barry was taken aback at this response. Once again, he’d expected Lucas to display a sense of embarrassment, or shame, or guilt - his actual reactions however were the exact opposite. He opened his mouth to argue, but Lucas cut him off.
“What do you actually know about electronic music?” Lucas asked expectantly. “Do you know how it’s made? Do you know when it was invented?” What classifies as ‘real’ music?” A pause. “Well go on. Answer those three questions for me.”
Barry’s response was to look positively stumped.
Lucas looked satisfied, triumphant. Determined not to let him win, Barry sat down next to him.
“Electronic music,” he snapped, “is made by you clicking some buttons on a keyboard and autotuning your terrible singing to make it sound amazing. You then sell it to the dumb masses who eat it up without knowing that the ‘genius’ behind the song, is a fraud who doesn’t know the difference between E flat and D sharp.”
“Wrong!” Lucas exclaimed with relish. “You’ve just once again proved how misguided and oblivious you are to the principles of electronic music, and music in general, for that matter.” A pause. “And by the way, yes I do know the difference between E flat and D sharp: Nothing. Expect their names.”
Barry’s mind was racing in a puzzled state of panic. In his head, he’d had the higher moral ground from the start - knowing how to play the piano and having years of experience behind him to back his point up. In his mind, he should’ve won the argument already, by miles. And yet here he was, being outsmarted and beaten by someone who made music with a laptop, of all things.
Lucas continued. “Electronic music is made by people simply using technology. The technology doesn’t magically make it all by itself.” He gestured with his hands. “Take digital art, or digital painting for instance. That still requires skill and talent and passion. The computer doesn’t make it all by itself; the artist creates the final product. The artists simply use different tools. They paint using tablets and styluses, instead of paint and paper - but the skill and passion’s still there.”
“Tha - that's different though….”
“How?” Lucas face grew into a sly smile. “Electronic musicians simply use computers to help make music. It’s not a matter of just pressing a button. You think pressing a button structures a song? You think pressing a button comes up with melodies, harmonies? You think pressing a button creates a beat? You think a song is created magically just like that, without any human effort or imput? Or passion?”
Barry was stammering now. “Bu - but I could make a song on a laptop any day.”
“Then why haven’t you tried it?” Lucas was confident, smiling with ease. “For that matter, why aren’t kids all around the world trying it? If computer music is so easy to make, why isn’t everyone making it and becoming millionaires?”
Barry didn’t respond. He had no answer, and he was scolding himself for making his previous comment, as it had only opened him up to ridicule. Lucas was besting him calmly, cooly, and with little effort.
Lucas continued now with mechanical precision, ripping into Barry’s flawed arguments without mercy. “It took me over a year to fully get the hang of music production software, and it could’ve taken longer. And even then, my songs were amateurish and sounded terrible! I’ve been doing this for some time now, and I’m still learning and practising.” He turned the laptop towards Barry once again. “Go on, make a song.”
Barry shook his head. “What?”
“Make a song that will become a worldwide hit.”
Barry shook his head, examining the immense grid of tools, virtual instruments, samplers and drum machines on-screen. “I….. I don’t know how.” He was suddenly feeling very foolish.
“Exactly.” Lucas patted him on the back. “And even if you knew how to use the software, would you really be able to compose a smash song that breaks the charts in two? Would you even be able to create a song that will sell at all?”
Barry, realising that it was becoming pointless to argue now, tried one last ditch effort. “But you’re using technology to create music.”
Lucas’ response was so simple it was almost lazy. “A piano is a piece of technology. So is a violin, a flute, a guitar. And just like a computer where you press buttons, with a piano you press keys. With a guitar you pluck strings.”
Barry was silent now. He could feel his face burning red, both from embarrassment at Lucas’ effortless dispatching of his arguments, and high-and-mighty attitude he’d displayed towards Lucas’ song - but also from his anger at never considering Lucas’ perspective. He was right; all instruments, even the oldest ones are pieces of technology to some degree. And Barry had never considered exactly how electronic producers made their music; to some degree, he’d genuinely thought it was the touch of a few buttons that made a song.
Lucas gestured to his computer and clicked on the interface. Moving the mouse across a grid on the screen, he started clicking and holding down a button on his mouse, dragging the cursor along the lines of the grid horizontally. Green bars started to appear each time Lucas clicked and released, and he started to sketch out a pattern on the grid of various blocks. Just like digital art, Barry thought. After a while of drawing out the strange pattern, Lucas turned back.
“I just created a melody.” When Barry didn’t respond, Lucas added, “That’s how I write my music. Don’t tell me that that doesn’t require talent or passion. Why the hell would I spend hours of my life, devoting time to making music if I didn’t have any passion for it?”
Barry shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe you just wanna be famous, or rich.”
Lucas snorted. “I’d hate to be famous. It would be hell being a celebrity. And I’m certainly not making music for the money. I mean, are you playing the keyboard for money?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
A beat passed. “I still don’t think that autotuning your voice is good.”
“Neither do I, unless you can actually sing of course. Many artists that process their vocals aren’t hacks who can’t sing; many of them just think it’s a cool effect. On top of that, using autotune doesn’t automatically make it electronic music. Singers in jazz bands can use autotune. So can pop singers, and so can rock musicians, etcetera, etcetera.” Lucas pondered for a moment, then continued. “For that matter, autotune can sometimes make singing sound even worse. It doesn’t magically make everything sound great.”
Barry nodded, but still didn’t look entirely convinced. “Electronic music is still just noises from a computer though.”
“Piano music is just noises coming from a big wooden box. Flute music is just the noise of air being blown through a tube.”
There was a long silence. Then Lucas started again. “Electronic music is nothing new, Barry. It started off actually in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, believe it or not. In the late ‘40s, musicians started to develop what they called musique concrète, experimental music made by edited fragments of recordings. Effectively it was like sculpting soundscapes out of natural and artificial noises. Pretty cool, eh?” Barry nodded. “However true electronic music - music made from electronic instruments - took off in the 1950s, in Germany. It began to spread.”
Lucas opened up Google on his laptop and starting typing. “It was all very experimental stuff. People didn’t like it very much at the time, but it was pioneering. Very avant-garde.” He clicked on a video. “Here’s some Soviet-era electronic music from Russia. From 1969 too! Imagine that! Have a listen to it.”
Barry took the headphones and placed them over his ears. The video began to play. Instantly, Barry felt removed from Lucas, from the class, the school and its inhabitants. Sucked - no, teleported out of his life, and into a world far different than he had ever seen or experienced. It wasn’t just the mid 20th century, the ‘60s. No it was far more removed, like the atmosphere set by old science fiction serials long ago. A time when America landed on the moon, when the world looked towards the stars in wonder and imagined aliens, spaceships, futuristic races far more advanced than themselves. A time period when nuclear missiles were trained on two superpowers, ready to find their targets if commanded to. The music, barely hindered by the faint crackles and snaps of the old analogue tape, appeared to bubble out of the headphones into his ears. An eerie series of sounds, all layered carefully on top of one another - some swooshes, some haunting whistles, some echoing wailing. It was otherworldly, like the sonic communication of an alien species. So old fashioned, yet futuristic at the same time - old fashioned futurism, he thought with a chuckle.
He took off the headphones, and the feeling of nostalgic loneliness dissipated, like a spaceship that had been switched onto hyperdrive. “That -” He struggled to find words to fit his feelings. “That’s pretty cool.”
Lucas grinned. “Slowly, as electronic music became ingrained into films and TV shows like Doctor Who, it began to become more popular. Eventually, around the ‘70s, it hit the music charts, and then the ‘80s went to the moon and back with synthesized, artificial music.” He thought for a moment. “Ever heard of Kraftwerk?”
“Heard of the name; may know some of their music. Never paid attention to them though…. Too old school for me.”
“Well they were from Germany. They were the band that first brought electronic music to the charts. They were the pioneers of mainstream electronic music.” Lucas began typing again and clicked on a video. “You may have heard of this song.”
Barry had. His parents, fond of older music, had played it every now and then. Kraftwerk’s “The Model” was a pure electronic song and it didn’t try to hide it. The synth lines sounded so crisp and artificial, the drums so perfectly timed. Barry knew that he was listening to a song from a time when electronic music was new, fresh, and wasn’t snubbed by people as much as it was now.
“She’s a model and she’s looking good.”
The synth echoed the tune with sharp precision. Barry was familiar with the song, but had never thought about it as electronic music. To him, electronic music had all been about nasty bass drops and horrendous painful noises that trembled the floors of nightclubs. Here however, was a song of his parents’ time that, at first, he’d never would’ve guessed was of the same genre.
“.....It only takes a camera to change her mind.”
He could hear the lead singer’s German accent creeping through. The pulsing bass arpeggiator was catchy, and he started to bob his head along to the music.
“Here’s another good song of theirs.” Lucas clicked on another video.
Barry listened with curiosity and amazement. This new song, “The Robots”, started off similar to the Soviet-era song: abstract synths like the noises from a spaceship. The song began to pick up the pace with a pounding bass arpeggiator, a steady mechanical beat and a charmingly simplistic synth tune. Once again Barry bobbed his head to the music.
Singing started, filtered electronically to sound like robots from an old serial.
“We’re charging our battery.
And now we’re full of energy.
We are the robots.”
Once again Barry caught the German accent creeping through. He gazed at the video itself which showed what looked like an album cover - presumably the album from which the song originated from. It displayed four men standing against a vibrant red background, presumably the four members of Kraftwerk. They were all dressed in red shirts with black ties, a striking image that almost made Barry think of communism. The members were facing slightly towards the right, each with short hair dyed jet black, stark pale skin and mouths red with lipstick. The man at the front stood tall, his face impassive and blank. The second man looked stern, his face almost grim and disapproving. The other two men further back appeared to to be smiling ever so slightly, relief amongst the stark and almost imperialistic imagery.
“Karl Bartos, Ralf Hutter, Florian Schneider and Wolfgang Flur,” muttered Lucas. “The four original members of Kraftwerk.” He closed the webpage.
“Well they were from Germany. They were the band that first brought electronic music to the charts. They were the pioneers of mainstream electronic music.” Lucas began typing again and clicked on a video. “You may have heard of this song.”
Barry had. His parents, fond of older music, had played it every now and then. Kraftwerk’s “The Model” was a pure electronic song and it didn’t try to hide it. The synth lines sounded so crisp and artificial, the drums so perfectly timed. Barry knew that he was listening to a song from a time when electronic music was new, fresh, and wasn’t snubbed by people as much as it was now.
“She’s a model and she’s looking good.”
The synth echoed the tune with sharp precision. Barry was familiar with the song, but had never thought about it as electronic music. To him, electronic music had all been about nasty bass drops and horrendous painful noises that trembled the floors of nightclubs. Here however, was a song of his parents’ time that, at first, he’d never would’ve guessed was of the same genre.
“.....It only takes a camera to change her mind.”
He could hear the lead singer’s German accent creeping through. The pulsing bass arpeggiator was catchy, and he started to bob his head along to the music.
“Here’s another good song of theirs.” Lucas clicked on another video.
Barry listened with curiosity and amazement. This new song, “The Robots”, started off similar to the Soviet-era song: abstract synths like the noises from a spaceship. The song began to pick up the pace with a pounding bass arpeggiator, a steady mechanical beat and a charmingly simplistic synth tune. Once again Barry bobbed his head to the music.
Singing started, filtered electronically to sound like robots from an old serial.
“We’re charging our battery.
And now we’re full of energy.
We are the robots.”
Once again Barry caught the German accent creeping through. He gazed at the video itself which showed what looked like an album cover - presumably the album from which the song originated from. It displayed four men standing against a vibrant red background, presumably the four members of Kraftwerk. They were all dressed in red shirts with black ties, a striking image that almost made Barry think of communism. The members were facing slightly towards the right, each with short hair dyed jet black, stark pale skin and mouths red with lipstick. The man at the front stood tall, his face impassive and blank. The second man looked stern, his face almost grim and disapproving. The other two men further back appeared to to be smiling ever so slightly, relief amongst the stark and almost imperialistic imagery.
“Karl Bartos, Ralf Hutter, Florian Schneider and Wolfgang Flur,” muttered Lucas. “The four original members of Kraftwerk.” He closed the webpage.
Barry thought for a moment. “Not gonna lie Lucas. I’d never thought of electronic music like that. In, I mean, the way you’ve presented it to me.”
“No,” Lucas agreed. “Not a lot of people do, I feel.”
Looking slightly guilty, Barry said, “I’m sorry I labeled you a hack. I guess I just never really understood your genre of music, or how you make it.” He stifled a laugh of self-scorn. “Hell, I don’t even think I wanted to!”
Lucas shrugged. “That’s alright. At least you know now.”
Barry continued. “I should tell the others at music classes about this. I’m sure they’d be interested - unless of course they already know what you know.” Suddenly his eyes lit up. “Are you doing the speech competition this year?”
Lucas shook his head. “Hell no. I suck at writing.”
Barry leaned forward eagerly. “I really like writing. Are you good at public speaking?”
“I’m alright, I guess.”
“Write a speech about this! It’ll be great. I’ll help you with the writing - we put all the points you made to me down, and we’ll be able to hopefully convince others that electronic music is a real type of music. In front of the whole school too!”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh yeah! Come on man, you’ve gotta do that. I can help you with it.”
“Well, if you’re su -”
The bell rang. Students began to pack up their bags and lunches. Barry got up.
“Meet me after school by the back entrance. We’ve got a speech to write.”
He scurried off. Lucas sat where he was for a moment before shutting down his computer. Smiling inwardly, he packed his bag and started off to his next class.
THE END
