What is electronic music?

What electronic music is

Britannica defines electronic music as any music involving electronic processing, such as recording and editing on tape. The definition is deliberately broad. It covers mid-century tape compositions, the analog synthesizer records of the 1970s, the drum-machine grooves of the 1980s and the software-based productions of today. What unites them is that sound is generated, stored or transformed by electrical means rather than only by acoustic instruments.

Jean-Michel Jarre has summed up the shift in a single sentence: with electronic music, you create music in terms of sound, not just notes. Timbre, texture and space become compositional material in their own right. That idea runs from the earliest radio studios to the calm, layered electronica that a lounge station plays, where a soft pad or a slowly opening filter can carry as much feeling as a melody.

Pioneers: tape, film and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Some of the most important early work happened inside the BBC. Daphne Oram, who joined the corporation in 1942, wrote Amphitryon 38 in 1957, the first wholly electronic score in BBC history. In 1958 she co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and became its first studio manager, leaving within a year to pursue her own projects. At her Oramics studio in Kent she developed a technique in which shapes drawn on 35mm film were read by photo-electric cells and turned into sound.

Delia Derbyshire, a Cambridge graduate in mathematics and music, moved to the Radiophonic Workshop in 1962. A year later she electronically realized Ron Grainer's Doctor Who theme; it served the series from 1963 to 1980, though the BBC did not credit her at the time. In 1968 she recorded An Electric Storm with Brian Hodgson and David Vorhaus as White Noise. Both women are now recognized as foundational figures whose patient, hand-built methods anticipated much of what followed.

Synthesizers and drum machines: from Moog to the TR-909

In 1964 Robert Moog introduced a modular, voltage-controlled synthesizer in which voltages set pitch and loudness and separate modules could be patched together. Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach (1968), a set of Bach arrangements for the Moog, won three Grammy Awards and became the first classical album certified platinum, proving that the instrument could be musical rather than a novelty. The portable Minimoog followed in 1970 and carried the sound into rock and pop.

Rhythm went electronic too. Roland's TR-808 arrived in 1980 and was built until 1982; its analog handclaps, bass drum and cowbell were later embraced by electro, hip-hop, house and techno. Yellow Magic Orchestra were reportedly the first band to use it. The TR-909 of 1983 was Roland's first drum machine with sampled cymbals and MIDI. It sold poorly when new, but on the used market it became a cornerstone of Chicago house and Detroit techno.

Electronic pop: Kraftwerk, Jarre, Moroder and YMO

In the 1970s electronic sound moved from the studio to the charts. Kraftwerk, whom Britannica calls the godfathers of electronic pop music, had an unlikely international hit with Autobahn in 1974. In France, Jean-Michel Jarre, who had studied with Pierre Schaeffer at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales from 1969, released Oxygène in 1976, an album built on the idea of bridging experimentation and pop melody.

Giorgio Moroder's production of Donna Summer's I Feel Love, released in July 1977, used a Moog to build a sequenced, four-on-the-floor pulse that later became central to house and techno; Brian Eno reportedly told David Bowie he had heard the sound of the future. In Tokyo, Yellow Magic Orchestra formed in 1978. Their second album, Solid State Survivor (1979), sold over two million copies, and their work influenced synth-pop, early hip-hop and the Detroit techno pioneers.

The calm side: melodic electronica today

By the late 1990s a softer, more melodic strand had found a wide audience. Air's Moon Safari (1998), filed by critics under downtempo, electronica and lounge, is credited with helping set the stage for downtempo; it sold about two million copies worldwide. Moby's Play (1999) wove field recordings from Alan Lomax's archive into gentle electronic backdrops and became the first album to have all of its tracks licensed for film, television or advertising.

That lineage continues today. Bonobo, the Brighton-born producer Simon Green, began on Tru Thoughts with Animal Magic (2000) and moved to Ninja Tune; albums such as Black Sands (2010) and Migration (2017) combine electronic methods with live instruments. In San Francisco, Scott Hansen's Tycho project builds sunlit, guitar-and-synth instrumentals, with Epoch (2016) and Weather (2019) both nominated for the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album. This is the melodic, unhurried end of electronic music that sits naturally beside lounge and chillout programming.