'Brain Wave' Music Possible (1949)

The August 28, 1949 San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX) ran this article and cartoon about the "brain wave" music of the future. The piece quotes heavily from electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott.

CHICAGO, Aug. 27 - (AP) - Some day composers won't write music, and musicians won't play it - yet fans will enjoy it in never-before-heard perfection.

The composer or artist will simply project it by brain waves - "thought transference," says Raymond Scott.

BRAIN WAVES

This man, who thinks in terms of electronics and music, thinks that is all quite possible. Scott said in an interview:

"Brains put out electrical waves. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some day it were possible to do away with lines in music, such as writing it out and playing the notes. You'll just be able to think it.

"Imagine fastening electrodes to your head, inviting some people to your home and then thinking your music. If you wanted 1000 violins you could have them - and if you wanted the bass fiddle to play piccolo parts, you could do that, too."

RECORDINGS, TOO

Scott says even recordings will carry, instead of musical sound, the brain waves of the composer. No arrangers, no rehearsals.

Scott is a New Yorker who has spent most of his adult life working on new developments in his two loves, music and electronics. He maintains a permanent electronics research laboratory in New York, while he composes music and directs his bands for radio shows and night club appearances. His musical theories have always been off-beat.

See also:
Robots vs. Musicians (1931)
The Future is Now (1955)
How Experts Think We'll Live in 2000 A.D. (1950)
All the Music of the Centuries (1908)
Every Era Produces Good Music (1968)

Every Era Produces Good Music (1968)

The August 31, 1968 Daily Review (Hayward, CA) ran this article about the possibility that future generations may one day consider music of the 1960s to be good. The article turns into a very specific endorsement/advertisement of a new LP by The Sandpipers. Do you think there was some payola going on in the newspaper industry as well as the radio business?

NEW YORK (UPI) - It is true that more melodic pop music was produced in the 1930s than in any other decade in this century, yet no era or generation can claim a monopoly on good sound.

And it may be that the pop musicologists of the 1990s may report to their generations that some elegant tunes were composed in the 1960s.

"Spanish Eyes," "Love Is Blue," and perhaps a show tune such as "Cabaret" have a good chance of being in some group's catalogue of popular standards at the turn of the next century.

Both "Spanish Eyes" and "Love is Blue" are among the 11 selections in an outstanding LP entitled "Softly" by The Sandpipers (A&M SP4147). These melodic and nostalgic numbers are handled magnificently by The Sandpipers, who have appeal to all ages.

But the feature song is "Quando M'Innamoro," which also has a foot in the musical door of the future. And the opening number, "Softly," is restful musical medicine.

See also:
All the Music of the Centuries (1908)
Robots vs. Musicians (1931)

Take Me With You Dearie (1909)

A friend just sent me a link to Early Aviator, which has some great images of flight from the early 20th century. Some are serious photographs while others are fanciful illustrations of what aviation was to be.

Some of the sheet music imagery and titles feel like they could be part of a Mr. Show sketch. The image above is from sheet music published in 1909 by Junie McCree and Albert von Tizler, titled "Take Me Up With You Dearie."

See also:
Futuristic Air Travel (circa 1900)
Aerial Navigation Will Never Be Popular (1906)
Pears Soap Flying Machine (1906)
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)
Flying Bicycle (1919)

Robots vs. Musicians (1931)

This ad from the March 9, 1931 Simpson's Leader-Times (Kittanning, PA) is in no way subtle. The consequences of using recorded music at theatre performances rather than live musicians are, "Monotony in the theatre - corruption of taste - destruction of art." Yikes.

Here is a struggle of intense interest to all music lovers. If the Robot of Canned Music wrests the helm from the Muse, passengers aboard the good ship Musical Culture may well echo the offer of Gonzalo to trade "a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of ground." Are you content to face a limitless expanse of "sound" without a sign of music?

Monotony in the theatre - corruption of taste - destruction of art. These must inevitably follow substitution of mechanical music for living music.

Millions of Music Defense League members cordially invite you to join them in putting the Robot in his place. Just sign and mail the coupon.

See also:
The Future is Now (1955)
All the Music of the Centuries (1908)
"I Can Whip Any Mechanical Robot" by Jack Dempsey (1930s)
The Robot is a Terrible Creature (1922)
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
Mammy vs Robot (Charleston Gazette, 1937)

The Future is Now (1955)

The 1955 short documentary The Future is Now showed viewers what technological changes they could expect in the near future. The clip below demonstrates home video, videophone and electronic music.

What do you wear to answer the phone? What difference does it make? None, today! But tomorrow, if videophone comes, as well it might, then the world has found itself another problem.

A special thanks to Jake over at the Paleo-Future Google Group for alerting us to the TCM airing of this paleo-futuristic classic.

See also:
Television Phone Unveiled (1955)
Futuristic Phone Booth (1958)
Governor Knight and the Videophone (Oakland Tribune, 1955)
Face-to-Face Telephones on the Way (New York Times, 1968)
Disney's Magic Highway, U.S.A. (1958)
Picturephone as the perpetual technology of the future

All the Music of the Centuries (1908)

The article below appeared in the January 3, 1908 Des Moines Daily News (Des Moines, Iowa) under the title, "The Poor Past Centuries." The piece describes a ceremony in Paris where phonographic records were buried beneath an opera house, to be opened in 2007. Sadly, I have not heard if this treasure has been unearthed yet.

Articles like these remind me of the genuine sense of wonder people felt about new inventions of the late 19th and early 20th century. Recorded music was to survive beyond the life of the creator thanks to new technologies. Hopefully, copyright law won't keep that from happening in the 21st century.

That was a curious ceremony performed last week in the subterranean passages of the opera house in Paris. Dignified people solemnly deposited in a specially constructed vault phonographic records of the great voices of today. There are songs and arias by Tamaguo, Caruso, Scotti, Plancon, Pattl, Melba, Calve and others. They are to remain there, hermetically sealed, for one hundred years. Then in the year 2007, they will be withdrawn, and the airships will stop while the passengers hear the historic voices of "the last century."

It's when we read of such things and think what they mean that we begin to realize what a wonderful age this is in which we are living, how different it is from other ages, and what it might have meant to us if the things we know today had been known hundreds of years ago.

Suppose the phonograph alone was nothing new?

We could go today and command all the music of the centuries. We could listen while Bach played the organ, Amati the violin and while Arion swept his harp. We could hear Paganini. We could listen to Palestrina directing the choir in the church of Santa Maria Maggioro, or to Father Ambrose chanting in the dim cathedral at Milan. We might even hear again of David in the psalms, or go back to the shores of the Red sea and listen to the song of Miraim.

And this is only a little in the realm of music alone. There are the orators and the poets and the players who might speak for us. Webster and Patrick Henry and Sapphe and Homer and Demothsenes and Aeschylus - the voices of history in our sitting rooms!

But what is the phonograph? Only one little invention of a multitude. Rameses could never call up the great pyramid. William the conqueror never dreamed of wireless telegraphy. Xerxes never saw a moving picture. Charlemagne never even got a glimpse of a single electric light.

At this moment the cub reporter stirred himself. He has been to college.

"No," he said, "and Darius never had any breakfast food."

"And Adam didn't have no street cars," observed the other boy.

See also:
Gardens of Glowing Electrical Flowers (1900)
Moving Sidewalk (1900)
Moving Sidewalk Mechanics (1900)