Music and technology firsts

The CD

Billy Joel -- 52nd Street (1982)
You might have heard of compact discs. Sony demonstrated an optical digital audio disc concept in 1975. Philips followed suit in 1979, and the two companies teamed up to develop the compact disc. Philips proposed a disc measuring 11.5cm in diameter, but Sony insisted on 12cm in order to fit the whole of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

The first test CD, pressed in 1981, was a recording of Strauss' Eine Alpensinfonie by the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by Herbert von Karajan. With neat synchronicity, Deutsche Grammophon, the company formed by gramophone pioneer Emil Berliner, was now part of PolyGram, the company that built the first CD-pressing factory. The first CD to be manufactured was ABBA's final, post-divorce, 1982 album The Visitors. Billy Joel's 52nd Street was the first to hit the shops, in October 1982 in Japan, played on the first CD player, the Sony CDP-101.

Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA was the first CD in the US early the following year.

The new technology was an instant hit, enough that in 1985 David Bowie's entire 15-album back catalogue was released on CD. That same year Dire Straits sold a million copies of Brothers in Arms.

The title track of Brothers in Arms was the first CD single, released as two limited-edition, tour-branded, four-track discs. Compact Discs became eligible for the UK Singles Chart in 1987, and in 1988 Pink Floyd's One Slip was the first single to be released only on CD.

The CD single didn't take off until the mid-1990s, and was only popular for about a decade before being killed stone dead by the digital download. Woolworths sounded the death knell in August 2008. CD singles became notorious for multi-formating, the practice of releasing two discs with different track listings. The vagaries of multi-format marketing became the stuff of national news with the 1995 'Battle of Britpop' between Blur's Country House and Oasis' Roll With It, released the same day. Look out for both Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn doing Liam impressions on Top of the Pops.

MIDI and the Atari ST

Mike Oldfield -- Earth Moving (1989)
Synthesisers became even more practical with the introduction of Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), proposed in 1981 by engineer Dave Smith and introduced in 1983. MIDI is a standard protocol that allows different kinds of electronic instruments to communicate and be controlled from one interface. The humble Atari ST appeared in many recording studios because it was one of the few home computers to come with MIDI ports as standard, and included relatively generous memory. Mike Oldfield's 1989 album Earth Moving credits the Atari ST and C-Lab MIDI software in its liner notes, while recording software Cubase and Logic Pro both originated on the ST.

The sampler

MARRS -- Pump Up The Volume (1987)
Sampling is another technique with a long and chequered history. The first sampled track may well have been Collage #1 ('Blue Suede'), cut together in 1961 by James Tenney from samples of Elvis Presley's Blue Suede Shoes. A whole side of The White Album was rendered unlistenable by The Beatles' 8-minute patchwork of loops and samples, Revolution 9, in 1968.

Early samplers involved triggering tape samples by pressing keys. The Mellotron began as a form of synthesiser but could be used to play any kind of sample. Unfortunately, systems like this were expensive, prone to breakage, and suffered from limited storage on tape. Digital sampling removed the need to physically chop up tape. The first digital sampler was the EMS Musys system, developed around 1969 in Putney. It consisted of two 12KB PDP-8 mini-computers with a 32KB hard drive, built by Peter Grogono, David Cockerell and Peter Zinovieff.

It was in the 1980s, with the integration of samplers into digital synthesisers and the rise of hip-hop, that the sample took off. The first sampling synthesiser, the Computer Music Melodian, hit shelves in 1976, and the first polyphonic model, Fairlight CMI, came from Australia three years later. Over the years, the sound of individual samplers would have a massive impact on the music scene. The crunchy drums of the E-mu SP-1200, for example, characterised the New York sound of 1987 and onwards, its increased storage making it portable and popular.

One of the earliest examples of a successful commercial single built out of samples was The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel in 1981. That's the one that features a bit of Apache by The Shadows. In 1985 erstwhile Clash guitarist Mick Jones built Big Audio Dynamite single E=MC² around samples from the films of Nicolas Roeg. The first number 1 to make extensive use of sampling was the legendary Pump Up The Volume, released in 1987 by MARRS, a one-off collaboration between various artists on the 4AD label.

Pump Up The Volume was also one of the first cases of controversy over sampling. When records containing samples began to make money, the original artists -- or more accurately, the labels behind the original recordings -- began to take notice. Those champions of musical innovation, Stock, Aitken and Waterman, sued MARRS despite not initially recognising the sample from the single Roadblock. Biz Markie's 1992 album I Need a Haircut was withdrawn over a sample from Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again (Naturally), and Shut Up And Dance's acid-house number 2 hit Raving I'm Raving was deleted after legal action from Walking In Memphis singer Marc Cohn.

Autotune

Cher -- Believe (1998)
Autotune is pitch correction applied to recorded vocals: a trade secret that gives singers perfect pitch every time. In fact, it was such a dirty little secret that when it was used to give Cher an electronic warble on 1998 hit single Believe, the producers claimed to have actually been using a Vocoder. Although pitch correction is designed to be undetectable, this was the first example of the unusual robot-voice effect also being possible.

Autotuning began with Auto-Tune, a Pro Tools plug-in developed in 1997 by Exxon seismic engineer Andy Hildebrand, from research into interpreting vibrations in the Earth. Auto-Tune can be used in a live setting outside the studio because it works in real time. Similar technology is included in Celemony's Melodyne, as used by Coldplay and Daft Punk, which can build backing vocal tracks from lead vocals and manipulate individual notes within chords.

Many artists decry the use of autotune. Jay-Z recorded a track entitled DOA (Death of Autotune), but Kanye West and other R&B and hip-hop artists love to flaunt the wibbly-warbly effect. Top-hatted lunatic T-Pain is synonymous with the sound, even lending his name to a iPhone app that allows you to autotune your own voice. Check out our CNET US colleague Justin Yu bringing autotune full circle with his extraordinary rendition of Believe.

Digital Downloading

Koopa -- Blag, Steal and Borrow (2007)
In October 2001, Apple released the first iPod -- and everything changed. The iPod captured the popular imagination with its sleek design. Integration with iTunes made the digital music experience accessible to mainstream users for the first time, and the MP3 killed the MiniDisc as the portable format of choice before Sony's nifty little platter had a chance to show its mettle.

The official UK Download Chart launched in September 2004. Just a few months later, in January 2005, downloaded tracks outstripped physical sales, and in April, downloads were added to the UK Singles Chart. In January 2007, the requirement for a physical release was removed, ending a period of argy-bargy over technicalities: Gorillaz, for example, released a nominal 300 vinyl copies of Feel Good Inc. Hits such as Gnarls Barclay's Crazy and Nelly Furtado's Maneater disappeared from the top 10 because the end of their physical releases made them ineligible, despite still selling digitally.

Crazy was the first song to reach number 1 on digital downloads alone, on 2 April 2006, when the condition was that downloads could be counted a week before the song's physical release. Mobile phone and video downloads count in the chart.

The first song to chart without ever being physically released was Blag, Steal and Borrow, by unsigned Colchester punk band Koopa, reaching number 31 the week after the rules changed. Before the end of the year Koopa did it twice more, even breaking into the top 20 with The Crash.

Ten songs went on to hit number 1 on the strength of download sales, but all followed this with physical releases. Leona Lewis scored the first number 1 that never graced a shop shelf with her histrionic cover of Snow Patrol's Run.

Suddenly, every song is a single. Radio and television play mean most artists still need what we could describe as 'lead tracks', so as not to split the song-buying public's vote. But downloads can still be successful without being officially released or reissued. Crazy and Maneater reappeared in the charts, which now also reflects surges in public interest in an artist. Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles was the first to persuade listeners to game the Chart, sending Billie Piper's 1999 number 3 Honey To The Bee in at number 17 in January 2007. Luciano Pavarotti's death prompted Nessun Dorma to chart at number 24, and Phil Collins' In The Air Tonight hit number 14 two and a half decades after first release, thanks to a drumming gorilla in an advert.

The death of Michael Jackson saw the biggest invasion of the Chart by a single artist, with 16 of his solo hits and four Jacksons tracks charting in June 2009. Man In The Mirror reached number 2 the following week.

The future?

It's a time of turmoil for the music industry, as physical releases and retailers apparently draw their last breath, while record labels and copyright holders chase their own tails in ever-decreasing circles. But music will always be with us, and as long as there are visionaries, innovators and nutcases inventing, innovating and messing about, technology and music will continue to hit the high notes.

Instruments such as the Tenori-on and the incredible Eigenharp are already pushing the musical envelope. What do you think is the future of musical technology? And what were the musical technology moments that blew your mind? Let us know in the comments.