Strand 4 – The Technologies of House Music

What are the key technologies of house music? What technologies allowed the music to become fully formed? Furthermore, what about the technologies of DJing? The sound systems of Richard Long and Alex Rosner were crafted and tuned to provide pristine audio quality to the dancers of New York in the 1970s and 1980s. The very first DJ mixer (called Rosie) was used as far back as the late 1960s. The first house music track did not use a TR-808 drum machine, something now synonymous with house in the minds of young people. The classic Korg-M1 italo-dance piano sound was not released until 1988 (early piano-house used Sequential Circuits’ Prophet 2000).

There is a need for active disagreement and informing in respect to the technological trajectories often associated with house music. It would be fair to say that whilst there are several stereotypical timbres, patterns, techniques, structures etc. in house music, they display more variation and intrigue than they are often credited with. There is a distinct lack of nuance around the technologies of house music, and the blanket assumptions made of the music are beginning to obfuscate the nuanced truth. The contemporary landscape of house music is vastly different than it was in the mid-1980s. Streaming, digital downloads, orchestral remixing and online festivals have changed what house is and means. How do we make sense of the new house aesthetic? And how do we compare old with new