1948. French radio engineer Pierre Schaeffer broadcasts Étude aux chemins de fer — a four-minute piece composed entirely of recorded train sounds. He calls the method musique concrète: composing with concrete sound objects rather than abstract notes.
By 1951 NWDR Cologne has built the first elektronische Musik studio — Karlheinz Stockhausen, Herbert Eimert. Studie I (1953), Gesang der Jünglinge (1956), Kontakte (1960). In Italy, Luciano Berio's Studio di Fonologia. In New York, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (Milton Babbitt, Edgard Varèse, Mario Davidovsky). The first synthesizers arrive: the RCA Mark II (1957), Don Buchla's modular (1963), Moog's voltage-controlled modular (1964) — the latter made portable, then keyboard-equipped, then Minimoog (1970).
Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider start Kraftwerk in Düsseldorf in 1970, working at first within the krautrock idiom (Can, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Faust). With Autobahn (1974) — the title track is 22 minutes long — they invent a new style: melodic, repetitive, sequenced, sung in deadpan over a pulse. Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981).
Afrika Bambaataa borrowed Trans-Europe Express for "Planet Rock." Detroit's Cybotron heard it and made techno. Bowie heard it and made Low. Daft Punk heard it and made everything. Kraftwerk's influence on everything that follows is impossible to overstate.
Disco is the missing link between R&B and dance music as we know it. Tom Moulton invents the 12" single in 1975 by accident (cutting a longer master, wider grooves, more bass). Giorgio Moroder programs Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" (1977) on a Moog Modular — a pulsing 16th-note bass that becomes the central rhythmic figure of dance music for the next 50 years. Brian Eno hears it and tells David Bowie they have heard the future.
Larry Levan at the Paragon Garage and Frankie Knuckles at the Warehouse in Chicago play disco records to gay Black audiences after the genre has been declared dead by the mainstream press. The Warehouse becomes the place where house is named.
Frankie Knuckles starts splicing drum machine patterns under disco edits at the Warehouse. Jesse Saunders' "On and On" (1984) and Marshall Jefferson's "Move Your Body" (1986) on Trax Records establish the form. Larry Heard (Mr. Fingers) cuts "Can You Feel It" (1986). The Roland TR-909 (released 1984, considered a flop) becomes the house drum machine.
"The Godfather of House." Resident at the Warehouse and the Power Plant.
Mr. Fingers · "Can You Feel It" · deep house's founding aesthetic.
"Move Your Body" · the house anthem with piano.
"Acid Tracks" (1987) — accidentally invented acid house with a TB-303.
Latin / Afro-Cuban inflected house. Nuyorican Soul (1997).
French filter-house. Homework (1997); Discovery (2001).
Three high-school friends from Belleville, Michigan — Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson — invent techno listening to Kraftwerk, Parliament, and the Electrifying Mojo on Detroit radio. Atkins as Cybotron releases "Clear" in 1983, then "No UFO's" as Model 500 in 1985 — the first record to call itself techno on the sleeve. Derrick May's "Strings of Life" (1987) becomes the genre's anthem.
The "Belleville Three" are followed by a "second wave" — Carl Craig, Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Mike Banks, Underground Resistance — and the export to Europe. Berlin after the Wall: Tresor (1991), Berghain (2004), and a continuous club scene that becomes the city's primary cultural export. The Hague's Bunker, Amsterdam's RoXY, Tokyo's Liquid Room.
1988. UK kids hear Chicago acid house tracks (the Roland TB-303's resonant squelch) and rebuild it as pill-eating outdoor culture. Shoom (Danny Rampling), The Haçienda (Manchester · Factory Records), Spectrum (Paul Oakenfold). The smiley face becomes the visual signature. By 1990 there are illegal raves of 25,000 people in fields outside London. The Criminal Justice Act of 1994 specifically outlaws gatherings playing music characterized by "the emission of a succession of repetitive beats."
Out of acid house, rave splinters: jungle / drum & bass (Goldie's Timeless, 1995), UK garage (Artful Dodger, MJ Cole), 2-step, grime (Wiley, Dizzee Rascal), dubstep (Burial's Untrue, 2007), UK funky, bassline.
Brian Eno coins "ambient" on the sleeve of Music for Airports (1978): "must be as ignorable as it is interesting." The lineage runs back through Erik Satie's "furniture music" (1917) and forward through The Orb, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. II (1994), Stars of the Lid, William Basinski's Disintegration Loops (2002).
"Intelligent Dance Music" — a name nobody uses without scare quotes — describes the Warp Records aesthetic of the early 90s: Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, μ-Ziq. Selected Ambient Works 85–92 (1992). Music Has the Right to Children (1998). Confield (2001).
Bass synth designed for guitarists. Failed. Got cheap. Acid house was born.
Drum machine. Marvin Gaye, Afrika Bambaataa, every trap song after 2010.
Hybrid analog/sample drum machine. The sound of techno and house, the kick and the hi-hat.
FM synthesis. The 80s preset E.PIANO 1 sound.
Sampler-sequencer. Roger Linn's design. The instrument of hip-hop and post-2000 electronic.
The "Organ 2" patch is in every house track from the era.
The four men in matching suits, the Doepfer mannequins, the SEM voder. The sound that begat hip-hop, techno, house, electro, synth-pop, and Daft Punk.