During the Seventies electronic synthesized music took off in a big way. The machines of the previous decade, such as the Moog had already had a tremendous impact, but during the seventies that the synthesizer became embedded in the aural landscape by its extremely widespread use in films, TV, advertising and on innumerable records. Very often synthesizers were used in the background such that one was unaware of their presence, rather than in the overt manner of 50s sci-fi movies or the 60s ´hey-listen-to-my-far-out-synthesizer´ music.
At the same time computer music was going through some big changes. Since the earliest computers of the 1950s, composers such as Milton Babbit had sought to use them to create music, but what was happening in the 70s was the development of micro chips and hard drives which would soon unleash the computer as a major musical force by giving it the ability to record and process music and generate sounds, all in real time. The whole business of making and manipulating sound was about to go digital…
