History of Electronic Music

I have been thinking of starting some kind of online project (podcast, YouTube channel, blog) on the overall history of electronic music. I have been gathering ideas and lists for a couple of years now, and the goal is to cover electronic music in depth, year by year, using a very wide scope (electronic music to me is any music involving electronic instruments and tools, so this would include genres outside the so-called "electronic music" genre, such as hip-hop, pop, and new wave, as a few examples).

I don't think I will be able to actually do this by myself in a comprehensive way that I feel this needs to be, and I do think this would be a very valuable resource once it's realized. If anyone thinks they might be able to join me in this odyssey, or offer some assistance, I think a team of like-minded individuals with diverse tastes and backgrounds would make a project like this actually worth doing.

I consider myself pretty knowledgeable in all kinds of electronic music, and I know this particular forum is intended more for the traditional kind of EM, but again, the goal is to chart the complete history of electronic music as a whole, from pre-electronic roots with various musical instruments that paved the way for the early 20th century experiments like the Theremin, to the academic music concrete and tape loops and experimental computer music of the 1950s, to the Moog, and then to all the synths, and then the computers, and the genre explosion in the internet age.

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, please let me know here or via PM. I know there are lots of sources out there with sort of similar premises, but thus far I have not encountered a single resource where the dedication was for a narrative history of electronic music, from the beginning till now.

It would be sort of giant, I guess, yes, but also something that will never be truly complete. I'm leaning toward setting it up as a website, a blog, maybe similar to a wiki. I thought about doing a linear podcast or YouTube channel, but first, I don't have the voice for that, and two, it would be too restricting. I don't think this can be told in Episode 1, then Episode 2 fashion. Since 99% of music is probably available legally on YouTube or Spotify, it can be embedded in the text so the reader can listen to the full piece while reading about it, which you can't do with a podcast or video, for copyright and length reasons.

Although I would prefer a chronological narrative, and it would be fairly easy to sustain for the early years, but electronic music, and music in general, explodes into so many directions in later year that I'm still struggling to envision how it could be laid out. I'm thinking it would focus on notable recordings per year and once genres become too varied, it can then focus on that genre in that year (for example, "Disco in 1980").

It might be a good idea to also chart the chronology of important artists throughout, so if a musician puts out an album in a given year, there would be an article on that. But mainly the goal is to go year by year and record by record (be it single track or album), to see how electronic music developed and evolved and changed, and how instruments and tools evolved as well (hardware is something I'm very unfamiliar with as simply a listener).

There was a book last year:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mars-…0571323979

These days, everything I don't like is called Electronic Music -- a conversation I had recently went like this:

"What kind of music do you make?" -- "I make electronic music." -- "I'd never have thought you're a DJ."

Stephen