How Has Technology Influenced Popular Music In The 19th Century?

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Throughout the late nineteenth century to the present, the music industry has experienced groundbreaking changes due to technological advancements. From the introduction of sheet music in the nineteenth century to the modern age of iPod’s and digital downloads, each technological advancement has brought new styles of music with new forms of business, all while reaching a broader audience. While popular music was originally produced for specific geographical regions, technological advances have allowed distribution of popular songs to reach the masses on a national and international level. Developing technology has influenced popular music in the early twentieth century by changing musical style from simplistic tunes to complex layered compositions, …show more content…

The first known musical songs were passed down orally from generation to generation. Due to the need for memorization, songs were short and simplistic and composers put a prominence on percussion. The musical style of this era consisted of ballads and dance music. Ballads were popular during this time because they featured simplistic tunes that people could recognize and easily replicate on their own. Since no form of recording a song was available at this time, many songs never left the city or town they originated in and featured themes that were central to the hometown. With the invention of the printing press, the invention of sheet music became the first step in the timeline of musical technological advancements. Sheet music provided a way for people to not only distribute their songs to other cities but also provided a way for new styles of music to reach new populations. Fresh ways of combining cords created many different types of music, and the meter, melody and rhythm of songs grew more diverse. With sheet music, songs were able to become more complex and were seen for the first time as a valuable commodity. Popular themes included family, country and common daily …show more content…

Despite these two songs being recorded only a few years apart and both featuring the same song structure, their distinct differences can be attributed to the singers’ adaptation to using the microphone. For the song April Showers recorded in 1921, Jolson was used to singing without a microphone, and therefore he was used to having his voice fill a large space with sound. When listening to the recording, his voice is clearly dominant over the instruments and his words are easily understandable and come across strongly while having little static in the

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