TOP 20 Inventions that CHANGED Music 

I'm honestly surprised the microphone wasn't even on the list, I expected it to be top 3. Not only do you not have over half this list without the microphone, it absolutely revolutionized singing. Before the microphone, opera singers were trained in bel canto, the one specific technique that allowed them to project their voice over the orchestra to a concert hall without amplification. With the invention of the microphone, contemporary vocal styles could be recorded and performed, spawning literal hundreds of genres and styles just from this alone. The microphone enabled live gigs for larger crowds of people for genres other than classical music. Microphones allowed you to record music, opened up millions of creative doors, enabled sharing of music and immortalizing artists better than even musical notation can (you have bach's notation, but you don't know the nuances he envisioned, you don't know how he played it, but you will always know how bohemian rhapsody is supposed to sound like because you have the original recording of the artist as a reference). AND it enabled music production/mixing/recording as a field. All its science stems from the invention of the microphone. Basically, I'd argue can potentially be the #1 invention, but musical notation is also a pretty good point. Still, microphone is definitely worthy of being on here. And as others have pointed out, speakers are the other end of it, so just as important

You forgot the PENCIL (mid-1800s). With a standard HB wood pencil, you could repair a cassette tape when the tape looped outside of the casing. :D

The microphone and the speaker. Completely changed live music and made recording possible.

The ability to turn sound waves into electrical waves by the microphone allowed for amplification and enabled all recording to take place. I loved your list and enjoyed having this topic on your show! But, the microphone is epic in the reproduction of music!

I would add synthesizer and probably the most important turning point in music was founding out that human being can make a rhythm, so any percussions made of stone, wood etc. are very important.

The microphone, turning sound into signal. Other than that, brilliant list.

Not to forget: the invention of the MP3 by the Fraunhofer Institut, which gave the music industry a lot of headache in the 90's and was the base for Napster and many other filesharing softwares, MP3-Players and so on. Also giving the opportunity to backup and transport all your music in very small (compressed) files.

Totally agree, just might add that I believe the first time music was heard without the actual players being there was not by gramophone records but by piano rolls, that's what made Scott Joplin famous and ragtime kinda the first mass-appeal popular music.

These are all very nice, but the most important invention was the volume knob that could go to 11.

The microphone surely needs to be in there. Certainly more worthy of a place than effects pedals.

Do a Top 20 on "Mistakes left in the mix"

I’m shocked that the synthesizer wasn’t on this list somewhere. It’s everywhere now. It absolutely changed music forever. Yes, the keyboard was incredibly important. Where would we be without the piano? And, of course, the keyboard is the most common way to interface with a synthesizer. But, the synthesizer had an impact on music that just cannot be underestimated. Music sampling technology should be on that list as well. The prevalence of drum machines and keyboards that can replicate the sound of acoustic instruments is everywhere.

The modern drum set! As said by others, a combination of African drums, Asian cymbals, and European military snares, all playable by one person and their four limbs. Made all of modern music possible, - rock, jazz, metal, funk, blues, etc.

The invention of the kick-drum pedal by Edward 'Dee Dee' Chandler in 1894, followed by the high-hat, changed 'the drums' from being section to being one instrument played by a single musician using all four limbs.

Couple of things: Musical notation in the western world dates back at least to the mid-800s, not to 1400. Modern notation dates back to about 1300, though the diamond-shaped noteheads of what's known as Trecento notation do look a bit different from the oval noteheads we use now. There's one thing I teach as "the most important technological innovation in the history of music," and that's the magnetic transducer. This one component, basically just a coil of copper wire around a magnet, ends up being the basis for a bunch of the inventions mentioned, here, and a bunch of others: electric guitar pickups, microphones, speakers, the pickups in Hammond organs, Rhodes electric pianos and various other electronic keyboards, radio antennas for both broadcast and reception, tape heads, and record player cartridges. Basically, the transducer has been the foundation of most other technological advancements in music since its inception in the early '20s.

I know you mentioned keyboards, but the invention of the synthesizer was an absolute game changer. The Mellotron was just a gap-filling extension of that technology, and a very important one, but the synthesizer deserves its own mention.

1) Drum (rhythm, tempo and dance), 2) Harp: invention of scales, chords, and self accompaniment 3) Whistle/flute: keys, scales 4) Guitar: Now one musician had it all: rhythm, chord progressions and melody Somewhere down the list: Tempered scale-music theory The Synthesizer - analog and Digital

A big Thank you to Anna-Magdalena, Bach's Second Wife, his principal copyist. Without her work, most of his music would have been lost to time.

You forgot to mention the van. Without it, no band would have ever got out of the garage. :)

I'm so glad you guys said Music Notation was #1. In a way you could say that was the very first means of "recording music".

I was waiting for you to say microphone was #1 👀

2021 is the 40th anniversary of MTV. I would like to thank them for 10 years of music.

Another "honorable mention": the acoustic theater, which allows performance to a large audience/ It goes fairly far back, to at least the ancient Greeks. Much of music history in many cultures had music and musical theater performed in such places.

Interesting list guys. I suggest another item that is fundamental to music since the early 20th Century. The generation and availability of electricity. :)

12 tone tempered scale, early instruments, microphone. There are so many things, it is hard not letting something go

The microphone and the amplifier both need to be on the list. Yes, you mentioned amps when you listed tubes, but the amp separately in and of itself is as important as many of the other things that made the list. Hard to argue with most of your choices. Another great video, Rick!

Pythagoras and the relationship between tone and half tone, octaves, pitch... The base of ocidental music. ✌️

The transistor radio belongs on the list. It changed radio from a family group experience with family oriented music to a personal experience. It is partly a chicken and egg situation, but the teens were the ones to adopt the new tech of transistor radios, which meant the forward looking people such as Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon could develop the new sounds of Top 40 radio to meet the new audience. The more teen-oriented music, the more they bought transistors to listen to it. The more transistors sold, the more ears to listen to the new music so more was created (all driven, of course, by the teens now buying the radio advertised products.) Even Elvis could only reach a very small number of people in live concerts, but the number of teen girls listening to DJs playing his music late at night with the transistor hidden under their pillow was nigh infinite.

Microphone needs to be an honorable mention, but definitely notation deserving #1!

A gigantic one, I believe, was overlooked. It is essential to radios, tvs, walkmen, iPods, PCs, instrument amps, etc. etc. It will likely be irreplaceable for years to come. You simply can't even hear music reproduced electrically without... a speaker.

Without the invention of the microphone, we would not have heard anything Rick said in this video!

It's a great list - very thought provoking! Watching this made me think of an old PBS show called "Connections" (1978) - a sort of history of science and technology focusing on how the intertwining of different and disparate technologies brought us to the contemporary world we live, in good and bad ways. That being said, I would have gathered the several types of recording media (wax cylinder, tape, record, CD, etc.) into one category - technology that made it possible for people to listen to recordings. I might also add some of the hardware of used by musicians (amps, PA's, microphones, etc.) to literally broadcast sound. I would also put the transistor in the top ten of the list - it has revolutionized EVERYTHING, and been the basis for the several items in the list - the iPod, the personal computer, workstations, Napster; it could be grouped with the vacuum tube for doing the same jobs (amplification, switching, logic, etc.), but for doing them faster, cheaper, and on the head of a pin. And perhaps a nod to architecture, urbanism, and social organization in the form of the concert hall, the opera house, the community center, the dance hall - the physical place, and the idea of making a space within which people consciously listened to music, and thereby making music into a thing, a place, a destination both concretely and conceptually; and by extension the creation of the audience.

You guys forgot the drum. The first instrument outside of the human-body. Uses acoustics and reverbration to communicate ideas over an incredible distance with remarkable volume. Establishes the idea of rhythm and tempo as the primary forces behind music. Almost anything can be used as a drum. Utilized in spiritual-rites, social-gatherings, ceremonies, warfare, enchantments, and leisure throughout the world.

Most important invention in music was, when the monks in the medieval decided to sing a 2nd voice beside the cantus firmus. With this decision started the history of european harmonics.

Maybe "speaker" alone should be somewhere before headphones, but I think this list is pretty accurate

The electric bass! The foundation of popular music since the late 50s! No more struggling to hear an upright in the mix, and the foundation of entire genres, like funk, where slap bass and 16th note grooves could be played at an audible level

You missed the synthesizer, a Canadian invention at the National Research Council of Canada. Maybe it doesn't rank in the top 20 but it has had a big influence on music since the early days of Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Thanks to you both for this delightful & informative top 20!

As an electronic music professor I think this is a really good list. Here’s what I think it missed. 1. Tied for #1 or should have been #2 was the development and adoption of Equal Temperament, which standardized the 12 chromatic half steps. 2. Synthesizers, particularly The Telharmonium in 1905 invented by Thaddeus Cahill. Using electricity to spin an oscillator to create an pitch was a revolution. Cahill is also a pioneer of subscription music services that predates Muzak and Spotify. 3. The Telephone which enabled the electronic transmission of sound over distance. 4. Don Buchla in California, Bob Moog in New York, and EMS Studios in London inventing the personal synthesizer, bringing synthesizers to the masses. I think that’s it for me. I’m sure I’ll think of something else later.

Before this video started rolling out my first impulse response was "the metronome" - Citing Wikipedia: A metronome, from ancient Greek μέτρον and νέμω, is a device that produces an audible click or other sound at a regular interval that can be set by the user, typically in beats per minute. Metronomes may include synchronized visual motion. Musicians use the device to practise playing to a regular pulse. Invented by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel, Johann Nepomuk Mälzel. I used this invention at nearly every piano practice/lesson.

Weed is the most important thing in music 💩. Just kidding. Love you guys, great video!

I would add the PA System. It was really that which gave the ability to scale small performances to huge ones which created that hype for festivals and large scale shared experience.

"hey everybody i'm rick beato" A sentence I will never forget.

I don’t know if it’s an invention, but the 12 tone equal temperament scale is the foundation of all Western music, and before it was invented, it was difficult or impossible to harmonize across octaves.

You guys are becoming important historians of music, particularly of modern music. A really excellent and thought provoking video, it must have been hard to know what to leave out.

I guess good old Electricity should be in there as well !!

Stewart Copeland of The Police has a great video where he proposes that the bass drum pedal is the single most important invention in Western music, and that once you have one person playing the bass and snare drums, the beat gets tight as is needed for rock n roll.

You guys nailed it. For me, the battery powered pocket sized transistor radio. They were the first affordable way to listen to music anywhere we went.

Amplification is what helped bring bass to live music, because without it we couldn't hear what the bass player was ever doing

Music notation, being one of the oldest and probably most important inventions in music, is in a way a part of language/written language in general, which is probably the oldest and most important invention in human history.

I can't believe you forgot Mr. Microphone. "Hey good lookin, We'll be back to pick you up later."

David Byrne’s book “How Music Works” talks a lot about the evolution of music both before and during the recording age. Headphones are actually insanely useful because for the first time, the listener can completely detach themselves from the acoustics of the room around them and get right up to the music.

Since you include the printing press, I was surprised you didn't include electricity or at least a reference to alternating current. Anyhow, great stuff as always, love your content and passion Rick!

My father was an electrician when I was a kid in the 70. I had a cassette player with one 1/8” output jack with a single earbud . He spliced two earbuds together for me to provide a “stereo” sound, although not true stereo. It was a double mono. But that made all the difference. My first cassette tape was given to me by my uncle which was Black Sabbath Paranoid. The rest is history

The drum? The stringed instrument? The wind instrument? The reed? The bow? The 12-note scale? Hate to go all old-school in y'all, but damn.

This might get me a boomer label, but I still enjoy listening to the radio. I enjoy being surprised by what comes up next with none of my input. Sometimes it makes me change the station, but sometimes it brings up a dang good song I needed to hear.

We take 'music notation' for granted that it was an "OH YEAH" moment when you mentioned it.

The invention of wiggly air is still unmatched.

The drum. Arguably the first ever musical instrument, apart from the human voice.

I love the thought that in a hundred years, videos like this will still be being made, because music is endless.

totally agree with your number one selection! bravo! i was surprised that microphone wasn't on the list -- it's how we can capture all the glorious sounds that we then use with all the 20 other things you listed.

Hammond organ + Leslie speaker and analog synthesizers like Minimoog shaped the sound from the moment they first appeared till today and still have an incredible impact on music.

I was waiting for you to name two things in top 3. One was already mentioned by many and that is a microphone. And another thing is equal temperament. Introduction of equal temperament gave life to all the notions which have shaped European (and later American) music for the last 500 years or so: intervals, tonalities, keys, transposing and so on.

If you include the Walkman, maybe the Transistor Radio deserves a shoutout! Portable and affordable, it took music listening out of the furniture in the living room and into our pockets.

I am an electronic musician. I LOVE that you included MIDI. MIDI is one of my favorite things. When I was just starting off a few months ago; MIDI allowed me to connect my Radio Shack keyboard to my computer and make drum beats with the sequencer in Reaper. These days the heart of my setup is the Arturia Keystep Pro. It's what I currently use to program drums. I have gotten into rack mount sound units. It's perfect for my small studio. If I have the rack space I can add another synth or rompler without the bulk of a full keyboard. Without MIDI those units would exist they way they do.

For me and my band mate the biggest thing was the 4-track cassette recorder. Once we got one of those we were able to get the music we were imagining in our heads on tape. Total game changer for a 14 year old rocker! Love the videos.

"Everybody knows that Muddy Waters invented electricity." Willie "Blind Dog" Fulton, Crossroads, 1986. Great vid, Rick and Rhett! I think y'all nailed it.

I can't imagine jazz or popular music without the drum kit developed by Ludwig.

This is a great post. I expected that it was going to feature things like “the hihat stand” and “electric pickup” but the important inventions in music as shared here is really the history of information recording and transmission. It makes me think that as soon as people needed to share information, they either used music to share the information or music was the information they wanted to share. Thank you for making this!

You mentioned the harpsichord. But there is a keyboard musical instrument that is before the harpsichord (and clavichord) and that is the pipe organ! It was the primary instrument of the Baroque period and much earlier. The pipe organ was the “synthesizer” of the past eras. The pipe organ has a very special place among keyboards, tuning, temperament, musical notation and all the rest. And guess what-the pipe organ is the king of instruments and should be right in there with all the early keyboards. Thank you.

Nomination for honorable mention: Spandex. It made all those high notes possible.

Tuning forks/tuners, microphones are the only things I could add to this list. Great content.

Great video! Too many essential inventions to count. Others I would have included: 1. Fundamental instruments like strings/lyres, drums/drum heads, and whistles/flutes 2. as others have mentioned, the microphone (and speaker, which is like a backwards microphone) 3. Acoustic theory, from simple amphitheaters to complex mastering booths Again, great video! Need a top 50 haha

How can the transistor not be #1?? Without it...no fuzz..no ipod.. no walkman..no DAW's ..no internet..the list goes on. Most importantly, no transistor radio which allowed young people to listen to their own music separate from the family console in the living room. This created the environment that spawned rock and roll music.

Can't forget the cowbell. Where would great songs like Don't Fear the Reaper be without more cowbell!!

The “frying pan” was the first electric guitar ever produced. The instrument was created in 1931 by George Beauchamp, and subsequently manufactured by Rickenbacker.

Maybe add 1. Multiple performers - the invention of the orchestra, band or group 2. Chords, polyphony, harmony & counterpoint 3. The piano roll - an early sequencer without which no Cubase or Logic 4. The Jukebox - spread music everywhere

To do it chronologically: 1400 BCE/1440 Printing Press ( 17:40 ) 1499 Keyboard ( 14:41 ) 1877 Phonograph ( 12:50 ) 1890 Headphone ( 3:33 ) 1986 Radio ( 16:24 ) 1904 Vacuum Tube ( 8:29 ) 1925 78 RPM Record ( 5:39 ) 1927 Television ( 6:07 ) 1928 Magnetic Tape ( 10:34 ) 1941 Electric Guitar ( 7:20 ) 1956 Personal Computer ( 13:36 ) 1962 Fuzz Pedal ( 1:09 ) 1979 Walkman ( 2:51 ) 1981 MIDI ( 9:24 ) 1982 Compact Disc ( 4:56 ) 1983 Internet ( 15:43 ) 1989 DAWS ( 11:38 ) 1999 Napster ( 2:10 ) 2001 iPod ( 0:30 ) 2000s Social Media ( 4:12 )

Nice duo! I like the chemistry between you two.

The microphone is a glaring omission. Definitely top 5

As you were going through the top 10 I was thinking "notation, they forgot notation. How could they forget notation". What a relief to see it there. There would have been centuries of music lost before we had the ability to record sound without notation.

The keyboard was as important (and ancient) as you say, but I think one thing that made modern styles of music really take off was specifically the invention of the pianoforte around 1700 by Bartolomeo Cristofori. The pianoforte was the first keyboard instrument that allowed the player to play individual notes at controlled amplitude (well, there was the clavichord, but that was so quiet that it had extremely limited use in public performance). The pianoforte was the first truly expressive keyboard instrument, and it made possible solo performances of complex music with tonal subtlety, giving us Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and eventually all the jazz pianists.

I was working at Moog Music when MIDI was introduced by Sequential Circuits and others. The leaders decided that it had too much latency (delay) to be useful so didn’t hop on the bandwagon. We were wrong.

Oh, the vacuum tube. I'm old enough to remember when "CRT" meant "Cathode Ray Tube".

ELECTRICITY. Without it you don't have microphones, amps, Moogs, radio, the internet and much stuff that is already on the list. And I would also consider MTV. (Not today's MTV, but the 1980s MTV.)

The synthesiser was very important for the abilty to create music especially for solo artists

I feel like multitrack recording and overdubs deserved more than a passing mention.

Very solid list. Nice seeing you two do some more videos together

The drum. More than likely the first instrument ever.

As sad as it is today, I feel the original MTV format helped musicians and changed the way bands were promoted. Many bands were "made" because they had a great music video.

As the great Ron Swanson said "Tom put all my records into this rectangle. The song is played right after the other. This is an excellent rectangle!"

That feeling when you see it with your own eyes and have it explained how a strange sound is actually produced is magical. I experienced it most recently when I got to look under the hood of a harpsichord and understood how the chords are pinched more like for a guitar. Or you could say it is truly a harp in a box. Those little hammers that hit the chords thus bringing us the piano forté in the early 1700s were IMO a huge invention. The grand piano, with its more rigid frame and with its metal chords is also worth a shout. I wish all the innovations related to the dissemination, distribution and consumptions of music were kept sepparate for a different top, and this one stayed about the technical innovations that directly impacted sound and further style and movements. That said, even so, I don't get the point of mentioning both the internet and social media, the latter being a subset of the former. Also, while I can admit that the internet changed my life in terms of music consumption and preferences, social media has had a devastating effect and I wonder what reasons can there be to put it in this top. Social media destroyed the music community where I'm from. In the noughties, I would spend a lot of time every day in the online music community posting over several internet forums socialising, making friends, talking and exchanging music, setting up meet-ups before gigs, setting up seaside weekends... People got together in real life, there were couples and even marriages. Then in 2009 and 2010 everybody migrated on Facebook and the musical focus just vanished. The internet forums went offline as nobody paid the hosting, the equivalent Facebook groups never took off, those who wrote eventually gave up their blogs... At best, the former music community became just like the rest of the civil society, chatting the same things like everyone else. I think my conclusion is that in the presence of *all* our friends, we tend not to discuss music: we do it mostly in the presence of like-minded music fans. In hindsight, thinking of what was lost still makes me sad: I still remember the usernames of my favourite music people, I know I have them in my Facebook friends list, but I wouldn't be able anymore to recognize them by their real-life name and their account with job and family chat as the music lovers they once were.

Would make a case for he drum kit making it into the top 20. More then even the electric guitar its was the basis for how popular music sounds today and for the last century.

Seems like a Sampler should be on here somewhere given how often they've been used for the last few decades.

Gretsch didn't sue Fender for using Broadcaster (their drums were Broadkasters), rather, Fred Gretsch contacted Leo Fender and told him that Gretsch was already using that name for their drums and they settled it amicably.

The ADAT and the PortaStudio changed everything for millions of musicians. Fact check: the CD was developed in 1976. 1982 was when it became commercially available. And electric guitars came on the market in the early 30's, before Leo and Les.

Good list but you left out Synthesizers (and earlier electric/electronic keyboards such as electric organs). Synthesizers had a massive effect on the music industry and shaped the sound of an entire decade (the 80's). Even till this day they are by far the most used instrument in a modern pop production, whether it's Trap music or any other type of modern pop music.

Kinda weird that you mentioned effect pedals, but left out microphones.

Musical notation was one on my list. When you mentioned radio, I immediately thought, how many musicians hearing a piece they were playing off of sheet music said "Damn, I have been playing it wrong." Or, "That is not how you play that."

Top 20 inventions that changed music: 1/ staff notation 2/ equal temperament tuning 3/ the Penny Whistle 4/ the means to sustain wind instruments longer than a single breath 5/ the first clavier 6/ the bow (for stringed instruments) 7/ frets 8/ the player piano 9/ the first electric microphone 10/ the magnitophone magnetic tape recorder 11/ Blumlein's middle/side mono-compatible stereo recording techniques (and his theory for multi-channel stereophony) 12/ the first 3 track tape recorder (enabling the first multi-track sound on sound recording) 13/ "phone" AM radio. 14/ the first 4 track multi-track recorder that could be synchronised with another 4-track recorder. 15/ the first low noise mixing desk with individual channel strips, auxiliary outputs, multi-track and 2 track outputs 16/ TalkBack from the console to the studio 17/ the first compressor 18/ PCM digital audio 19/ the first low Q loudspeaker 20/ Musical Instrument Digital Interface 21/ the first Roland FM synthesizer 22/ the Fairfax sample-based synthesizer 23/ etc. There are so many inventions that transformed western music - all of which had a real beneficial impact on music in the western world over the centuries.

Well, most comments here are just writing about what they would add to the list... Instead, I'd just like to say: thank you for the great video!! I really like your calm, educational energy here! The edits are also really good, they leave the most important info in there and don't cut out the charm! I love this kind of videos, keep it up!