From Discovery to Trend

Throughout recording history, the use of different recording technologies and instruments has left lasting impressions on recordings, suggesting an almost intrinsic relationship between technology, time, place and agency. However, not all of these technologies have been intended as tools for recording and producing music in the first place. In fact, recording history is full of accidental innovation. This chapter presents three examples where wrong or unintended use of different technologies has provided a basis for important developmental leaps in popular music, instances where the discovery turns to innovation by becoming a trend: Slap-back echo and multi-track recording, as discovered/invented by Les Paul in the early 1950s. Gated reverb as discovered/invented by Hugh Padgham, Peter Gabriel, and Phil Collins in 1980. Autotune, as discovered/invented by Andy Hildebrand in 1996. It goes without saying that slap-back echo, gated reverb, and autotune sound different. Yet, they mark sonically different stages in recording history, and they have contributed, and still will contribute, to guiding the creative process in a recording situation.