Electric and electronic instruments of 20th century pop, part one

Demystifying some frequently-mistaken timbres

We’re spending the last chunk of Advanced Popular Music Transcription talking about the sonic and timbral aspects of pop production. This week we’re focusing on identifying various instrument timbres and talking about their stylistic associations. In this post, I won’t be talking about synths, that will come in part two. I also won’t be talking (much) about the guitar, because my students already know what guitar sounds like. Instead, I’ll focus on electronic instruments that are less familiar.

Electric piano

The two most commonly used electric pianos are various incarnations of the Fender Rhodes and the Wurlitzer. They sound similar and work in the same way: when you press a key, a hammer strikes a thin metal tine like a tuning fork. This tine vibrates next to a magnetic pickup like the ones in an electric guitar. Rhodes and Wurli sound guitar-like not only because they use the same basic physics, but also because people often run them through guitar amps, and sometimes through guitar effects pedals too.

Ray Charles - “What’d I Say” (1959)

Ray Charles started playing electric piano for a practical reason: the pianos in the clubs he was playing were usually horribly out of tune, and touring with an electric piano is a lot easier than touring with an acoustic one. As I learned from the 500 Songs podcast, other musicians gave Ray a hard time about it, because electric pianos were considered to be toys, not serious instruments. But now the sound of the Wurly evokes Ray’s jazzy, sophisticated soul. You can see Ray playing electric piano in The Blues Brothers, though there he’s playing a Rhodes.