Bach to Billie Eilish: every era's great musicians rode a new machine

iamtrask · x · 2026-09-28

iamtrask lists how technology shaped music history: Bach explored well-temperament tuning, Liszt had the modern piano, Bing Crosby the electric microphone, Jimi Hendrix turned guitar feedback and distortion into music, T-Pain had Auto-Tune, and Billie Eilish was among the first to fully exploit modern microphones and compression capable of recording whispers in high definition.

Related event: OpenAI VP iamtrask: AI Will Create History's Greatest Musicians(9 posts)→

Original post →

More from AGI Musings

AGI Musings channel →