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This episode is brought to you by BandLab.

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BandLab is a free app that lets you

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record entire songs on any device. You don't

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need to play an instrument to use it,

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and its interface is super simple. During the

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break, you'll hear from an artist who has

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already found success through songs created entirely in

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BandLab. Now, just to be clear, we made

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this episode the same way we always do,

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with full creative control over the story. And

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if I do say so myself, I think

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it's pretty awesome. Here we go. You're

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listening to 20,000 Hertz. What

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makes a song great? Of course,

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the writing, the performance, and the arrangement

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are all important. But

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there's another huge factor that's really easy to

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miss. The technology behind the

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music. In some ways, technology

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is like an invisible instrument. That's 20,000

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Hertz producer, Andrew Anderson. We don't always

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notice the role it plays, but without

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it, songs just don't sound the same.

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There are so many examples of

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new inventions that transformed the sound

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of music, from magnetic tape, to

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electric guitars, to drum machines, and

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beyond. Developments like these can

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change the course of music history, and

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sometimes they can even change the world.

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Let's get into it. Music

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recording began back in the late 1800s,

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and due to the limits of technology,

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these recordings sounded pretty rough. As

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an example, here's a track from 1888 called The Lost Chord. But

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over the next hundred years, recorded music

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became a closer and closer replication of

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live sound, thanks to

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inventions like reel-to-reel tape, multi-track

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recorders, and high-fidelity microphones like

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this one. As

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time went on, musicians expected their instruments

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to sound as pristine as possible when

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captured on record. Here's

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a tune by the Benny Goodman sex set from

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the early 40s. By modern standards, it sounds

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pretty vintage, but you can hear that recording quality

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had already come a long way since the 1880s.

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But then in the 1950s, something strange

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started to happen. Awesome.

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You had these sounds that were just dirty

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and messed up. That's journalist

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and author Greg Milner. Greg literally wrote the

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book on the history of music technology and

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he says that the 1950s were a turning

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point. Musicians just

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found ways to like mess it up,

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to create sounds that were interesting if

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not sounds that were actually good based

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on normal standards of fidelity. During that

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time, you had artists like Big Mama

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Thornton, Halim Wolf and Gene Vincent using

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abrasive guitar tones that hadn't been heard

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before. You ain't

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nothing but a house. Those

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dirty guitar sounds were some of the first

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examples of intentional distortion. Now,

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in music, there are a few different

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kinds of distortion. One of the most

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common is called harmonic distortion, which adds

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overtones to the original sound. These

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extra frequencies make the sound feel richer.

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Another common type of distortion is clipping.

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This is when the signal gets boosted

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so much that the top of the

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waveform gets completely flattened. There

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is some debate over the first recorded

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song to use Distortion but the most

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popular candidate is Ike Turner's Rocket 88

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released in 1951. The

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legend is that the amplifier fell off

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the truck on the way to the

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recording session and it

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created this messed up sound that Ike

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Turner really liked. Stories

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like this were pretty common back then because

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at the time there weren't any distortion devices

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for sale. So if you wanted that gritty

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sound you had to improvise. For example Dave

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Davis from the Kinks got creative with his

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amp to make the distorted sound on You

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Really Got Me. Here's Dave in

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an interview with VH1. I came

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across this little amp in the shop

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and I just got a razor blade

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and started to cut the cone and

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the speaker down the wire

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and I plugged it in and it

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made that amazing sound.

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But in 1962 Gibson changed the game

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with the Maestro Fuzz Tone guitar pedal.

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It's molo, it's raucous, it's

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tender, it's raw, it's the Maestro Fuzz

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Tone. The Fuzz Tone took

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that broken amp sound and turned it into

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a pedal that you could switch on and

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off as needed. Now let's listen to

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some of the unbelievable effects that you

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can create with the Fuzz Tone. Wasn't

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that something? Well it was

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definitely something but it turned out most guitarists

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didn't want that sound on their record. What

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the Fuzz Tone really needed was a hit

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song to take it into the big time

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and in 1965 it

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got exactly that. Using

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the flustered tone, I can't get no

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satisfaction took distortion into the mainstream. But

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strangely enough, Keith never meant for that guitar line

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to be used in the final mix. Instead,

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he recorded it as a placeholder for

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hornpops that were supposed to be added

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later. Keith

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thought the distorted guitar sounded gimmicky, but when the

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rest of the band heard it, they liked it.

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So, they took a vote. All those

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in favour of keeping the guitar part? Aye!

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All those opposed? Nay.

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And the rest is history. And

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sparked a never-ending quest for more and more

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distortion in rock music from Jimi Hendrix.