Electronic music

The 20th century brought the first truly innovative instrument in centuries—the theremin.^{[citation needed]} For centuries before, music had either been created by singing, drawing a bow across or plucking taught gut or metal strings (string instruments), constricting vibrating air (woodwinds and brass) or hitting or stroking something (percussion). The theremin, which operated by interrupting a magnetic field around the instrument, did not even have to be touched to produce a tone. It found use both as an instrument for scoring movies (Forbidden Planet) and in rock and roll (The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations).

In the years following World War II, electronic music was embraced by progressive composers as a way to exceed the limits of traditional instruments. Although electronic music began in the world of classical composition, by the 1960s Wendy Carlos had popularized electronic music through the use of the synthesizer developed by Robert Moog with two notable albums The Well-Tempered Synthesizer and Switched-On Bach.^{[citation needed]}

In the 1970s the film industry also began to make extensive use of electronic soundtracks. From the late 1970s onward, much popular music was developed on synthesizers by pioneering groups like Heaven 17, The Human League, Art of Noise, and New Order.

The development of the techno sound in Detroit, Michigan and house music in Chicago, Illinois in the early to late 1980s, and the later new beat and acid house movements of the late 1980s and early 1990s all fuelled the development and acceptance of electronic music into the mainstream and introduced electronic dance music to nightclubs.^{[citation needed]}

Subgenres include, but are not limited to, a variety of dance oriented music (Techno, Trance, Goa, House, Drum and Bass, Jungle, Break Beats) as well as IDM, Trip Hop, Ambient, Dark Wave, and Experimental. The lines between electronic subgeneres can be fuzzy and some of these may be considered redundant or further subgenres themselves.^[vague]