science

Technodelic

Technodelic is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Technodelic rather than just read about it. In short: Technodelic is the fifth studio album by Japanese electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra. Released in 1981, the album is notable for its heavy use of digital samplers, which were not commonly used until the mid-to-late 1980s, resulting in a more avant-garde sound compared to the group's previous work.

Key takeaways

Technodelic belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Technodelic to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Technodelic from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Technodelic is the fifth studio album by Japanese electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra. Released in 1981, the album is notable for its heavy use of digital samplers, which were not commonly used until the mid-to-late 1980s, resulting in a more avant-garde sound compared to the group's previous work. It is considered the first released album to feature mostly samples and loops, influencing the heavy use of sampling and looping in popular music. Yellow Magic Orchestra's approach to sampling music was a precursor to the contemporary approach of constructing music by cutting fragments of sounds and looping them using computer technology. In 2008, Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore provided a cover of "Gradated Grey" for the Haruomi Hosono tribute album Strange Songbook (Tribute To Haruomi Hosono 2). In 2016, the Canadian post-punk group Preoccupations covered the track "Key" as a part of a 7" vinyl that came with pre-orders of their self-titled album alongside a cover of The Raincoats' 1979 track "Off-Duty Trip".

Production Most of the sampling was made with an LMD-649, a custom-built digital sampler developed by Toshiba-EMI engineer Kenji Murata. The LMD-649 was the first PCM digital sampler, capable of playing and recording PCM samples with a 12-bit audio depth and 50 kHz sampling rate, stored in 128 KB of dynamic RAM memory. It also had sampling drum machine capabilities. Notable samples used include Indonesian gamelan music and short looped vocals ("paa", "fuku", "chiki") for percussion in "Seoul Music", Indonesian kecak chanting in "Neue Tanz", and the final two tracks feature industrial factory noises. The LMD-649 was later used by other Japanese synthpop artists in the early 1980s, including YMO-associated acts such as Chiemi Manabe and Logic System in 1982. The album also features use of speech through a two-way radio, a prepared piano, a Roland TR-808 drum machine (previously used in BGM), and Prophet-5 synthesizers. In another departure from previous albums, Haruomi Hosono has a more prominent role playing the bass guitar as opposed to playing bass lines on synthesizers (this trend will appear again on the album Service). As with many of YMO's releases, song titles are printed in both Japanese and English. For "Seoul Music", the kanji "京城" are used, referring to Gyeongseong (경성; known as Keijou in Japan), the name of Seoul when Korea was under Japanese rule. "灯" refers to the light of a lantern. "Neue Tanz" is German for "New Dance", while "Taisō" is Japanese for "gymnastics" or "calisthenics". For its single release, the track "Taisō" was given a music video directed by Haruomi Hosono and Norimasa Okumura. The video features the members of YMO, dressed in uniforms designed by Yukihiro Takahashi, along with Takahashi's then manager Hiromi Kanai performing calisthenics against various chroma key backdrops, parodying real-world televised calisthenics broadcasts in Japan.

Track listing

Personnel Yellow Magic Orchestra – Arrangements, Electronics, Sampler, Mixing engineers, Producers

Haruomi Hosono – Bass, Synth Bass, Keyboards, Vocals Ryuichi Sakamoto – Keyboards, Vocals Yukihiro Takahashi – Vocals, Drums, Electronic drums Guest musicians

Hideki Matsutake – Technical assistance Takeshii Fujii & Akihiko Yamazoe – Equipment Peter Barakan – Lyrics, Transceiver Voice on "Pure Jam" Staff

Shōrō Kawazoe – Executive Producer Mitsuo Koike – Recording & Mixing engineer Yoshifumi Īo – Assistant Engineer Hiroshi Yuasa (JVC Cutting Center) – Mastering engineer Kazusuke Obi – A&R Coordinator Yōichi Itō & Hiroshi Ōkura – Management Plan-New Werk – Creative Services Masayoshi Sukita – Art director, Photography

Charts

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Technodelic

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Technodelic claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Technodelic before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Technodelic ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Technodelic

In research: Technodelic appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Technodelic in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Technodelic is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1981 albums, 1981 in Japanese music, Alfa Records albums, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Technodelic outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Technodelic in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Technodelic means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Technodelic out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Technodelic in simple terms?

Why does Technodelic matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Technodelic?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Technodelic.