and at last...

Music technology in the 80’s marked a new era in music. Equipment had become, in general, more affordable, allowing anybody to get access to synthesizers and drum machines and create music. But most important, was the advent of new sampler technology. In the same vein as Throbbing Gristle and Musique Concrète, artists using samplers could manipulate pre-recorded audio in a live and studio setting.
Early hip-hop used sampling heavily through the late 80’s and through the 90’s. While some producers prefer live musicians on albums, sampling still remained commonplace. The ability to take raw audio and use it in a musical form, in my opinion, is one of the greatest advances in music technology in the past thirty years.
Indirectly, modern hip hop producers, and anybody that uses samples in music, has the Musique Concrète movement to thank. Before Musique Concrète, and before John Cage, the public had not been able to hear the world as very musical. With technology, artists have been able to push their medium into new extremes. Modern pop music may have been in a completely different form had it not been for the advances and misuse of tape equipment in the 40’s.