Raymond Scott is a name you likely don’t know. I didn’t until recently. Yet, he’s one of the most important composers of the 20th century.
He was also a deeply entrepreneurial inventor who built elaborate machines that created some of the first electronic sounds and music. One of Scott’s machines, the Electronium, created music on its own via prompts. Sound familiar? It’s eerily similar to the generative AI technology that’s causing fervent debate today.
But Scott did this well over 60 years ago, and music legends like Motown founder Berry Gordy — a “formula man” (according to Motown’s head of operations, Guy Costa) who tried to systematize the art and business of music — courted Scott and his Electronium in the hopes of more predictably creating new hit songs.
