First completely computer produced pop record

Apart from vocals!
It’s common now to have music recorded, mixed, edited and mastered completely “in the box” with no traditional instruments or outboard processing. Obviously this wasn’t always the case so does anybody here know what might have been the first?
I asked this question on local radio about 10 years ago and somebody texted in “Nutbush City Limits” by Tina Turner, obviously confusing a synthesizer with a computer!

 

Popcorn by Hot Butter from 1972 is an early one, but I don't understand the diff with synth.

 

Hard to work this one out. What it even means. (And no synths are not computers.) There is however computer-made music going back to the 1950s. But pop? And how do we know what was done on a pop record and how. Also are samplers which use samples of real instruments allowed in your definition?

Alan Turing proposed the idea in the early 50s with this:

First ever recording of computer music

My naive suggestion is Bomb The Bass' Megablast(Hip Hop On Precinct 13), 1988 – which I understand used software built on an Atari or Amiga computer chip.

 

Is that really the first? John Kelly and Carol Lockbaum did this in 1961. But the link I included above suggests that Alan Turing did it in 1951.

 

Made organized sound, maybe. But it's not a pop record without singing

 

"Popcorn" by "Hot Butter".

 

I think the OP means that everything was recorded on the computer, and all of the sounds were created by the computer, with the exception of vocals....

Oh, it has to be pop music.

 

Wow! That’s one step further than I asked and a huge step further back in time than I expected!

 

That’s pretty much what I was asking for. By pop I really mean music released commercially for the purpose of entertainment (of course that could easily include classical etc..)
As for those who said Popcorn, that’s really an early synthesizer track not a computer creation. A synthesizer is a musical instrument (and in popcorn’s case an analogue one) not a computer. You can play music and create noises on it but it won’t file your tax returns.

 

I realize I am probably asking in the wrong sort of forum for this and maybe should’ve posted in a recording forum somewhere Apologies for wasting anybody’s time.

 

By the mid 80s there were a lot of pop records that were done almost exclusively on the Fairlight and such. This for example (though there may be a real guitar on it):

 

But it wouldn’t have been recorded or mixed on a computer . I’m talking the whole thing from performance to end product.
The Fairlight was probably one of, if not the first proper music computer though. Bizarrely you can buy fairlight sounds for Mellotrons

 

May have been at that point, but not sure. I know Mutt Lange tried to use computers wherever possible.

 

Although often there ARE traditional instruments in the chain in the form of sampled instruments, so you have to throw those out too since those samples where each recorded from traditional instruments at some point. And if you're throwing out synthesizers too, other than software synthesizers, then I suppose you're throwing out MIDI controlled drum machines -- because they're not really any different than outboard processors -- and sampled loops because the samples are coming from outside the box. If you're really talking about all in the box music making with no sound source that's not inside the box made on a PC as a platform it might be hard to know where the firms lines are. Most stuff is hybridized somewhere along the chain.

 

HAL 9000's grandfather?

 

Maybe try and identify a track that's definitely all computer produced and work backwards. I suspect it's more recent that you'd think. Before that there'd always be some old school tech involved. Suspect the last 10 years. For instance I'm sure tape was involved most times until storage became much cheaper and more reliable.

 

Not sure if this qualifies as one of the requirements, but Giorgio Moroder's E=mc2 was the first DDD recording, right? endemic to this question since Ry Cooder's of course used an actual guitar?

The factor that I think makes this qualify is not that it was synthesized music from a synthesizer, but Moroder's program was encoded directly onto the PCM master tape that was ready to be lathed into a stamper. Why this is important means, technically there is no actual "performance", until ya put the needle on tha rekkid - Moroder could have played his master over his machine in the studio to hear it, but it wasn't intended for the performance to actually "occur", until your thumb dropped the stylus down.

 

I think The Beach Boys - Summer in Paradise (1992) is one of the earliest pop records produced entirely on a computer, a Macintosh using Pro Tools. It may have had some real instruments.

 

Which was of course, the "Cowbell 3000" which as we all know, all synth pop songs need more of.

 

Neither are pop. The Alan Turing experiment is singing.

 

I understand the question, but don’t know the answer. Basically we’re looking for an album/song that sounds like a regular mainstream composition, but performed by only a vocalist over completely artificial accompaniament done on a screen.

 

Not just that but then mixed in Pro Tools or some similar DAW without taking the signal out to a board or using any outboard processing.

 

I heard "Daisy Bell" on this entertaining LP

Various - Music From Mathematics