This episode is brought to you by Band Lab.

Band Lab is a free app that lets you record entire songs on any device.

You don't need to play an instrument to use it and its interface is super simple.

During the break, you'll hear from an artist who has already found success through songs created entirely in Band Lab.

Now, just to be clear, we made this episode the same way we always do, with full creative control over the story.

And if I do say so myself, I think it's pretty awesome.

Here we go.

You're listening to 20,000 hurts.

What makes a song great?

Of course the writing, the performance, and the arrangement are all important.

But there's another huge factor that's really easy to miss, the

technology behind the music. In some ways technology is like an invisible

instrument. That's 20,000-Hirt's producer Andrew Anderson. We don't

always notice the role it plays, but without it, songs just don't sound the

same. There are so many examples of new inventions that transformed the sound of music, from magnetic tape to electric

guitars to drum machines and beyond.

Developments like these can change the course of music history and sometimes they can even change the world.

Let's get into it.

Music recording began back in the late 1800s and due to the limits of technology

these recordings sounded pretty rough.

As an example here's a track from 1888 called The Lost Chord. But over the next hundred years, recorded music became a closer and closer replication of live sound,

thanks to inventions like real-to-reel tape, multi-track recorders, and high-f fidelity microphones like this one.

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