History of Music & Modern Recording Project
From Medieval to Groups & Musicians Issuing on Vinyl by 1970
Based on research at
Profiles by Order of Publishing Date
Current Issue Classical:
Dec 2025 #493 Francisco Tárrega
Current Issue Modern Recording:
Dec 2025 #504 Sammy Kaye
Special Issue: Jazz:
Dec 2025 #146 Lena Horne
Launch: 31 Dec 2021.
The
HMR Project is the
completion of the VF History which is its
Notes. This is a music history of
the western hemisphere from about 500 AD through musicians who commercially
recorded by 1970. The reason I didn't press further to 1980 is because doing
a page of seventies rock revealed that to add another decade to all genres
would require about two years. Since I had already spent ten years on the VF
History, though not full time until 2013, I thought it was high time to
begin the project for which reason I made its Notes. The HMR Project comes in two
constellations: Classical which is one chapter of the VF History, and Modern
Recording
which arrives to thirty-three sections commencing as of 1890.
The VF History approaches 2700 musical profiles,
of which at this writing in December of 2025 at least 650 articles in the
HMR Project have been completed, requiring five years to finish not quite
25% of the VF History. We've traveled nearly 1500 years to composers born in
the latter half of the 19th century. I was also able to chronologically
reach 1937 in modern recording by the end of 2025 (not that specific year in
music, but artists who first recorded that year). That's darn close to half
a century of modern recording. I'd like to continue chronologically until 1940,
but that's a
tall task in the meanwhile leaving categories like rock neglected. So I'd
like to complete at least 1937 in 2026. Though 1938 was also a big year for
new recording artists particularly in Swing Jazz, somewhere about that time
I plan to start rotating
through all genres and periods which have thus far been neglected by a rigid
chorological approach.
Disregarding classical where most of the action took place in Europe, the HMR Project generally concerns itself with the
following areas of modern recording: black gospel, bluegrass, blues, boogie woogie, country western, folk, jazz, R&B including doo wop, rock
including rockabilly, and vocal
harmony. Early popular includes ragtime. The VF History begins "late"
popular with the soundtrack, though the explosion of television might be
more apt with a "middle" period of perhaps twenty years between the
soundtrack when a night on the town meant movie tickets and television which
kept people at home. Finally, various genres of Latin are addressed
including the Caribbean, South America, salsa in the United States and flamenco in
Spain.
Brief notes along the progress of the HMR Project:
Update November 2022: occasioned by accomplishing about 10% of the VF History (270 profiles) since May of 2021. In classical that brings us to the hem of high baroque about 1100 years from where we started in the Middle East. In modern recording we've completed the first three decades and reached well into the Roaring Twenties, but are yet in the acoustic period.
Update July 2023: The HMR Project had to be discontinued in April 2023 per technical issues with the server (Host Gator - avoid along with all others associated with the Endurance International Group. They're making money and neither your contribution nor welfare are recognized in that). They'd sell WordPress to a baby. Made aware of exhaustion as well, I've taken the summer off and play a lot of Microsoft's Age of Empires, which old game I keep around for stretches of depression too great to work. Clue: If you keep it at a simple level you can win at something in life. This won't be much encouragement, however, since you will know that you're playing at a level so easy that you can't possibly lose. That does, anyway, keep games to a couple of hours so that you're not depressed for days at a time.
Update December 2024: On about the 15th of December I was attacked by a hacker which wrought the destruction of my OS by Microsoft's recovery program. The HMR Project is therefore in delay. I was well into the romantic period in classical by then and had nigh completed the first four decades of modern recording, about the time that Edison cylinders went defunct, irrelevant to music advancing into its swing period, much less Carnival soon to begin in Rio de Janeiro down south. Well into electronic recording by now which began in 1925.
Update November 2025: Some six months ago Violafair went offline for the first time since 2002 due to software and server problems (online 2004-10 but dormant since driving big trucks affords little time to work on websites). By this time violafair has been through one happiness upon the next like endless dead links at YouTube, Microsoft's FrontPage and its extensions no longer allowed near pets nor the internet, coding no longer simply for PCs but complicated by smartphones, testing WordPress to see what the big deal was, only to learn that it's a nightmare in multiple ways including security (a third party app specifically for WordPress causing Google to lock me out of my gmail account for a month). The only website editor I will use is meanwhile become a worse piece of shit than it already was. Come Windows 11 making it difficult to work with images and even notepad. YouTube changes linking requirements which I can't figure out. Other events leave me without a computer on which to work during summer. In the meantime I discover that some POS in India is cybersquatting with my domain name. My registrar gets rid of the creeps, but by this time I've developed an attitude. I verily detest the dishonesty with which the internet is a flood.
What was a curiosity in 2001, to build a website to see what happens, has for most years since then been a laborious pain in the neck with zero reward beyond my own satisfaction. Nevertheless, the year of 2026 brings a temptation to concentrate on boogie woogie, gospel and rockabilly so I can close out those smaller genres by next year. Following a rigid chronological procedure finds us completing 1936 by the end of 2025. So as we begin 2026 in 1937 I plan to pursue most artists first recording that year. Around 1938 when we're solid into Swing I intend to break out of rigid chronological procedure to begin cycling through other genres and periods neglected up to now like modern jazz, R&B and rock. It may take three or four years to reach classical composers born in the 20th century, but once I there arrive I'll cease to emphasize classical and remove that category at the top of this page, leaving me to better focus on the behemoth that is jazz, not to mention rock now presently years neglected. Perhaps about that time I will begin a more leisurely pace, since other projects in my life go neglected as I create these histories. I begin 2026 by jumping ahead quite a lot to the modern, Shostakovich, and black gospel artist, Sallie Martin, before returning to 1937 et al.
I began the VF History not fifteen years ago because I had grown beyond weary of the world as I began descent into old age. It looked a thing possible to accomplish howsoever humble or temporary. Even older now, thus all the more on grace, though I'm glad to be able to progress through an examination so interesting as music history, it's getting to be quite a challenge. Sometimes you wonder how you're ever going to get where you're going. Quite the wrestle this twisting life in which not all is as clear as elementary logic or math. Common for me to put fifteen hours a day into this pursuit when earlier begun, that drive has gradually decreased as I age. Howsoever, if I may anticipate as many interruptions in the next five years as in the last, and if I complete as many profiles as in the last, the HMR Project will still achieve only under 50% of the VF History. Earlier aspirations seem to have exceeded possibility, as I doubt that 100% is either doable or even desirable. Another unfinished education to take to the grave.
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