This is the first book to develop both the theory and the practice of synthesizing musical sounds using computers. Each chapter starts with a theoretical description of one technique or problem area and ends with a series of working examples (over 100 in all), covering a wide range of applications. A unifying approach is taken throughout; chapter two, for example, treats both sampling and wavetable synthesis as special cases of one underlying technique. Although the theory is presented quantitatively, the mathematics used goes no further than trigonometry and complex numbers. The examples and supported software -- along with a machine-readable version of the text -- are available on the web and maintained by a large online community. The Theory and Techniques of Electronic Music is valuable both as a textbook and as professional reading for electronic musicians and computer music researchers.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The electronic medium allows any audible sound to be contextualized as music. This creates unique structural possibilities as spectrum, dynamics, space, and time become continuous dimensions of musical articulation. What we hear in electronic music ventures beyond what we traditionally characterize as musical sound and challenges our auditory perception, on the one hand, and our imagination, on the other. Based on an extensive listening study conducted over four years, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of the cognitive processes involved in the experience of electronic music. It pairs artistic practice with theories from a range of disciplines to communicate how this music operates on perceptual, conceptual, and affective levels. Looking at the common and divergent ways in which our minds respond to electronic sound, it investigates how we build narratives from our experience of electronic music and situate ourselves in them.

In this book, scholars and artists explore the relation between electronic music and bodily expression from perspectives including aesthetics, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, dance and interactive performance arts, sociology, computer music and sonic arts, and music theory, transgressing disciplinary boundaries and established beliefs. The historic decoupling of action and sound generation might be seen to have distorted or even effaced the expressive body, with the retention of performance qualities via recoupling not equally retaining bodily expressivity. When, where, and what is the body expressed in electronic music then? The authors of this book reveal composers', performers', improvisers' and listeners' bodies, as well as the works' and technologies' figurative bodies as a rich source of expressive articulation. Bringing together humanities' scholarship and musical arts contingent upon new media, the contributors offer inspiring thought and critical reflection for all those seriously engaged with the aesthetics of electronic music, interactive performance, and the body's role in aesthetic experience and expression. Performativity is not only seen as being reclaimed in live electronic music, interactive arts, and installations; it is also exposed as embodied in the music and the listeners themselves.

David Tudor is remembered today in two guises: as an extraordinary pianist of post-war avant-garde music who worked closely with composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen and as a founding figure of live-electronic music. His early realization of indeterminate graphic scores and his later performances using homemade modular instruments both inspired a whole generation of musicians. But his reticence, his unorthodox approaches, and the diversity of his creative output - which began with the organ and ended with visual art - have kept Tudor a puzzle. Illustrated with more than 300 images of diagrams, schematics, and photographs of Tudor's instruments, Reminded by the Instruments sets out to solve the puzzle of David Tudor by applying Tudor's own methods for approaching the materials of others to the vast archive of materials that he himself left behind. You Nakai deftly patches together instruments, electronic circuits, sketches, diagrams, recordings, letters, receipts, customs declaration forms, and testimonies like modular pieces of a giant puzzle to reveal the long-hidden nature of Tudor's creative process. Rejecting the established narrative of Tudor as a performer-turned-composer, this book presents a lively portrait of an artist whose activity always merged both of these roles. In reading Tudor's electronic devices as musicological 'texts' and examining his idiosyncratic use of electronic circuits, Nakai undermines discourses on sound and illuminates our understanding of the instruments behind the sounds in post-war experimental music.

Dancing to the Drum Machine is a never-before-attempted history of what is perhaps the most controversial musical instrument ever invented: the drum machine. Here, author Dan LeRoy reveals the untold story of how their mechanical pulse became the new heartbeat of popular music. The pristine snap of the LinnDrum. The bottom-heavy beats of the Roland 808. The groundbreaking samples of the E-MUSP-1200. All these machines-and their weirder, wilder-sounding cousins-changed composition, recording, and performance habits forever. Their distinctive sounds and styles helped create new genres of music, like hip hop and EDM. But they altered every musical style, from mainstream pop to heavy metal to jazz. Dan LeRoy traces the drum machine from its low-tech beginnings in the Fifties and Sixties to its evolution in the Seventies and its ubiquity in the Eighties, when seemingly overnight, it infiltrated every genre of music. Drum machines put some drummers out of work, while keeping others on their toes. They anticipated virtually every musical trend of the last five decades: sequencing, looping, sampling, and all forms of digital music creation. But the personalities beneath those perfect beats make the story of drum machines a surprisingly human one-told here for the very first time.

Innovations in music technology bring with them a new set of challenges for describing and understanding the electroacoustic repertoire. This edited collection presents a state-of-the-art overview of analysis methods for electroacoustic music in this rapidly developing field. The first part of the book explains the needs of differing electroacoustic genres and puts forward a template for the analysis of electroacoustic music. Part II discusses the latest ideas in the field and the challenges associated with new technologies, while Part III explores how analyses have harnessed the new forces of multimedia, and includes an introduction to new software programme EAnalysis, which was created by the editors as the result of an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant. The final part of the book demonstrates these new methods in action, with analyses of key electroacoustic works from a wide range of genres and sources.

Innovations in music technology bring with them a new set of challenges for describing and understanding the electroacoustic repertoire. This edited collection presents a state-of-the-art overview of analysis methods for electroacoustic music in this rapidly developing field. The first part of the book explains the needs of differing electroacoustic genres and puts forward a template for the analysis of electroacoustic music. Part II discusses the latest ideas in the field and the challenges associated with new technologies, while Part III explores how analyses have harnessed the new forces of multimedia, and includes an introduction to new software programme EAnalysis, which was created by the editors as the result of an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant. The final part of the book demonstrates these new methods in action, with analyses of key electroacoustic works from a wide range of genres and sources.

FutureDJs: How to DJ is the ideal resource for anyone interested in the alchemy of mixing records. Perfect for the aspiring student with no prior knowledge as well as DJs looking to extend their skills and explore new genres. This complete guide covers all the technical foundations for DJ-ing in any genre or style, from fundamental skills such as beat-matching right through to using effects, scratching and beat-juggling. Featuring clear step-by-step instructions, stunning diagrams, at-a-glance guides to genres and packed with comments from professional DJs, this book will inspire and guide you through the creative and thrilling techniques required to become a FutureDJ. Every skill can be practised over and over in a range of genres from House, Techno and Trance to Grime, Trap, Hip-hop and Drum and Bass. "At last, a comprehensive and authentic book on the art of DJ-ing. The FutureDJs team have delivered a must-have book for anyone aspiring to become a DJ or enhance their existing skills." Mark Brown (Cr2 Records) "This brilliant handbook will help you to develop your skills, musical understanding and sense of what makes DJ-ing unique, exciting and important as a modern musical skill. Dig in and enjoy." Dr Pete Dale

The guitar is one of the most evocative instruments in the world. It features in music as diverse as heavy metal, blues, indie and flamenco, as well as Indian classical music, village music making in Papua New Guinea and carnival in Brazil. This cross-cultural popularity makes it a unique starting point for understanding social interaction and cultural identity. Guitar music can be sexy, soothing, melancholy or manic, but it nearly always brings people together and creates a common ground even if this common ground is often the site of intense social, cultural, economic and political negotiation and contest.This book explores how people use guitars and guitar music in various nations across the world as a musical and symbolic basis for creating identities. In a world where place and space are challenged by the pace of globalization, the guitar provides images, sounds and styles that help define new cultural territories. Guitars play a crucial part in shaping the commercial music industry, educational music programmes, and local community atmosphere. Live or recorded, guitar music and performance, collecting and manufacture sustains a network of varied social exchanges that constitute a distinct cultural milieu.Representing the first sustained analysis of what the guitar means to artists and audiences world-wide, this book demonstrates that this seemingly simple material artefact resonates with meaning as well as music.

Dive hands-on into the tools, techniques, and information for making your own analog synthesizer. If you're a musician or a hobbyist with experience in building electronic projects from kits or schematics, this do-it-yourself guide will walk you through the parts and schematics you need, and how to tailor them for your needs. Author Ray Wilson shares his decades of experience in synth-DIY, including the popular Music From Outer Space (MFOS) website and analog synth community. At the end of the book, you'll apply everything you've learned by building an analog synthesizer, using the MFOS Noise Toaster kit. You'll also learn what it takes to create synth-DIY electronic music studio. Get started in the fun and engaging hobby of synth-DIY without delay. With this book, you'll learn: The differences between analog and digital synthesizers Analog synthesizer building blocks, including VCOs, VCFs, VCAs, and LFOs How to tool up for synth-DIY, including electronic instruments and suggestions for home-made equipment Foundational circuits for amplification, biasing, and signal mixing How to work with the MFOS Noise Toaster kit Setting up a synth-DIY electronic music studio on a budget

During the twentieth century, electronic technology enabled the explosive development of new tools for the production, performance, dissemination and conservation of music. The era of the mechanical reproduction of music has, rather ironically, opened up new perspectives, which have contributed to the revitalisation of the performer's role and the concept of music as performance. This book examines questions related to music that cannot be set in conventional notation, reporting and reflecting on current research and creative practice primarily in live electronic music. It studies compositions for which the musical text is problematic, that is, non-existent, incomplete, insufficiently precise or transmitted in a nontraditional format. Thus, at the core of this project is an absence. The objects of study lack a reliably precise graphical representation of the work as the composer or the composer/performer conceived or imagined it. How do we compose, perform and study music that cannot be set in conventional notation? The authors of this book examine this problem from the complementary perspectives of the composer, the performer, the musical assistant, the audio engineer, the computer scientist and the musicologist.

Sound Synthesis and Sampling' provides a comprehensive introduction to the underlying principles and practical techniques applied to both commercial and research sound synthesizers. This new edition has been updated throughout to reflect current needs and practices- revised and placed in a modern context, providing a guide to the theory of sound and sampling in the context of software and hardware that enables sound making. For the revised edition emphasis is on expanding explanations of software and computers, new sections include techniques for making sound physically, sections within analog and digital electronics. Martin Russ is well known and the book praised for its highly readable and non-mathematical approach making the subject accessible to readers starting out on computer music courses or those working in a studio.
* Explains the theory of sound and sampling to allow readers to really understand the different types of synthesis and sound making
* Covers all the latest technology and techniques in music production and sound design enabling the reader to get to grips with the current shape of computer technology and music composition
* Includes glossary and jargon buster for quick reference and grasp of vocabulary

In this practical, project-based book, music students, educators, and coders receive the necessary tools to engage with real-world experiences in computation and creativity using the programming language Scratch. Designed to teach students the fundamental concepts of computational thinking through interactive music, sound, and media, projects vary in complexity and encourage readers to make music through playing and creating music. This book introduces readers to concepts in computational thinking and coding alongside parallel concepts in music, creative sound, and interaction. The book begins with a gentle introduction to the Scratch 3.0 programming environment through hands-on projects using a computer keyboard and mouse to make music and control sounds, creating original sounds, and performing them as an instrument. The next chapters introduce programming musical sequences, melodies, and structures, and assembling them into a virtual band that can be performed live or automated through algorithms. The final chapters explore computational thinking and music in the contexts of making games with sound effects, teaching the computer to generate music using algorithms and rules, interacting with music using live video, finishing with a chapter on musical live coding, where readers will create and manipulate computer code to perform, improvise, and create original music live.

The guitar is one of the most evocative instruments in the world. It features in music as diverse as heavy metal, blues, indie and flamenco, as well as Indian classical music, village music making in Papua New Guinea and carnival in Brazil. This cross-cultural popularity makes it a unique starting point for understanding social interaction and cultural identity. Guitar music can be sexy, soothing, melancholy or manic, but it nearly always brings people together and creates a common ground even if this common ground is often the site of intense social, cultural, economic and political negotiation and contest.This book explores how people use guitars and guitar music in various nations across the world as a musical and symbolic basis for creating identities. In a world where place and space are challenged by the pace of globalization, the guitar provides images, sounds and styles that help define new cultural territories. Guitars play a crucial part in shaping the commercial music industry, educational music programmes, and local community atmosphere. Live or recorded, guitar music and performance, collecting and manufacture sustains a network of varied social exchanges that constitute a distinct cultural milieu.Representing the first sustained analysis of what the guitar means to artists and audiences world-wide, this book demonstrates that this seemingly simple material artefact resonates with meaning as well as music.

(Book). This is the most comprehensive and insightful study ever published on the pioneers of electric blues guitar including the great Chicago, Mississippi Delta, Louisiana, Texas and West Coast bluesmen. Rollin' and Tumblin' offers extensive interviews with some of the world's most famous blues guitarists, and poignant profiles of historical blues figures. Following a sweeping portrait of blues guitar history, the book features such players as T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins and many more.

During the twentieth century, electronic technology enabled the explosive development of new tools for the production, performance, dissemination and conservation of music. The era of the mechanical reproduction of music has, rather ironically, opened up new perspectives, which have contributed to the revitalisation of the performer's role and the concept of music as performance. This book examines questions related to music that cannot be set in conventional notation, reporting and reflecting on current research and creative practice primarily in live electronic music. It studies compositions for which the musical text is problematic, that is, non-existent, incomplete, insufficiently precise or transmitted in a nontraditional format. Thus, at the core of this project is an absence. The objects of study lack a reliably precise graphical representation of the work as the composer or the composer/performer conceived or imagined it. How do we compose, perform and study music that cannot be set in conventional notation? The authors of this book examine this problem from the complementary perspectives of the composer, the performer, the musical assistant, the audio engineer, the computer scientist and the musicologist.

Inside Computer Music is an investigation of how new technological developments have influenced the creative possibilities of composers of computer music in the last 50 years. This book combines detailed research into the development of computer music techniques with nine case studies that analyze key works in the musical and technical development of computer music. The book's companion website offers demonstration videos of the techniques used and downloadable software. There, readers can view interviews and test emulations of the software used by the composers for themselves. The software also presents musical analyses of each of the nine case studies to enable readers to engage with the musical structure aurally and interactively.

Creating Sounds from Scratch is a practical, in-depth resource on the most common forms of music synthesis. It includes historical context, an overview of concepts in sound and hearing, and practical training examples to help sound designers and electronic music producers to effectively manipulate presets and create new sounds from scratch. The book covers the all of the main main synthesis techniques including analog subtractive, FM, additive, physical modeling, wavetable, sample-based, and granular. While the book is grounded in theory, it relies on practical examples and contemporary production techniques to illustrate how the reader can utilize electronic sound design to maximize and improve his/her work. Creating Sounds from Scratch is ideal for all who work in sound creation, composition, editing, and contemporary commercial production.

Push: Software Design and the Cultural Politics of Music Production shows how changes in the design of music software in the first decades of the twenty-first century shaped the production techniques and performance practices of artists working across media, from hip-hop and electronic dance music to video games and mobile apps. Emerging alongside developments in digital music distribution such as peer-to-peer file sharing and the MP3 format, digital audio workstations like FL Studio and Ableton Live introduced design affordances that encouraged rapid music creation workflows through flashy, "user-friendly" interfaces. Meanwhile, software such as Avid's Pro Tools attempted to protect its status as the "industry standard," "professional" DAW of choice by incorporating design elements from pre-digital music technologies. Other software, like Cycling 74's Max, asserted its alterity to "commercial" DAWs by presenting users with nothing but a blank screen. These are more than just aesthetic design choices. Push examines the social, cultural, and political values designed into music software, and how those values become embodied by musical communities through production and performance. It reveals ties between the maximalist design of FL Studio, skeuomorphic design in Pro Tools, and gender inequity in the music products industry. It connects the computational thinking required by Max, as well as iZotope's innovations in artificial intelligence, with the cultural politics of Silicon Valley's "design thinking." Finally, it thinks through what happens when software becomes hardware, and users externalize their screens through the use of MIDI controllers, mobile media, and video game controllers. Amidst the perpetual upgrade culture of music technology, Push provides a model for understanding software as a microcosm for the increasing convergence of globalization, neoliberal capitalism, and techno-utopianism that has come to define our digital lives.