Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Electronic music evokes new sensations, feelings, and thoughts in both composers and listeners. Opening the door to an unlimited universe of sound, it engages spatialization as an integral aspect of composition and focuses on sound transformation as a core structural strategy. In this new domain, pitch occurs as a flowing and ephemeral substance that can be bent, modulated, or dissolved into noise. Similarly, time occurs not merely as a fixed duration subdivided by ratios, but as a plastic medium that can be generated, modulated, reversed, warped, scrambled, and granulated. Envelope and waveform undulations on all time scales interweave to generate form. The power of algorithmic methods amplify the capabilities of music technology. Taken together, these constitute game-changing possibilities. This convergence of technical and aesthetic trends prompts the need for a new text focused on the opportunities of a sound oriented, multiscale approach to composition of electronic music. Sound oriented means a practice that takes place in the presence of sound. Multiscale means an approach that takes into account the perceptual and physical reality of multiple, interacting time scales-each of which can be composed. After more than a century of research and development, now is an appropriate moment to step back and reevaluate all that has changed under the ground of artistic practice.Composing Electronic Music outlines a new theory of composition based on the toolkit of electronic music techniques. The theory consists of a framework of concepts and a vocabulary of terms describing musical materials, their transformation, and their organization. Central to this discourse is the notion of narrative structure in composition-how sounds are born, interact, transform, and die. It presents a guidebook: a tour of facts, history, commentary, opinions, and pointers to interesting ideas and new possibilities to consider and explore.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

With this volume Roads (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara), author of foundational texts such as The Computer Music Tutorial (1996) and Microsound (2001), has made another invaluable contribution to the literature on electronic music. He provides an extensive overview of the underdiscussed area of aesthetics in electronic music. Roads acknowledges that electronic music now encompasses such a broad and diverse array of techniques, genres, and subgenres that an all-encompassing overview would be impossible for one individual to create; he therefore focuses on the principals and methods that guide his own work. Roads is an accomplished composer and teacher, and his approaches and ideas serve to make this a nuanced, wide-ranging, thoughtful, and engaging examination of the theory and practice of electronic music. In well-constructed chapters on topics such as pitch, rhythm, sonic narrative, and spatialization, the author provides new insights for experienced composers, a firm foundation for new practitioners, and fascinating material for those approaching electronic music as listeners. Listening examples, available online, provide invaluable aural context. Roads's book is sure to be a crucially important resource for many years to come. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. --Ben Allen Hunter, University of Idaho