The terms Electroacoustic or Electroacoustic music have been used to describe several different musical genres or techiniques. There is no agreement on a definition of "Electroacoustic music"; some contend that any sound played over a loudspeaker is "electroacoustic", while for others, the term also entails some aesthetic specifications. While all electroacoustic music is made with electronic technology, the most successful works in the field are usually concerned with those aspects of sonic design which remain inaccessible to live instruments. In particular, most electroacoustic compositions make use of sounds not available to, say, the orchestra- recorded sounds from nature or from the studio, synthesized sounds, processed sounds, and so forth. Electroacoustic compositions also often explore spatial characteristics of sound, as sounds can be given trajectories, and can be placed in distant or near fields of listening. Electroacoustic music is typically less preoccupied with the 'traditional' concerns of score-based music- rhythm and melody- and more concerned with the interplay of gesture and texture, and what Denis Smalley has termed 'spectromorphology'- the sculpting of the sound spectrum in time. Musical genres are categories which contain music which share a certain style or which have certain elements in common. ...

Electroacoustic music is a diverse field. Important centers of research and composition can be found around the world, and there are numerous conferences and festivals which present electroacoustic music, notably the International Computer Music Conference, the International Conference on New interfaces for musical expression, the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Festival (Bourges, France), and the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, Austria). A number of national associations promote the art form, notably the Canadian Electroacoustic Community in Canada, SEAMUS in the US, and Sonic Arts Network in the UK. The Computer Music Journal and Organised Sound are two important journals dedicated to electroacoustic music. The International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) is a yearly international conference for computer music researchers and composers. ... Musician with a multimodal instrument based on electromyography, position sensing, and acoustically resonant bowls. ... Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society which was part of the International Bruckner Festival. ...

Many date the birth of electroacoustic music to the late 1940s and early 1950s, and in particular to the work of two groups of composers who were at strict odds with each other. The Musique concrète group was centered in Paris and was pioneered by Pierre Schaeffer; their music was based on the juxtapositon of natural sounds (meaning real, recorded sounds, not necessarily those made by natural forces) recorded to tape or disc. In Cologne, Elektronische Musik, pioneered by Herbert Eimert, was based around the construction of tones using only sine waves. The precise control afforded by the studio allowed for what Eimert considered to be an electronic extension and perfection of serialism; in the studio, serial operations could be applied to elements such as timbre and dynamics. The common link between the two schools is that the music is recorded and performed through loudspeakers, without a human performer. While serialism has been largely abandoned in electroacoustic circles, the majority of electroacoustic pieces use a combination of recorded sound and synthesized or processed sounds, and the schism between Schaeffer and Eimert's approaches has been overcome. Musique concrète (French; literally, concrete music), is the name given to a class of electronic music produced from editing together fragments of natural and industrial sounds. ... The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (August 14, 1910–August 19, 1995) was a French composer, noted as the inventor of musique concrète. ... Cologne Cathedral with Hohenzollern Bridge Cologne (German: (help· info) [kÅ“ln]; Kölsch: Kölle) is Germanys fourth-largest city after Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. ... In trigonometry, an ideal sine wave is a waveform whose graph is identical to the generalized sine function y = Asin[ω(x − α)] + C, where A is the amplitude, ω is the angular frequency (2π/P where P is the wavelength), α is the phase shift, and C is the... In the European classical music theory, serialism is a set of methods for composing and analyzing works of music based on structuring those works around the parameterization of parts of music: that is, ordering pitch, dynamics, instrumentation, rhythm, and on occasion other elements into a row or series in which...

It should be noted that isolated examples of electroacoustic music exist which predate Schaeffer's first experiments in 1948. Ottorino Respighi used a phonograph recording of a nightingale's song in his orchestral work 'The Pines of Rome' in 1924; experimental filmmaker Walter Ruttmann created a sound collage on an optical soundtrack in 1930; and John Cage used phonograph recordings of test tones mixed with live instruments in Imaginary Landscape no. 1, in 1939, among other examples. In the first half of the Twentieth Century, a number of writers also advocated the use of electronic sound sources for composition, notably Ferrucio Busoni, Luigi Russolo, and Edgard Varese. Ottorino Respighi (born in Bologna on July 9, 1879, died in Rome on April 18, 1936) was an Italian composer and musicologist. ... Walter Ruttmann (born December 28, 1887 in Frankfurt am Main; died July 15, 1941 in Berlin) was a German film director and along with Hans Richter the most important practitioner of experimental film. ... John Cage John Milton Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American experimental music composer, writer and visual artist. ... Luigi Russolo ca. ...

Many self-described "electroacoustic" pieces include live performers, either as a performer playing along with a tape, or, more recently, with live electronic processing of the performer's sound. Evan Parker has won acclaim for his recordings using live electronic processing. The term "acousmatic music" is often used to refer to pieces which consist solely of prerecorded sound. There are dozens of other terms which are either synonymous with "electroacoustic music", or which describe subsets or offshoots from the genre. These include: sonic art; computer music; electronic music; microsound; lowercase; soundscape; audio art; radiophonics; live electronics; musique concrète; field recording; experimental electronica. Evan Parker (born 5 April 1944) is a British free-improvising saxophone player. ... Look up Acousmatic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Acousmatic music is a music of images that is shot and developed in the studio, and projected in a hall, like a film, at a subsequent date. ...

Electroacoustic music is closely related to Electronica by technique; recently many popular electronica artists have been influenced by electroacoustic composers, for instance Amon Tobin, Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Squarepusher. Electronica is a rather vague term that covers a wide range of electronic or electronic-influenced music. ... Amon Tobin performing live. ... Autechre are an English electronic music group consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, both natives of Rochdale. ... Aphex Twin (born Richard David James, August 18, 1971, Ireland) is a UK-based electronic music artist, credited with pushing forward the genres of techno, ambient, acid, and drum and bass. ... Squarepusher, the performing pseudonym of Thomas Jenkinson, is a British electronic music artist (born in Chelmsford, Essex) signed to Warp Records. ...

See also

• Electronic art music
• Sonology
• Sound sculpture

Chadabe J., (1997), "Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music", Prentice Hall, NJ. Electronic music has existed, in various forms, for more than a century. ... Categories: Physics stubs | Physics ... Sound sculpture is one term for the multimedia artform where, as the name suggests, sculpture produces sound or, less often, the reverse. ...

Emmerson S., (1986), "The Language of Electroacoustic Music", Macmillan Press, London.

Emmerson S., (2000), "Music,Electronic Media and Culture", Ashgate Publishing,Hampshire,UK.

Griffiths P., (1995), "Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945", Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Heifetz R.J., (1989), "On The Wires of Our Nerves:The Art Of Electroacoustic Music" ,Associated University Presses Inc., Cranbury, NJ.

Kahn D., (1999), "Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts", MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Licata T., (2002), "Electroacoustic Music: Analytical Perspectives", Greenwood Press,Westport,CT.

Roads C., (1996), "The Computer Music Tutorial", MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Wishart T., (1996), "On Sonic Art", Routledge, London.

External links

• Sonic Arts Network - Sonic Arts Network is a UK based organisation that promotes and explores the art of sound.
• CEC - Canadian Electroacoustic Community / Communauté électroacoustique canadienne.
• EARS - the Electro Acoustic Resource Site.
• EMS - Electro acoustic Music in Sweden.
• empreintes DIGITALes - Recordings of musique concrète, acousmatic music, electroacoustic music.
• NIME - conference on new interfaces for musical expression
• SEAMUS - Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States.
• STEIM - Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• VIBRÖ - Chronicles of contemporary sound experiments
• Electroacoustic Music - style reference at Synthtopia.
• Art of the States: electroacoustic electroacoustic works by American composers
• Musiques & Recherches - Belgium association dedicated to the development of electroacoustic music
• SEAMS - Society for Electro Acoustic Music in Sweden