PAL Research Guide

The Digital Musicianis a textbook for creative music technology and electronic music courses. It provides an overview of sound properties, acoustics, digital music, and sound design as a basis for understanding the compositional possibilities that new music technologies allow. Creative projects allow students to apply key concepts covered in each chapter. Topics covered include hardware hacking, live coding, interactive music, sound manipulation and transformation, software instruments, networked performance, as well as critical listening and analysis. Features Readers Guides outline the major topics in each chapter Project boxes for both individuals and groups throughout each chapter Annotated Listening Lists for each chapter, with accompanying playlists on the companion website Recommended Further Reading and Discussion Questions at the end of each chapter Case studies of actual composers, with contributed projects Companion website includes reading lists, links to audio and video, and slides for use in the classroom. he companion website Recommended Further Reading and Discussion Questions at the end of each chapter Case studies of actual composers, with contributed projects Companion website includes reading lists, links to audio and video, and slides for use in the classroom.

In this new edition of the classic text on the evolution of electronic music, Peter Manning extends the definitive account of the medium from its birth to include key developments from the dawn of the 21st century to the present day. The scope of the many developments that have taken place since the late 1990s are considered in a series of new and updated chapters, including topics such as the development of the digital audio workstation, laptop music, the Internet, and the emergence of new performance interfaces. Emphasizing the functional characteristics of emerging technologies and their influence on the creative development of the medium, Manning covers key developments in both commercial and the non-commercial sectors to provide readers with the most comprehensive resource available on the evolution of this ever-expanding area of creativity.

We live in an electronic world, saturated with electronic sounds. Yet, electronic sounds aren't a new phenomenon; they have long permeated our sonic landscape. What began as the otherworldly sounds of the film score for the 1956 film Forbidden Planet and the rarefied, new timbres of Stockhausen's Kontakte a few years later, is now a common soundscape in technology, media, and an array of musical genres and subgenres. More people than ever before can produce and listen to electronic music, from isolated experimenters, classical and jazz musicians, to rock musicians, sound recordists, and the newer generations of electronic musicians making hip-hop, house, techno, and ambient music. Increasingly we are listening to electronic sounds, finding new meanings in them, experimenting with them, and rehearing them as listeners and makers. Live Wires explores how five key electronic technologies--the tape recorder, circuit, computer, microphone, and turntable--revolutionized musical thought. Featuring the work of major figures in electronic music--including everyone from Schaeffer, Varèse, Xenakis, Babbitt, and Oliveros to Eno, Keith Emerson, Grandmaster Flash, Juan Atkins, and Holly Herndon--Live Wires is an arresting discussion of the powerful musical ideas that are being recycled, rethought, and remixed by the most interesting electronic composers and musicians today.

Electronic music instruments weren't called synthesizers until the 1950s, but their lineage began in 1919 with Russian inventor Lev Sergeyevich Termen's development of the Etherphone, now known as the Theremin. From that point, synthesizers have undergone a remarkable evolution from prohibitively large mid-century models confined to university laboratories to the development of musical synthesis software that runs on tablet computers and portable media devices. Throughout its history, the synthesizer has always been at the forefront of technology for the arts. In The Synthesizer: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding, Programming, Playing, and Recording the Ultimate Electronic Music Instrument, veteran music technology journalist, educator, and performer Mark Vail tells the complete story of the synthesizer: the origins of the many forms the instrument takes; crucial advancements in sound generation, musical control, and composition made with instruments that may have become best sellers or gone entirely unnoticed; and the basics and intricacies of acoustics and synthesized sound. Vail also describes how to successfully select, program, and play a synthesizer; what alternative controllers exist for creating electronic music; and how to stay focused and productive when faced with a room full of instruments. This one-stop reference guide on all things synthesizer also offers tips on encouraging creativity, layering sounds, performance, composing and recording for film and television, and much more.

A comprehensive, practical guide to composing video game music, from acquiring the necessary skills to finding work in the field. Music in video games is often a sophisticated, complex composition that serves to engage the player, set the pace of play, and aid interactivity. Composers of video game music must master an array of specialized skills not taught in the conservatory, including the creation of linear loops, music chunks for horizontal resequencing, and compositional fragments for use within a generative framework. In A Composer's Guide to Game Music, Winifred Phillips--herself an award-winning composer of video game music--provides a comprehensive, practical guide that leads an aspiring video game composer from acquiring the necessary creative skills to understanding the function of music in games to finding work in the field. Musicians and composers may be drawn to game music composition because the game industry is a multibillion-dollar, employment-generating economic powerhouse, but, Phillips writes, the most important qualification for a musician who wants to become a game music composer is a love of video games. Phillips offers detailed coverage of essential topics, including musicianship and composition experience; immersion; musical themes; music and game genres; workflow; working with a development team; linear music; interactive music, both rendered and generative; audio technology, from mixers and preamps to software; and running a business. A Composer's Guide to Game Music offers indispensable guidance for musicians and composers who want to deploy their creativity in a dynamic and growing industry, protect their musical identities while working in a highly technical field, and create great music within the constraints of a new medium.

The Routledge Film Music Source Book is an annotated, thematically organized collection of approximately eighty source readings pertaining to film music dating from its beginnings to the present, from the US and other select countries around the globe. The documents represent a wide variety of music-related issues that were heatedly debated during cinema's early decades and which by and large remain of concern today. Each document is prefaced by a brief introduction that gives details on both the author and the particular issue at hand. Also, each group of documents is prefaced by a longer introduction that puts into historical context the collective information and opinions that follow. The organizational scheme is at the same time chronological and thematic in a pattern that alternates between aestehetic and practical considerations.

This book is dedicated to the topic of performance practice of electroacoustic music, focusing mainly on the production of RAI's Studio di Fonologia in Milan between the 1950s and 1970s. It is the result of an in-depth dialogue between musicology and musical practice, presenting musicological and practice-based contributions, some dealing with specific problems of performance practice, in particular the analysis and interpretation of the aesthetic prerequisites and production conditions of the repertoire from a musicological perspective, others focusing on specific works and on their realisation from a performer's perspective. Overall, this publication is intended as a contribution to the performance culture of the repertoire.

Electronic and Experimental Musicis a second edition of a well-known text on the history of electronic music. Holmes' original book, first published in 1985, was a beginner's introduction both to the theories of sound and sound production and to the history of some of the earliest experiments in instrument building and composition. In this new edition, the author thoroughly updates and enlarges the theoretical and historical sections. He also presents new material on using home computers and the many software and Internet resources available.