Book dossier

Electronic music

by Allen Strange

The complete title of the book is *Electronic Music - Systems, Techniques, and Controls*, and it deals mostly with the applications involving subtractive synthesis using analog devices as it was written prior to the development of digital synthesizers. Describing the principles regarding and creation of electronic music, the book contains chapters of specific concepts of electronic music such as "Voltage Sources" or "Recording Techniques" and starts with the basics of electro-acoustic principles and ends with live performance considerations. Examples of 'patching' (configuring an analog synthesizer to create specific sounds) are provided at the end of each chapter demonstrating its subject and also instilling creative thinking in the reader. The styles of electronic music approached would typically be classified as "avant-garde" or "experimental", and the examples are often aleatoric and/or atonal. Professor Strange refers to a particular configuration of a synthesizer as an "instrument" rather than the device itself, alluding to the idea that every configuration will play and behave differently as if it is a unique instrument in its own right, and he extends this idea to the creation of some very unconventional styles of music. But most all of the principles presented could just as easily be applied to the electronic realization of more conventional tonal music. The electro-acoustical principles are still very useful, but the hardware-specific techniques are not going to readily translate well to most modern digital synthesizers. Professor Strange wrote most of the early documentation on Buchla synthesizers, and from the many references and examples he makes using Buchla devices, he was clearly more familiar with the workings of that brand of synthesizer. Buchla synthesizers are still available today, but they are expensive and beyond the reach of most people, so some creative thought will be needed to translate the examples into more readily available synthesizers. Most of the devices mentioned by manufacturer are either obsolete, no longer available, or very expensive to obtain; however, the general concepts are not device-specific, and the some of the patching examples can be translated to some contemporary hardware analog synthesizers and many analog-modeling software packages. Despite Professor Strange's comments to the contrary, some prior knowledge of music, acoustics, and electronics *is* assumed and necessary in order to fully understand the subject matter, though one only needs mathematics skills not exceeding simple algebra. The book reads like a textbook, and it requires a fair amount of ambition to get through and fully comprehend it without the benefit of an instructor or knowledgeable guide. While some of the early chapters can be read and digested in random order, most are prerequisite to the understanding of subsequent chapters. Most musicians with no technical background would probably find the book to be a 'hard read', but if the musician wishes to delve into the world of electronic synthesis and electronic music composition, it is well worth the effort.