Electro-Music vs Electronic Music?

[Wayne Higgins]

Alot of good ideas and quotes in this one. It's thread like this that make me question: "Just what are you doin' thayre, Oenyaw?"

I'm glad it was brought up - Switched on Bach. Classical music electronically realized. Music which was generated using a sythesizer and then recorded on magnetic tape. Not electronic music, per se, but definately electronic music.

(Where is Bebe Baron when we need her!) Speaking of... John Cage composses music for prepared piano, not electronic music at all. John Cage, Bebe Baron and one other of whom the name escapes me now perform music for 57 (?) turtables. A work performed in the 1950's using a number of manual turtables with jazz records which were played by the performers. I don't know if I would consider this electronic music, but where else would you put it. I have a difficult time believing music consisting of samples of other recordings to be electronic, but this is a piece using highly technical apparatus of the time to achieve the work. Bebe Baron has been known to slam everyone in the world of electronic, she comes from a time when the electronic musician built there own electronic circuits to produce the sounds. (Soundtrack to Forbidden Planet, among others.

Electronic music can't be restricted to using one instrument and not the other. If one is to say electronic music is only synthesizers, than it sould be considered synthesizer music insted. Then someone like me comes along and does music that every one thinks is a synthesizer, but it's a guitar, effects and computer. I'm still struggling with the term electronic music, is it really what I'm doing? I am using a guitar as a controller, passing it through electronic devices, and realizing it on a computer, to create music. I would hate to admit while under interigation that my music is electronic because it's not something previously composed and performed using tricky gizmos (eg: Switched on Bach), it's merely stuff that I make up as I go along.

Electronic music has been redefined many times over the past 50 years. Electro music and it's differences. Hmmmm. Danceable? Trance inducing? Beat oriented? Trying to explain the difference between Klauss Schulze and Midevel Pundits is not easy. I can hear it, I just can't say it. But there isn't really much of a difference between electronic and electro if you compare it to bluegrass. It's all electronic music if electronics are needed to "pull it off."

But then again... how do we define that middle part of "Whole Lotta Love"?

[Tronato]

Hello!

I would define it as "Controlled Electronically Processed Amplified Music"

TRO

[laura woodswalker]

[blue hell]

[Wayne Higgins]

you know, I read all these opinions the other day during lunch. after babbleing with my painfully long post, I wondered if i missed the point entirely. i was actually responding to the many good points with my own two cents worth then later that day i though (oh, duh, wayneo, the forum is "electro-music"!)

hopefully, y'all are laughing with me.

(somedays, my job blows my mind!)

[laura woodswalker]

[Antimon]

My take on this is that the emphasis here is on the word "music", and if you're not scared off by the "electro" in front, you can probably find a home or at least some casual enjoyment here somewhere, whatever actual kind of music you're into.

/Stefan

[Kassen]

I don't think it's that important or that interesting, any formal definition we might come up with is bound to be so broad it's useless or so narrow half the people will object.

What I believe we are seeing is something that has bothered me since I started recording to computers; when you record to MD or tape or whatever all is fine but when you record to a computer you will *have* to name the file when you may not be ready yet to give your (partial)composition a name. Websites have the same issue, you can't have a website without naming it (well, you could name pieces after the date and time or a site after it's IP# but that gets unpractical very quickly).

As long as we remember the map is not the territory all should be fine.

[laura woodswalker]

[Wayne Higgins]

I always lable my files with the date recorded, or begun, and I know I'm not alone in doing this. An internet myspace friend form Colorado said it's easier to keep track of them that way. I agree. I don't name things until they are complete, and sometimes not even then.

[kkissinger]

I do all of my composition work in Cubase these days. My filenames are just filenames that have little to do with the name of the composition and usually include the date and something to jog my memory. A typical filename would be something like:

LoopExperimentNov2007 -- or something like that.

As far as naming works, I usually develop a working title that usually isn't the final title. The working title helps to keep me focused on the theme of the music. Often the final title is a concise statement of the "working title".

An exception was "The Sad Little Ghost" http://kevinkissinger.com/sadlittleghost.shtml... the working title and the final title are the same. My other Halloween work "Mummies and Unholy Ghosts" http://kevinkissinger.com/mummies.shtml had a working title of "Mummies in Search of Caffeine".

I find that to come up with a working title is a great help to me to keep focused. And it is more fun for me to work on a tune about pulsars, space trips, secret or imaginary thoughts, ghosts, or whatever than to work on an "etude" or "sonata".

[Wayne Higgins]

There are times when a "Theme idea" hits me and I can't stop until it's finished. "The Chrystallized Delusion is from definition out a book of clinical schizophrenia. "Strength Through Joy" is about Nazi propoganda, read about that in a footnote in the book "In Hitler's Germany". so on and so on

Lately, I have been doing "demos" and live rehersal experiments. That's the dating game.

http://www.myspace.com/oenyaw000
111007a

[elektro80]

[elektro80]

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a KdF ship

[Kassen]

[renevanderwouden]

back to topic:

Unless I overread it, nobody mentioned "Musique Concrete" by Pierre Schaeffer. He used speakers and such electronic devices to composed his electronic/electro-akoustic music.