Electronic music & chance music

What is Electronic Music?

• Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology
in its production
• “Electronic music” generally implies the use of electronic instrumentration to create (synthesize) or to
manipulate sound.
• Character of the music sounds synthetic,processed/ manipulated by electronics as opposed to being
performed by acoustic instrumentation.
• Electromechanical instruments include mechanical elements, such as strings, hammers, and so on, and
electric elements, such as magnetic pickups, power amplifiers and loudspeakers.
• Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ,
and the electric guitar, which are typically made loud enough for performers and audiences to hear
with an instrument amplifier and speaker cabinet.
History of Electronic Music
• The first electronic devices for performing music in the history of electronic music, were developed at
the end of the 19th century.
• During the 1920s and 1930s, electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions for
electronic instruments were composed.
• During the 1920s and 1930s, electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions for
electronic instruments were composed.
• By the 1940s, magnetic audio tape allowed musicians to tape sounds and then modify them by
changing the tape speed or direction.
Some interpreters of this music
• Martin garrix -Bangarang • Steve Aoki- Kyoto
• Nervo- Levels • Andrew Weatherall-First of the year
• Avicii- You make me • Skrillex -Wizard
• David Guetta- Hey Brother • Goldfrapp-Tsunami
• Dimitri Vegas -Animals
Genres of Electronic Music
The electronic music includes many genres, subgenres and styles, among which are the following.
• Acid House • Deep House
• New Beat • Acid Techno
• Chicago House • Bleep and bass
• Circuit House • Detroit techno
Synthesizers
• It means an electronic musical instrument, typically operated by a keyboard, producing a wide variety
of sounds by generating and combining signals of different frequencies.
• Moog, in late 1963, he met experimental composer Herbert Deutsch, who, in his search, for new
electronic sounds, inspired to create his first Moog synthesizer, the “Moog Modular Synthesizer”
New Aesthetics of music
Deals with the use of both electrical sources as others in the music of the future.
Growth of dance music
• By the late 1980s,dance music records which used exclusively electronic instrumentation became
increasingly popular. This trend has continued to the present, being common to hear electronic music
in clubs worldwide.
Tomorrowland
• Tomorrowland is an electronic dance music festival held in Boom, Belgium. Tomorrowland was first
held in 2005 and has since become one of the world's largest and most notable music festivals. It now
stretches over 2 weekends and usually sells out in minutes.
Chance Music
• It is also known as Aleatory Music from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice"
• It is a 20th century type of music in which chance indeterminate elements are left for the performer to
realize
• The musical score may also include the points where performers are to improvise or even to include
quasi theatrical gestures.
• Quasi means seemingly; apparently but not really, and theatrical means of, for, or relating to acting,
actors, or the theater.
• Aspects, such as the ordering of a piece’s sections, it’s rhythms, even pitches are decided to the
movement of the performance.
• It refers to a style wherein the piece always sounds different at every performance because of the
random techniques of production, including the use of ring modulators or natural elements that
become a part of the music.
FAMOUS CHANCE MUSIC COMPOSERS
• John Cage.
• Henry Cowell.
JOHN CAGE or John Milton Cage Jr (September 5 1912 to August 12 1992)
•  was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist.
• A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical
instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde.
• Avant-garde -new and unusual or experimental ideas, especially in the arts, or the people introducing
them.
• Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century.
4”33
• three-movement composition by American experimental composer John Cage 
• It was composed in 1952 for any instrument (or combination of instruments), and the score instructs
the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three
movements
• which, for the first performance, were divided into thirty seconds for the first, two
• minutes and twenty-three seconds for the second, and one minute and forty seconds for the third
•  The piece purports to consist of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is
performed, although it is commonly perceived as "four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence".
HENRY COWELL (March 11 1897 to December 10 1965)
• he grew up surrounded by a wide variety of Oriental musical traditions, his father's Irish folk heritage,
and his mother's Midwestern folk tunes.
•  Already composing in his early teens, Cowell began formal training at age 16 with Charles Seeger at
the University of California.
• Further studies focused primarily on world music cultures.
• He is the central figure in AVANT-GARDE composers
• He organized the new music society.
His work – tiger
• Cowell experimented with the "string piano”
•  Studies of the musical cultures of Africa, Java, and North and South India enabled Cowell to stretch
and redefine Western notions of melody and rhythm; mastery of the gamelan and the theory of
gamelan composition led to further explorations with exotic instruments and percussion.
Later, Cowell developed the concept of indeterminancy or "elastic form" in works like the Mosaic
Quartet (where performers determine the order and alternation of movements).