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.

Overview: Although the most vital and innovative trend in contemporary music, techno is notoriously difficult to define. What, exactly, is techno? Author Dan Sicko offers an entertaining, informed, and in-depth answer to this question in Techno Rebels, the music's authoritative American chronicle and a must-read for all fans of techno popular music, and contemporary culture.

A technophile's wet dream going beyond the limits of an encyclopedia or a record guide, here are essays by musicians and music journalists which illuminate genres techno, house, krautrock, disco, hip-hop, jungle, drum'n'bass, ambient and downtempo. Probing the conceptual origins of synthesised sound and including legendary names Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Robert Moog and John Cage, the black roots of electronic music are also documented, from free-jass traveller Sun Ra to funk inovators Parliament and Funkadelic. With sections on fusion, dub, post-punk, breakbeats+.

This accessible Introduction explores both mainstream and experimental electronic music and includes many suggestions for further reading and listening.

Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture provides a comprehensive history of electronic music, covering key composers, genres, and techniques used in analog and digital synthesis. This textbook has been extensively revised with the needs of students and instructors in mind. The reader-friendly style, logical organization, and pedagogical features of the fifth edition allow easy access to key ideas, milestones, and concepts. New to this edition: • A companion website, featuring key examples of electronic music, both historical and contemporary. • Listening Guides providing a moment-by-moment annotated exploration of key works of electronic music. • A new chapter—Contemporary Practices in Composing Electronic Music. • Updated presentation of classic electronic music in the United Kingdom, Italy, Latin America, and Asia, covering the history of electronic music globally. • An expanded discussion of early experiments with jazz and electronic music, and the roots of electronic rock. • Additional accounts of the vastly under-reported contributions of women composers in the field. • More photos, scores, and illustrations throughout. The companion website features a number of student and instructor resources, such as additional Listening Guides, links to streaming audio examples and online video resources, PowerPoint slides, and interactive quizzes.

Electronic music is now ubiquitous, from mainstream pop hits to the furthest reaches of the avant garde. But how did we get here? In Mars by 1980, David Stubbs charts the evolution of synthesised tones, from the earliest mechanical experiments in the late nineteenth century, through the musique concrete of the Futurists and radical composers such as Pierre Schaeffer and Karl Stockhausen, to the gradual absorption of electronic instrumentation into the mainstream, be it through the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, grandiose prog rock or the DIY approach of electronica, house and techno.Stubbs tells a tale of mavericks and future dreamers, malfunctioning devices and sonic mayhem. But above all, he describes an essential story of authenticity: is this music? Mars by 1980 is the definitive account that answers this question.