Electronic music by classical composers

Hi

I really love the sound of electronic music, so I would like to know if there are any contemporary classical composers who make interesting electronic compositions. I already know xenakis and stockhausen, but I'm looking for a more melodic kind of music.

tia

DAI

Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Yujio Dill.

Robert Ashley - more fundamental, but very key.

Kraftwerk!

Oh you said "classical"...

antanas jasenka, vytautas v. jurgutis, arturas bumsteinas

and

brian eno :D

Of course I already know popular electronic artists like aphextwin , kraftwerk,Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze,Jarre and brian eno. But I find their musical language a bit limited( not enough interesting chord progressions etc. for my taste) that's why I was actually looking for classical electronic composers :) I listened to the composers mentioned by pliorius and it sounds interesting but reminds me still too much of noise-music.

I really don't know what you're looking for honestly. Most, ahem, "classical" electronic music is rather avant-garde to begin with.

Like I said, I'm looking for electronic music by "academic composers" which is not Noise-music or total-serialism. And if there really isn't such a thing then I ask myself: Why? I think that there is so much potential in electronic music to that still has to be explored

Of course I already know popular electronic artists like aphextwin , kraftwerk,Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze,Jarre and brian eno. But I find their musical language a bit limited( not enough interesting chord progressions etc. for my taste) that's why I was actually looking for classical electronic composers :) I listened to the composers mentioned by pliorius and it sounds interesting but reminds me still too much of noise-music.

some of it is noise music, but not all. i find great pleasure and purity in antanas jasenka's music. and chords is not what electronic music is about.

or do you want to hear classical music arranged for electronic instruments? which, then, is not electronic music in it's character and goal. you can also try fennesz, pita, taylor deupree, for electroacoustic sound you can search for an amazing compilation 'experiences de vol' released on subrosa. also check alva noto and his works with sakamoto. actually sakamoto's colaborations with alva noto, fennesz and most recently with christopher willits are great electroacoustic music works. the variety of electronique music is very very vast.

from labels such as 12k, kranky, rune grammofon to tens of net-labels. just dive into it and if you think electro sound works for you, go for adventure ;)

Like I said, I'm looking for electronic music by "academic composers" which is not Noise-music or total-serialism. And if there really isn't such a thing then I ask myself: Why? I think that there is so much potential in electronic music to that still has to be explored

all three mentioned lithuanian composers are 'academic', well with the 'academic' backround.

there is no vast ammount of academic widely known electroheads because this is quite new field and still devoted mainly to experiments(pure electronic music), well, besides using electronics as something that expands acoustic, which is used by very many 'normal' composers.

if i can find 10s of 'academic' electroheads in lithuania, you sure as hell may find like 1000 around the world :D

Like I said, I'm looking for electronic music by "academic composers" which is not Noise-music or total-serialism. And if there really isn't such a thing then I ask myself: Why? I think that there is so much potential in electronic music to that still has to be explored

Uh. You mean people writing electronic tonal/old style copy music? Uh. You could look at Tomita or Wendy Carlos and what not, but honestly, again, "academic composers" is the stuff you don't seem to like and it's not either serial or "noise" music.

Look at Pierre Henry or them other music concrete people. Hell, there's also stuff by Ligeti and Takemitsu worth checking out. Kagel also did some electroacoustic stuff, then there's Hindemith's Trautorium stuff.

Or, really, go write it yourself. :>

It really depends on what you call "melodic". I call a lot of Stockhausen's pieces ("Gesang der J

Kashiwa Daisuke!

Really..

-I wonder if electronic instruments (synthesizers) can not yet produce tones that rival the complexity and richness of traditional instruments.

-Is it not as easy to achieve the range of dynamic and nuanced expression that is achievable by using traditional instruments played by professional instrumentalists?

-has orchestration doctrine not yet developed to take advantage of the particular characteristics of electronic instruments?

Could those be the reasons why "traditional" classical music performed by electronic instruments has not become prevalent? Or are composers simply not open to the idea? Or are the listeners not open to it? Or is there some other reason?

william businski

You might find the music of this composer interesting. There are also scores.

Panayiotis Kokoras

Alexandros

-I wonder if electronic instruments (synthesizers) can not yet produce tones that rival the complexity and richness of traditional instruments.

-Is it not as easy to achieve the range of dynamic and nuanced expression that is achievable by using traditional instruments played by professional instrumentalists?

It is certainly possible to create tones electronically that are as complex and rich as the tones of mechanical instruments. But I think the main question here is control. If you're thinking of your traditional synthesiser, i.e. basically a "keyboard with knobs", then your range of influencing a tone is limited to what keys and knobs you can manipulate with two hands at once (and maybe your feet, if you add some pedals). The huge advantage traditional, mechanical instruments have is the ultra-sensitivity of every single part you interact with. Just pulling a bow across a violin string contains so many parameters at once: Pressure, speed, alignment, position on the string etc., and the development of said parameters over time. Emulating such a rich and fine method of interaction with your instrument, all by a single hand is one of the greatest difficulties of electronic instruments, regardless of how rich and detailed you can make the final sound. This is why synthesizers don't completely compare with traditional instruments yet. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have a place within instrumental music. You just can't expect them to have the same function as a violin, or a piano. Electronic music that simply tries to emulate mechanical instruments is always just that, an imitation. Maybe a very good imitation, but still. Electronic music that goes an entirely different path however, embraces the differences to mechanical instruments, and turns them into a new creative source, can be very enriching to a musical setup.

-has orchestration doctrine not yet developed to take advantage of the particular characteristics of electronic instruments?

I agree with you that this is a problem. In most academic setups, "orchestration" is still taught based on the same instruments we had 100 years ago. And even if instruments like the saxophone or the electric guitar might be included by some, actual electronics are often left aside. In many cases however, I think this is not just because the teachers aren't interested in it, but because they have no experience with electronics whatsoever. In many schools you have teachers who are well versed in music theory, history, traditional instrumentation etc,. but not much knowledge of electronics and computers, and then you have some "technics guys", who have just the opposite knowledge. There certainly are people who bring these things together, but as of yet, they seem to be regrettably rare. I certainly hope for some development in this respect in the future, and see more teachers of "traditional" subjects that embrace new technology and are aware of how to include it into more conventional setups. (As well as the opposite: Sound engineers, and other people concerned with acoustic technics, who are knowledgeable about music in a broad sense.) I think all of this is currently happening now, we just need to give it a bit more time.

However, I just want to address one more thing about what you said: You mentioned the "particular characteristics" of electronic instruments. This is the problem, because electronic instruments are not standardised such as traditional orchestral instruments are. There are no particular characteristics, per se. There is no specific sound and no specific way to interact with it. It all changes from case to case and is in many cases developed specifically for a piece by a composer. That's what makes it such a challenge to teach in an instrumentation course, and that also might be the reason many of those teachers avoid this subject. There are certain technical basics when dealing with electronic music however, that can very well be taught and that will be very helpful for any composer wishing to include electronic sounds in a piece.

Could those be the reasons why "traditional" classical music performed by electronic instruments has not become prevalent? Or are composers simply not open to the idea? Or are the listeners not open to it? Or is there some other reason?

Well, I think this is about the problem of "electronic instruments as imitation of mechanical instruments" again. Why should you perform traditional classical music on electronic instruments, when it wasn't written for electronic instruments? It would simply be something else. You -could- do it, certainly, but why not perform a new piece instead that is -specifically- written for electronics?

-has orchestration doctrine not yet developed to take advantage of the particular characteristics of electronic instruments?

Interesting, I never thought of this before. I think it is a combination of the fact that electronic music so new and "orchestration" with it would be difficult to apply doctrine to because of the infinite variety of sounds that are capable of being produced. The most interesting electro-acoustic (or completely electronic, for that matter) pieces that I have heard treat the electronic element as a textural tool in many different ways: as a lead instrument, background to a traditional instrument, harmonizing, aleatoric elements, etc. Electronic music is so rooted in experimentation that I don't think it benefits any composer artistically to pigeonhole any one function or particular sound of electronics.

-I wonder if electronic instruments (synthesizers) can not yet produce tones that rival the complexity and richness of traditional instruments.

... Yeah, whatever. Let's first define what "complexity and richness," then maybe we can get somewhere. I bet we won't agree on that, so this point is moot. Put in another way: "Gee I wonder if the tones produced by traditional instruments are at all rich and complex to begin with."

-Is it not as easy to achieve the range of dynamic and nuanced expression that is achievable by using traditional instruments played by professional instrumentalists?

It's quite easy. The problem isn't on the composer's side, but on the audience. You already go in with points like the one above, the bias obviously will prevent you from finding "nuance expression" in anything unless you already are predisposed to finding it to begin with. As for the dynamic range thing, uh, I suppose you mean decibels and so on? If so, I assume you can imagine things can get pretty loud and pretty soft (as well as higher and lower in pitch) just as well, if not sometimes better (through variable amplification, speaker positioning, etc), than the canonical instruments.

-has orchestration doctrine not yet developed to take advantage of the particular characteristics of electronic instruments?

This would make sense if "electronic instruments" didn't include everything from recordings of garbage trucks to analog tone generators and digital synthesis chips. Someone already said it, it's quite impossible to "sum up" electronic instruments in the way you can with the traditional European canonical instruments. There are thousands of mixes of styles, from acid jazz to japanese techo pop and everything in between. Trying to document them all in an "orchestration" book or any of that would be a pointless endeavor (and nevermind an endless book.)

Could those be the reasons why "traditional" classical music performed by electronic instruments has not become prevalent? Or are composers simply not open to the idea? Or are the listeners not open to it? Or is there some other reason?

"Prevalent" where exactly? Most of the European traditional "classical" music is written for them good'ol instruments. That's the reason anything electronic or other types of instruments not in that canon are so difficult to integrate into it, they have an uphill battle from the get-go since they're outnumbered and out-gunned in popularity (thus a negative bias is created, etc.)

It isn't a problem in every other genre, which is quite clear if you bother to look up electronic music as a whole, from NES chip music to Chemical Brothers, there's a LOT to choose from and to say it's not prevalent is ...well, rather silly. In those genres (because a lot of them sprung out of electronic sounds to begin with) the traditions and canon of the western world play a much less castrating role.

Obvious bias is obvious~

You guys mention many great points here so this is a bit lengthy.

Gardener, I definitely see what you are saying in regards to mechanical vs. electronic instruments. At this point in time it seems you are either left playing an inferior electronic instrument in real time, or automating parameter modulations before hand using MIDI software. The second option I don't really consider to be highly viable because automation is such a relatively unintuitive process compared to playing an instrument.

I do think however that there are some technologies existing that can allow us a significant degree of this kind of parameter control, and that there are others that probably could be developed given sufficient demand.

- You mentioned pedals; MIDI wah pedals come to my mind. If you could operate two that would be two parameters of any choosing.

- Breath controllers allow you modulation by breathing through a tube that feeds into electronic sensors

-MIDI strings have been around since the synthaxe. Maybe they could even be modified to work with bows, I don't really know.

-Combine the above strings with wamy bars and instrument mounted nobs

-Electric drum technology to emulate xylo/vibra phones

-Even quintephones, which allow you to interface with synthesizers using brainwaves.

I guess the question, though, is whether or not a human can feasibly play a MIDI guitar, two pedals, and a breath controller at once. They would at least need allot of practice.

To Gardener and jcharney: You both touched on the same issue of there being such a vast array of possibilities with synthesizers that it is totally impractical to have a set doctrine of how to use them. Not that I think we should discourage experimentation with synths--thats absurd and I would never advocate for that--but I do think it would be beneficial to orchestral music and, by that fact, conducive to the advancement of electronic music experimentation to approach the question of synthesizer orchestration from the other direction.

Rather than asking what sort of things we can do with this synthesizers and how we can make those things fit into a composition--or how can I make a composition to fit those things--we might ask what sort of timbres could compliment traditional/modern orchestra instruments and whether or not we can make those timbres with our synthesizer technology. In other words, we need a sufficient theory of how timbre compliments the other elements of music and how different timbres compliment each other. Once we have that, then we can have guidelines for how to employ our synthesizers. Of course, there will still be room for those who want to experiment and, in fact, there would likely be an exchange of technique between them and those who prefer the "theoretical" approach. Ultimately, the final arbiter would be our ears.

As to the specifics of such a theory of course I can't say, but I will provide an example, which inspires me. In his book, Composing Modal Music, Stephen Cormier talks about bass instruments used in orchestras. He alleges several problems with the bass instruments, which he claims can mask higher registers if the bass voice is to "active":

- Their overtones are more pronounced and there are naturally more notes above them to be masked

-"wind instruments can't be played as continually as string instruments and the double bass viol is somewhat ponderous with a very low and not particularly forceful sound"

-Pianos are overtone rich and organs are not in ever hall

-these limitations exist if the bass melody occurs below C3

Cormier actually suggests synthesizers, along with bass guitars, as a possible remedy to this problem.

Finally, SSC: I didn't intend my questions to be assertions and I'm sure we can come to some sort of agreement here, or at least a restatement of terms. In regards to richness and complexity I would refer firstly to the number of different frequencies present within a tone, or auditory gestalt if you will, and secondly to my intuition that tones produced by so many interconnected physical interactions would generally be more complex than a rudimentary saw wave (as an extreme example). I could be wrong in my intuition, who knows. However, I would naturally defer to an expert on timbre as to what factors constitute a timbre. As for putting the question another way, that is basically how I put the question. I made no judgment: I simply stated that orchestral instruments posses a certain degree of richness or complexity, not that they were rich and complex, they could possess any degree of such qualities.

As for nuance, I was referring to what Gardener mentioned in terms of the intricacy and detail of parameter modulation that is capable with a given instrument, without resorting to unintuitive methods. As for dynamic I was referring to the instruments ability to modulate loudness precisely and with nuance over time. Considering dynamic, It's kind of redundant for me to pose the question I suppose, considering the obvious capabilities of weighted, velocity sensitive keys.

As for orchestration doctrine I refer only to formal orchestra/chamber music, (mainly to just orchestra.) And though I failed to imply it, in regards to electronic instruments I am specifically referring to MIDI synthesizers of varying synthesis methods. My bad. I don't think any of the informal electronic music genres need any sort of "orchestration" help.

The rest of the music you mentioned falls outside of the realm of "formal" music with the exception video game music, some of which was highly modeled on classical music. The soundtrack to FF6 comes to mind most of all, though I'm sure there were others. However the style was largely abandoned (especially by the game industry, not that they matter) after the console technology advanced, probably because that music suffered in the timbre department due to the technical limitations of the time. Though, I do still listen to the FF6 soundtrack. I could even see "Devil's Lab being an influence/example of the kind of music I imagine being made. What are your favorite examples of "formal" music composed for SNES era consoles?

YouTube - Final Fantasy 6 - Devil's Lab

In regards to richness and complexity I would refer firstly to the number of different frequencies present within a tone, or auditory gestalt if you will, and secondly to my intuition that tones produced by so many interconnected physical interactions would generally be more complex than a rudimentary saw wave (as an extreme example). I could be wrong in my intuition, who knows. However, I would naturally defer to an expert on timbre as to what factors constitute a timbre. As for putting the question another way, that is basically how I put the question. I made no judgment: I simply stated that orchestral instruments posses a certain degree of richness or complexity, not that they were rich and complex, they could possess any degree of such qualities.

... OK, so you're just asking if electronically generated sounds (whatever that may be) have similar qualities (timbre, etc) to traditional western instruments?

Sure they can.

And for the record: Sawtooth wave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Don't underestimate them good'ol saw waves. All these things are not more or less complex, but simply different. The reason an oboe sounds different than a cello the same that a saw wave sounds different from white noise, they're all very much different permutations of the same phenomenon.

As for nuance, I was referring to what Gardener mentioned in terms of the intricacy and detail of parameter modulation that is capable with a given instrument, without resorting to unintuitive methods. As for dynamic I was referring to the instruments ability to modulate loudness precisely and with nuance over time. Considering dynamic, It's kind of redundant for me to pose the question I suppose, considering the obvious capabilities of weighted, velocity sensitive keys.

Eh? We're talking about PERFORMANCE of electronic music? Instruments? What? First of all, you can have as much control and "intricacy" on parameter modulations, or whatever you want to call it, with electronic sound synthesis or manipulation as you want. It's no problem. Seriously.

Even if you are going for a "performance" situation, it's very easy to set up a rig to control these parameters "on the fly," depending on what you want/need. But considering that most electronic music benefits much more from playback than from being played live, this isn't such a big deal.

As for orchestration doctrine I refer only to formal orchestra/chamber music, (mainly to just orchestra.) And though I failed to imply it, in regards to electronic instruments I am specifically referring to MIDI synthesizers of varying synthesis methods. My bad. I don't think any of the informal electronic music genres need any sort of "orchestration" help.

The rest of the music you mentioned falls outside of the realm of "formal" music with the exception video game music, some of which was highly modeled on classical music. The soundtrack to FF6 comes to mind most of all, though I'm sure there were others. However the style was largely abandoned (especially by the game industry, not that they matter) after the console technology advanced, probably because that music suffered in the timbre department due to the technical limitations of the time. Though, I do still listen to the FF6 soundtrack. I could even see "Devil's Lab being an influence/example of the kind of music I imagine being made. What are your favorite examples of "formal" music composed for SNES era consoles?

YouTube - Final Fantasy 6 - Devil's Lab

"Formal?" Yeah, see now, I don't really think that's a necessary distinction this day and age. Specially since you'd need to be a lot more accurate in what you define as "formal" music. I really recommend you read up on what timbre actually is, by the way.

Most of the game music I like is really far away from "classical" sounding stuff, IE, R-type 3 for SNES, or the megaman games' soundtrack, Streets of Rage's OSTs, etc. In fact I tend to steer clear from soundtracks that try to sound like movie soundtracks, symphony and all though there are some vague examples of adaptations for traditional orchestra which I do like (Gradius arrangements for orchestra, KOF/Fatal Fury/Samurai Spirits arranged for orchestra, etc.)

In any case, you still don't escape from the fact that "electronic" instruments is a whole fuckload of things, as already mentioned. Narrow it down to whatever you want, but that's just a delusion and there's no real point in cutting down available options. Don't dismiss the problem by saying it's irrelevant unless you're making "formal(!?)" music, since honestly if Schnittke could include a jazz improv in the middle of his first symphony, I can include a trance interlude in the middle of mine. (Say nothing of the music concrete fellows which I guess you don't consider "formal" either...)

At this point in time it seems you are either left playing an inferior electronic instrument in real time, or automating parameter modulations before hand using MIDI software. The second option I don't really consider to be highly viable because automation is such a relatively unintuitive process compared to playing an instrument.

Well, my point was merely that electronic instruments are worse at trying to emulate mechanical instruments than mechanical instruments themselves (obviously), and an important factor in this is how they are controlled. I was not saying they are "inferior instruments". My whole point was that I don't think just trying to imitate the advantages mechanical instruments have with electronic means is all that helpful for creating music, but that you should rather embrace the possibilities electronic instruments have instead and make something great out of it. So the point is probably not so much trying to develop controllers that get electronic instruments closer to mechanical ones - unless you're merely using electronic instruments to cheaply imitate mechanical ones (such as playing trumpet sounds on a keyboard), which isn't a practice that personally interests me much, as a composer. There's a multitude of possibilities to use electronics in a live context:

- Playing back fixed "tape music" alongside music that is played live.

- Controlling an "electronic instrument" live on stage with controllers.

- Automated programs that "listen" to the music that is played live and react to it in certain ways.

- The use of certain fixed "effects" such as delay, reverb, distortion etc. on sounds that are played live by mechanical instruments.

- Algorithmic (and possibly randomised) generation of electronic sound.

- etc.

None of these is necessarily superior to the others. All of them have advantages and disadvantages, all of them have been used many times, with different results. Just limiting electronic music to the "playing an electronic instrument on stage" aspect and disregarding any other use seems to me like being caught up in a somewhat anachronistic sense of music performance while neglecting the true potential electronic music can have. You may call it an "unintuitive process", and sure, it may be at times, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

The rest of the music you mentioned falls outside of the realm of "formal" music with the exception video game music, some of which was highly modeled on classical music.

If you reduce live electronics to keyboards/synthesizers, midi guitars and the like, you're missing out on a lot of electronic music that has been written, especially in a "formal"/academic context. Synthesizers were a relatively late development in the vein of electronic instruments, but next to this vein there were quite different applications of electronics in music, such as tape music, consisting either of recorded and transformed sounds, or electronically generated ones. Today, with the technical possibilities computers have offered us, we have a vast field of possibilities with electronic music which go far beyond "playing electronic sounds on stage", interweaving electronic concepts in various ways with mechanically created sounds, as well as the usage of "low-tech electronics" from circuit bending, over tape manipulation, over the deliberate use of "defects" like feedback, over the robotic playing of traditional instruments via microcontrollers, to stuff like the mentioned NES chips. These are all certainly used in quite as "formal" contexts as the ones you are probably thinking of. (And I'm not speaking of video game music there, but concert music - if that distinction matters to you.)

And for the record: Sawtooth wave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Don't underestimate them good'ol saw waves. All these things are not more or less complex, but simply different. The reason an oboe sounds different than a cello the same that a saw wave sounds different from white noise, they're all very much different permutations of the same phenomenon.

Sure, if we're talking about having lots of overtones, a sawtooth wave or white noise are certainly as "rich" (or even much richer) than oboe or cello tones. And we certainly can't make a qualitative distinction between a sawtooth wave an an oboe tone. But we can still take into account that a sawtooth wave, compared to an oboe or cello tone, is:

- very static and uniform.

- relatively easy to describe mathematically.

One moment of an oboe tone is simply a certain setup of overtones with respective amplitudes, but as a whole, an oboe tone from its attack to its decay changes its appearance constantly, in physically complex ways, and depending on the instrument you also have varying mixtures of noise and tone and sometimes even inharmonic spectra (which a sawtooth wave all doesn't have). In other words: You need more data to accurately describe a specific oboe tone than a specific sawtooth wave, in order to reproduce it by any means. But of course all of this doesn't say much about our perception of those tones, or about their "quality". (And interestingly, it has even been a common trend in our "western music culture" to actually favour instruments that have been less "complex" acoustically: We developed instruments that had less and less inharmonic partials, less and less noise components, and a more and more "softer" sound, which usually refers to a lack of strong overtones. Actually, even just 300 years ago, most of our instruments produced much more "complex" sounds than our modern instruments, not even to mention the sounds of a Gamelan orchestra, with all its diverse, inharmonic spectra.)

Sure, if we're talking about having lots of overtones, a sawtooth wave or white noise are certainly as "rich" (or even much richer) than oboe or cello tones. And we certainly can't make a qualitative distinction between a sawtooth wave an an oboe tone. But we can still take into account that a sawtooth wave, compared to an oboe or cello tone, is:

- very static and uniform.

- relatively easy to describe mathematically.

One moment of an oboe tone is simply a certain setup of overtones with respective amplitudes, but as a whole, an oboe tone from its attack to its decay changes its appearance constantly, in physically complex ways, and depending on the instrument you also have varying mixtures of noise and tone and sometimes even inharmonic spectra (which a sawtooth wave all doesn't have). In other words: You need more data to accurately describe a specific oboe tone than a specific sawtooth wave, in order to reproduce it by any means.

Only to throw a proverbial wrench into that, I can say that the saw wave can be manipulated to produce variations along a timeline (like the Oboe example) and it's really... uh, much the same thing. You can "increase the complexity" so to speak if you add more things to the formula than simply pressing an "on" key.

As an example, you're aware of course that the french tradition of organ music employs many "copy" registers that are meant to emulate orchestral sections, such as oboes, strings, etc etc. It reduces the entire instrument to a button-press, which really does make quite a difference compared to how a real oboe sounds (compared to the emulated one on an organ.) It is analogous to what you're saying but in reverse, the saw wave can be "complicated" through different physical (acoustic) or digital/analog processes, like the oboe tone can be simplified to the point it's extremely uniform since you can only control it using a single key (which isn't even pressure sensitive!)

So, to really compare both things we need to give them the same amount of parameters that can change/variate otherwise we're not really being fair.

Oh, of course. But technically, as soon as you manipulate a saw-tooth wave it's no longer a saw-tooth wave, as much as an oboe tone simulated by an organ isn't actually an oboe tone anymore. I'm definitely not saying you can't make extremely complex sounds from a saw-tooth wave, just that in it's pure form it can be considered less "complex" than a natural oboe tone.

P.S.: By the way: I love saw-tooth waves. They are loving great. I also like the sound of chain saws (or even better: circular saws!). But that's a different matter all together!

gardener - I like the sound of dentures clattering in a jar.

Can't say I'm too familiar with that sound, but I'll take your word on it!