Microstoria ALBUM 1996
Microstoria's 1996 album of understated, organic-sounding ambient electronics.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
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Microstoria ALBUM 1996
Microstoria's 1996 album of understated, organic-sounding ambient electronics.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
PROTOCOL
The dominant control-voltage convention where each rising volt raises pitch by one octave.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
George Orwell BOOK 1949
Orwell's dystopia — included for its treatment of language as an instrument of control.
MEMORY LANGUAGE
Throbbing Gristle ALBUM 1979
Throbbing Gristle's 1979 album, its cover parodying easy-listening compilations while the music undercuts the joke.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Pete Namlook, Tetsu Inoue ALBUM 1995
Self-titled 1995 ambient collaboration between Pete Namlook and Tetsu Inoue.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY SPACE
Hans Kulk ALBUM 1989
A Selection of Improvisations (1989-2017)
Hans Kulk's revised-edition compilation of nearly three decades of personal analog synthesizer improvisations.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
CONCEPT
Building a complex timbre by summing simple waveforms, typically sine tones, at chosen amplitudes.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Éliane Radigue ALBUM 1974
Éliane Radigue's slowly unfolding drone cycle (Adnos I–III).
SOUND TIME PERCEPTION
Mathematician and father of theoretical computer science.
COMPUTATION NUMBER MORPHOGENESIS
American composer exploring acoustic phenomena, resonance, and the physics of sound in space.
SOUND PERCEPTION SPACE
Brian Eno ALBUM 1982
Brian Eno's 1982 album of remembered and imagined landscapes, the fourth in his Ambient series.
SOUND SPACE MEMORY
American free-jazz drummer known for his work with Cecil Taylor and his own long solo and duo practice.
SOUND TIME
Alan R. Pearlman, ARP Instruments INSTRUMENT
ARP's first synthesizer, introduced in 1970 and notable for its pitch stability.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Alan R. Pearlman, Dennis Colin, ARP Instruments INSTRUMENT
ARP's 1971 semi-modular synthesizer, successor to the 2500.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
American synthesizer manufacturer founded by Alan R. Pearlman, active 1969–1981.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Sonny Sharrock, Pharoah Sanders, Bill Laswell ALBUM 1991
Sonny Sharrock's 1991 album with Pharoah Sanders, Charnett Moffett, and Elvin Jones, produced by Bill Laswell.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS TIME
ORGANIZATION
British embedded audio platform maker, founded 2016 from Queen Mary University of London research.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Robert Ashley ALBUM 1979
Robert Ashley's 1979 album exploring involuntary speech and Tourette's syndrome through electronics.
SOUND TIME LANGUAGE
Takashi Sekiguchi ALBUM
Takashi Sekiguchi's album exploring bamboo and Asian wind instruments.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
Desmond Briscoe, Daphne Oram, Desmond Briscoe ORGANIZATION
BBC department for electronic sound and music, founded 1958 at Maida Vale Studios.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
BeagleBoard.org Foundation HARDWARE
Open-source single-board computer that the original Bela platform was built on.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Wendy Carlos ALBUM 1986
Wendy Carlos's 1986 album exploring alternative tunings and scales built from scratch.
SOUND TUNING
Augmented Instruments HARDWARE
Ultra-low-latency embedded audio and sensor platform, built on the BeagleBone Black.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Augmented Instruments HARDWARE
2025 stereo audio/sensor add-on board for the PocketBeagle 2, successor to the original Bela.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Augmented Instruments HARDWARE
10-in/10-out variant of Bela Gem, for more complex multichannel audio projects.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
American research laboratory where Max Mathews developed the first computer music software.
COMPUTATION SOUND
French composer of musique concrète and acousmatic sound.
SOUND PERCEPTION
American bassist, producer, and prolific collaborator across free jazz, dub, ambient, and experimental studio production.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
David Rosenboom BOOK 1976
Biofeedback and the Arts: Results of Early Experiments
David Rosenboom's edited collection documenting early experiments in biofeedback and creative practice.
FEEDBACK PERCEPTION SOUND
Miles Davis ALBUM 1970
Miles Davis's 1970 double album, a foundational fusion of jazz improvisation with electric instruments and studio editing.
SOUND TIME
Delia Derbyshire COMPOSITION 1967
Delia Derbyshire's 1967 BBC Radiophonic Workshop piece built from a struck lampshade and re-synthesized voice.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
David Rosenboom ALBUM 1975
David Rosenboom's 1975 biofeedback-driven electronic music, expanded and reissued by Black Truffle in 2019.
SOUND FEEDBACK PERCEPTION
British musician and originator of ambient and generative music.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY FEEDBACK
ORGANIZATION
American synthesizer manufacturer founded by Don Buchla in 1962.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Don Buchla, Buchla & Associates INSTRUMENT
Don Buchla's modular voltage-controlled synthesizer, commissioned by the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 1960s.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
LANGUAGE
General-purpose programming language, developed at Bell Labs in the early 1970s.
COMPUTATION
LANGUAGE
General-purpose programming language extending C with object-oriented features.
COMPUTATION
American engineer, co-creator of the Synclavier at Dartmouth College.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, founded 1974.
COMPUTATION SOUND
American pianist and poet, a founding figure of free jazz's percussive, dense keyboard language.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
Iannis Xenakis ORGANIZATION
Iannis Xenakis's Paris research center for music and mathematics, formalized 1972, birthplace of the UPIC system.
SOUND COMPUTATION NUMBER
Merrill Ellis ORGANIZATION
Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI)
University of North Texas center, founded 1963 as the Electronic Music Center by Merrill Ellis.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
American computer scientist and founder of the field of artificial life.
COMPUTATION DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS MORPHOGENESIS
Bill Laswell, Coil ALBUM 1997
Bill Laswell's 1997 album, featuring a 13-minute Coil composition among its collaborators.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Alberto Ginastera, Alberto Ginastera ORGANIZATION
Latin American composition institute at Buenos Aires's Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, founded 1962 by Alberto Ginastera.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Pierre Schaeffer ORGANIZATION
Paris radio research club, renamed from the Studio d'Essai in 1946, where Pierre Schaeffer began musique concrète.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
F. Richard Moore LANGUAGE
A MUSIC-N-descended computer music language written in C by F. Richard Moore at UCSD.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Richard Felciano, David Wessel ORGANIZATION
UC Berkeley's Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, founded 1989, co-developer of Open Sound Control.
SOUND COMPUTATION PERCEPTION
British experimental group formed by John Balance and Peter Christopherson in 1984, exploring the occult and dark ambient.
SOUND FEEDBACK
Brad Garton ORGANIZATION
Columbia University Computer Music Center
Renamed in 1996 from the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, continuing as Columbia's computer music research center.
SOUND COMPUTATION
Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Milton Babbitt, Roger Sessions, Vladimir Ussachevsky ORGANIZATION
Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center
Joint Columbia/Princeton studio founded 1958-59 around the RCA Mark II synthesizer, the oldest electroacoustic music center in the US.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
CONCEPT
Music composed or generated with the aid of computation, from the earliest MUSIC-N software onward.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Kraftwerk ALBUM 1981
Kraftwerk's 1981 album on computers and information society.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY COMPUTATION
Conrad Schnitzler ALBUM 1978
Conrad Schnitzler's electronic work of restless synthetic textures.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
Iannis Xenakis COMPOSITION 1958
Electroacoustic music composed by Iannis Xenakis for the Philips Pavilion he designed for Expo 58.
NUMBER SOUND
Prolific German electronic musician and Kluster co-founder.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
CONCEPT
The voltage signal itself that carries a control value between modules, as distinct from voltage control as a general idea.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY FEEDBACK
Buckminster Fuller BOOK 1981
Buckminster Fuller's synthesis of design science, resources, and the trajectory of humanity.
TECHNOLOGY FORM
Barry Vercoe SOFTWARE
Barry Vercoe's 1985 sound synthesis programming language, descended from the MUSIC-N lineage.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Paul Ryan BOOK 1974
Paul Ryan's cybernetic account of media, ecology, and the sacred.
CYBERNETICS
ORGANIZATION
American software company, founded 1997 by David Zicarelli to continue commercial development of Max.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Hans Jenny FILM 1967
Hans Jenny's films making sound visible as form in vibrating matter.
SOUND FORM MORPHOGENESIS
Hans Jenny BOOK 2001
Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena and Vibration
Hans Jenny's study of periodic vibrational phenomena, illustrated with his own experiments in visible sound.
SOUND FORM MORPHOGENESIS
Else Marie Pade ORGANIZATION
Danish Radio Electronic Music Studio
Informal studio Else Marie Pade organized at Danmarks Radio in the late 1950s.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
American engineer, founder of E-mu Systems and pioneer of sampling instrument design.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
American composer and bioacoustician working at the intersection of music, language, and environment.
SOUND PERCEPTION CYBERNETICS
American composer and pioneer of biofeedback and brainwave music, longtime Dean of Music at CalArts.
SOUND FEEDBACK PERCEPTION
Pianist turned live-electronics pioneer; Rainforest and feedback instruments.
INSTRUMENTS SOUND FEEDBACK
Bernard Parmegiani ALBUM 1975
Bernard Parmegiani's 1975 cycle of twelve electroacoustic studies on the nature of sound.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Digital Equipment Corporation HARDWARE
Digital Equipment Corporation mainframe used across early computer music research, including at Stanford's CCRMA.
COMPUTATION
British composer and BBC Radiophonic Workshop pioneer of musique concrète and electronic sound.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY TIME
Virgin Islands-born drummer whose loose, melodic pulse shaped early free jazz.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS TIME
English guitarist central to free improvisation and non-idiomatic playing.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
Terry Riley ALBUM 1982
Descending Moonshine Dervishes
Terry Riley's 1982 album of just-intonation electric organ improvisation.
SOUND TIME TUNING
Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny, Michael Stearns ALBUM 1989
1989 ambient collaboration between Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny, and Michael Stearns, evoking the American desert Southwest.
SOUND SPACE TIME
Stafford Beer LECTURE 1974
Beer's CBC Massey Lectures analyze why institutions fail through the lens of cybernetics — and how the science of effective organization could be used to redesign them.
CYBERNETICS DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY
CONCEPT
Recording and digitally storing a sound for playback, pitch-shifting, and manipulation.
COMPUTATION SOUND MEMORY
PROTOCOL
A hardware clock and start/stop protocol for synchronizing drum machines and sequencers, carried over a DIN connector.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY TIME
American instrument designer, co-inventor of the voltage-controlled modular synthesizer.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
American trumpeter central to free jazz, known for the pocket trumpet and world-music fusion.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
American pianist and organist central to free jazz, known for percussive clusters and rolling-forearm technique.
SOUND TIME
Rashied Ali, Frank Lowe ALBUM 2020
Duo Exchange: Complete Sessions
2020 expanded reissue of Rashied Ali and Frank Lowe's 1972 free-jazz duo sessions, Survival Records' inaugural release.
SOUND TIME
ORGANIZATION
American sampling instrument manufacturer founded by Dave Rossum.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
American jazz drummer known for his work with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, bringing New Orleans rhythm into free jazz.
SOUND TIME
British percussionist, co-founder of AMM, and founder of Matchless Recordings.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Russian electronic and film composer, best known for scoring Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker.
SOUND TIME
Tod Dockstader ALBUM 1961
Tod Dockstader's self-produced 1961 debut, built after-hours at a New York radio station without institutional support.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Peter Zinovieff, David Cockerell, Tristram Cary ORGANIZATION
Electronic Music Studios (EMS)
British synthesizer manufacturer, founded 1969, maker of the VCS3 and Synthi 100.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Knut Wiggen, Knut Wiggen ORGANIZATION
Swedish national electronic music studio founded 1964 in Stockholm — distinct from the British synthesizer manufacturer of the same acronym.
SOUND COMPUTATION
French composer of slowly evolving electronic and acoustic drone music.
TIME SOUND PERCEPTION
PLACE
Peter Zinovieff's home studio in Putney, London, founded 1965, running the MUSYS computer music system.
SOUND COMPUTATION INSTRUMENTS
David Cockerell, EMS INSTRUMENT
EMS's large-format 1971 synthesizer, produced in only 30 units.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
EMS INSTRUMENT
Portable EMS synthesizer combining the VCS3 circuit with a built-in sequencer and touch keyboard.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Peter Zinovieff, David Cockerell, EMS INSTRUMENT
EMS's 1969 portable synthesizer, among the first commercially available.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Jean Schwarz ALBUM 1972
Jean Schwarz's electroacoustic pieces Erda (1972) and Suite N (1982), reissued together by Recollection GRM.
SOUND SPACE
PLACE
IRCAM's variable-acoustic concert hall, designed by Renzo Piano.
SOUND SPACE
ORGANIZATION
American audio processor manufacturer, founded 1971, maker of the Harmonizer line.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Eventide HARDWARE
Eventide's digital multi-effects Harmonizer, a later stage in the H910/H949 lineage.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Tony Agnello, Eventide HARDWARE
Eventide's 1975 pitch-shifting processor, the first Harmonizer.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Eventide HARDWARE
Eventide's 1982 signal processor, the first programmable hardware effects unit.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Peter Kolman, Peter Kolman ORGANIZATION
Experimental Studio of Czechoslovak Radio
Electroacoustic music studio established within Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava, 1964-65.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
Australian instrument manufacturer, founded 1975 by Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Peter Vogel, Kim Ryrie, Fairlight INSTRUMENT
The first polyphonic digital sampling synthesizer, released 1979.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
Pete Namlook's prolific German ambient and electronic label, active through the 1990s and 2000s.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Thomas Lehn ALBUM 2000
Thomas Lehn's 2000 free-improvisation album for analog synthesizer.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS FEEDBACK
Eddie Prévost, Organum ALBUM 1987
1987 collaborative LP pairing Eddie Prévost's percussion with Organum's drone.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Hiroshi Yoshimura ALBUM 1987
Hiroshi Yoshimura's 1987 album of unhurried, environmental keyboard music.
SOUND SPACE PERCEPTION
John Cage COMPOSITION 1958
John Cage's 1958 indeterminate composition, generated from transparent overlays of points, curves, and lines.
SOUND TIME
Louis and Bebe Barron ALBUM 1976
Louis and Bebe Barron's 1956 score for Forbidden Planet, the first entirely electronic film soundtrack, first issued commercially in 1976.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY FEEDBACK
Iannis Xenakis BOOK 1971
Xenakis on stochastic, set-theoretic, and computational approaches to composition.
NUMBER FORM COMPUTATION SOUND
Jon Hassell, Brian Eno ALBUM 1980
Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics
Jon Hassell and Brian Eno's 1980 album founding Fourth World music, fusing processed trumpet with electronics and non-Western rhythm.
SOUND PERCEPTION
French composer of acousmatic music and originator of the acousmonium.
SOUND SPACE
John Chowning CONCEPT
Frequency modulation (synthesis)
Generating complex timbres by using one oscillator's output to modulate another's frequency at audio rate.
COMPUTATION SOUND
ORGANIZATION
Composers' collective and publisher of experimental scores, software, and writings.
SOUND
Jean-Claude Eloy ALBUM 1978
Jean-Claude Eloy's long-form electroacoustic film music and sound work.
SOUND TIME
PROTOCOL
A control signal marking the duration a note or event is held, on for its length and off otherwise.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY TIME
German mathematician who founded set theory and the study of transfinite numbers and the infinite.
NUMBER FORM
French philosopher of difference, multiplicity, and becoming.
DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS FORM LANGUAGE
Douglas Hofstadter BOOK 1979
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Hofstadter on self-reference, formal systems, and strange loops across logic, art, and music.
NUMBER FORM COMPUTATION
British cybernetician known for conversation theory and adaptive, interactive machines.
CYBERNETICS FEEDBACK
CONCEPT
Building sound from many brief grains of audio, reassembled with independent control over density, pitch, and position.
COMPUTATION SOUND TIME
Jacob Klein BOOK 1968
Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra
Jacob Klein on the conceptual origins of algebra in and after Greek mathematics.
NUMBER FORM
Hiroshi Yoshimura ALBUM 1986
Hiroshi Yoshimura's 1986 album, recorded at his home studio over the winter of 1985-86.
SOUND SPACE PERCEPTION
PLACE
The Groupe de Recherches Musicales' production facilities in Paris, including Studio 54.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Max Mathews SOFTWARE
Max Mathews's 1970 system for real-time computer control of analog synthesizers.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Françoise Barrière, Christian Clozier ORGANIZATION
Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB)
French electroacoustic institution founded 1970 by Françoise Barrière and Christian Clozier.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Pierre Schaeffer ORGANIZATION
Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC)
Pierre Schaeffer's 1951 research group at the Club d'Essai, the direct predecessor of the GRM.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Pierre Schaeffer ORGANIZATION
Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM)
French institution for musique concrète and electroacoustic research.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Nicolas Collins BOOK 2006
Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking
Nicolas Collins's practical guide to circuit bending, hacking, and building electronic instruments.
INSTRUMENTS SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Swiss physician and researcher who coined cymatics, the study of visible sound and vibration.
SOUND FORM MORPHOGENESIS
Throbbing Gristle ALBUM 1980
Throbbing Gristle's 1980 album, recorded live in the studio before an invited audience.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Japanese composer central to kankyo ongaku (environmental music), pairing sound with everyday space and pace.
SOUND SPACE PERCEPTION
PROTOCOL
A rarer control-voltage convention, notably used by Korg and Yamaha, where voltage scales pitch linearly in Hertz rather than by octave.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Composer and architect utilizing game theory, stochastic processes, set theory
NUMBER FORM SOUND
Richard Pinhas ALBUM 1979
Richard Pinhas' 1979 solo debut following his split from Heldon.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY CYBERNETICS
Robert Ashley, Paul DeMarinis ALBUM 1974
In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women
Robert Ashley's 1974 setting of John Barton Wolgamot's poem for voice and modular synthesizer.
SOUND LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY
Roland Kayn ALBUM
Roland Kayn's cybernetic music of autonomously evolving electronic processes.
CYBERNETICS SOUND FEEDBACK
ORGANIZATION
Institut International de Musique Électroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB)
Successor institution to the GMEB, recognized as a National Center for Musical Creation in 1997.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA)
French national audiovisual archive institute; administrative home of the GRM since 1975.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
Dutch electronic and computer music institute, renamed from STEM in 1967, now at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
SOUND COMPUTATION
ORGANIZATION
Buenos Aires cultural institute founded 1958, host to CLAEM and the most significant Argentine arts institution of the 1960s.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Louis De Meester, Hubert Vuylsteke ORGANIZATION
Ghent Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music, founded 1963.
SOUND PERCEPTION TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
Paris institute for music and acoustic research, founded by Pierre Boulez in 1977.
COMPUTATION SOUND
PLACE
IRCAM's production and research studios beneath the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
SOUND COMPUTATION
American programmer, creator of the SuperCollider audio synthesis language.
COMPUTATION SOUND
American composer and theorist; work on Gestalt perception of musical form, just intonation, and computer music.
PERCEPTION FORM SOUND TUNING
American composer, discoverer of FM synthesis, co-founder of CCRMA.
COMPUTATION SOUND TUNING
British mathematician; inventor of the Game of Life and the surreal numbers.
COMPUTATION NUMBER FORM
Mathematician; foundational to computing, game theory, and self-reproducing automata.
COMPUTATION NUMBER CYBERNETICS
American trumpeter and composer who developed Fourth World music, fusing electronics with non-Western vocal and instrumental technique.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Argentine writer of labyrinthine short fictions on infinity, time, memory, and language.
LANGUAGE TIME MEMORY
Richard Pinhas, Merzbow ALBUM 2008
2008 live duo recording between Richard Pinhas and Merzbow, made in Tokyo in 2007.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY FEEDBACK
Peter Liechti FILM 1989
Peter Liechti's 1989 film portrait of eastern Switzerland built around Voice Crack's junk-electronics music.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS FEEDBACK
Herbert Brün COMPOSITION 1962
Klänge Unterwegs (Wayfaring Sounds)
Herbert Brün's 1961–62 electronic composition, made at the Siemens-Studio für elektronische Musik.
SOUND COMPUTATION CYBERNETICS
Klein + Hummel MANUAL
Klein + Hummel UE-100 — Manual
Manual for the Klein + Hummel UE-100 graphic equalizer — a 10-page scanned manual.
TECHNOLOGY SOUND INSTRUMENTS
German electronic group foundational to synthpop and electronic music.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Krohn-Hite MANUAL
Krohn-Hite 6880A Distortion Analyzer — Maintenance Manual
Maintenance and service documentation for the Krohn-Hite 6880A programmable distortion analyzer — a 64-page scanned manual.
TECHNOLOGY SOUND INSTRUMENTS
ORGANIZATION
American manufacturer of test and measurement instruments, including precision filters, amplifiers, and distortion analyzers.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Krohn-Hite MANUAL
Krohn-Hite DCA-10 — Service Manual
Service documentation for the Krohn-Hite DCA-10 amplifier — a 64-page scanned manual.
TECHNOLOGY SOUND INSTRUMENTS
Carla Scaletti, Symbolic Sound SOFTWARE
Sound design language treating every level of a composition, from single timbre to whole piece, as a composable object.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Richard Pinhas, Gilles Deleuze ALBUM 1982
Richard Pinhas' 1982 album featuring Gilles Deleuze's spoken voice, reissued by Bureau B in 2019.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY CYBERNETICS
François Bayle ALBUM 1972
François Bayle's large-scale cycle of acousmatic works composed between 1969 and 1972.
SOUND SPACE
Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson ALBUM 1975
Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson's electronic work made at UC San Diego's Center for Music Experiment, released on vinyl in 1981.
SOUND TUNING
American composer, pioneer of minimalism, sustained drone, and just intonation.
SOUND TIME TUNING
Sonny Sharrock, Peter Brötzmann, Bill Laswell, Ronald Shannon Jackson ALBUM 1986
The self-titled 1986 debut of the free-jazz/noise group Last Exit.
SOUND TIME
American composer and pioneer of computer music and algorithmic composition.
SOUND TIME
Pierre Schaeffer ALBUM 1975
Pierre Schaeffer's final work, composed entirely from synthetic sounds — his only purely electronic piece.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
League of Automatic Music Composers
Pioneering late-1970s Bay Area ensemble performing live music with a network of microcomputers.
COMPUTATION SOUND FEEDBACK
ORGANIZATION
CEMAMu's successor name, running production and training on the UPIC system through the 1980s.
SOUND COMPUTATION
ORGANIZATION
American digital audio processor manufacturer, founded 1971.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
David Griesinger, Lexicon HARDWARE
Lexicon's 1978 digital reverberator, among the first commercially viable digital reverbs.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
David Griesinger, Lexicon HARDWARE
Lexicon's 1986 reverb processor, an industry standard for studio reverb.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Lexicon HARDWARE
Lexicon's early digital delay unit, designed explicitly for musical effects.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
LANGUAGE
Family of programming languages built around symbolic expressions, dating to 1958.
COMPUTATION
Musica Elettronica Viva, AMM ALBUM 1970
Live Electronic Music Improvised
1970 split LP pairing live improvisations by Musica Elettronica Viva and AMM.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
American pioneers of electronic music who built circuits as living, dying sound.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY FEEDBACK
French composer, co-founder of the GRM, pioneer of anecdotal music and unedited field recording.
SOUND TIME PERCEPTION
Susumu Yokota ALBUM 1998
Susumu Yokota's 1998 debut album, originally a limited edition of 500 CDs.
SOUND PERCEPTION
PLACE
BBC studio complex in London, home to the Radiophonic Workshop from 1958.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
British artist and musician working with algorithmic composition, rhythm, and microtonal synthesis.
SOUND COMPUTATION TUNING
German computer musician and glitch-music pioneer, recording as Oval and as half of Microstoria.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Composer of structure-borne sound and otoacoustic-emission works; large-scale architectural and perceptual sound.
PERCEPTION SOUND SPACE
Japanese free-jazz guitarist and pioneer of noise improvisation.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
CONCEPT
Routing any of several inputs to any of several outputs at independently adjustable levels.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Miller Puckette, Cycling '74 SOFTWARE
Visual programming language for music and multimedia, created by Miller Puckette at IRCAM.
COMPUTATION SOUND
American engineer at Bell Labs who wrote MUSIC, the first widely used computer program for generating sound.
SOUND COMPUTATION TECHNOLOGY
Eduard Artemyev COMPOSITION 1979
Eduard Artemyev's recurring theme for Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979), a slow synthesizer drone built on the ANS-derived electronic language of his Tarkovsky scores.
SOUND TIME
James Tenney BOOK 1988
Meta-Hodos and META Meta-Hodos
Tenney's application of Gestalt perception to musical form — a foundational text for thinking about how listeners organise sound into structure.
PERCEPTION FORM SOUND
American ambient/space-music composer and film sound designer, a founding figure of the Californian space music scene.
SOUND SPACE TIME
Experimental electronic duo of Markus Popp (Oval) and Jan St. Werner (Mouse on Mars), formed in Düsseldorf in 1994.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
PROTOCOL
Musical Instrument Digital Interface, the 1983 protocol for communication between electronic instruments.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
PROTOCOL
MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE)
An extension convention over MIDI enabling independent per-note expressive control.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Free-jazz percussionist and researcher into rhythm, the heartbeat, and the body.
SOUND PERCEPTION FEEDBACK
Pauline Oliveros ORGANIZATION
Mills Center for Contemporary Music
Successor to the San Francisco Tape Music Center, established at Mills College in 1966 under Pauline Oliveros.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Robert Moog, Moog Music INSTRUMENT
Moog Music's 1971 compact synthesizer, the archetype for the electronic keyboard.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
CONCEPT
Building a sound system from independent function modules connected by the user's own patching.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Robert Moog, Moog Music INSTRUMENT
Robert Moog's original voltage-controlled modular system, distinct from the later compact Minimoog.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
American synthesizer manufacturer founded by Robert Moog.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
American composer and Buchla synthesizer pioneer, best known for Silver Apples of the Moon.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company
Early synthesizer ensemble from America.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell ALBUM 1969
Duo recording by Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell, recorded in Paris and released on BYG Records in 1969.
SOUND TIME
Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell ALBUM 1970
Continuation of the Cherry/Blackwell Mu sessions, recorded in Paris and released on BYG Records in 1970.
SOUND TIME
Gilbert Rouget BOOK 1985
Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations Between Music and Possession
Gilbert Rouget's cross-cultural study of how music relates to trance and possession.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Hiroshi Yoshimura ALBUM 1982
Hiroshi Yoshimura's 1982 debut album, home-recorded, that helped define kankyo ongaku (environmental music).
SOUND SPACE PERCEPTION
Max Mathews LANGUAGE
Max Mathews's 1968 computer music language, the most widely disseminated of the MUSIC-N series.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Iannis Xenakis COMPOSITION 1978
Xenakis's 1978 work, the first piece ever composed on the UPIC system.
NUMBER SOUND
David Tudor COMPOSITION 1992
David Tudor's late live-electronic work built from feedback networks.
FEEDBACK INSTRUMENTS SOUND
ORGANIZATION
American digital instrument manufacturer, 1976–1993, maker of the Synclavier.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Toshiro Mayuzumi, Makoto Moroi ORGANIZATION
Tokyo broadcaster's electronic music studio, completed 1954, modeled on WDR's Cologne studio.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Milford Graves, Don Pullen ALBUM 1967
Milford Graves and Don Pullen's self-released 1967 duo recording.
SOUND TIME
Stanisław Lem STORY 1971
Lem's fictional account of 'personoids' — conscious beings created inside a computer, who reason their way to theology.
COMPUTATION LANGUAGE
ORGANIZATION
Berlin synthesizer manufacturer founded 2011 by Stephan Schmitt, founder of Native Instruments.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Nonlinear Labs INSTRUMENT
Nonlinear Labs' 61-key digital synthesizer built for expressive, automation-free playing.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
American mathematician who founded cybernetics, the study of control and communication in animal and machine.
CYBERNETICS FEEDBACK COMPUTATION
Steve Reid, The Legendary Master Brotherhood ALBUM 1976
Steve Reid's 1976 debut LP with The Legendary Master Brotherhood, launching his Mustevic Sound label.
SOUND TIME
Portuguese musician known for Plux Quba, a singular work of miniature electronic and acoustic sound-collage.
SOUND PERCEPTION
ORGANIZATION
American synthesizer manufacturer founded by Tom Oberheim.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Tom Oberheim, Dave Rossum, Oberheim Electronics INSTRUMENT
Oberheim's 1974 Synthesizer Expander Module, its first synthesizer voice.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Oberheim Electronics INSTRUMENT
Oberheim's extensively programmable rack-mount synthesizer, released 1984.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Alan Turing PAPER 1936
On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem
Turing's 1936 paper defining the Turing machine and the limits of mechanical computation.
COMPUTATION NUMBER
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson BOOK 1917
D'Arcy Thompson's classic on the mathematics and physics of biological form.
MORPHOGENESIS FORM NUMBER
Hermann von Helmholtz BOOK 1863
On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music
Helmholtz's foundational treatise on acoustics, timbre, and the perception of tone.
SOUND PERCEPTION TUNING
PROTOCOL
A network-based protocol for communication between sound and media applications, developed at CNMAT.
COMPUTATION SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Daphne Oram ORGANIZATION
Daphne Oram's independent studio, founded 1959 after leaving the BBC, at Tower Folly in Kent.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
David Jackman's long-running project of dense, ritualistic drone built from acoustic and processed sources.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Bill Laswell, Pete Namlook ALBUM 2023
Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook's 2023 album on Cold Spring.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Tony Conrad, Faust ALBUM 1973
Tony Conrad and Faust's 1973 landmark of sustained-tone drone minimalism.
SOUND TIME TUNING
Oval ALBUM 2001
Oval's 2001 album, marking a shift from CD-skip glitch toward more constructed digital composition.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Finnish duo making minimal, physically intense electronic music from custom-built oscillators and pulse generators.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
CONCEPT
Configuring an instrument's signal path by connecting modules, rather than through fixed internal wiring.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
German ambient musician and founder of the FAX label, prolific across solo work and long-running collaborative series.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
British engineer, co-founder of Electronic Music Studios (EMS).
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Luc Ferrari COMPOSITION 1973
Petite Symphonie Intuitive pour un Paysage de Printemps
Luc Ferrari's 1973-74 piece treating a spring landscape's field recordings as intuitive, near-unedited symphony.
SOUND TIME PERCEPTION
Pharoah Sanders ALBUM 1976
Pharoah Sanders's 1976 album, self-released on India Navigation.
SOUND TIME
American tenor saxophonist known for overblown, multiphonic playing and spiritual jazz, closely associated with John Coltrane's late work.
SOUND TIME
CONCEPT
Generating FM-like timbres by modulating an oscillator's phase rather than its frequency directly.
COMPUTATION SOUND
PLACE
Philips Research Laboratories Electronic Music Studio
Eindhoven facility where Varèse realized Poème électronique for the 1958 Philips Pavilion.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
CONCEPT
Simulating the physical behavior of a real instrument's vibrating and resonating parts to generate its sound.
COMPUTATION SOUND
French composer and engineer who founded musique concrète and the GRM.
SOUND PERCEPTION TECHNOLOGY
Nuno Canavarro ALBUM 1988
Nuno Canavarro's 1988 album of miniature, dreamlike electronic and acoustic sound-collage.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Józef Patkowski, Józef Patkowski ORGANIZATION
Polish Radio Experimental Studio
Warsaw electronic music studio founded 1957, one of Europe's first.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Wolfgang Palm, PPG INSTRUMENT
PPG's 1981 wavetable synthesizer, combining analog signal paths with digital oscillators.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
PLACE
Columbia University building on 125th Street that housed the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center's studios.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Luc Ferrari COMPOSITION 1970
Presque Rien No. 1: Le Lever du Jour au Bord de la Mer
Luc Ferrari's 1970 tape piece built from a near-unedited dawn field recording at the sea's edge.
SOUND TIME PERCEPTION
Godfrey Winham, Paul Lansky, J. K. Randall ORGANIZATION
Princeton Computer Music Center
Princeton's own computer music studio, built around Godfrey Winham and Paul Lansky's extensions to Max Mathews' MUSIC language.
SOUND COMPUTATION
Pete Namlook, Bill Laswell ALBUM
A collection of the five Psychonavigation albums by Pete Namlook and Bill Laswell, originally released 1994-2002.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Masahiko Togashi, Masayuki Takayanagi ALBUM 1983
1983 free-improvisation duo album pairing percussionist Masahiko Togashi with guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
John McGuire COMPOSITION 1978
John McGuire's 1978-79 phase-based electronic work, realized at the West German Radio electronic music studio.
SOUND TIME NUMBER
Miller Puckette SOFTWARE
Open-source visual programming language for music, Miller Puckette's successor to Max.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Pythagoron ALBUM 1977
The sole, privately issued 1977 album from Pythagoron, sold via mail-order as sound for altering brainwave states.
SOUND PERCEPTION TECHNOLOGY
Kraftwerk ALBUM 1975
Kraftwerk's 1975 concept album built around radio and radioactivity.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
David Tudor COMPOSITION 1968
David Tudor's series of works in which sounds are given physical form through resonating objects.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS SPACE
American composer and inventor who built early machines for automatic music composition.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Harry F. Olson, Herbert Belar, RCA INSTRUMENT
The first programmable electronic synthesizer, installed at Columbia-Princeton in 1957-59.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY NUMBER
Steve Birchall ALBUM 1973
Steve Birchall's 1973 private-press synthesizer album, recorded on a VCS-3 and 16-track tape.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
You Nakai BOOK 2021
Reminded by the Instruments: David Tudor's Music
You Nakai's study of David Tudor reconstructed through his instruments and circuits.
INSTRUMENTS SOUND FEEDBACK
Steve Reid ALBUM 1976
Steve Reid's 1976 spiritual-jazz LP on his own Mustevic Sound label, pressed in an edition of 1,000.
SOUND TIME
French guitarist and electronic musician, founder of Heldon, working at the intersection of rock and cybernetic theory.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY CYBERNETICS
Mike Ratledge, Denys Irving ALBUM 1977
Mike Ratledge's 1977 synthesizer score for Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's film, released decades later from BFI archive reels.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
American composer of television operas and pioneer of speech-based electronic music.
SOUND LANGUAGE TIME
ORGANIZATION
Japanese electronic instrument manufacturer, founded 1972 by Ikutaro Kakehashi.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Roland Corporation INSTRUMENT
Roland's 1987 digital synthesizer, combining sampled attack transients with synthesized tones.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Roland Corporation INSTRUMENT
Roland's 1981 eight-voice programmable analog synthesizer.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Roland Corporation INSTRUMENT
Roland's fully modular expansion of the System 100 concept.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Roland Corporation INSTRUMENT
Roland's 1976 professional modular synthesizer, its most expensive instrument.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Musica Elettronica Viva ALBUM 1999
Musica Elettronica Viva's Spring 1968 Rome recording, issued in 1999 with phonetically spelled liner notes.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
Jean Piché COMPOSITION 1980
Jean Piché's piece for percussion and tape, the most agitated work on his 1982 album Heliograms.
SOUND TIME
Don Cherry, Jean Schwarz ALBUM 1977
Don Cherry and Jean Schwarz's 1977 duo recording, released by Transversales Disques.
SOUND TIME
Japanese artist working with sine tones, data, and mathematics as sound and image.
NUMBER SOUND PERCEPTION
LANGUAGE
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language, used at CCRMA for computer music programming including Chowning's Stria.
COMPUTATION
Susumu Yokota ALBUM 1999
Susumu Yokota's 1999 album of dense, sample-woven ambient composition.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Ramon Sender, Morton Subotnick ORGANIZATION
San Francisco Tape Music Center
Bay Area studio and collective founded 1962 by Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick, birthplace of the Buchla modular system.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Japanese composer and co-founder of Sound Process, a key voice in kankyo ongaku (environmental music).
SOUND SPACE PERCEPTION
Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
A general-purpose signal-processing utility module within the Serge system.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
A basic multi-channel audio mixing module within the Serge system.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
A two-stage phase-shifting effects module within the Serge system.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
Serge Dual Universal Slope Generator
Two Universal Slope Generator circuits on one panel, for cascaded or independent envelopes and oscillators.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
A Serge module routing any of several inputs to any of several outputs at independently set levels.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
Serge Tcherepnin's company, selling low-cost modular synthesizers designed at CalArts from 1973 until 1986.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems INSTRUMENT
Serge Tcherepnin's low-cost, flexible modular synthesizer, developed at CalArts from 1972.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
A Serge slew-limiting module shaping the falling edge of a control signal.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
Serge New Timbral Oscillator (NTO)
A Serge oscillator module producing a wide range of complex, evolving waveforms.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
A Serge slew-limiting module shaping the rising edge of a control signal.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
Serge Precision Oscillator (PCO)
A stable, precisely tracking voltage-controlled oscillator within the Serge system.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
MODULE
A resonant filter module in the Serge Modular system, part of the Soup Kitchen panel.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
Serge Smooth & Stepped Generator
A Serge module producing both a smooth CV output and a stepped/quantized companion output.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
INSTRUMENT
A self-contained Serge Modular panel combining slope generators, filters, and mixing for a compact patchable voice.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
Serge Universal Slope Generator
A core Serge Modular function generator producing linear or exponential rising and falling slopes.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
A Serge resonant filter module with continuously variable resonance (Q).
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Tcherepnin, Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
A Serge waveshaping/wavefolding module multiplying the harmonic content of an input signal.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Serge Modular Music Systems MODULE
A bucket-brigade analog delay module within the Serge system.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Jean-Claude Eloy ALBUM 1974
Jean-Claude Eloy's expansive electroacoustic work of sustained, meditative sound.
SOUND TIME
Terry Riley ALBUM 1980
Terry Riley's 1980 album of just-intonation electric organ and tape delay, drawing on Indian classical music.
SOUND TIME TUNING
Josef Anton Riedl, Josef Anton Riedl, Siemens & Halske ORGANIZATION
Siemens-Studio für elektronische Musik
Munich electronic music studio built from Siemens' own synthesizer, active 1959-1968.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
John Cage BOOK 1961
Silence: Lectures and Writings
John Cage's foundational collection on indeterminacy, silence, and the sounds of the world.
SOUND TIME PERCEPTION
Morton Subotnick ALBUM 1967
Morton Subotnick's 1967 LP, the first electronic work commissioned by a record label, made on the Buchla 100.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Eduard Artemyev COMPOSITION 1972
Eduard Artemyev's score for Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972), built from ANS-synthesizer variations on Bach's Chorale Prelude in F Minor.
SOUND TIME
American guitarist who brought free jazz's harmonic freedom to the electric guitar, without recourse to distortion as a crutch.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS
Albert Ayler ALBUM 1965
Albert Ayler's 1965 trio album with Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray, recorded for ESP-Disk'.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Misha Mengelberg, Louis Andriessen, Peter Schat, Dick Raaymakers, Michel Waisvisz ORGANIZATION
Amsterdam studio for electro-instrumental music, founded 1969, focused on hands-on live-electronic instrument building.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
British-American scientist known for cellular automata and a computational view of nature.
COMPUTATION DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS FORM
American ambient/electronic composer known for slow-evolving synthesizer drone and desert-inspired soundscapes.
TIME SOUND
American artist and musician who coined "lowercase" sound, working with quiet, found, and object-based sources.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Satoshi Ashikawa ALBUM 1982
Satoshi Ashikawa's 1982 environmental-music album, the second release in the Wave Notation series.
SOUND SPACE PERCEPTION
John Chowning COMPOSITION
John Chowning's 1977 tape piece, its FM synthesis and structure built entirely on the golden ratio.
SOUND COMPUTATION NUMBER TUNING
Steve Roach ALBUM 1984
Steve Roach's 1984 ambient landmark of slow-evolving synthesizer drone.
TIME SOUND
Pierre Schaeffer, Jacques Copeau ORGANIZATION
Wartime French radio studio founded 1942, ancestor of the GRM lineage.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, Alfredo Lietti ORGANIZATION
Studio di Fonologia Musicale della RAI di Milano
Milan electronic music studio founded 1955 by Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Herbert Eimert, Herbert Eimert, Karlheinz Stockhausen ORGANIZATION
Studio für elektronische Musik des WDR
The world's first electronic music studio, founded 1951 at West German Radio in Cologne.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Flo Menezes ORGANIZATION
Brazilian electroacoustic music studio founded 1994 by Flo Menezes, now at São Paulo State University.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Roelof Vermeulen, Henk Badings, Gottfried Michael Koenig ORGANIZATION
Studio voor Elektronische Muziek (STEM)
Utrecht studio founded 1960 on Philips' Eindhoven equipment, renamed Institute of Sonology in 1967.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
CONCEPT
Shaping a harmonically rich source waveform by filtering out frequencies, rather than building a tone up from nothing.
COMPUTATION SOUND
James McCartney SOFTWARE
Audio synthesis and algorithmic composition language created by James McCartney in 1996.
COMPUTATION SOUND
Hiroshi Yoshimura ALBUM 1986
Hiroshi Yoshimura's 1986 album of environmental keyboard music.
SOUND SPACE PERCEPTION
Japanese electronic musician moving fluidly between techno, ambient, and sample-based composition.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Heinrich Strobel ORGANIZATION
Freiburg studio for live electronics, founded 1971 within the Heinrich Strobel Foundation.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
American engineer, co-creator of the Synclavier at Dartmouth College.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
American software company founded 1989/90 by Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel, makers of Kyma.
COMPUTATION SOUND
ORGANIZATION
The modern company continuing the Synclavier lineage, run by original co-creator Cameron Jones.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Cameron Jones, Sydney Alonso, New England Digital INSTRUMENT
New England Digital's digital synthesis and sampling system, first shipped 1978.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Synclavier Digital INSTRUMENT
Synclavier Digital's 2022 desktop FM synthesizer, spiritual successor to the Synclavier II.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
Dutch synthesizer manufacturer and distributor, founded 1973 by Felix Visser.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Marc Paping, Bert Vermeulen INSTRUMENT
A 1997 analog modular synthesizer reviving the Synton Fenix line, with 31 modules.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Felix Visser, Marc Paping, Bert Vermeulen, Synton INSTRUMENT
Synton's 1983 monophonic analog synthesizer with a touch-plate interface, produced in only 75 units.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Roland Kayn ALBUM 1985
Roland Kayn's large-scale work of self-organizing 'cybernetic music'.
CYBERNETICS SOUND FEEDBACK
American composer central to minimalism, tape delay, and just-intonation improvisation.
SOUND TIME TUNING
Terry Riley, Don Cherry ALBUM 1975
Terry Riley / Don Cherry: Live, Köln 1975
A 1975 live recording from Köln pairing Terry Riley's synthesizers with Don Cherry's trumpet, including a broadcast of Descending Moonshine Dervishes.
SOUND TIME TUNING
Japanese ambient musician known for dense, textural electronic soundscapes, including collaborations on FAX.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Shinya Tsukamoto FILM 1989
Shinya Tsukamoto's 1989 cyberpunk body-horror of flesh fusing violently with metal.
TECHNOLOGY FORM
Georges Bataille BOOK 1949
Georges Bataille's theory of general economy — expenditure, excess, and the necessary loss of surplus energy.
Gil Mellé ALBUM 1971
The Andromeda Strain (Original Electronic Soundtrack)
Gil Mellé's 1971 score for The Andromeda Strain, the first all-synthesizer score for a feature film.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Gordon Pask ESSAY 1969
The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics
Pask's argument for cybernetics as a theory of architecture and interaction.
CYBERNETICS
Alan Turing PAPER 1952
The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis
Turing's 1952 paper proposing reaction–diffusion systems as the origin of biological pattern.
MORPHOGENESIS FORM DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS
Jorge Luis Borges STORY 1940
A magician sets out to dream a man into being, then discovers that he too is another's dream.
FORM MEMORY
Irdial-Discs ALBUM 1997
A 1997 compilation of recorded shortwave numbers-station transmissions, released by Irdial-Discs.
SOUND TIME LANGUAGE
Delia Derbyshire, Barry Bermange COMPOSITION 1964
Delia Derbyshire's 1964 radiophonic sound collage of dream accounts, made with writer Barry Bermange.
SOUND TIME LANGUAGE
William S. Burroughs ESSAY 1970
Burroughs's pamphlet on language as a virus and tape/electronic techniques of control and resistance.
LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY SOUND
Karl J. Niklas BOOK 1997
The Evolutionary Biology of Plants
Karl Niklas on plant form, biomechanics, and the evolution of morphology.
MORPHOGENESIS FORM
Laurie Spiegel ALBUM 1980
Laurie Spiegel's landmark of algorithmic composition made on the GROOVE system at Bell Labs.
SOUND TIME
William S. Burroughs ESSAY 1966
Burroughs on tape recorders, cut-ups, and jamming the reality studio of mass media.
LANGUAGE SOUND PERCEPTION
David B. Doty BOOK 1993
David B. Doty's practical introduction to the theory and practice of just intonation.
TUNING NUMBER SOUND
League of Automatic Music Composers ALBUM 2007
The League of Automatic Music Composers 1978-1983
New World Records anthology of the League's networked-microcomputer performances.
COMPUTATION SOUND FEEDBACK
Jorge Luis Borges STORY 1941
The universe imagined as a total library containing every possible book of a fixed length.
NUMBER LANGUAGE SPACE
Jorge Luis Borges STORY 1941
A society governed ever more totally by an infinite lottery, until chance administers every event.
NUMBER FORM
Julian Jaynes BOOK 1976
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Julian Jaynes's theory that consciousness is a learned, language-based construction of recent historical origin.
LANGUAGE PERCEPTION MEMORY
R. Murray Schafer BOOK 1994
The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World
R. Murray Schafer's foundational study of acoustic ecology and the world as composition.
SOUND PERCEPTION SPACE
Jon Appleton COMPOSITION
The Sweet Dreams of Miss Pamela Beach
Jon Appleton electronic composition from his work developing the Synclavier at Dartmouth.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela BOOK 1987
The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding
Maturana and Varela on autopoiesis, cognition, and the biology of understanding.
CYBERNETICS PERCEPTION FEEDBACK
Edward Tufte BOOK 1983
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Tufte on the principled graphical display of data.
FORM NUMBER PERCEPTION
Morton Subotnick ALBUM 1970
Morton Subotnick's 1968 Buchla synthesizer work for Nonesuch.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
German analog synthesist known for improvised performance on the EMS Synthi 100.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS FEEDBACK
British industrial group pioneering industrial music and culture.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Jorge Luis Borges STORY 1940
The encyclopedia of an invented world slowly begins to overwrite reality itself.
LANGUAGE FORM MEMORY
American self-taught composer of musique concrète, working outside the institutional studios of his European peers.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Thomas Lehn, Gerry Hemingway ALBUM 1999
1999 duo album pairing Thomas Lehn's analog synthesizer with Gerry Hemingway's drums and percussion.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS TIME
PLACE
Converted oast house in Fairseat, Kent, housing Daphne Oram's independent studio from 1959.
SOUND SPACE
Organum ALBUM 1985
1985 Organum LP of dense, ritualistic drone on L.A.Y.L.A.H. Antirecords.
SOUND PERCEPTION
Eduard Artemyev COMPOSITION 1979
Eduard Artemyev's cue for the trolley journey into the Zone in Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979), blending railroad noise with synthesizer drone.
SOUND TIME SPACE
Kraftwerk ALBUM 1977
Kraftwerk's 1977 album built around the image of the European rail network.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY TIME
François Bayle ALBUM 1978
François Bayle's acousmatic works from 1978 and 1979, reissued by Recollection GRM.
SOUND SPACE
PROTOCOL
A brief control pulse marking the onset of an event, without indicating its duration.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY TIME
Éliane Radigue ALBUM 1998
Éliane Radigue's three-part electronic meditation on death and passage.
SOUND TIME PERCEPTION
La Monte Young COMPOSITION 1958
La Monte Young's 1958 work of extended, sustained tones, widely cited as an origin point of musical minimalism.
SOUND TIME TUNING
Erkki Kurenniemi ORGANIZATION
University of Helsinki Electronic Music Studio
Finland's first electronic music studio, built by Erkki Kurenniemi from 1962.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY
Lejaren Hiller ORGANIZATION
University of Illinois Experimental Music Studios
Founded 1958 by Lejaren Hiller, arguably the first electronic/computer music studio in the Western Hemisphere.
SOUND COMPUTATION NUMBER
Philip Bezanson, Robert Shallenberg, Kenneth Gaburo ORGANIZATION
University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios
Founded 1964 around the world's first real-time digital synthesizer, built by James Cessna.
SOUND COMPUTATION
Patrick Saint-Jean, Iannis Xenakis INSTRUMENT
Xenakis's graphic composition system, translating tablet drawings directly into sound.
SOUND COMPUTATION FORM
Emerald Web ALBUM
Valley of the Birds (Remastered)
Emerald Web's synthesizer duo album, remastered.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Valentino Braitenberg BOOK 1984
Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology
Braitenberg's thought experiments in which simple sensorimotor machines produce lifelike behavior — a foundational text on emergence from minimal parts.
CYBERNETICS PERCEPTION COMPUTATION
Swiss duo (Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang) performing with cracked everyday electronics.
SOUND INSTRUMENTS FEEDBACK
CONCEPT
The general paradigm of using varying voltages to control synthesizer parameters continuously.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY FEEDBACK
Iannis Xenakis COMPOSITION 1989
Voyage absolu des Unari vers Andromède
Electroacoustic work by Iannis Xenakis.
NUMBER SOUND
Charles Tyler Ensemble, Steve Reid ALBUM 1975
Charles Tyler Ensemble's 1975 free-jazz album.
SOUND TIME
Waldorf Music INSTRUMENT
Waldorf's wavetable synthesizer, reviving the PPG Wave lineage with an extensive knob-per-function interface.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
German synthesizer manufacturer founded in 1988 by PPG's former German distributor.
INSTRUMENTS TECHNOLOGY
ORGANIZATION
Satoshi Ashikawa's environmental-music imprint on his Sound Process label, home to the three-LP Wave Notation series.
SOUND SPACE PERCEPTION
CONCEPT
Reflecting a waveform back on itself once it crosses a threshold, generating additional harmonics.
COMPUTATION SOUND
CONCEPT
Storing successive single-cycle waveforms in memory and scanning between them to shape timbre.
COMPUTATION SOUND
American composer and synthesist, pioneer of the Moog synthesizer in recorded music.
SOUND TECHNOLOGY TUNING
American writer; the cut-up method, tape-recorder experiments, and language as a control system.
LANGUAGE SOUND TECHNOLOGY
John Cage COMPOSITION 1952
John Cage's 1952–53 tape composition assembled from hundreds of spliced sound fragments organized by chance operations.
SOUND TIME
Xenharmonic community WEBSITE
A deep reference for microtonal music — tunings, temperaments, scales, notation.
NUMBER TUNING SOUND
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