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Chapter 14 - Conclusions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2013

Nick Collins
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Margaret Schedel
Affiliation:
Stony Brook University, State University of New York
Scott Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Summary

We hope you've found much to engage you in this introduction to electronic music. We could hardly explore every path, but have pointed out a few routes; the further reading and listening suggestions in the chapters will lead you on many interesting musical journeys. The final suggestions for this chapter are a collection of some further alternative histories, theories, ideas, and music to pursue. We'd like to take the opportunity in the paragraphs remaining to us to point to a few further trends and movements in electronic music, perhaps because they were given less attention elsewhere in the book or are worth acknowledging as ongoing sites of scholarship and musical activity.

There is certainly a mass interest in electronic music history, evidenced by articles and programs on electronic music in popular media, and often associated with the avid technology-rich cultures of the present. Retro movements pore over the inspiring examples, and missed opportunities, of the past, spending more time with, say, 8-bit music, than the accelerating technology curve allowed in the 1980s. Enthusiasts collect and restore old equipment; Phil Cirocco describes in great detail a loving restoration of a 1940 Novachord, a romantic adventure in electronics, metal, and wood, set against a peril of “black tar” contamination of the unit by old capacitors. There is a continuing use of legacy equipment, such as in the analog studio room at The Hague's Institute of Sonology, amongst many other institutions keeping alive tape and analog synthesizer tradition. Long-term maintenance is an active issue in the fast-paced technology world, especially for software; open source software has a potentially greater chance of survival, as seen by the long existence of the Music 1 descendant Csound. Propellerheads’ proprietary Rebirth software, originally released in 1997, has been discontinued and is now given tribute in an online museum (www.rebirthmuseum.com), though it has also recently re-appeared in the form of an iPhone app.

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Electronic Music , pp. 192 - 194
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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References

Duckworth, William (2005) Virtual Music: How the Web Got Wired for Sound (New York: Routledge).Google Scholar
Norman, Katharine (2004) Sounding Art: Eight Literary Excursions Through Electronic Music (Aldershot: Ashgate).Google Scholar
Oram, Daphne (1972) An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics (London: Galliard Ltd.).Google Scholar
Smirnov, Andrei (2010) Sound in Z – Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia (Cologne: Buchhandlung Walther König GmbH & Co. KG).Google Scholar
Tompkins, Dave (2010) How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop, The Machine Speaks (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House Publishing).Google Scholar

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  • Conclusions
  • Nick Collins, University of Durham, Margaret Schedel, Stony Brook University, State University of New York, Scott Wilson, University of Birmingham
  • Book: Electronic Music
  • Online publication: 05 May 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511820540.014
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  • Conclusions
  • Nick Collins, University of Durham, Margaret Schedel, Stony Brook University, State University of New York, Scott Wilson, University of Birmingham
  • Book: Electronic Music
  • Online publication: 05 May 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511820540.014
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusions
  • Nick Collins, University of Durham, Margaret Schedel, Stony Brook University, State University of New York, Scott Wilson, University of Birmingham
  • Book: Electronic Music
  • Online publication: 05 May 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511820540.014
Available formats
×