Live electronic music (also known as live electronics) is a form of music that can include traditional electronic sound-generating devices, modified electric musical instruments, hacked sound generating technologies, and computers. Initially the practice developed in reaction to sound-based composition for fixed media such as

musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic ...

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

and early

computer music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ...

Musical improvisation Musical improvisation (also known as musical extemporization) is the creative activity of immediate ("in the moment") musical composition, which combines performance with communication of Emotion, emotions and Musical technique, instrumental techn ...

often plays a large role in the performance of this music. The

timbre In music, timbre (), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instrument ...

s of various sounds may be transformed extensively using devices such as

amplifier An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It is a two-port electronic circuit that uses electric power from a power su ...

filters Filtration is a physical process that separates solid matter and fluid from a mixture. Filter, filtering, filters or filtration may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming * Fil ...

, ring modulators and other forms of

circuitry An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electric ...

Real-time Real-time, realtime, or real time may refer to: Computing * Real-time computing, hardware and software systems subject to a specified time constraint * Real-time clock, a computer clock that keeps track of the current time * Real-time Control Syst ...

generation and manipulation of audio using

live coding Live coding, sometimes referred to as on-the-fly programming,Wang G. & Cook P. (2004"On-the-fly Programming: Using Code as an Expressive Musical Instrument" In ''Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expr ...

is now commonplace.

History

1800s–1940s

Early electronic instruments

Early electronic instruments intended for live performance, such as

Thaddeus Cahill Thaddeus Cahill (June 18, 1867 – April 12, 1934) was a prominent american inventor of the early 20th century. He is widely credited with the invention of the first electromechanical musical instrument, which he dubbed the telharmonium. He st ...

Telharmonium The Telharmonium (also known as the Dynamophone) was an early electrical organ, developed by Thaddeus Cahill c. 1896 and patented in 1897. , filed 1896-02-04. The electrical signal from the Telharmonium was transmitted over wires; it was hea ...

(1897) and instruments developed between the two world wars, such as the

Theremin The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone, etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named aft ...

(1919), Spharophon (1924),

ondes Martenot The ondes Martenot ( ; , ) or ondes musicales () is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a lateral-vibrato Keyboard instrument, keyboard or by moving a ring tied to a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin. D ...

(1928), and the

Trautonium The Trautonium is an electronic synthesizer invented in 1930 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschule's music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. Soon afterward Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's de ...

(1929), may be cited as antecedents, but were intended simply as new means of sound production, and did nothing to change the nature of musical composition or performance. Many early compositions included these electronic instruments, though the instruments were typically used as substitutes for standard classical instruments. An example includes composer

Joseph Schillinger Joseph Moiseyevich Schillinger (; (other sources: ) – 23 March 1943) was a composer, music theorist, and music composition, composition teacher who originated the Schillinger System of Musical Composition. He was born in Kharkiv, Kharkov, in the ...

, who in 1929 composed ''First Airphonic Suite for Theremin and Orchestra'', which premièred with the

Cleveland Orchestra The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the " Big Five". T ...

with

Leon Theremin Lev Sergeyevich Termen ( 18963 November 1993), better known as Leon Theremin, was a Russian inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also worke ...

as soloist.

Percy Grainger Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 188220 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who moved to the United States in 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. In the course of a long and ...

, used ensembles of four or six

theremin The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone, etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named aft ...

s (in preference to a string quartet) for his two earliest experimental ''Free Music'' compositions (1935–37) because of the instrument's complete 'gliding' freedom of pitch.( The ondes Martenot was also used as a featured instrument in the 1930s, and composer

Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithology, ornithologist. One of the major composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th century, he was also an ou ...

used it in the '' Fête des belles eaux'' for six ondes, written for the 1937 International World's Fair in Paris. Cage's '' Imaginary Landscape No. 1'' (1939) was among the earliest compositions to include an innovative use of live electronic material; it featured two variable-speed phonograph turntables and sine-tone recordings. Cage's interest in live electronics continued through the 1940s and 1950s, providing inspiration for the formation of a number of live-electronic groups in America who came to regard themselves as the pioneers of a new art form.

1950s–1960s

In Europe,

Pierre Schaeffer Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: , ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His inno ...

had attempted live generation of the final stages of his works at the first public concert of ''musique concrète'' in 1951 with limited success. However, it was in Europe at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s that the most coherent transition from studio electronic techniques to live synthesis occurred.

Mauricio Kagel Mauricio Raúl Kagel (; 24 December 1931 – 18 September 2008) was an Argentine-German composer and academic teacher. Life and career Early life and education Mauricio Raúl Kagel was born on 24 December 1931 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into an ...

's ''Transición II'' (1959) combined two tape recorders for live manipulation of the sounds of piano and percussion, and beginning in 1964

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...

entered on a period of intensive work with live electronics with three works, '' Mikrophonie I'' and '' Mixtur'' (both 1964), and '' Mikrophonie II''. While earlier live-electronic compositions, such as Cage's ''Cartridge Music'' (1960), had mainly employed amplification, Stockhausen's innovation was to add electronic transformation through filtering, which erased the distinction between instrumental and electronic music. During the 1960s, a number of composers believed studio-based composition, such as musique concrète, lacked elements that were central to the creation of

live music A concert, often known informally as a gig or show, is a live performance of music in front of an audience. The performance may be carried by a single musician, in which case it is sometimes called a recital, or by a musical ensemble such as an ...

, such as: spontaneity, dialogue, discovery and group interaction. Many composers viewed the development of live electronics as a reaction against "the largely technocratic and rationalistic ethos of studio processed tape music" which was devoid of the visual and theatrical component of live performance. By the 1970s, live electronics had become the primary area of innovation in electronic music.

1970s–1980s

The 1970s and 1980s were notable for contributions by electronic musician

Jean-Michel Jarre Jean-Michel André Jarre (; born 24 August 1948) is a French composer, performer and record producer. He is a pioneer in the Electronic music, electronic, Ambient music, ambient and New-age music, new-age genres, and is known for organising out ...

. The success of Oxygene and his large scale concerts which he performed attracted millions of people, breaking his own record for largest audience four times.) In fact Jarre continued to break his own records up to the end of the century, with 3.5 million people attending 1997's Oxygene in Moscow.

1990s

Laptronica

Laptronica is a form of live electronic music or computer music in which laptops are used as musical instruments. The term is a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of "laptop computer" and "electronica". The term gained a certain degree of currency in the 1990s and is of significance due to the use of highly powerful computation being made available to musicians in highly portable form, and therefore in live performance. Many sophisticated forms of sound production, manipulation and organization (which had hitherto only been available in studios or academic institutions) became available to use in live performance, largely by younger musicians influenced by and interested in developing experimental popular music forms. A combination of many laptops can be used to form a laptop orchestra.

Live coding

Live coding (sometimes referred to as 'on-the-fly programming', 'just in time programming') is a programming practice centred upon the use of improvised

interactive programming Interactive programming is the procedure of writing parts of a program while it is already active. This focuses on the program text as the main interface for a running process, rather than an interactive application, where the program is desig ...

. Live coding is often used to create sound and image based

digital media In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, an ...

, and is particularly prevalent in computer music, combining

algorithmic composition Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music. Algorithms (or, at the very least, formal sets of rules) have been used to compose music for centuries; the procedures used to plot voice-leading in Western counterpo ...

with improvisation, Typically, the process of writing is made visible by projecting the computer screen in the audience space, with ways of visualising the code an area of active research. There are also approaches to human live coding in improvised

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

. Live coding techniques are also employed outside of performance, such as in producing sound for film or audio/visual work for interactive art installations. Live coding is also an increasingly popular technique in programming-related lectures and conference presentations, and has been described as a "best practice" for computer science lectures by Mark Guzdial.

Electroacoustic improvisation

Electroacoustic improvisation (EAI) is a form of

free improvisation Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any general rules, instead following the intuition of its performers. The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre of ...

that was originally referred to as live electronics. It has been part of the sound art world since the 1930s with the early works of John Cage. '' Source'' magazine published articles by a number of leading electronic and avant-garde composers in the 1960s. It was further influenced by electronic and

electroacoustic music Electroacoustic music is a Music genre, genre of Western art music in which composers use recording technology and audio signal processing to manipulate the timbres of Acoustics, acoustic sounds in the creation of pieces of music. It originated a ...

and the music of American

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...

composers such as

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...

Morton Feldman Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminacy in music, a development associated with the experimental New York School o ...

and

David Tudor David Eugene Tudor (January 20, 1926 – August 13, 1996) was an American pianist and composer of experimental music. Life and career Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefa ...

. British free improvisation group AMM, particularly their guitarist Keith Rowe, have also played a contributing role in bringing attention to the practice.

Notable works 1930s–1960s

The following is an incomplete list, in chronological order, of early notable electronic compositions: *

– '' Imaginary Landscape'' (1939–1952) *

– ''Cartridge Music'' (1960) * Robert Ashley – ''Wolfman'' (1964), ''Lecture Series'' (1965), ''Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon'' (1968) *

– '' Mikrophonie I & II'' (1964 and 1965); '' Mixtur'' (1964); ''

Solo Solo or SOLO may refer to: Arts and entertainment Characters * Han Solo, a ''Star Wars'' character * Jacen Solo, a Jedi in the non-canonical ''Star Wars Legends'' continuity * Kylo Ren (Ben Solo), a ''Star Wars'' character * Napoleon Solo, fr ...

'' (1966); '' Prozession'' (1967); '' Kurzwellen'' (1968); ''

Spiral In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a point, moving further away as it revolves around the point. It is a subtype of whorled patterns, a broad group that also includes concentric objects. Two-dimensional A two-dimension ...

'' (1968) * Alvin Lucier – ''Music for Solo Performer'' (1965), ''North American Time Capsule'' (1967), ''Vespers'' (1968) *

Johannes Fritsch Johannes Georg Fritsch (27 July 1941 – 29 April 2010) was a German composer. At the age of seven, Fritsch found a violin in the attic of his uncle's house in Bensheim-Auerbach, Germany, and began lessons with a village music teacher named Kna ...

– ''Partita'' (1965–66) for viola, contact microphones, tape recorder, filters, and potentiometers (4 players); ''Modulation 2'' (1967), for 13 instruments and live electronics; ''Akroasis'' (1966–68) for large orchestra with jazz band, two singers, live electronics, hurdy-gurdy, music box, and newsreader *

David Behrman David Behrman (born August 16, 1937) is an American composer and a pioneer of computer music. In the early 1960s he was the producer of Columbia Records' ''Music of Our Time'' series, which included the first recording of Terry Riley's ''In C''.< ...

– ''Wave Train'' (1967) * Gordon Mumma – ''Hornpipe'' (1967) *

Steve Reich Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer best known as a pioneer of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich descr ...

– ''

Pendulum Music ''Pendulum Music'' (For Microphones, Amplifiers Speakers and Performers) Reich, S. (1974). "''Pendulum Music''". In '' Writings About Music'' (pp. 12–13). The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Co-published by: New York Univ ...

'' (1968) * Max Neuhaus – ''Drive-in Music'' (1968) * Larry Austin – ''Accidents'' (1968) *

Richard Teitelbaum Richard Lowe Teitelbaum (May 19, 1939 – April 9, 2020) was an American composer, keyboardist, and improvisor. A student of Allen Forte, Mel Powell, and Luigi Nono, he was known for his live electronic music and synthesizer performances. He ...

– ''In Tune'' (1968) * Louis Andriessen, ''Hoe het is'' (1969) for 52 strings and live electronics * Louis Andriessen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Misha Mengelberg, Peter Schat, Jan van Vlijmen – ''Reconstructie'' (1969), Morality opera for soloists, 3 mixed choirs, orchestra, and live electronics * George Brown – ''Splurge'' (1969) * Takehisa Kosugi – ''712-9374'' (1969) * Roger Smalley – ''Transformation I'' (1969)

References

Notes

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * *Eyles, John (2006).
Extended Analysis: 4g: ''Cloud''
. AllAboutJazz.com (21 June) (Accessed 2 May 2013). * * * * * * * * * * * * * *