Curtis Roads: Microsound (2001)

“Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particles lasting less than one-tenth of a second. Recent technological advances allow us to probe and manipulate these pinpoints of sound, dissolving the traditional building blocks of music—notes and their intervals—into a more fluid and supple medium. The sensations of point, pulse (series of points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as particle density increases. Sounds coalesce, evaporate, and mutate into other sounds.

Composers have used theories of microsound in computer music since the 1950s. Distinguished practitioners include Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis. Today, with the increased interest in computer and electronic music, many young composers and software synthesis developers are exploring its advantages. Covering all aspects of composition with sound particles, Microsound offers composition theory, historical accounts, technical overviews, acoustical experiments, descriptions of musical works, and aesthetic reflections.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2001
ISBN 0262182157, 9780262182157
xii+409 pages

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David Toop: Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds (1995/2001)

Sun Ra, Brian Eno, Lee Perry, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Brian Wilson are interviewed in this extraordinary work of sonic history that travels from the rainforests of amazonas to virtual Las Vegas, from David Lynch’s dream house, high in the Hollywood hills to the megalopolis of Tokyo.

Ocean of Sound begins in 1889 at the Paris Exposition when Debussy first heard Javanese music performed. It goes on to comprehensively map a whole century of ambient music and its legacy.

Publisher Serpent’s Tail, 1995
ISBN 185242382X, 9781852423827
306 pages

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Leonardo Music Journal, vols. 9-14 (1999-2004)

LMJ 9: “Power and Responsibility: Politics, Identity and Technology in Music” (1999)
Contributors include: Nicolas Collins, Krystyna Bobrowski, Sergi Jordá. William Duckworth, Mark Trayle, Chris Brown, Justin Bennett, Lowell Cross, Daniel Goode, Fred Ho, Rajmil Fischman, David Dunn, René van Peer, William Osborne, Frederic Rzewski, David Cope, Roger Alsop, Ann Warde, Dante Tanzi, Greg Schiemer, Suguru Goto, Peter Manning, David Ryan, Sasan Rahmatian, John Bischoff, Guy van Belle. Plus notes by CD Contributors. Includes CD: “Power and Responsibility: Converted to Streaming Between Machines,” curated by Guy van Belle.

LMJ 10: “Southern Cones: Music out of Africa and South America” (2000)
Contributors include: Coriún Aharonián, Lucio Edilberto Cuellar Camargo, Carlos Palombini, Daniel Velasco, O’dyke Nzewi, George Lewis, Lukas Ligeti, Artemis Moroni, Jônatas Manzolli, Fernando Von Zuben and Ricardo Gudwin, Damián Keller, Neil McLachlan. Plus notes by CD Contributors. Includes CD: “Southern Cones: Music out of Africa and South America,” curated by Jürgen Bräuninger.

LMJ 11: “Not Necessarily ‘English Music’: Britain’s Second ‘Golden Age'” (2001)
After the first installment of Cool Britannia beguiled the 1960s with its peculiar conflation of Pop, Art, Fashion and Politics, musical experimentation flourished in the U.K. Styles of improvisation, minimalism, electronic music, performance art, political music and “amateur” music grew out of British art schools, universities and urban villages; styles neither as self-important as those of Europe nor as blithely technocratic as those of North America — a peculiarly “English Music” (and Scottish and Welsh). Includes Two-CD Set: “Not Necessarily ‘English Music,'” curated by David Toop.

LMJ 12: “Pleasure” (2002)
From its naughty lyric content to the pounding physicality of its sound, Pop music is unabashedly driven by the pleasure principle. “Serious” music, however, is usually perceived as more refined, genteel, or to put it another way, repressed. And the avant-garde has traditionally found itself in the peculiar position of accompanying bohemian, hedonistic lifestyles with defiantly itchy and uncomfortable music. But are pleasure and thoughtful invention necessarily at odds? Can there be no “bump and mind”? … LMJ 12 includes articles and personal reflections on the role of pleasure in all genres of music. Includes CD: “From Gdansk till Dawn: Contemporary Experimental Music from Eastern Europe,” curated by Christian Scheib and Susanna Niedermayr.

LMJ 13: “Groove, Pit and Wave: Recording, Transmission and Music” (2003)
Sound is encoded in grooves on vinyl, particles on tape and pits in plastic; it travels as acoustic pressure, electromagnetic waves and pulses of light. The rise of the DJ in the last two decades has signaled the arrival of the medium as the instrument — the crowning achievement of a generation for whom tapping the remote control is as instinctive as tapping two sticks together. Turntables, CD players, radios, tape recorders (and their digital emulations) are played, not merely heard; scratching, groove noise, CD glitches, tape hiss and radio interference are the sound of music, not sound effects. John Cage’s 1960 “Cartridge Music” has yet to enter the charts, but its sounds are growing more familiar. In LMJ13 authors contribute their thoughts on the role of recording and/or transmission in the creation, performance and distribution of music: Includes CD: “Splitting Bits, Closing Loops: Recording, Transmission and Music,” curated by Philip Sherburne.

LMJ 14: “Composers inside Electronics: Music after David Tudor” (2004)
Inspired by David Tudor and others, the experimental music community in the 1970s adopted a new working method based on seat-of-the-pants electronic engineering. The circuit — whether homemade, self-hacked or store-bought but scrutinized to death — became the score. A generation later, aspects of the Tudor aesthetic have spread well beyond the avant-garde: hip-hop, house and other forms of dance music and electronica share a similar obsession with the quirks intrinsic to specific pieces of audio gear. In this special volume of Leonardo Music Journal, authors consider all aspects of the work of David Tudor, the influence of Tudor’s ideas on their own work and/or the role of technological idiosyncrasies in their composition, performance or production. Includes CD: “David Tudor: Live Electronic Music,” curated by Ron Kuivila.

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