Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instruments. It originated around the middle of the 20th century, following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition to fixed media during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de recherches musicales at the ORTF in Paris, the home of musique concrète, the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, where the focus was on the composition of elektronische Musik, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, where tape music, electronic music, and computer music were all explored. Practical electronic music instruments began to appear in the early 20th century.
Annie Gosfield is a New-York-based composer who works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. She composes for others and performs with her own group, taking her music to festivals, factories, clubs, art spaces and concert halls. Much of her work combines acoustic instruments with electronic sounds, incorporating unusual sources such as satellite sounds, machine sounds, detuned or out-of-tune samples and industrial noises. Her work often contains improvisation and frequently uses extended techniques and/or altered musical instruments. She won a 2012 Berlin Prize.
İlhan Kemaleddin Mimaroğlu was a Turkish American musician and electronic music composer.
Daniel Deacon is an American composer and electronic musician based in Baltimore, Maryland.
An experimental musical instrument is a musical instrument that modifies or extends an existing instrument or class of instruments, or defines or creates a new class of instrument. Some are created through simple modifications, such as cracked cymbals or metal objects inserted between piano strings in a prepared piano. Some experimental instruments are created from household items like a homemade mute for brass instruments such as bathtub plugs. Other experimental instruments are created from electronic spare parts, or by mixing acoustic instruments with electric components.
Maggi Payne is an American composer, flutist, video artist, recording engineer/editor, and historical remastering engineer who creates electroacoustic, instrumental, vocal works, and works involving visuals.
Robert Carl is an American composer who currently resides in Hartford, Connecticut. He was chair of the composition program at the Hartt School, University of Hartford.
Lutz Glandien is a German avant garde composer and musician based in Berlin. He has composed a number of classical and electroacoustic pieces, released four solo albums, and collaborated with English percussionist Chris Cutler to record two acclaimed avant-rock albums, Domestic Stories (1992) and p53 (1996).
Jesper Nordin is Swedish composer. His music mixes traditional Swedish folk music, rock music, electroacoustics and improvisation. In 2002 his composition Calm Like a Bomb won second prize in Category B: electroacoustic music with voice or instruments in the 24th Russolo Composers Competition, and this piece was released on a CD together with music by the other prizewinners. The following year he was a finalist in Category A: electroacoustic music, of the same competition. He was Composer in Residence at SR P2, Swedish Radio’s serious music channel, from 2004 to 2006. "Residues", released in 2006 by Swedish Radio, has been hailed as a "milestone for contemporary music lovers" in France and as "a central album of the Swedish music from the first decade of the 21st century" in Swedish press. Nordin was given a recommendation at UNESCO's Rostrum 2005 and his music has been played at several ISCM festivals.
Robert Scott Thompson is a composer of ambient, instrumental and electroacoustic music. He earned the B.Mus. degree from the University of Oregon and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, San Diego. His primary teachers include Bernard Rands, Roger Reynolds, Joji Yuasa and F. Richard Moore. He creates work in a wide variety of forms ranging from chamber and orchestral music to works for the virtuoso soloist, computer music, and experimental video art.
:PAPERCUTZ is a Portuguese electronic music act formed as a side project in Porto that became a fully active band in 2008. Bruno Miguel is the only official member of Papercutz and solely responsible for its musical direction. After recordings, Bruno assembles a live band to perform with him which may include musicians used on studio recordings. Past musicians have included vocalists Melissa Veras, a US singer with Portuguese ascendancy born in New York and Portuguese Marisa Pinto, Marcela Freitas as well as instrumentalists Bruno Ribeiro, Nuno Sarafa and Francisco Bernardo, among others.
Cory Allen is an author, podcast host, musician, composer, and mastering engineer. On his podcast The Astral Hustle, he speaks with experts in mindfulness, neuroscience, and philosophy. Allen writes about mindfulness, meditation, and self-development. Music released under his own name is usually categorized as minimal avant-garde composition and has been described as 'clever and intricate structures that will repay the careful ear.'
Nicholas Roy Vasallo is an American composer. In 1997, Vasallo graduated from Monte Vista High School in Danville, California, where he began his musical career as a guitarist and vocalist in a hardcore band called Y.F.H., later Antagony. He has been credited as being the father of extreme metal genre deathcore. Vasallo has since evolved from a metal musician into an award-winning composer and professor of music. He is best known for his compositions combining heavy metal sounds and aesthetics with experimental classical techniques. He has released four albums containing his compositions with different independent labels. His music is published by Santa Barbara Music Publishers and released by Neuma Records and Innova Recordings. Vasallo is of Filipino and Taiwanese descent.
Saman Samadi is a Persian-American composer, performer, and musicologist with a prolific body of work spanning nearly twenty years. He earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge.
Gene Pritsker is a Russian-born composer, guitarist, rapper and record producer living in New York City. He moved to the United States with his family in 1978 and lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. He attended the Manhattan School of Music from 1990 to 1994 where he studied composition with Giampaolo Bracali.
Kara-Lis Coverdale, also known as K-LC, is a Canadian composer, musician, producer, based in Montreal, Quebec. Coverdale is known equally for her piano, organ, and keyboard work as she is for her experimental electronic projects; often her work integrates the two, blurring the lines between traditional composition and research-based modernism. Her 25 minute album Grafts (2017) was named an album of the year by Noisey, Crack, Boomkat, Resident Advisor, Tinymixtapes, and more.
George Hurd is an American composer whose work focuses primarily on electroacoustic music combining classical instrumentation and electronics. He has also written a substantial amount of music for solo electronics and classical chamber ensemble. He is based in Berlin, Germany and heads The Hurd Ensemble, a chamber group dedicated to performing his pieces. A large portion of his work is concert music for The Hurd Ensemble and other groups/artists such as the Grammy-winning Third Coast Percussion, Elevate Ensemble, and violinist Carla Kihlstedt, and music for dance, most notably with choreographer Loni Landon and LEVYdance on Meet Me Normal (2014) and the murmur of yearning for Kinetech Arts.
Richard Aaker Trythall was an American and Italian composer and pianist of contemporary classical music.
Kelly Moran is an American composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Brooklyn. Her music spans classical, electronic, minimalist, jazz, impressionist, and metal genres. In many of her compositions, Moran utilizes electronic musical techniques in combination with the John Cage-pioneered technique of the prepared piano. Moran signed with Warp Records in September 2018.
Scott L. Miller is an American composer best known for his electroacoustic chamber music and ecosystemic performance pieces.
