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Tom Cosm is an electronic musician and educator based in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is best known for his work within the computer music scene, especially for the creation and distribution of tutorials related to the use of Ableton Live.
He has performed extensively in both New Zealand (Aotearoa) and Australia, as well as many countries in Europe, Asia and South America. One of his more notable performances was at the Canaan Downs festival [1] in New Zealand.
Cosm has led workshops at the Boom Festival in 2008 [2] and the Rainbow Serpent Festival. [3] Along with Pitch Black, Tom led a workshop at Cargo in London on 24 July 2008. [4]
Tom is New Zealand's only Ableton certified trainer and assisted Ableton with both the Australian (2009) and Israeli (2011) certification events.
Cosm makes and publishes online tutorials, providing the methods and techniques for performing live electronic music. [5]
Cosm runs and moderates a teaching website, [6] based on the business model of voluntary payment. Users are able to access a multitude of regularly updated tutorials for free in standard, YouTube-style format, or high-definition through a monthly subscription. All of Tom Cosm's knowledge is given openly. The only real difference between material given to those who voluntarily pay and those that don't, seems to be the quality of video, and the fact that a student can download a lesson in its entirety after subscribing.
Each year he travels to Europe and USA, giving public and private workshops.
Tom contributed a track to the Compilation Contact Lens on Cosmic Conspiracy Records, [7] two tracks to the compilation Ultrapop 2 on Fabularecords in 2007, [8] and the Earthbeatz compilation on Native Harmonix Records (2008). Tom has since decided not to commercially release any more music, as making it freely available helps build public recognition of his name.
Tom makes his work freely available through his website. [9] He has several live sets and tunes available for download. He also offers the component parts of his computer compositions so that others can download and see how they are created.
In his own words "I treat music as a form of communication that completely overpowers that of any other kind of human interaction, and I don't want money or middle men getting in between the link that we create when you listen to my music, or have its access restricted to people who can either afford it, or have the technical ability to steal it. Everyone can download my music free at anytime directly from the source where it was created."
Tom was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he spent his formative years. He left Linwood College (New Zealand) in 2001. Growing up he was influenced by Happy Hardcore, Drum'n'bass and Breakcore/IDM. He also cites classical composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff and Franz Liszt as large influences. He studied towards a degree in music, specifically Jazz, at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, but left after two years to continue his work with computers and music.
Alexander Paul Coe, known professionally as Sasha, is a Welsh DJ and record producer. He is best known for his live events and electronic music as a solo artist, as well as his collaborations with British DJ John Digweed as Sasha & John Digweed. He was voted as World No. 1 DJ in 2000 in a poll conducted by DJ Magazine. He is a four-time International Dance Music Awards winner, four-time DJ Awards winner and Grammy Award nominee.
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.
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