ABSTRACT
This chapter explores contemporary live electronic music: its technologies, its practices, and some of the educational opportunities that live electronic music presents. It introduces the knowledge and ideas necessary to turn the potential of live electronic and digital music making technologies into reality. The performance possibilities for solo and ensemble settings are ever changing, and the chapter outlines many of the practices that can be taken up in educational contexts. Live electronic music in the early twenty-first century is generally aligned with musical styles broadly described as electronica or electronic dance music (EDM). It provides rich opportunities for music education because it is at the crossroads of many important considerations for student engagement. The chapter provides more details about the most commonly used classes of electronic instruments. While digital synthesizers largely replaced analog instruments, older analog instruments are prized, and new releases of revised older models are common. Like synthesizers, drum machines from the 1970s and 1980s have become classics.
