ABSTRACT

Teaching Electronic Music: Cultural, Creative, and Analytical Perspectives offers innovative and practical techniques for teaching electronic music in a wide range of classroom settings. Across a dozen essays, an array of contributors—including practitioners in musicology, art history, ethnomusicology, music theory, performance, and composition—reflect on the challenges of teaching electronic music, highlighting pedagogical strategies while addressing questions such as:

  • What can instructors do to expand and diversify musical knowledge?
  • Can the study of electronic music foster critical reflection on technology?
  • What are the implications of a digital culture that allows so many to be producers of music?
  • How can instructors engage students in creative experimentation with sound?

Electronic music presents unique possibilities and challenges to instructors of music history courses, calling for careful attention to creative curricula, historiographies, repertoires, and practices. Teaching Electronic Music features practical models of instruction as well as paths for further inquiry, identifying untapped methodological directions with broad interest and wide applicability.

chapter |22 pages

Introduction

Narrative Histories, “Real” Music, and the Digital Vernacular

part I|97 pages

Analytical, Descriptive, and Creative Strategies

chapter 1|18 pages

Then and Now

A Practical Guide for Introducing Electronic Music

chapter 2|15 pages

Parametric Analysis

An Early Tool for Analyzing Electronic Music

chapter 3|17 pages

Analyzing Electronic Music

Uncovering the Original Conditions of Production

chapter 4|15 pages

Sound Design and Compositional Process in Skrillex

From Minimalism and FM Synthesis to Dubstep

chapter 5|13 pages

Teaching Principles of Interactive Sound

A Practice-Based Approach

chapter 6|17 pages

Algorithmic Composition

Implementations in Western Tonal Art Music, Video Games, and Other Music Technologies

part II|17 pages

Unifying the Curriculum

part III|84 pages

Critical Interventions and Methods

chapter 8|16 pages

Posthuman Sound Design

Describing Hybridity, Distributed Cognition, and Mutation

chapter 9|15 pages

Composing by Hacking

Technology Appropriation as a Pedagogical Tool for Electronic Music

chapter 10|21 pages

Listening to and Sampling the Land

On the Decolonization of Electronic Music Pedagogy

chapter 12|15 pages

Sound and Image in New Media Art