Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music

by Joel Chadabe
Prentice Hall, New Jersey, U.S.A.,
1997, 370 pp.
Paper, Illus. ISBN: 0-13-303231-0.

Reviewed by Marc Battier


The list of informative books on electronic and computer music is surprisingly short for such an active field. Furthermore, most of the literature is oriented toward technical information and based on secondary research. This is why the lively new book by Joel Chadabe, Electric Sound, is an invaluable and unique contribution to the field of electronic music in general. Subtitled The Past and Promise of Electronic Music, the book relies on primary research to deliver a comprehensive historical survey and paints a landscape of the wide variety of practice, experimentation and achievement in the field.

The author devised a unique approach to writing this book: over the course of several years, he conducted more than 150 interviews with composers, researchers and entrepreneurs. This makes for a very engaging presentation in which it seems that the people who have made a contribution to the field talk directly to the reader. It also creates an inexhaustible resource for citations---a fact that will not escape the scrupulous attention of students, who will find first-hand intellectual food for the preparation of their theses here. All citations are dutifully referenced in an appendix to the book.

Chadabe has also extracted numerous citations from sources other than his personal interviews. The sheer number of references displays the depth of knowledge the author possesses in this field. The book is generously illustrated with photographs, many of which were taken by the author and, like the excerpts from interviews, appear here for the first time in print. This alone contributes to the unique position of the book in the literature dedicated to electronic music.

Chadabe has chosen a structure that displays his own interpretation of electronic music history. Although the book's main structure appears to be its division into 12 chapters, the author has also placed six main titles here and there in the text. These can be seen as outlining six consecutive sections that address broad questions. Hence, some chapters are gathered under a single title: chapters 2, 3 and 4, for example, are placed under a title that places emphasis on studio techniques. What the author tells us in this section is that studio techniques have been used both inside and outside the studio---that is, with and without magnetic tape. In other words, the medium is less important than the set of musical operations one chooses for a particular piece. This is a rather new way of looking at history. Even in the recent past, most books would tend to place music created with electronic techniques in the studio in opposition to live electronic music: the environment in which the music was set became a category. Chadabe begins with a short history of electric and electronic instruments from their origins through the 1950s. There is no doubt that a discussion of instruments is a natural opening for a study of music technology. But a quick look at the table of contents shows that the book also ends with the idea that the most recent evolution in the field returns to the use of instruments. This conclusion is not at all obvious, as music technology, for over 30-odd years, has been relying more on machines or technological know-how than on instruments. In that respect, Electric Sound offers, from the start, the promise of a highly original account of a whole century of music technology.

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are gathered under the title tape music and related technology, in the studio and in performance. As previously noted, linking tape techniques and live performance is, on the part of the author, a strong statement about music technology. After all, due to his comprehensive knowledge of conventional studio techniques and the most advanced steps into what came to be known as hyperinstruments or intelligent instruments, he has been an actor involved in changing the face of electronic music by advocating the idea that composing in this medium could be done interactively. Using a combination of state-of-the-art machines and special devices he had custom-made for his use, Chadabe was able, in the 1970s and 1980s, to expand the language of electronic music into the realm of interactive composition. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 examine how the digital technology and synthesizer concepts come together. Here also, Chadabe's intention is openly displayed: to link the evolution of music technology in the twentieth century to the revolution of the musical instrument. In these three chapters, the author shows how specific computer technology used in producing sounds has met the analog synthesizer and, through a series of technological achievements, has become a new kind of musical instrument. Where are we in the development of performance devices and sound generators? is the question addressed in chapters 8 and 9. The book nears completion with a question that loops back to its opening, as Chadabe asks what ideas emerge for an interactive instrument. The question of where we are going is the topic of the last section of the book, titled Summaries and Speculations.

Electric Sounds is the work of an author who is a composer, an active contributor to the field of electronic music through his research endeavors, and a witness of his time. It marks the advent of a new era in which electronic music, in all its aspects, is becoming a part of our cultural memory. It is a book that is not to be missed.