[tonystride]

Totally agree, needing to groove or follow harmony in some ways is a limited way of thinking about music. And my job is to teach people how to groove and follow harmony! One of my favorite types of music is electro acoustic because it is soooo far from the ideas of western music, probably most similar in formal structure. That being said Radio Head’s ‘Amnesiac’ is a superb example at bringing together the extended sonic pallets of electro acoustic in a main stream setting. What are some examples where you feel technology has enhanced traditional music forms?

[matthewh806]

Yeah, Radiohead are a great example indeed of bringing these two worlds together. Kid A is another amazing one from them.

When you say "traditional music forms" what do you mean specifically? I'm trying to avoid going down a rabbit hole of references which answer the wrong question :D

My answer to any question would change day to day really, especially at the moment as I'm finding lots of new and interesting ways to think about and approach production. Last night I was watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VspVQiG6hj8 (most well known as the artist Rrose making pitch black techno) which presents such a simple idea for creating an interesting drone sound using resonance alone & without any actual audio input.

I think a lot of the early IDM people like Aphex Twin, Autechre etc in their music have really used technology to push music beyond its traditional forms. And you have people like Oval that go with this kind of idea of "the medium is the message" (https://archive.aec.at/media/assets/b3d9569953edbc479d2a7bf6...) marking CDs to create glitches etc and surfing through filestystems to create microsamples

[tonystride]

yeah 'traditional music forms' was a poor choice of words, guess I meant western music, or modern popular styles.

I really love synthesis & IDM but I tend to gravitate more towards soundscape compositions that are made of samples that have been abstracted to varying degrees. For example here's a piece I made that loosely follows Sonata form but has very little harmony or rhythm. Made completely of samples from an outside field and my living room. https://soundcloud.com/anthony-nagid/the-reality-sculptor-st...

Thanks for the essay, I'll put that in my que! There's a book I really like on 'The Art of Sound Organization' that got me into these styles. https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Art-Sound-Organization-...