Abstract
This chapter discusses the practices of silicon luthiers , the master craftspeople of electronic music . It illustrates how the design of electronic music instruments is heavily indebted to the spirit of invention that characterized electronics research before the standardization of components, and connects them with the associated engineering methodologies relevant today. Through the presentation of various sound generation schemes and interfaces, an alternate history of electronic music is drawn at the component, interface, and system level. Musicians and designers have always questioned the limits of their devices, as well as the preconceptions of what instruments could or should be: Through the development of original interfaces and unusual synthesis methods, they offered their personal visions for the field. This chapter offers a view of how these innovators helped shape the present and many futures of music technology.
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Notes
- 1.
See, among many other examples, Pauline Oliveros’ AUMI project.
- 2.
- 3.
For a discussion of gender bias in radio’s technical culture, see the Chap. 5 of Ham Radio’s Technical Culture (Haring 2007). For an ongoing documentation of gender bias in electronic music today, see the female pressure fact survey (Female Pressure 2015), amongst many. For a sample of women in electronic music, see Rodgers (2010). Unfortunately, the author knows of no generalized or selective history of women in homemade electronic music instrument design at the time of writing.
- 4.
Personal conversation with Charles Dodge, 2015 .
- 5.
Personal conversation with Curtis Bahn, 2016.
- 6.
- 7.
Compare it specifically to the scores/diagrams for Tudor’s Untitled or the generalized version of Rainforest (4).
- 8.
This selection is, once again, a reflection of the interviews and analyses detailed in the author’s master’s thesis (Teboul 2015). As such, these examples are most representative of this subculture as it can be encountered in the northeastern USA and Europe, along with all the biases this implies.
- 9.
Personal exchange, 2015.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter is dedicated to Don Buchla, Jean-Claude Risset, Ray Wilson, and Pauline Oliveros, with thanks to Nicolas Collins, Jon Appleton and Eduardo Miranda.
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Teboul, E. (2017). The Transgressive Practices of Silicon Luthiers. In: Miranda, E. (eds) Guide to Unconventional Computing for Music. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49881-2_4
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