![]() ![]() There are books about some aspects of electronic music like sampling and synthesis. Instead the information mostly resides with the people the make the music. The books just haven't been written about it yet-generally speaking I'm sure there are some. But the theory was there the entire time, evolving with the music, but there.Īnd just because that hasn't all happened yet for electronic music doesn't mean that the theory isn't there. In order for the theory of say classical, jazz, or even pop music to be codified into something that everybody more or less agreed with it took years of people making that music and years more of people studying it and people studying those studies until finally some sort of pedagogy emerged. You can pretty much always work backwards and figure that stuff out.Īnd, yes, the reason you don't hear more about electronic music theory is because of how relatively new it is. When somebody says "music theory" they are really just talking about an explanation of how something was done. Studying the equivalent development for other genres would be a good place to look for the "theory" of these individual genres. Acid house in particular is a good case study for how the style of a subgenre was heavily influenced by a particular instrument. Additionally, the "knob-tweaking" capabilities of most synths is an avenue for generating a lot of sonic interest in some styles. Most synthesizers through history have been best at repetitive patterns with different parts coming and going in piecemeal rather than sweeping, intricate compositional changes. In fact, most electronic styles have been influenced quite heavily by the gear itself. An Acid Bass patch refers to the type of sound you can get from a Roland TB-303 while modulating the frequency and resonance controls. Then you can have some more genre-specific conventions for sounds, sometimes arising from a particular piece of gear that became popular during the time. You can hear this sort of sound throughout in the background of the above piece.īass and Leads are pretty self-explanatory. It's kinda the synth equivalent to a string section. ![]() Pads are sounds designed particularly for chordal work, and typically have a more ambient quality with slow attacks and long releases. In the theme to Stranger Things you hear a typical arp sound throughout the piece. ![]() This developed in part because some prominent synthesizers (the Juno 60 comes to mind) included an automated arpeggiator to facilitate this type of playing. Many early synthesis focused on replicating timbres of real instruments, but some synthesis-specific descriptors of timbre have arisen over time:Īrp is a name commonly given to a staccato sound (or patch) suited for arpeggios. So much so that you might even be building up each sound starting from a sine wave as is the case for FM synthesis. In synthesis, you have a lot of control over the timbre of each part at your fingertips. We sometimes take timbre for granted with non-electronic music styles, since there tend to be "tried-and-true" instrument/tone color combinations for most genres. All the same conventions and lessons from typical music theory still apply in electronic genres, but I believe what you hinting at is some added emphasis on sound design. ![]()
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