I’m currently reading the book “Composing Electronic Music, A New Aesthetic” by the electronic music composer Curtis Roads. I would say this is the most thorough and complete book when addressing electronic music, going from the medium history to its developments and most important work. Also the book goes through very technical aspects of the medium, like the physical nature of sound.

From what I have read some specific points have stranded out that gave me another perspective of how viewing sound. In the introduction of the book, Roads gives a very smart analogy of the difference between electronic music and acoustic music. He said that acoustic music is like integer numbers and that electronic music are like real numbers, meaning that electronic music follows the rules of all acoustic music, but then expands every single feature to great extents. An example of this would be how in electronic music timbre can be drastically manipulated while in acoustic music, timbre is determined by the instrument.

I found very interesting the chapter on the book called Sonic Narrative, where Roads explains the capabilities of narrative development by using electronic mediums. For example he explained that in electronic music you can symbolize thing with greater detail, by using samples or recordings of such element that is going to be symbolized and that the acoustic counterpart cannot compete agains this feature.

This book will help me as a framework of what electronic music is and what is it capable of. Mostly all my compositions are electronically made and I like more the medium that the acoustic medium. Furthermore I have listen to Roads music and I found that his way of using granulator synthesis creates really complex and interesting compositions.