A Closing Thought on Principles and Practice of Electronic Music

I am finished the book now, and I can honestly say that I learned so much from it. What is interesting is that it began on a rather abstract, philiosophical note, and then it went into technical, preceidural material, and then it ended whith abstract philiosophy, around where it started.

If I were to update the book, I would write it in a similar fashion, but I would omit the parts referring to obsolete technology, relegating them to little paragraphs (at most) in Chapter 10 – A Brief History of Electronic Music. I would also cover current technologies, and I would have at least a whole chapter on digital sound synthesis, not just a section about it. And instead of discussing tape recorders, I might talk about how to do the same things with a computer program.

I can honestly say that I comprehended most of what was written. I was a bit confused on a couple of things, but overall, I got the general idea. I would only suggest this book to those who are interested in both electronics and music, as most other people would have a hard time staying awake while reading it. In other words, it is most definitely not what I would call a “general interest” sort of book, one that many different types of people are able to understand and enjoy. It is for those who are both technical and artistic.

After reading this book, I think that I now know enough to get started in electronic music. I already had some knowledge of electronic sound synthesis, but not that much. I had a background in music, and I don’t think I learned much about music theory from reading this – I didn’t need to! What I needed to know was how to generate sounds with electronics – and that is what I got.