Music Book Review: Between the Tracks: Musicians on Selected Electronic Music edited by Miller Puckette and Kerry L. Hagan

Between the Tracks: Musicians on Selected Electronic Music

edited by Miller Puckette and Kerry L. Hagan (Music 786.7 Puc)

 

I wanted to highlight this book because it’s a good example of the old adage “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Indeed the cover art for this title is unfortunately bland, with an image of a vinyl record along the top quarter of its front cover and lots of empty blue space for much of the rest. But if you’re interested in the more experimental side of electronic music and its history, this book is far more exciting than the cover suggests.

 

The book consists of 12 essays covering the more “composerly” side of electronic music from roughly the 1960s to the present. Back in the 50s and 60s, there were university sound laboratories packed with room-sized synthesizers for composers and students to undertake what amounted to research in sound. At that stage, most of this music was truly “experimental,” exploring then-new sounds and textures and working methods. Now that so many people have worked with these sounds, they’re largely past the stages of experimentation and function as fully expressive musical tools, but that gives us the opportunity for even more kinds of research: we can look at cultural and social aspects of music-making around these instruments.

 

Although the essays are independent from one another, there are some common themes that arise between them. The first three essays, for example, all address electroacoustic compositions that have some potential for extramusical communication. While electroacoustic music was once regarded as almost impenetrable emotionally, it has become so familiar that we can analyze newer compositions in terms of their ability to function representationally, like the opening essay by Yvette Janine Jackson that describes Jacqueline George’s “Same Sun (2016)” as a narrative commentary on environmental issues. Gayle Young’s “Ice Creek (2018)” and Hildegard Westerkamp’s “Beneath the Forest Floor (1992)” are given similarly thorough analysis.

 

Other essays address issues like collaboration and ownership of compositions, cultural identities within electronic music practices, and investigations into the circuits, both literal and conceptual, used in electronic music performance and composition. This is a great read with some novel perspectives that’s sure to expand your thinking on electronic composition.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Electronic Music and Musique Concrete by F.C. Judd, Living Electronic Music by Simon Emmerson or Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic by Curtis Roads.]

[ publisher’s official Between the Tracks web page ] | [ Wikipedia page for Miller Puckette ]

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

 

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