Studio Wizards
An Anthropology of Electronic
Music Creation
Studio Wizards
An Anthropology of Electronic Music Creation
Jim Kroezen 10269495
University of Amsterdam
Research Master Social Sciences Thesis Supervisor: dr. O.K. (Olga) Sooudi
Second reader: dr. A.T. (Alex) van Venrooij July 2019
Contact: jimkroezen@hotmail.com
Cover art: ‘The WXYZ’—14 x 17 ink and watercolour piece by Etsy (https://nl.pinterest.com/source/etsy.me/)
Contents
Acknowledgements ii
Illustrations and Audio iv
Glossary v
Introduction 1
1. Creating Electronic Music 14
2. Emergence 21
3. Creating Bodies 38
4. Valuing Creation 57
5. A New Art World 73
Acknowledgements
I have come to the realisation that writing is not too different from creating music. Both activities are not done alone, by yourself, but with the help of many others. I as well have received the help of many in bringing this dissertation come about and I am deeply grateful for all of them. First of all, I want to thank the artists that kindly invited me to their workspaces and shared me their insights, techniques and practices; some of those deeply personal. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to see with my own eyes such personal creative endeavours 'behind the scenes'. I want to express extra gratefulness to the artists that shared their own work with me to use as support for my textual descriptions--Felipe Noriega, Ji Youn Kang, Mike Jungerius, Robert van Heumen and Martijn Naber. I also want to thank Felipe for being extremely helpful and open from the day I met him and for introducing me to some very interesting artists. And I am also very grateful to all other artists that have contributed anonymously.
I want to thank my supervisor at the University of Amsterdam, Olga Sooudi, for believing in my project, providing helpful feedback on many drafts, new insights and most of all for not making it easy for me; challenging my assumptions and ideas to make them stronger in the end. From the UvA I also want to thank Laurens Bakker for commenting on my proposal, Kristine Krause for some inspiring conversations,
and Amade M'Charek and Giselinde Kuipers for their engaging courses that formed the basis for this research.
I should not forget the lovely co-students that have accompanied me on this ride over the past year, in particular Els Roding, Britt Swartjes and Tania Huijben who quickly became close friends and formed the core of the 'B-6 gang' during fieldwork ('gang' works here both as 'a gang of people' and as the Dutch word 'gang' referring to the hallway where we sat all year). Also, Doortje Hörst, Tsjalline Boorsma, Jerrold Cuperus, Maria Siermann and Yoren Lausberg for being there during the final months; not only offering profound feedback at times, but also making the writing process such a fun experience. I want to thank Jessica Kroezen for proofreading my draft and lastly, my parents Rob and Inge, brother Cis and 'sister-in-law' Kate for their love and support at all times.
Illustrations and Audio
Figure 1 Derek's modular synthesiser. Photo by author. (p. 16)
Figure 2 A typical DAW (Ableton), timeline going horizontally; channels stacked vertically. Screenshot of author’s own project. (p. 18)
Figure 3 Overview photo of Derek's studio. Photo by author. (p. 19)
Figure 4. Instrument and effect pedals in Derek's studio. Photo by author. (p. 33)
Audio 1 Work in progress audio clips of Cruisin by NABER. (p. 20)
Audio 2 Recording of jam session by Felipe Noriega and Robert van Heumen. (p. 37)
Audio 3 Video clip of Ji Youn Kang rehearsing her bamboo performance. (p. 48)
Audio 4 Final version of the track Thesis by Human Space Machine. (p. 68)
Appearances of real name artists and groups:
CodeKlavier (Felipe Noriega & Anne Veinberg), 1-2
NABER (Martijn Naber), 20-24, 26-27, 29-30, 36, 59-60, 62, 66
Derek van Beelen, 28, 30-34, 36, 43-44, 53-55
Robert van Heumen & Felipe Noriega, 37-40, 43-44
Ji Youn Kang, 48-53, 55
Glossary
Analogue: Refers to instruments, effects or other devices that generate or manipulate
sound through electric circuitry, transporting voltages. Analogue instruments have a less stable sound output because voltages are a little different each time.
Arpeggio: A chord where the individual notes are played separately in succession of
each other.
Audio interface: connects to a computer, translates audio signal into digital
information and the other way around. It is needed to create or record music in a computer.
Beats-per-minute (BPM): Common measurement of a track’s tempo. Most house
music sits around 120-130 bpm.
Breakbeat: Part of a song where the drummer plays a different pattern than the
regular beat. In electronic music such patterns are sampled and form the basis for new tracks. Also refers to when the drum is not in a four-to-the-floor rhythm.
Compressor: Effect that alters the dynamic range of a signal, decreasing the
difference between the loudest and the softest parts.
Digital: Refers to instruments, effects or other devices that generate or manipulate
sound through computer calculations.
Digtial Audio Workstation (DAW): Software program for the creation and editing of
music. Offers options to generate original sounds as well as editing and arranging audio. The most commonly used DAWs are Ableton and Logic.
Effect (sound): A change to the sonic qualities of a sound made by hardware devices
or software plug-ins. They are used to make sounds more interesting, add a sense of depth or clean the mix. See also Plug-in.
Electronic dance music: Type of electronic music with prominent drumbeats that
caters to dance nights in clubs or at raves.
Equaliser (EQ): Effect used to filter or boost specific frequency ranges of a signal.
Can be used on separate elements or the whole track at once. Important tool in mixing, used to alter the colour of sounds and to clean the signal by filtering unneeded frequencies. See also Mixing.
Filter: Effect that filters frequencies from an audio signal according to a cut-off
frequency set by the user. Low-pass filters filter everything above the cut-off and high-pass filters filter everything below the cut-off. See also Equaliser.
Four-to-the-floor: Most common rhythm in dance music centred on a kickdrum on
each crotchet of a 4/4 measure. See also House music.
Frequency: The amount of iterations of a sound wave. Higher means a higher
pitched sound.
Live coding: A technique were programming on the spot is made into a
performance. In music it is used to program instruments from scratch. See also Super Collider.
Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO): Effect that is part of many synths. Generates an
inaudible waveform that is used to modulate other parameters in a wave-motion. Used to make effects such as vibrato.
Mapping: Process of assigning actions on one device to effect on another.
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface): Industry standard communication
protocol for instruments, computers and other devices. Used to link instruments together, instruments with computers, synchronise instruments to the same tempo and controlling devices with other external devices. See also Sync.
Mixing: Originally the process of combining various recorded channels into one
audio output. Now it refers to the whole process of balancing the volumes, frequencies, stereo outputs and many other parameters of all audio channels that combine into the final track. The mix-down is one of the last steps before a track is finished.
Monophony (mono)/ Polyphony (poly): Refers to instruments that produce one tone
at the time (mono) or multiple tones at the time (poly). Polyphonic instruments are required to play chords.
Oscillator: Device that generates a sound wave by oscillating a signal (a voltage
when analogue) along a central value. See also Waveform.
Overtones: Frequencies greater that the fundamental frequency of a sound. See
Timbre.
Pad: A sustained synthesiser pattern that provides atmospheric background.
Plug-in: External software instrument or effect to use within a DAW. See also DAW. Reverb (reverberation): Natural spatial sound effect that occurs through the various
ways a sound wave is reflected in a space. Is used as artificial effect to give a sense of space to direct electronic signals.
Sampler: Instrument that works from existing pieces of music. It samples little parts
from existing tracks whereafter these parts can be altered and used in a new track.
Sequencer: A device that plays back a musical pattern in an ongoing loop. The
length and speed of the loop can be changed as well as the pattern itself. Most common are 16-step sequencers that allow the user to either activate or deactivate each of the 16 steps to alter the rhythm of the pattern.
Subtractive synthesis: Sound synthesis technique where an original signal that is
rich in harmonics is subtracted by filters and other effects to generate the final timbre of the sound. See also Oscillator.
Super Collider: Software environment and programming language that lets the user
customise his or her own instrument. Also used for live coding.
Sync (synchronise): Synchronization of the tempos of multiple sound sources. When
various signals are synchronised, they are said to be ‘in sync’.
Synthesiser (or synth): One of the most important electronic instruments, they exist
both as hardware and software variants. Generates sounds through synthesis. The sounds are either played by a built-in or external keyboard, or sequenced by a sequencer. Most synths have onboard knobs to change parameters of the sound on the fly which affect the colour, volume or other qualities of the sound signal. See also Sequencer.
Timbre: The qualities that characterise of sound. Determined by the overtones of the
sound.
Track: Other term for a piece of music. Often used instead of ‘song’ to refer to
electronic music without vocals.
Waveform: The shape of a (sound) wave. Different waveforms have different
timbres. Common types are sine waves, square waves and sawtooth waves. See also Subtractive synthesis.
Introduction
‘Making Technology with Art’
Electronic music creation comes in many forms and occurs in many places; today it happened to be a classically trained pianist and an aspiring computer programmer in one; together with a live coder in a small garden shed. It is a chilly morning when I visit the rehearsals for an upcoming performance of the CodeKlavier project in the town of Hilversum. Anne opens the door wearing glasses and a purple hoodie with ‘CodeKlavier’ written on both sleeves. She has long blond, curly hair. Shuffling in her UGGS, she leads the way to the backyard where the studio shed is located. The room is cramped, filled by laptops, boxes, speakers, cables, and two pianos. I greet Felipe who is already inside.
Once inside the studio I gradually learn the details of this ambitious project. First, Anne and Felipe show me how the piano is modified with a device they call the ‘keyscanner.’ It is a thin metal plate that covers the entire range of the piano keys. Each time a key is played, a small bulb attached to the plate corresponding with the key in question lights up and the keyscanner records the touch; transforming the data into a MIDI signal that is sent to a laptop. In this way, the piano is turned into a computer keyboard. Thus, when Anne plays the piano she also sends data to the computer. Now she can play piano and program at the same time.
After some preparations, Anne begins a first rehearsal run. Over the course of twenty minutes I witness her virtuosic piano play that involves fast sequences of tremolos and arpeggios. Meanwhile the computer screen fills with rows of code commands that begin to activate digital sounds that start to rise on top of the piano sounds. I hear organs, toy pianos and even a church choir. In between test sessions, Felipe, a professional coder and music conservatory graduate, fixes the various bugs that arise during rehearsal. As he does, he comments: ‘The fun part is that Anne is learning to code!’ It becomes clear to me that the project extends beyond music alone: their goal is to create a programming language that can be written by playing music. ‘We are changing the paradigm,’ he tells me, ‘instead of using technology to make art, we’re using art to make technology.’
As the end of the afternoon approaches, Anne and Felipe discuss the last run. We are all tired from an intense session. Felipe shares a couple of notes on certain aspects of the music and says that there are also a couple of functions that do not work properly yet. ‘Shall we address the organ?’ Anne asks. While figuring out what they need to change to the code, Felipe yawns several times. Anne smiles: ‘I think it’s time for our CodeKlavier nap!’
Creating electronic music
Anne and Felipe’s is a story of electronic music creation, one of the many that can be told. Electronic music is just one particular form or style of music, though it is a highly multifaceted one. Music as it were, is just one of the many things that can be created. As such, the main reason I have chosen to study electronic music is a personal one. For many years it has been a keen interest of mine, perhaps even a passion. It was during the summer, just after graduating from high school, that I first properly encountered it. I went to clubs and illegal raves and immersed myself in a world that, at times, felt like some kind of alternative reality. A community of people and a network of places was revealed, all geared towards the ritual of dancing to these strange mechanised beats that, for all I knew, could have easily been made by robots, or even aliens. It did
not take long before I began to look more deeply into the music itself and I quickly became fascinated by a type of music that was so different from anything I had heard before. The sounds seemed detached and posthuman, but they still had soul and conveyed emotion. I became even more interested in the process of creating music like this. My curious mind was captivated by the question of how such strange robotic sounds came into being. Some eight years later, the curiosity and bewilderment had gradually made room for understanding. Bit by bit, some of the secrets of music creation became part of my own repertoire as a hobbyist music producer (with an emphasis on hobbyist!). Still, there were many things I did not yet know and inside me, coming to surface from time to time, was still some of that fiery curiosity from before. Thus to me, this makes it an ideal research topic.
While it is electronic music that sparked the fire behind this intellectual endeavour, it is ‘creation’ that allows this work to converse with the outside world. Creation is an integral part of human life and the foundation of our enjoyment of our favourite films, books, video games, theatre plays and, of course, music. This process, procedure, practice, whatever one wants to call it, while having been explored in a wide variety of disciplines, leaves many questions yet to answer. One way of addressing these questions might have been researching the people that create electronic music, identifying the challenges they face and describing their life worlds. Another way might have been to describe the institutions, organisational environments and distribution networks of electronic music artists. Or, I could have explored the results of creation, the musical product that emerges out of it, analysing concepts such as style, or musical theory. This dissertation, however, will do no such thing. What I will do is present a research on creation in itself. Akin to Richard Sennett’s (2008) idea of craft—making something well for its own sake—I will explore the act of bringing something into being. In this case, this something is electronic music. Using the specificities of this case I seek to add to our existing knowledge new angles, thought and ideas that help us to think about what it is to create.
The question that I have sought to explore in this research is treacherously simple: ‘How is electronic music created in practice in music studios and live performances?’ It will become clear that the focus is on practice. What is it that actually happens in those mysterious places, shrouded from the public, where all our favourite (or most deeply detested!) songs are made? This is what this research sets out to answer. Well, I hope, at the very least, to share insight that might help us think about this question in new ways.
The Literature on Creative Production
Before we start, it is necessary to acknowledge what others have done before me. From a production perspective, electronic music has been the topic of social science research in several capacities. Some scholars focus on specific subcultures or communities around a particular style of music, such as rap and grime, and how such social groups are created and reproduced (Dedman 2011; Lena 2004). Others have relied on ethnographies of groups of music artists to illustrate the role that music creation plays in those artist’s daily lives; for example, black civil-rights counter movements formed in funk music (Morant 2011), coloniality in the everyday lives of Latino American hip-hop musicians (Cervantes 2015), black masculinity and queerness in music (Callier 2016) or the intersection of modernity and post-colonial identities in the Nor-tec music scene in Mexico (Madrid 2005). Another strand of research has a more economic character and deals with the institutional environments of music scenes, such as that in Berlin (Bader 2010; Lange 2011). A final body of work explores the various technologies involved in the production electronic music, how they develop and impact creativity, in terms of sampling (Roger 2003) and digital music (Turner 2003), for instance. These literatures are varied in their range of topics, but they do tend to subjugate creation in itself—in these case studies, creating music is the context in which other phenomena are studied. While these works provide valuable insights in the role of music in the social aspects of artist’s everyday lives, they do something
different than what I strive for; which is exploring creation in itself—as an object of social investigation in its own right.
There are also approaches seeking to unravel the mechanisms and characteristics of creative/cultural/artistic production in a general sense. In sociology there have been three main strands (Santoro 2015). The first, inspired by the work of Howard Becker (1977, 2008), encompasses research that seeks to unravel art production on a microsocial level, as the collective endeavour of a range of specialised actors that, together, form an ‘art world.’ Becker has applied this approach himself to the study of jazz musicians building shared repertoires (Faulkner & Becker 2009). Second is the production-of-culture perspective, developed on the basis of several case studies on rock, country and jazz music, that aims, on a meso and macro level, to uncover how the production of cultural objects is shaped by the environment within which they are created (Peterson 1976; Peterson & Anand 2004). Researchers in the third strand draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1993), in particular on the theory of cultural fields—i.e., hierarchical structured spaces in which actors define their position in terms of relations of difference (Born 2010). They study art in relation to its social, economic and political consequences. The concept of field has, amongst many others, inspired studies on rock music’s critical recognition, music taste and subcultural capital in club cultures (Regev 1994; Savage 2006; Thornton 1995). All three strands have shown a willingness to bring insights from non-musical theory into the realm of music production (Dowd 2004); therefore opening creative production to social analyses—as a combination of decentralised collaborative practices and social mechanisms, rather than the mysterious workings of solitary creative geniuses. Still, in their efforts to highlight social mechanisms behind or as the basis of creative creation, these approaches do not illuminate creation as a practice in itself.
Recent decades have seen the rise of the ‘new sociology of art’ that is critical of, what adherents of this perspective see as, the overly social approach to understanding cultural production. They argue that sociologists, in their efforts to shift the locus of creativity away from the individual creator—the romantic image of the lone genius—
have gone too far, and have reduced the art object and its creation to mere carriers of social explanations (Born 2010; De La Fuente 2007; Prior 2011). As such, new approaches have since begun to focus on the art object as an active component in the social world itself. On example of this is Tia DeNora’s (1999) work on music as an active component that not only derives its meaning from social factors but is representative of co-producing our social life. Another important scholar for this approach is Antoine Hennion (1983), who was one of the first and only sociologists to study the creation of popular music as it happens in music studios. His approach shares similarities with Becker’s art world—as both focus on the micro-interactions between a network of specialists—but Hennion turned the explanans around and sought to use the social activities of music production to unveil unknown aspects of society.
The shift in focus to the role of non-humans has come from multiple directions. Foremost, scholars influenced by actor-network theory have sought to uncover the agentic role of material objects in the production and consumption of cultural products (Beer 2008; Griswold, Mangione & McDonnell 2013; Prior 2008, 2011; Rubio 2014). Another example comes from the anthropologist Alfred Gell (1998), whose aim was to develop an anthropological theory of art that differed from the indigenous aesthetics program based in Boasian anthropology and instead theorise art as a social interaction involving creators, recipients and material art objects (‘indices’). These actors, including material indices, can become both active agents as well as passive patients, depending on the specificities of the relationship. Gell’s theory inspired music theorist Georgina Born (2005, 2011) in her work on music production, which aims to recover the active role of material objects in music while still maintaining the ability to capture the social valence of material practices, including those apparent in the formation of collective identities.
In order to do this, Born (2005) also employs the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of ‘assemblage’ to address the complex nature of music’s ontology, which links both material, historical and social factors together. Recently, other moves towards
Deleuzian theory have been made in an effort to address creative production. The most clearly articulated is that of Nick Fox (2012, 2015), who relies on the ideas of assemblage and ‘affect’—i.e., the capacity of entities, whether human, non-human or non-material, to affect and be affected by other entities—to put forward a theory of creative production that, in addition to still agreeing with sociologists’ decentring of individual agency, also denies the human primacy of creativity. He argues that creativity may instead be conceptualised as flows of affect that territorialise into assemblages that connect humans, non-humans and non-material entities together.
How do we proceed from here?
Of the ideas discussed above in the context of analysing creative production in a social scientific way, there are a few that I draw on specially. The first is the decentring of the individual creative agent. My analysis puts forward the claim that the electronic music creation described is not an individual enterprise but a collective one. The second is the role of non-human actors. My analysis of electronic music creation shows that, even when there is only one artist present in the room, creation still occurs as a collective practice; the key in doing so is the inclusion of non-human actors into the creative process as active agents. Here, I draw explicitly on the argument in actor-network theory (e.g. Latour 2002, 2005) that phenomena are constituted by the temporary stabilisation of networks of heterogeneous components. All members of the network are actants that help ‘enact’ a certain phenomenon as they are being done (Mol 2002). Therefore, non-humans are considered to be mediators, able to actively change and betray the connections with other members of a network. In addition, I build on Gomart and Hennion’s (1999) notion of emergence to describe the active-passive nature of how particular events are enacted in decentralised networks of humans and things.
I also draw on Fox’s Deleuzian theory of creativity to describe the creation processes I followed as continual shifts between unexpected events that generate series of not yet fully determined potential directions for the creation as a whole and the stabilisation of these possibilities into more durable components that together form the finished creative product. What is missing in Fox’s approach, however, is a clearly
defined way to empirically analyse the actual mechanisms through which these developments happen. In other words: the framework lacks the means to understand how shifts from undetermined potentialities to durable components work in actual practice.
My approach will therefore consider the music studio to be not too dissimilar from the laboratories researched by ethnographers of science in the 1970s (e.g. Latour & Woolgar 1986). The music studio will be explored from an ethnographic viewpoint with the goal of carefully tracing the practices, ideas, people, things, sounds that are being done within the music studio in order for a piece of electronic music to come into being. All this will be done while aiming to avoid imposing externally defined social explanations onto the practices in the studios themselves; also providing a more practical account than the abstract conceptualisations put forward by Fox’s Deleuzian approach.
The Methods
As the main goal of this research is to gain an understanding of the practices of electronic music creation, the primary method employed is praxiographic fieldwork. So, the aim is to follow practice in itself rather than understand humans and their actions (see Mol 2002). Over the course of five months of fieldwork I visited music studios, and attended concerts, music workshops, rehearsals and collaborative jam sessions. I was lucky enough to be able to use personal contacts I had acquired over the years of visiting music events to get in touch with artists. In general, my position, formed by my initial interest and knowledge on music production, made the meeting of these people a smooth and pleasant experience.
As is the case in regular ethnography, the principal technique I used was participant observation. The observation part consisted of me closely following the action and jotting down each relevant step of the process of music creation in my notebook. Afterwards these jottings were written out into more detailed field notes. The participation part was also me, but rather than watching and jotting down notes,
I was an actor in the creation of electronic music myself. The active role I took up varied from day to day. At times I was simply there, present and occasionally making comments while other persons were busy creating. At other times I actually had to get my hands dirty, taking a place in front of various instruments such as modular synthesisers and samplers. Another aspect of my participation—and one I will elaborate on below—was the active role I took on in co-constructing the situation that I was analysing.
In addition to making observations I also conducted in-depth interviews with eight of the artists I visited in the studio, discussing the things that go on in artist’s head during creation, invisible and in-audible to me. I considered the artists to be their own ethnographers in the interviews, opening myself to insights that I would not have had on my own. Some of these interviews took place in bars, but a couple of them took place at the home or studio of the interviewee. In those latter cases, we were able to use music as an elicitation technique. The respondent could let me hear music to provide examples for what was being said or the music could serve as an interesting prompt; it also made the topics more concrete and easier to discuss. All interviews were, with the permission of the respondents, recorded and fully transcribed.
The content of the field notes and transcriptions were at first analysed inductively. Each sentence was closely read multiple times to initiate ideas. Thoughts, ideas, categorisations and concepts that sprung to mind were noted down in the documents, using Word’s ‘comment’ function. I also often juggled between my field note documents and a separate memo document where I wrote down more fleshed out ideas and observations. Another way to get ideas was to go back and forth from literature to field notes, which helped to flesh out new ideas and provide fresh outlooks. The last phase of analysing was done in Atlas.ti software. After carefully re-reading the dozens of small comments, notes and memos I had written earlier, I distilled around 70 codes that I used to archive the materials into sets of smaller quotes and excerpts. The codes were further divided into larger conceptual categories, such as ‘body’ or ‘agency,’ which allowed me to easily refer back to examples in the data.
The inductive approach I employed was both an analysis as well as a construction of the phenomenon I am interested in. This is a consideration made by John Law (2004) in After Method. Law argues that the messiness and elusiveness of the realities we seek to understand requires us to be open to the complexities that such realities bring with them, rather than reduce them in an effort to capture them analytically. This means, most of all, that a consideration of method must be related to the intervention we, as researchers ourselves, carry out in the world we observe and write about. As such, I do not consider this analysis to be an extraction that I—with careful methodological techniques—managed to discover in the world of electronic music creation; rather, I believe that the story I tell is a construction produced both by the world around me and my own part in that world. Obviously, such a construction is a volatile business and most likely very different from person to person and situation to situation. I therefore advise the reader to treat this analysis as a story that seeks to provide information as well as create new worlds in doing so. Drawing on philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers (2000), I seek to—rather than placing certain articulation outside of the realm of science, as mere opinion’s or fiction—espouse the construction of interesting new worlds and questions as the basis of ‘good’ scientific insight.1
Reporting an analysis of music creation is challenging. Much of what happens in a studio is invisible, audible phenomena rather than something that can be seen, let alone written about. I have done my best to make the descriptions of sounds as vivid and also as clear as possible to the reader. Unfortunately, this cannot fully overcome the limitation that words have in relation to expressing sonic content. With this in mind, I have added audio-visual materials throughout the text that hopefully help to make the picture clearer for the reader. These include photos and references to audio fragments. The latter are marked by ♫ + name and number of the fragment and provide
a QR code, as well as a URL to a Wordpress page, where the fragments can be listened
1 The question of epistemology thus becomes one of ontology: good knowledge is about creating an
interesting world (rather than extracting interesting knowledge from a world external to the observer) (see also Latour 2004).
to and help ‘audiolise’ the description. This requires the readers to use his or her own smartphone or computer with internet connection (if it were in any way possible, I would have included these resources myself). As I understand that this is not feasible for every reader or in every situation, I have made sure that the chapters are fully understandable on the basis of the textual content alone.
The text contains small anonymous excerpt and quotes of a range of artists as well as a couple of larger ‘creation stories’ within each chapter. The artists are called by their real names except when mentioned otherwise. This is done in careful consultation with the persons in question. A complete list of all the real artists and fragments that appear can be found in the beginning of the document. As most of the interviews were conducted in Dutch, quotes excerpted from these have been translated into English before presenting them here (cases where I present untranslated quotes from interviews in English will be mentioned as such). While I did my best to convey the essence of what has been said through another language, some of the subtle details are inevitably lost.
The Argument
The main argument I present is that the creation of electronic music I have followed occurs through a twofold process of emergence and formation through valuing. On the one hand, there is the sonic materiality of the music, the sound itself, that rather than being crafted in a deterministic fashion, from idea to result, emerges from complex relationships of actors that are all required to participate passively. It is active-passive because while sounds do not just emerge from purely random chance events— they involve many decisions and actions to set up suitable conditions—they always require some degree of giving up control. It is from the surplus that exists between the sounds that emerge and the sum of the actions that make them up that creation is fuelled. Sounds emerge with the help of many interrelated actors that may include artists, non-human objects and ‘creating bodies’ (bodies that create) whose active role helps fill the gap between human artists and non-human technologies.
On the other hand, there is formation. Creating music inevitably requires creating products with some degree of durability, this can be a piece of music or just a jam that after the session only continues to exist as a memory. In all cases, however, there is a process of reaching something that was not there before. In the second part of the thesis I will argue that creation cannot exist without this formation part; the part where sounds that have emerged acquire a more durable form, thereby opening up new possibilities for the proceeding creation process while excluding other potential directions. In answering the question how these formation processes occur in practice, I emphasise the importance of valuing. I show that the act of qualifying the value of sounds is both a concrete practice that no music creation process can exist without and the process through which the sounds that emerge take on a form.
Chapter One will introduce the reader to electronic music, the instruments, techniques and people creating it and the significance of dance music culture. Then, the main argument starts to take shape, which is presented in two parts. In the first part, two chapters focus on the various actors that are involved in creating electronic music and importantly, how they are connected with one another. Chapter Two covers unexpected events in music creation and the role of both human and non-human actors in helping such events occur. After a discussion of Gell’s theory of artistic agency, I take insights from science and technology studies to propose a move away from creative agency towards active-passive emergence. Chapter Three continues with exploring the variety of actors that create music, by highlighting the human body as one significant type of actor that helps sounds to emerge. In contrast to other sociological approaches to the body’s role in music, which usually reduce the body to an object of social schemas, skills or knowledge, I show how ‘creating bodies’ are actors in their own right. During music creation they perform complex movements and merge together with technologies to capture sounds, act in dialogue with the mind without being a puppet to it and continuously learn and morph from situation to situation. Chapter Four leads us to the second and final part of the argument; it takes up the topic of valuing, showing how creation cannot exist without it, and arguing for
a conceptualisation of valuing as the shaping of form. Lastly, in Chapter Five the main conclusions will be summarised whereafter I discuss the implications of this argument in terms of social scientific research on creative production; proposing a ‘new art world approach’ that centres the analysis of creation in itself.
1. Creating Electronic Music
The Music
From the warm fuzzy timbres of synthesised basslines to dreamy atmospheric pads; from hard hitting punchy drums to harsh noises and capricious glitchy interferences; and from the squeaking resonated sound of the 303 ‘acid’ bassline to the sampled ‘Amen’ breakbeat. All these are characteristic sounds and timbres found in the rich sonic world of electronic music. But these examples aside, it is fairly hard to pinpoint to what makes music ‘electronic’. While not attempting to provide a foolproof definition, I suggest it is easiest to think of electronic music as music that is primarily made with electronic instruments. These are instruments that generate sound with electronic circuitry, rather than acoustically—through the movement of air within a sound box. This can be either analogue, via oscillating voltages, or digital, through bits and bytes. To avoid confusion, I consider the electronic-ness of electronic music in the most general and encompassing way: namely that the primary part of a song’s composition should be electronic.
What does electronic music sound like? Apparent in the earlier mentioned examples—in themselves only scratching the surface of possibilities—is the variedness of possible timbres within the sonic spectrum of electronic music. I would say the main standout point, sonically, of electronic music therefore is its multi-headedness; the chimera-like quality of electricity to produce sounds that do not fit into the bounds of pre-existing instruments—a guitar sound belonging to a guitar, etc. For electronic music the starting point is sound itself. To explain the sound of electronic music, one
must explain, well the sound of electronic music, not the instrument. Therefore, for me, it is the primacy of sound and its fluidity, its large palette of possibilities and its non-stability in conforming to definitions that explain the electronic-ness of electronic music best.
The Club
Electronic music is more than just electronic dance music—a particular type of music specifically composed to be played by DJs (disc jockeys) at dance parties in clubs or out-door areas. Dance music is however a major genre in electronic music and the reason for bringing it to a large audience. The idea of dancing to pre-recorded music, often referred to as ‘tracks’ instead of songs, can be traced to various musical traditions that emerged from the African diaspora (e.g. disco in the U.S. and dancehall in Jamaica). The moment from where we can really speak of ‘electronic dance music’ began in the mid-1980s when various disco DJs in New York and Chicago began modifying disco tracks to make the instrumental parts longer and add prominent electronic drums, making them easier to mix and shifting the focus to the pounding instrumental drum rhythms centred on the famous ‘four-to-the-floor’ kickdrum (a kickdrum on each quaver, ‘tum, tum, tum, tum, etc.’). It was the prominent drum beat that formed the basis for the new genre that emerged: house music.2 The drums are
usually accompanied by minimalistic disco-inspired bass lines; big piano hooks or more stylistic jazzy chords.
After staying mostly an underground phenomenon in Afro-American and Hispanic urban centres, from around 1988 house suddenly took off in Europe. This rise in popularity coincided with a strong growth in recreational use of the love drug ‘ecstasy’. Raves—massed parties fuelled by drug use and electronic beats—became the centre of a fast-growing sub-culture along with its own slang, clothes and heroes.3 In
2 The most basic house rhythm is a prominent kick drum on each quaver of a high tempo (around 120
bpm) 4/4 measure, with a clap or snare on each backbeat and a hi-hat on the off-beats). The drums are made with electronic drum machines, in particular the Roland 808 and 909 from the 1980s.
the 1990s many new styles emerged, spanning different tempos and rhythms (e.g. techno, trance, hardcore, jungle, UK garage and dubstep). On this day there are both local underground communities and hyper-commercial events in super clubs around Ibiza and Las Vegas.
The Instruments
I have talked about ‘electronic’ instruments, but what are those exactly? Basically, there are two primary methods to produce sound electronically—synthesis and sampling. Synthesisers (or synths) produce—as their name suggests—sound through synthesis. This means that the sound is generated from scratch, without any pre-recorded content. Sound synthesis begins with the generation of a waveform—an electric signal that oscillates around a central value, thus creating a wave. In subtractive synthesis—the most common type—an initial waveform, rich in harmonics and therefore possessing many frequencies, is attenuated by a filter. Thus, the resulting sound is acquired by subtracting unwanted frequencies from an initial waveform. The final timbre of the synthesised sound depends on the shape of the initial waveform (e.g. square, sawtooth) and the amount and type of subtraction that is done further down the chain. Most analogue synthesisers from the 1960s up to the 1980s employ this technique, which became mainstream through the work of Robert Moog.4
The second method is sampling. Rather than generating sound from scratch, sampling works from pre-recorded bits—samples—of sound that are played back and modified to produce new timbres. A sampler is a device that records incoming audio, for instance by connecting it to a vinyl player—and lets the user cut a small piece of the recorded sound. This small bit of sound is called the sample. Entire tracks can be made with just using small bits of earlier created music; sampling forms the basis of genres like hip-hop and jungle. There are many ways samples can be used. A common example is the sampled breakbeat, used in jungle and many other genres. This is a sample of a piece of drumming in the break section of a song that becomes the
rhythmic basis for a new track. Another option is to sample the vocal part of a song and insert it into a new arrangement.
The first synthesisers were analogue synths, meaning that the sounds were generated through electric voltages. Digital synths that became available in the 1980s generate sound through the calculation of bits and bytes. The main technical difference is that analogue circuits are not as stable as digitally calculated algorithms. Therefore, analogue instruments will always show small deviations in pitch, volume or other parameters, because an electric current is never entirely the same.
Figure 1. A modular synthesiser with a sequencer beneath. Photo by author.
The People
We continue with the artists. The first thing that stands out when looking at those I worked with (or electronic music artist in general) is that a large majority of them identifies as male. Most of the names in the examples that will follow therefore refer to males and other cases will be explicitly specified. Besides predominantly male, the selection of people I visited is young, mostly between the age of 20 to 30. All of them work in the Netherlands, mostly in and around Amsterdam but I also travelled to The
Hague, Utrecht, Enschede and Maastricht. Besides born in the Netherlands, there were also artists from Korea, Mexico and Australia. They make music in various capacities, sometimes combining their personal projects with freelance producer jobs for third parties. Only a few are able to make music on a full-time basis, most work side-jobs to get by.
Their musical work mostly happens in shared studio spaces located in the periphery of the city. Sharing studio rooms is cost effective because it not only reduces the rent but also makes it possible to share funds for upgrading equipment. Other workspaces are also possible: some artists work in bedroom studios inside their own home and there were those who made use of facilities provided by their education. Formal education—providing training in skills such as musicianship, music theory, audio technology, acoustics and programming—was very common in the group I worked with. Some were still following conservatory programs (Amsterdam, Enschede and HKU in Utrecht were common ones); others had finished it recently.
Music-wise the artists and practices I observed were varied. They range from dance music producers with a strong focus on the dancefloor; experimental computer musicians and live coders; artists combining acoustic and electronic instruments or even use non-musical objects to generate sound, and analogue synthesiser wizards.
The Studio
Time to enter the locality where most of the magic happens. The typical studio looks much like a regular office room or living room; there may be couches and chairs. Usually many equipment and cables lie scattered on the floor or stored in closets. When entering a studio, you’ll also immediately recognise the soft sponge-like materials that hang on the walls—their purpose is to absorb sound. Soft materials will absorb more and reflect fewer sound waves than hard materials; you want to reduce the amount of reflections as much as possible, as they will clutter on top of the direct signal, making it harder to mix. Unfortunately, it is hardly possible to get rid of reflections entirely. Despite that, most studios will contain some kind of acoustical treatment.
The computer has become one of the key elements of every studio. You could make a continuum that goes from complete computer-based creation (‘in the box’) to making music purely with hardware. Most fall somewhere between the two extremes. Making music with a computer is done with specially catered software called a DAW (digital audio workstation). There are many DAWs, each with its own pros and cons; artists pick the one they like best. DAWs can be used both to generate digital sounds and to record external sounds. DAWs also visualise musical elements (e.g. a piano chord sequence) into coloured rectangle blocks that can be arranged in its own channel along a timeline going horizontally from the start on the left to the end on the right side.
Figure 2. A typical DAW (Ableton), timeline going horizontally; channels stacked vertically.
Screenshot of author’s own project.
Another technique for making music with a computer is live coding. Basically, the method is synthesis, but instead of working with pre-wired synthesisers live coders build their instruments from scratch in programming code, through the software environment and programming language ‘Super Collider’. Coding on the fly then becomes part of the musical performance; projection screens are used to let the audience watch along while they listen to the music.
Figure 3. Music studio with a computer and two speakers in the centre; a mixer in the left corner and various instruments spread around. Photo by author.
2. Emergence
Martijn’s Happy Accident ♫ Audio 1:
https://studiowizards.wordpress.com/2019/06/18/audio-1-martijns-happy-accident/
A two-hour train ride takes me to Enschede, a medium-sized city in the eastern part of the Netherlands. The street where Martijn lives is under construction and I carefully manoeuvre across the sandy soil. The jackhammer noises made by the construction workers would, to his minor annoyance, not end at the walls of the one-bedroom apartment where Martijn lives and has his home studio in the living room. Martijn tells me that he started a project just this morning, right out of bed. He is a conservatory student and makes music under his own personal moniker NABER and by playing keys in an electropop band. Martijn is a slender, young male with bright green eyes and medium-length brown hair combed backward. Today he wears a patterned shirt
and his nails are polished black. Two round golden earrings adorn his right ear and a row of bracelets sits on his wrist.
Before we can start, Martijn needs to reset his computer, because the software program he uses just crashed. While the computer is restarting, Martijn turns to the right side of the studio section in the living room. Here, against the wall, two analogue Korg brand synthesisers are stacked on top of each other on a rack. Martijn starts playing on the keyboard of the Korg Poly and uses the digital interface to scroll through the different sounds that are saved on the instrument. He tells me that he has designed all these sounds himself. This, he says, was not an easy task with only one small digital screen instead of a row of knobs. While the interface is digital, the synth itself is analogue. This means that the sound is synthesised by oscillating voltages on an electronic circuit. Martijn plays chords and short melodic patterns and the room is filled with a warm, crisp sound. While playing one the keys, Martijn remarks that the synth is acting a bit strange. He plays the same key again and when I listen closely, I can hear the pitch moving from high to low before stabilising on the tone that corresponds to the key played. Because the electric current is always a little bit different, an analogue machine is bound to produce minor discrepancies like this one. Martijn certainly does not mind: ‘I look out for cases like this while I’m making music; things that do not work like they are supposed to. Then I try to work with them.’
The next synthesiser is the Korg MS-20 mini, a contemporary remake of the 1980s original. ‘This is probably my favourite synth. The only downside is that you cannot make polyphonic sounds with it. It has an overdrive that lets you make heavy metal that sounds better than it would with any guitar!’ Martijn starts playing a bass melody that sounds full bodied and raw due to the gnarling filter and overdrive. I also notice Martijn’s piano ability, his hands flowing effortlessly from key to key. ‘This sounds great!’ I remark. After playing a couple of improvised patterns, Martijn stops and then plays just one note on the MS-20; holding it down a few seconds. While the note is held down, I hear a high note that falls down in pitch slowly (pieeeew). Martijn explains that this is another example of the synth doing something other than it is
supposed to. ‘It’s fun and it gives me inspiration: happy accidents!’ He tells me that he tries to record these kinds of things regularly. ‘[The synth] does something with it that you would never be able to think of yourself. Because it is something that you do not do yourself.’
Surprise, surprise!
A significant part of electronic music creation involves delving into the unexpected. This is partly because of the nature of creating something novel: the thing that is about to be created does not exist before the act and how it turns out cannot be fully predicted. The focus of this chapter is a specific and complex form of unexpectedness. The goal is to provide an overall framework showing how the creation of electronic music comes about in the balance between intended actions and unintended events— between the expected and the unexpected. I will start by discussing in what ways unintended events are significant in terms of creation and in what forms these events occur. Then, I provide a framework that describes how such events emerge out of complex relationships between heterogeneous sets of actors, involving a mix of activeness and passiveness.
A clear example of how unintended events have significance for creation is the ‘happy accident’. A happy accident features in Martijn’s story, as well as in several other scenes that we visit along the way. In fact, the word ‘happy accident’ is a relatively common term in the field that I researched, as multiple artist referred to it in our conversations. I will thus stick to the same term to describe events that are both unintended and unexpected: they happen without being directly and completely caused by intentional action, therefore breaking up the chain of expectation that an artist might have. Usually, a happy accident is something that occurs because someone or something does something different than he/she/it is supposed to. Instead of being discarded, it is considered pleasant or desirable, and it may be included in the final product that is in the process of being made. The significance of happy accidents for music creation lies in the fact that they add something to the music that was not there before, and could not have existed without the ‘accident’ having transpired.
When the Korg MS-20 synthesiser began changing the pitch of the note that Martijn played he said that the synth ‘does something with it that you would never be able to think of yourself. Because it is something that you do not do yourself.’ This quote sums up nicely what a happy accident is. Something, in this case the synthesiser, does something different than what it is supposed to: instead of holding the tone of the corresponding key, the sound went down in pitch. This was unexpected: I also noticed how Martijn suddenly moved his body in response to the changing tone. What is perhaps most striking is the last part of the quote. Martijn states that it would not have been possible to think of such a sound without the help of the synth doing something unexpected. The synth’s accident created something novel that would not have come into being without it. Something is added to the set of existing elements (the synth and Martijn) that is more than simply the sum of its parts—which would have been the case if the synth had executed Martijn’s wishes and played the intended tone. Because this did not happen, a sound emerged whose properties could no longer be reduced to the elements that made it up. It is in this surplus—the space between the result and the pre-existing elements—that new music is created.
As the content of the surplus cannot be fully known in advance, artists often react with surprise to sounds that emerge while they are working. There is an interruption in the flow of expectation. This can be discerned in regularly occurring, micro-scale actions and reactions: the artist suddenly looks up, the eyes widen, a finger points upwards, remarks like ‘look!’ are made; artists may smile or giggle softly with one another during a collaborative jam session, and so on. Surprises are also an important part of artistic creation. As one artist puts it:
‘You really try to respond to that moment of opportunity. And if I surprise myself in a moment like that, I know it’s good. If that does not happen, something is not right. Then it stays the same, or something very likely happens, something that you could have predicted. It’s no fun to make something that
everyone could have seen coming from miles away. Why would you even make it, then?’
This artist explains that his own surprise reaction becomes the basis for both his reaction and his course of action from that point onward. The element of surprise is a necessary part of a worthwhile creation, providing him with a way of knowing whether or not he is on the right track. In some way, the artist expects surprises. But this does not mean he or she knows what will happen, only how to create situations from where surprises might emerge.
Seeing the creation process as a series of responses to surprises speaks to what anthropologist Alfred Gell (1998, p. 45) calls: ‘generate and test sequences’. This is the notion that complex muscular performances, like drawing or playing the piano, take place in such a way that the cognitive processing of these actions only takes place after the act. One can be frustrated that the outcome is not as intended, or, through a ‘happy muscular fluke, the line drawn is actually superior to the one visualised beforehand.’ In all these cases the human artist is surprised by the result of an action. The complexity of neuromuscular performance creates a gap between the visualised idea, the act, and the outcome. It is in this gap that unexpected things occur.
Related to surprising, unexpected events are mistakes. These are moments where the artist fails to execute an intended action. Mistakes are not necessarily bad, however, as evidenced by the comments of a female artist, in response to the question of what makes a performance good: ‘It is more or less all about the possibility that things might go wrong. If you cannot make mistakes, you might as well have just played a CD.’ Not only do mistakes make a performance fun, they also give rise to novel things. Later, she mentioned: ‘That’s also where new things come from. “How do you handle a mistake, how do you continue after a mistake?” […] It’s more or less a rule of improvisation: “If you make a mistake, make it twice!”’ Thus, this type of failure in music creation is not necessarily ‘failure’ in the general sense of the word. It is more aptly described as an instance in which the result deviates from an intended
action and, as such, just like other unexpected events, it becomes part of the surplus that is added to the things that are already in place.5
I have explained the significance of unexpected events in creation and how some of these may, in retrospect, become happy accidents. It is necessary, however, to take some nuance into account. Looking back at Martijn’s example, he mentioned that his synthesiser occasionally did something strange, but desirable. Thus, he was very much aware of the opportunity created by his synth going ‘off-road’; it is one of the reasons that he enjoys working with this very machine. So, happy accidents are not entirely unexpected, or unintended events because even when the sound itself occurs unexpectedly, it may still have emerged from a situation that was set up by the artist who is aware of the direction the sound might go. As opposed to Gell’s generate-and-test sequences where the result simply occurs and is processed afterwards, happy accidents occur as a result of a combination of unexpectedness and active preparation of conditions.
Relational Creation
Happy accidents, like music creation in general, never happen in isolation. In the process of creating electronic music, a range of different elements form relationships and work together to create something whose properties are more than the sum of all the individual elements that constitute the relationship. There may be a wide set of different actors involved in helping to create both complete pieces of music, as well as single sounds; these actors may be artists in and outside the studio or synthesisers; studio speakers and ravers dancing to techno music in a night club, the people you love and computer software. As you may have noticed, I include both human and non-human ‘actors’ in these relationships. There is a simple reason for this: electronic music is not just created by human artists. There are many components that come together to shape the situation in which newly created music emerges, reducing these to the actions of human artists alone would not be accurate. In relationships, all elements
5 Because of this, ‘failure’ is not actually a good word to describe this kind of practice; as what is a failure
play their part and there is no a priori hierarchy by which to rank them in terms of their significance. As such, rather than vertical, tree-like structures, the relationships I describe are better understood as horizontal and rhizomatic ‘networks’ or ‘assemblages’ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987; Latour 2005). In addition to being heterogeneous in terms of components, relationships are seldom completely stable: the elements at play continuously assemble, disintegrate and reassemble in different ways; each time one or more components change (e.g. an instrument, person, idea), the relationship may produce different results; different sounds will emerge.
Sounds that emerge from relationships are, themselves, brought together into new constellations when they are combined in a track that is in the process of being created. A track’s musical components, when brought together, connect with each other, change each other and help to create something that is different than the sum of its parts. For instance, listening to one specific part in isolation, let’s say a hi-hat drum, would sound very different than hearing it in a full mix. The elements around the hi-hat change the way it sounds, and the hi-hi-hat does the same for the elements around it. In the same way, rhythmic elements may reinforce each other—when drums together just groove. No separate element can be picked out as the exact reason that the drums groove; it is only in combination with each other that each element works in the way it does. Alternatively, parts can also lead to friction. A common struggle in the studio is to get the low frequencies of the kickdrum and the bass to work together instead of clash. Martijn was very aware of this. He told me that the careful balance of frequencies is essential, and that he aims to give every element its own place in the spectrum: ‘The frequencies of different elements are pieces of a puzzle.’
Relationships may cross both spatial and temporal boundaries. A track that is being created, for instance, may already be shaped by perceived or intended future listeners. Dance music, in particular, is made with the specific purpose of dancing to it in night clubs. This leads to considerations, such as: does it work in a club situation? At which points during the night: opening, peak time, closing? How does the track sound played on a large sound system? In this way, elements that are not present
spatially or contemporaneously still play a role in determining what emerges in the studio.
Of course, a track’s future listeners can never independently determine how that track is created. Following Annemarie Mol (2002, p. 32)—who argues that objects are never alone, but depend on ‘everything that is active while it is being practiced’— the point I would like to make is that no element in creation works in isolation; there is no single agentic source that sparks the creation of music. Rather, creative agency is distributed over the entities that take part together in helping the creation come about. The happy accident involving Martijn and his Korg synthesiser makes this clearer: Martijn’s preference for this analogue synth and the imperfections of the synth’s internal circuit both create the conditions in which this accident happens. Neither could have done it alone.
I am not the first to point out the relationality of musical practice.6
Socio-musicologist Christopher Small (1999, p. 9) has proposed replacing the noun ‘music’ with the verb ‘musicking’ to indicate taking part in a musical performance in any capacity, be it as a performer or listener. With this, he problematises the musical work, arguing that the essence of music lies in its performance and not in the final product. The meaning of musicking lies in ‘the relationships that are established between the participants by the performance.’ In Small’s view, as in the examples I gave above, there is no essence of a piece of music that can be defined prior to the act of musicking, nor is there an a priori system that defines the role of each participant in creating it. Rather, music is enacted in relationships in which all participants may take on an equal part.
Non-Human Creators
6 It is also possible to situate my argument within sociology’s move away from ‘substantialism’ to
‘relationalism’, which understands entities to be defined by their relations with others rather than their substances (Emirbayer 1997).
I depart from Small, however, by highlighting that participants in music creation can also be non-human actors. Every type of instrumental music involves sounds being generated with the help of non-human objects. Still, in electronic music there are some key differences that make non-humans more active participants in creation. We have already seen that electronic instruments do not end at playing a key or plucking a string, as after that, a complex electronic circuit is needed to generate sound. Because of what might happen between playing a synth and the emergence of sound, the instrument becomes more than an extension of an artist’s body that exactly follows the played keys. Instead, the sound that emerges is not fully reducible to either the synth alone, or the artist.
Another characteristic of electronic music is the shift away from playing instruments to sequencing them. This means that playing patterns is often redirected to a sequencer—a device that plays back an audio signal according to a programmable pattern over a fixed sequence of (usually sixteen) steps. The artist sets a tempo and chooses which of the sixteen steps are activated and which are not. The sequenced sound signal is played back in a loop, while keeping time. Obviously, the artist has his or her hands free to do other things. But the following remark by an artist shows that there is more to it: ‘[…] because [the synth] was already so tightly on beat, the timing was already correct. Because of this, I could make the sound itself more experimental. So, suddenly the drum computer became the boss.’ The sequencer in this example is not just a fixed machine that keeps the sound on beat, it also takes up the role of orchestrator within a performance situation; it frees up the artist from the effort of keeping a sound in time and allows for new more experimental sounds to arise in interaction with the artist and other instruments. The result is a complex sound that is more than the simple sum of human action and non-human output.
This example brings to mind Simon Emmerson’s (2012) discussion about the role of computers in electronic music performances. He first discusses the view of pioneering computer engineer, Alan Turing, who claimed that a computer’s intelligence should be sought in comparing its behaviour with that of humans. In other
