Books on Music Composition catered to Electronic Musicians

I could just google this but usually "electronic musician" means "EDM". So I'd rather get the opinions of people here where they found some book useful for their own music in some way... music composition/theory/creativity whatever, not just music theory. I am doubtful there are many, but i've been reading a lot of books in general lately and think I should at least try to look to see if I can find some good books on the topic.

there's the music theory for electronic musicans book

https://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Electronic-Producers-progressions/dp/172786302X/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=music+theory+for+electronic+musicians&qid=1621113712&sr=8-2

uses ableton a lot. 

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-mantras

All of the Arcana: Musicians on Music. Specifically one and two.

http://www.tzadik.com/index.php?catalog=B001

Also:

Sound Synthesis and Sampling, Second Edition (Music Technology) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0240516923/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_XGRTMHR6EMTZR7WQ09E8

Why are mine not links? I did it the same way I always do?

  On 5/16/2021 at 1:55 AM, Himelstein said:

Why are mine not links? I did it the same way I always do?

works here, must be some copy-paste-rich-text-formatting thing

http://www.tzadik.com/index.php?catalog=B001

also

https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/book/bbfa0d78-79d3-4e73-bfd2-dce10da797c0

https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/book/6dde0f29-be24-4c5e-b39c-4dfcf5520d2a

https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/book/62105e9f-e17a-419f-b63b-52b2ddd51fe5

academic and creative

https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Sound-Design-Second-programming/dp/0240516931/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=miranda+computer+sound+design&qid=1621162615&s=books&sr=1-1

Thank all of you for your recommendations!

"on sonic art"  for deep musings on sound and music beyond the western note system.

"audible design" if you want to dive in to spectral mutations with the cdp software.

http://www.trevorwishart.co.uk/AuD.html

best books Ive read on sound/music so far

also curtis roads'  "composing electronic music" is a super enjoyable read

Maybe more in the “whatever” category, but still good:

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802146104/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_Q07JN3AMW1YT9C1GKHM6

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400033535/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_YDFWC27J6S1VDNCQM1RZ

Also - anything by David Toop- like rap attack or ocean of sound.

Decent theory book (I went thru 10th edition, but I’m sure it’s the same):

Basic Materials in Music Theory: A Programmed Approach (12th Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0205654207/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_9VVETS8C0JX0X1NSFVRS

  On 5/15/2021 at 11:19 PM, Brisbot said:

I could just google this but usually "electronic musician" means "EDM". So I'd rather get the opinions of people here where they found some book useful for their own music in some way... music composition/theory/creativity whatever, not just music theory. I am doubtful there are many, but i've been reading a lot of books in general lately and think I should at least try to look to see if I can find some good books on the topic.

more about sound design than composition, but hey, where to draw the line in electronic musics anyway?

Yee, I've got all the books on a list to check out! tyty

  Quote

HANDBOOK FOR ACOUSTIC ECOLOGY

http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio-webdav/handbook/index.html

KLF-The-Manual.pdf

find one yourself, I'm too lazy

  Quote

Daphne Oram, "An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics" (1972). When Oram was commissioned to write about music, she was keen to avoid writing a conventional manual; instead she wrote on music, sound, and electronics & their relationships

https://ubu.com/media/text/emr/books/oram_anindividual.pdf

Not specifically catered to electronic musicians, but I just discovered (though the painstaking process of it being one of the top 5 search results for the title) that the Tufts Digital Library has a full PDF of Everyday Tonality by Philip Tagg just sitting out there for free download:

https://dl.tufts.edu/concern/pdfs/hx11xt121

I don't know what else is on there (nothing music related I could find), but I guess it's just honor system as far as downloading it if you don't already own it.  Makes the archive.org lawsuit seem even worse when major universities are jsut giving the stuff away freely (at least with Archive you ahve to go through the trouble of printing the whole PDF as images and then recompiling them into a new PDF if you want a DRM-free copy from their lending service). I don' think it's a special case of the book being made freely available by the author or whatever, since Cambridge University Press still charges $26 to download the same PDF.

this looks rather interesting

  Quote

On Minimalism moves from the style's beginnings in psychedelic counterculture through its present-day influences on ambient jazz, doom metal, and electronic music. The editors look beyond the major figures to highlight crucial and diverse voices—especially women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ musicians—that have shaped the genre. Featuring more than a hundred rare historical sources, On Minimalism curates this history anew, documenting one of the most important musical movements of our time.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520382084/on-minimalism#table-of-contents

  On 5/20/2023 at 5:13 PM, iococoi said:

On Minimalism moves from the style's beginnings in psychedelic counterculture through its present-day influences on ambient jazz, doom metal, and electronic music.

Nice.

I remember in college, around '99 or 2000, I played a track by The Monks for a theory class as an example of early influence of minimalism outside of academic music.  The professor wasn't having any of it, and the only comment he had beyond "I don't hear any similarity" was that the bass was out of tune and they couldn't play very well.

A year or two later I found an interview with Gary Burger where the talked quite a bit about how Steve Reich in particular was a big influence on the band at the time, and he considered their music a sort of primitive rock 

It's nice to see more people making those (IMO completely obvious) connections in academic settings over the last decade or so.

Iannis Xenakis - Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Music

  On 5/25/2022 at 7:21 AM, iococoi said:

https://ubu.com/media/text/emr/books/oram_anindividual.pdf

actually, the whole section is excellente ...

  Quote

We've taken the filing cabinet as our model, rather than the museum, and our focus is on historical and rare material rather than recent developments. We've chosen to exclude contemporary work here not because it is less relevant, but because it already takes care of itself.

https://ubu.com/emr/index.html

https://archive.org/details/TheManualHowToHaveANumber1TheEasyWay

I've reread it every few years since the early 2000s and it's better every time.

Starting to get the ball rolling on a new album right now, and this one's going to be even more Manual-influenced than usual, I think.