*) Introduction
It is quite natural that the most music sounds from loudspeaker and mostly it is not live music: radio, CD or tape; at home; in the car; at the supermarket and so on. Under acoustic reality we would call it 'Electroacoustic': The whole pop and rock music, the greater part of popular and folksy music; all records of concerts; the production of music; as well as all kinds of playbacks where musician are simulating and the music comes from tape.
The Electroacustic Music as such is an art form that works on electroacoustic media. It is not a recording of any instrument - it is produced on the computer (or tape) and be heared via loudspeaker only.
*) Terminolgy
The Absolute Music is part of the Electroacoustic Music. Its relatives are Acousmatic, Computer Music, Electronic Music, Musique Concrete. These categories also have a lot of sub-categories and so you will get in touch into lastes music genres such as techno, minimal, dubstep and so on. In our researches we found out that some sources mean that Electroacoustic Music is the same as Neue Music [Modern classical music] - in our opinion they are two different kinds of shoes.
These mentioned categories might be not very common but even great musicians such as The Beatles or Frank Zappa had experiences with this kind of music. A good example is "Revolution 9" from The Beatles.
*) Basics
Here you will find the basics of Eletronic Music spoken by Herbert Eimert. Unfortunately these MP3s are in german.
Grundbegriffe - Intro, (738k mp3)
der Ton, (902k mp3)
Tonhöhe (1.8MB mp3)
Hüllkurven (1MB mp3)
Bandschleife (675k mp3)
Klangfarben (920k mp3)
Filter (982k mp3)
Vokalspektren (500k mp3)
Obertonlautstärken (1.3MB mp3)
Tongemisch 1 (1.9MB mp3)
Tongemisch 2 (1.5MB mp3)
Tongemisch 3 (1.3MB mp3)
Geräusch (758k mp3)
Permanentes Glissando (683k mp3)
Ringmodulation 1 (2.3MB mp3)
Ringmodulation 2 (1.7MB mp3)
Ringmodulation 3 (1.3MB mp3)
Impulse 1 (1.6MB mp3)
Impulse 2 (1.7MB mp3)
Source: Eimert - Introduction to electronic music (Vinyl)
*) Absolute Music
The ground breaking innovation of music history of the 20th century is neither electronics nor computers, much less the portable computer – the really ground breaking innovation is the possibility of working on a sound recordings like a painter on his painting or a sculptor on his sculpture.
For centuries the separation of musician and composer is voided. "Zeitfrei" [timefree] is the magic word. The process of producing music does not depend on time anymorw. At the end there is no sheet of notes (score) which can be interpreted differently when playing. No, at the end you have the final music stored on a sound carrier which can be heared via loudspeaker only - Not live but real: Absolute.