Experimental Music Since 1970

What is experimental music today? This book offers an up to date survey of this field for anyone with an interest, from seasoned practitioners to curious readers. This book takes the stance that experimental music is not a limited historical event, but is a proliferation of approaches to sound that reveals much about present-day experience. An experimental work is not identifiable by its sound alone, but by the nature of the questions it poses and its openness to the sounding event.
Experimentation is a way of working. It pushes past that which is known to discover what lies beyond it, finding new knowledge, forms, and relationships, or accepting a state of uncertainty. For each of these composers and sound artists, craft is developed and transformed in response to the questions they bring to their work. Scientific, perceptual, or social phenomena become catalysts in the operation of the work.
These practices are not presented according to a chronology, a set of techniques, or social groupings. Instead, they are organized according to the content areas that are their subjects, including resonance, harmony, objects, shapes, perception, language, interaction, sites, and histories. Musical materials may be subject, among other treatments, to systemization, observation, examination, magnification, fragmentation, translation, or destabilization. These restless and exploratory modes of engagement have continued to develop over recent decades, expanding the scope of both musical practice and listening.

Jennie Gottschalk (born 1978 in Stanford, CA) is a composer based in Boston. She holds a bachelor's degree in composition from The Boston Conservatory (2001), and a master's degree and doctorate from Northwestern University (2008). Teachers have included Larry Bell, Yakov Gubanov, Jay Alan Yim, Augusta Read Thomas, and Aaron Cassidy. Recent performances in Los Angeles (Dog Star Orchestra) and Chicago (Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra and Contemporary Music Ensemble). Her dissertation and current work explore connections between American pragmatist thought and experimental music. Current projects include a string quartet, a children's book, an experimental music blog (soundexpanse.com), and a residency at the Conway School of Landscape Design. For additional resources related to this book, please visit the author's website at soundexpanse.com.

Chapter 1: Defining Features of Experimental Music
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Indeterminacy
1.3. Silence
Chapter 2: Scientific Approaches
2.1. Acts of Discovery
2.2. Harmonic Relations
2.3. Playing with Numbers
2.4. Learning by Making
2.5. Finding Hidden Sounds
Chapter 3: Physicalities
3.1. The Physicality of Performance
3.2. Resonant Spaces
3.3. Objects as Instruments
3.4. From Shape to Sound
Chapter 4: Perception
4.1. The Position of the Listener
4.2. The Perception of Time
Chapter 5: Information, Language, and Interaction
5.1. Treatments of Sonic Information
5.2. The Sounds of Living Beings
5.3. Language
5.4. Interaction
Chapter 6: Place and Time
6.1. Mappings
6.2. Site-Specific Works
6.3. Histories
Chapter 7: Advocates
Appendix
Index