‘A New Kind of Music’  

‘Most of the effort in electronic music is centred around a machine that was invented by engineers at the RCA Victor company.  It's called a synthesiser and I believe there's only one of its kind.  It costs $150,000 to make, I suppose that's one of the reasons why there's only one of its kind.      

Apparently, the synthesiser is going to make it possible for those composers who have access to it, to produce the kind of electronic music that I understand takes 3 months to do abroad in Europe, they can do that on a synthesiser in about 2 days.  It can do everything they can do abroad, they tell us, but you can do it faster.  Also, there seems to be no sound known to man, that isn't reproducible on this instrument.... 

It works I believe like a computer machine.  You type the information into the machine and the information is translated into musical sound.  While I heard only one actual piece produced by the synthesiser and composed by Milton Babbitt.  I would say from the evidence of that one piece there are an enormous number of possibilities to be drawn by that synthesiser.    

I'm extremely permissive in my attitude and I can't see any particular reason for jumping to conclusions as to what the future may be for electronic music.....but there are numbers of our composers who are interested and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the electronic kick became a quite broad movement in our music.    

All the talk that goes on about breaking the sound barrier and using sound waves to investigate the insides of machines in such an era, it would seem very strange if we just went on blowing into our pipes like they did a thousand years ago.  Something new is going to come in the way of the production of sound and the kinds of sounds we hear and the kind of scales we work with and when you change all of those things you're going to get a new kind of music.’   

- Aaron Copland circa 1961



Lightning

Funkington

Rollin'

Murmour

Analog Digital

I'm Sorry Too

Siren

Chemical Reactions

A New Kind Of Music

Sorrow For Christchurch

Dave Rocket