Chapter 2: ELECTRONIC MUSIC RESOURCES.

This article discusses different the components of electronic music. Sound is produced by air pressure waves that cause vibrations which are converted by auditory nerves into impulses that the brain recognizes. The science of musical acoustics developed during the latter half of the nineteenth century along with general discoveries in the field of electricity. According to scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, musical sounds can be analyzed according to basic physical properties. Every instrument exhibits its own unique mixture of harmonics. His analysis of the components of sound influenced many inventors and composers, including instrument builder Thaddeus Cahill. Composer John Cage added an artistic clarity about the nature of creating music. He suggested that music should be defined by five basic components: timbre, frequency, amplitude, duration of sound and morphology. He also related them directly to the potential of using electronic musical devices to broaden our sound spectrum and create a new kind of music. In electronic music, pitch is referred to as frequency and is defined by the number of vibrations that occur each second. While most of the sounds we hear in electronic music are combinations of multiple waves, it is possible to catalog a few basic waveforms or waveshapes that serve as the building blocks of the electronic music composer.