I’m writing this book because I wish it existed when I was getting into making Braindance / IDM. The technology is easy to get your hands on, but no one shows how you how to apply the technical ideas and what to do with the tools. Microsound is cool, but using it to make glitch music requires immersing yourself in the tools, learning for yourself what creates the desirable sounds for glitch music — there needs to be a better presentation, an adaptation of all these technical methods and ideas to something creative so that electronic music and sound design is more approachable for people who’ve never done it before.
.PP
I mean I understand in electronic music that the culture has an attitude of DIY, secrecy, and “you should figure it out on your own” — but I’m kinda against that. Composers should be more open.
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And also I don’t believe that sound design is “just vibes”. There are rules, things that will always work, things that just sound bad, and ways of structuring your composition that make it interesting.
.HEADING 1 "What is IDM"
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IDM stands for Intelligent Dance Music, other wise knowns as Braindance for less pretensious-sounding intentions. It's the most ridiculous name you could give a genre, but it stuck. The goal of IDM as opposed to techno is to work the brain instead of the feet, though it still grooves.
IDM stands for Intelligent Dance Music, otherwise knowns as Braindance for less pretensious-sounding intentions. It's the most ridiculous name you could give a genre, but it stuck. The goal of IDM as opposed to techno is to work the brain instead of the feet, though it still grooves.
.PP
To me, I think of IDM not as a style, but an approach to electronic music that presents experimental sound design and compositional techniques in the context of techno \[em] (cite notable IDM producers calling their music techno).
@ -39,6 +56,11 @@ In IDM, rhythm isn’t confined to the percussion. It’s embedded in the way me
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Unlike genres such as indie rock, shoegaze, or traditional ambient -- where rhythm can be loose, implied, or absent — IDM makes rhythm foundational to every layer. Even a pad might pulse, wobble, or glitch in time. This attention to rhythmic detail gives IDM its sense of precision, movement, and microstructure — it feels like the entire track is breathing in sync with itself. Each layer is interacting with each other dynamically.
\" Interesting. Good writing. You’re off to a strong start. I can see how it will be a useful overview of the genres and sub genres as well as practical application on how to get started. I agree that having more examples in there for analysis would be useful. I also had a question about the opening section about rhythm. With the limited experience I have with IDM, I’m used to hearing four on the floor, quarter notes in some kind of bass sound, with a lot of subdivision from 8th to 16th to 32nd and into those rolls. Do you think it would be useful to break down subdivision in that section? Later you talk about syncopation in a different section. I wonder if that might be connected to the opening? (My dad)
Early IDM used a lot of four on the floor beats, but when it evolved, there’s a lot more polyrhythms, glitchy syncopation, using the drums as lead instruments. You see it evolve from a composition like Xtal by RDJ to Acroyear by Autechre and Windo05 by Utabi.
.HEADING 3 "Counterpoint"
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@ -55,9 +77,6 @@ Where traditional genres might rely on a mixing engineer to polish and finalize
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This approach stems partly from a DIY ethic and partly from aesthetic choice. When your music involves glitchy textures, hyper-detailed layering, or precise spatial illusions, no one but the composer can truly know how it’s meant to feel.
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The mix becomes a way to shape how elements interact -- what's dry, what’s smeared in reverb, what pops out transiently, what’s buried and whispering. It’s about balance, but also about narrative, tension, and intimacy.
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Modulation isn't all done by hand, sometimes it's an envelope or an LFO -- but it's always thought through.
@ -78,6 +97,7 @@ What makes glitch interesting as a genre is that computers have become a tool fo
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"As ignorable as it is engaging." - Eno
.HEADING 2 "Survey of IDM"
@ -159,3 +179,59 @@ Xenharmonic wiki
.ITEM
Scale Workshop 2
.LIST OFF
.COLLATE
.START
.HEADING 1
Reverb
.HEADING 2
What it is (brief, to the point)
.HEADING 2
How it's usually used
.HEADING 2
.HEADING 2
What makes it musically boring or generic
.HEADING 2
How it can be used in IDM to create compelling, textured, rhythmically interesting sound
.HEADING 2
Creative examples or exercises that spark exploration
.COLLATE
.START
.HEADING 1 microsound
.BLOCKQUOTE
Granular synthesis is based on the idea that a steady-state waveform with its time-invarient spectrum, although mathematically convenient, is a physical impossibility because a waveform cannot exist for all time. It stems from a theory of acoustical quanta postulated by Gabor, which recognizes that aural perception is performed in the time and frequency domains simutaneously. In this technique, the fundamental compositional elements that are used to to weave the sound are /grains/: small bursts of energy encased in an envelope. This term is attributed to I. Xenakis who detailed an extensive theory of grain selection.
