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.CHAPTER 1
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.CHAPTER_TITLE "Preface"
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.HEADING 1 "Preface"
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.PP
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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. This book frames sound synthesis methods and alternative tunings in the context of IDM in order to make these concepts practical and applicable for intermediate electronic music composers.
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.PP
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Access to music technology is universal for anyone with a computer, but education isn’t. To write this book, I conducted endless experiments in SuperCollider and studied computer music textbooks to discover what’s useful. Through experimentation, I found that certain tools suit certain purposes — but if one piece of intellectual advice is missing, the results can be boring or hideous.
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.PP
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Many sound design tools aren’t difficult technically—they become approachable once you understand their basic mechanics. The real challenge is knowing what to do with them. Most tutorials cover the “how,” but rarely the “why” or “what next.” This book aims to fill that gap by offering compositional strategies and aesthetic direction that make these tools composable. We’ll explore how to select source material, set meaningful constraints, and create signal paths that lead to expressive, intentional outcomes. You’ll also learn to work with techniques that go beyond conventional use—like clustering wavesets or reshaping impulse responses—not just applying synthesis, but inventing it.
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.PP
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.HEADING 2 "Art and Meaning"
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.PP
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Art isn’t inherently or universally communicative. What it means and how it lands depends heavily on the cultural, social, and personal contexts of both creator and audience. To really connect with a piece of art, you have to share certain predispositions — attitudes shaped by subcultures, communities, and lived experience. So the idea that art is either “universal” or purely “subjective” is way too simple. It’s not subjective in the sense of being purely individual or isolated, because art can’t exist outside of social relations. Instead, meaning is split and segmented across scenes, movements, and educational contexts, each with their own languages and codes.
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.[
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Fell 79-82
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.]
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.PP
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Art connects people who share certain values and ways of thinking, creating a space for shared inquiry rather than universal truths. But honestly, above all that, art should be beautiful first. The audience should be able to feel it before they’re thinking about it if you care about reaching anyone. Mark Fell, <signal phrase>, says, "what's the point of art in which you need to read an essay in order to understand? I think this speaks more to the curator's ambitions and an industry that has fully internalized a contentist agenda, than it does about the shortcomings of 'non-expert audiences'.
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.[
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Fell 94
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.]
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.LIST
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The chapters build conceptually in this order:
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.ITEM
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Alternative Tunings – Because tuning systems define what’s possible and train your ears to hear consonance and dissonance in specific ways.
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.ITEM
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Microsound – Because it provides an alternative world of synthesis that conceptualizes sound as bursts of energy encased in envelopes rather than periodic waveforms.
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.ITEM
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Phase Vocoding – Because it allows detailed spectral editing and resynthesis of source sounds, giving full control over their microscopic components.
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.ITEM
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Convolution – Because it does more than simulate space—it can completely recolor a sound, revealing hidden harmonics like a filter on an FM patch and embedding sonic context.
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.LISTEND
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.PP
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IDM has a unique role in pushing experimental sound design into the mainstream, raising the bar for what listeners expect and appreciate. Landmark albums like Aphex Twin’s *Selected Ambient Works Volume II* shifted cultural attention toward texture, timbre, and sonic detail in unprecedented ways. I hope to reclaim and continue that legacy. IDM’s potential lies not only in innovation but in its ability to challenge and engage a broad audience, encouraging deeper listening and fresh perspectives on sound.
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.PP
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This book is aimed at intermediate electronic music composers working within the IDM tradition, which generally doesn’t rely on formal music theory—and often for good reasons. Personally, I don’t use theory in my compositions, and IDM rarely builds its complexity through traditional music theory. Instead, that complexity often comes from experimental sound design, processing, and texture. Overly elaborate musical structures can actually get in the way—dense harmonies and melodies tend to clash with detailed timbres, muddying the results. Many Boards of Canada tracks, for instance, use simple modal ideas—often just Mixolydian or pentatonic scales—but achieve emotional and sonic depth through dense processing. That is to say, complexity doesn’t have to come from synthesis itself.
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.PP
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By contrast, Mark Fell’s work exemplifies algorithmic rigor, using formal systems to explore how sound structures behave under constraints. He has also criticized the way some artists use data sonification—particularly when they map arbitrary musical scales onto non-musical sources like plant data—as if those mappings were intrinsic. A scale isn’t inherent to a plant’s structure; it’s a projection, a metaphor. This kind of aesthetic imposition can distort the reality of the source and flatten its complexity. By contrast, Ryoji Ikeda’s work with data sonification embraces abstraction more honestly. Rather than anthropomorphizing data, Ikeda uses raw binary streams—digital noise, sine tones, pulses—to let the system speak in its own language. His work doesn’t interpret data; it reveals its materiality. You feel it as a technological presence, not a musical narrative. Though this book doesn’t focus on algorithmic composition or sonification, these practices still inform IDM’s ecosystem of sound art, especially when they’re approached with this kind of formal clarity and respect for the data.
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\".[
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\"Fell <which page is the critique on conventional data sonification?>
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\".]
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.PP
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If you’re struggling with basics like melody, harmony, or rhythm and want explicit tools to develop those, traditional music theory can help—but keep in mind IDM typically stays simple on the theory side while exploring rich sonic detail.
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.PP
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If I eventually work professionally in sound design beyond electronic music—in film, animation, or games—this book could expand to explore how sound design functions across those mediums. In IDM, sound design is foreground: it carries the structure and invites focused listening. In visual media, sound design supports narrative, mood, and environment without drawing attention away. While the techniques overlap, the intent shifts: IDM prioritizes sonic innovation for its own sake, whereas film and animation sound serve timing, emotion, and story. In both cases, understanding how to shape, place, and transform sound is a core compositional skill.
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.PP
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I used to wish I could compose faster, but now I realize the time spent is due to constant experimentation — and that’s not a flaw in the process, it is the process. Each piece grows through trial and discovery. I’m not just composing; I’m conducting research. This book maps that ongoing research: a record of tools tested, techniques uncovered, and paths that led to unexpected places.
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.PP
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This book does not include companion code, and that’s intentional. The ideas and techniques here aren’t meant to be copied line-for-line; they’re meant to be interpreted, reshaped, and reimagined within your own workflow. Whether you work in SuperCollider, Max/MSP, a DAW, or elsewhere, implementing these concepts yourself is a vital part of the creative process. Writing your own patches and building your own signal chains will teach you more than any prewritten example ever could. Along the way, you’ll discover your own tricks and pathways — insights that only emerge through doing, not downloading. I want this book to guide your thinking, not limit your results.
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.PP
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These tools don’t succeed because they’re inherently powerful—they succeed because they change how you listen. Most start simple or limited, but with intention, they open new worlds. If this book helps you hear differently, it has succeeded.
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.HEADING 2 "Why Sound Design?"
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.PP
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Sometimes I wonder how many versions of rain I can make before it stops sounding like rain—still recognizable, still evoking the feeling. What if it becomes ghostly tonal water? Water that speaks unintelligibly? These questions don’t come from textbooks. They come from somewhere deeper—a need to understand how sound shapes perception, how it marks a world and makes it real. Sound design gives us tools for understanding how sound shapes our perception
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.PP
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Alternative tunings is part of that. Using alternative tunings isn’t just about sounding weird or experimental. It’s about breaking out of defaults we’ve inherited uncritically. The twelve-tone equal temperament we’ve all been conditioned to hear as "correct" isn’t neutral—it’s a historical compromise, a flattened grid imposed on something that should breathe and bend. When I use alternative tunings, it’s not to sound different—it’s about challenging myself to think differently, in that new language. I’m trying to shake myself loose from habits, from unconscious assumptions about harmony, consonance, and the supposed "limits" of musical space.
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.COLLATE
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