Daryl Loomis wrote:

>I'm not sure where to go with this, but I would appreciate any feedback.

I can only relate some of my own experiences. My composition teacher in
graduate school ran the electronic music lab. We had one of the first Moog
machines. I had no interest in electronic music. After a year or so he
"urged" me to take the two semester sequence of instruction in electronic
music. By the end of the first year I felt that I had some understanding
and appreciation for it and in retrospect I feel that my best work was
done with electronics and then later, the computer. I never gave up on
writing for acoustic instruments...at least until I gave up composing
completely.

Years ago I spent a delightful afternoon discussing electronic music with
several other composers including Vladimir Ussachevsky. It was a time when
computer assisted composition was being discussed within the context of
analog and digital synthesis. We were asking the question, "what is
electronic music." Is music created with the aid of the computer, yet
performed with acoustic instruments, electronic? Ussachevsky responded
with a word, "loudspeakers." Someone turned to him and asked, "are you
suggesting that recorded music is also electronic music." He said "yes."
I don't think anyone took him seriously...except perhaps for me.

In his book "Understanding Media," McLuhan suggested that the aesthetic for
electronic music is different from that for acoustic instruments. Without
going into why, I will say that I agree with him, as I see the goal of
acoustic music to be different much as I see the goal of popular music to
differ from the goal of art music.

Karl