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