My friend’s dad was telling me that with classical music, rock, or any other type of music, you can write down tabs and notes etc, but electronic music can’t be written on “paper”. So I am curious, how do you keep a note on how it’s supposed to go? I hope this makes some sense, I have very limited knowledge of music.
In: 0
It’s not that it can’t be written down, but it usually isn’t, and that’s because the things that sheet music indicate (primarily exactly how and when to play the notes and rhythms through time) aren’t really a concern for much of electronic music, because it’s not composed to be recreated by other performers (the recorded work IS the piece).
But furthermore, electronic music generally has some particular processes that are set up beforehand — for instance, generating a rhythmic loop, specifying an arpeggio (a particular sequence of notes, often outlining a musical chord in a specific order), setting parameters to tweak tone, etc. But it’s often (not always) heavily based on loops, and then the further manipulation of those loops, so the sheet music would look like the same thing over and over again with a remark like “after 2 minutes, twist that knob to make it sound brighter.” It’s just not really what notation is good for.
So again, electronic music is based on processes and techniques, and standard musical notation is useful for indicating things other than that.
Latest Answers