- Paperback: 286 pages
- Publisher: Course Technology Inc (1 May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1931140170
- ISBN-13: 978-1931140171
- Product Dimensions: 27.4 x 21.3 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,291,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The book provides excellent descriptions of historic electronic instruments as well as some terrific interviews with pioneering giants like Bob Moog, Tom Oberheim, Serge Teraphin, Don Buchla and Klaus Schulze. Meticulous attention is given to important historic information and the book includes a wonderful timeline going back over a hundred years to Elisha Gray and his electric telegraph. This is as close as you can get to personally being there when the instruments were first invented. Likely the best of eight electronic music books on my shelf.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Not much to say on this one, primarily because there is such little content here.
He opening chapter which lists principle characters in the history of electronic music is good as it includes the rarely mentioned or known.
The interviews with Schultz, Roach, Ciani, Sterns etc are thin with little to grab the imagination.
The book closes with a reasonably good glossary and that’s it.
Fine for those like me who tend to buy anything to do with electronic music but not the best volume on the subject.
He opening chapter which lists principle characters in the history of electronic music is good as it includes the rarely mentioned or known.
The interviews with Schultz, Roach, Ciani, Sterns etc are thin with little to grab the imagination.
The book closes with a reasonably good glossary and that’s it.
Fine for those like me who tend to buy anything to do with electronic music but not the best volume on the subject.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
21 reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Dissapointing, for a $21 book........
12 Mar 2003
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book, although comprehensive to be sure, often paints in extremely broad or disconnected brush strokes, leaving me wishing there was more detailat times. This was especially evident in the first section, a seemingly endless series of brief bio's of various figures who are presented as key players in the development of electronic music, with very little indication of how they might actually fit into the historical continuum, or how they might relate to each other.
Also, I'm not an expert, but I noticed some factual errors (for example: 'Whiter Shade of Pale', is by Procol Harum, not the Moody Blues; Stanley Clark is a bassist, not a guitarist; LFO stands for Low Frequency Oscillator, not Low Filter Oscillator). These may seem like minor errors, but in a book intended to give technical or historical information, they throw doubt on the integrity of the rest of the facts presented. Also, the presence of typo's and grammatical errors made me wonder if this was hastily edited, to capitalize on the current craze for all things analog and electronic.
The interview with Klaus Shultz contains an opinion about music downloading that is woefully out of touch (the cost of phone service to download a CD is more than the cost of a CD?), which, granted, is his opinion, but in a book purported to educate those who are unexposed to the technology is also misleading, and also very surprising for a book published in 2002.
Finally, the format/layout is approximately 8.5x11, but the pages are half-empty. Although this may be considered innovative graphic design, it implies that the publisher wished the book to seem more substantial than its content would support, in a book of convential size and layout.
I also have read Frank Trocco's book on the Moog synthesizer (which also covers the Buchla, ARP, and others), and found it to be far superior. I'd recommend anyone just getting into this subject to start there instead.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Magnificent History!
24 April 2003
Format:Paperback
In this scholarly work , Kettlewell discusses the work of composers, inventors and performers who shifted the boundaries of music in regard to sound source, notation, time, space, and the roles of the composer, performer and audience. The author seeks to identify and explain a whole body of musical work that existed outside the classical tradition and the avant-garde orthodoxies that flowed from it. Many rare photographs enrich the text and the book concludes with a selected source bibliography, an exhaustive list of related websites, and a bibliography of publications since 1934. Dr. Joel Paradiso, the Director of the MIT MediaLab in Cambridge, Massachusetts has contributed an interesting foreword to this edition. The tome is a detailed account of a radical musical direction that has borne great fruit in the years since it was first analysed in this thorough and scholarly work.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
wonderful book
7 Jun 2008
Format:Paperback
I found this book very informative both historically and as a music technology reference. I've read it from cover to cover 3 times already.
One thing I find curious, is not the book, but some of the reviews of the book I've read on your website. For instance the one by J. B. Durham "djminiwheats" (Chicago, IL USA) is totally fabricated, most likely something cooked up by an author with a similar competing book. None of the inaccuracies this reviewer refer to are in the book, and I've gone through it with a fine tooth comb. It's a pity that false reviews like that creep into the Amazon website. Most libraries carry the book. I urge perspective readers to check it out before making a purchase. It will be time well spent.
One thing I find curious, is not the book, but some of the reviews of the book I've read on your website. For instance the one by J. B. Durham "djminiwheats" (Chicago, IL USA) is totally fabricated, most likely something cooked up by an author with a similar competing book. None of the inaccuracies this reviewer refer to are in the book, and I've gone through it with a fine tooth comb. It's a pity that false reviews like that creep into the Amazon website. Most libraries carry the book. I urge perspective readers to check it out before making a purchase. It will be time well spent.
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