Semi-Conducting: Rambles Through the Post-Cagean Thicket

Written by a composer long immersed in new and experimental music, this book provides a tour of the music, technologies and people that have transformed how we make, hear and think about sound over the past fifty years. As both a participant and critical observer in the post-Cagean musical landscape, Nicolas Collins uses anecdotes and analysis to survey the history and aesthetics of the musical avant-garde. Among the topics explored are: relationships between popular culture and the avant-garde; the shifting definitions of improvisation and composition in a world where musical scores might take form as charts, drawings, words, notes written on a staff or electronic circuits; the social and aesthetic effects of analog and digital resources in the production and consumption of music; and more broadly, the nature of experimental thinking in creative pursuits. The book follows a personal chronology of observations and experiences with music, technology, economics and culture-from youthful encounters with John Cage and Minimalism, to the Downtown and East Village scenes of the 1980s, the assimilation of avant-garde sensibilities into European concert halls and global pop, the burgeoning of sound art, and the transformative influence of digital technologies both positive and negative.

Table of Contents:
1. The Hidden Switch 2. I am Sitting in a Classroom 3. Worlds of Music 4. Four Ridiculously Large Speakers 5. Playing with Chips 6. The Infinite Amplification of Silence 7. Old Guard Avant Garde 8. Newcastle to Narvik 9. The Eden Before Apple 10. A Bright Red Electric Guitar 11. Devil's Music 12. Planes, Train and Step-Down Transformers 13. A Computer Walks into a Bar 14. We Were All Seated Around the Campfire 15. Still Lives 16. STEIM: IRCAM with a Human Face 17. Whistling in the Woods 18. Strange Heaven 19. Art School 20. Hardware Hacking 21. Salvage 22. The Missing Switch 23. Surprise Me

About the Author :
Nicolas Collins is an internationally recognized composer of experimental music, Professor of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago., USA. His book Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking, now in its third edition (2020), has inspired maker-musician communities around the world.

Review :
Anyone interested in this communal nature of experimental music in its 'post-Cagean' (peri-Cagean?) incarnation will find an impeccably cast movie (humans, computers, circuits…) with writing and editing that makes Semi-Conducting surprisingly hard to put down… Newcomers will get a detailed, honest narrative introduction to some of North America's and Europe's more unusual music. Blurring the lines between composition and chance, Nicolas Collins' intimate reflections in Semi-Conducting reveal how life and music share the same experimental spirit-messy, full of happy accidents, and constantly stumbling into surprises. Part memoir, part musical adventure, reading this book is its own kind of performance, tuning into the unexpected and letting the feedback (of memory) play aloud. With the characteristic brilliance of his humorous yet thought-provoking style, Nicolas Collins seems to offer us a memoir that features almost every possible type of music in a series of encounters, inventions, journeys, and much serendipity. But in reality, what we have here could be the definitive autobiography of experimental music itself. In this delightful memoir, Nic Collins takes us on a personal tour of experimental music, showing us that it has always been a music of tinkerers, hackers, and circuit benders. Armed with home-brew circuits and primitive computers, Semi-Conducting is an illuminating account chronicling the experimental music scene from Downtown NY to the Concertgebouw.