Rating: 
Summary: This book is a must. Highly recommended.
Review: The sleek digital synthesizer of today is so easy to play and so ubiquitous in the world of popular music that its presence is often taken for granted. In this well-researched, entertaining, and immensely readable book, Kettlewell chronicles the synthesizer's early, years, from the turn of the 20th century - through the mid-1990s. The author gives preeminent pioneer Robert Moog due prominence, but also charts the achievements of other luminaries from this era, such as rival inventors Donald Buchla, Tom Oberheim, Serge Teraphin and Alan Perlman, composers Wendy Carlos and Pauline Oliveras, and rock stars Keith Emerson and Jan Hammer. American readers will be interested to learn details of a lesser-known British entry in the analog synthesizer field-the VCS3-which became the preferred tool of many rock stars of the 1970s. The author is especially effective in exploring the cultural, sociological, and economic sides to the synthesizer revolution. Throughout, his prose is engagingly anecdotal and accessible, and readers are never asked to wade through dense, technological jargon. Yet there are enough details to enlighten those trying to understand this multidisciplinary field of music, acoustics, physics, and electronics. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: LIttered with inaccuracies!
Review: This book has some nice pictures, some interesting interviews, but all in all, it is littered with inaccurate information and lies!Regardless of what Kettlewell says: Karl Stockhausen is NOT considered the father of Dobly surround! Darius Milhaud is NOT considered the father of rap music!! Morton Subotnick NEVER wrote music on a Serge Synthesizer!!! All of these are in here, plus many other obsurd conclusions and comments! If you are after accurate information about electronic music, I would highly recommend that you pass over this one.
Rating:
Summary: Read This Book!
Review: This book is an outstanding resource for musicians who are more or less purists or who have that fever that leads you to seek out fine vintage instruments like ARPs, Oberheims and Moogs. A great read and a really cool history of the instruments. This book will appeal to keyboard/synth players primarily, but also to fans of electronic music, who have followed the album liner notes over the years, to see which instruments were responsible for those fantastic new sounds. Such sounds, indeed, inspired visions of the possibilities available within the new worlds of electronics and computing technology. I highly recommended 'Electronic Music Pioneers' to all fans of electronic music, and specifically, to those who wish to gain some unique insights into the business life of the builders of these exotic and highly varied instruments.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful history
Review: This book is an outstanding sourcebook for musicians and electronic music affectionados who have that passion that leads you to seek out fine vintage instruments like Arp, Serge, Buchla and Moog. I found this book to be a great read and a really facinating history of the instruments. I highly recommended 'Electronic Music Pioneers' to all fans of electronic music, and specifically, to those who wish to gain some unique insights into the lives of the builders of these exotic and highly sophisticated instruments.
Rating:
Summary: Thr Big Picture
Review: This book is the first book I have come across that describes the big picture on the introduction of electronic instruments and the musicians who first used them. It is an easy to read history and a great introduction for anyone who wants to develop a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of the technology. I really enjoyed the insight the book offers on the wizardry of the inventors, going back to the 19 century, as well as the larger than life personalities of living legends at the beginning of the 21 century. This book is an inspiration for me and my music students.
Rating: 
Summary: Dissapointing, for a $21 book........
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: This is a fantastic book!
Review: This is a fantastic book! If you were lucky enough to be around when these synths were first introduced, then this is a true trip down memory lane! There are some great exclusive photographs and some insightful interviews with Bob Moog, Klaus Shulze and many of the giants who invented and performed with these instruments. It's the most concise history I've seen on the subject, and Kettlewell deserves kudos for the intense research that must have been involved in such a lobor of love. Most of Ben's information is enjoyable and non-technical, a real plus since most books in this genre are much too dry and technical. The book is a capsulation of the technologies, companies, and the people surrounding the evolution of electronic music. There are also lots of background stories on the companies who designed and built these amazing instruments. Highly Recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive, ...a perfect read
Review: What is outstanding about Electronic Music Pioneers is the sheer breadth of the work. Kettlewell has an encyclopedic knowledge of musical genres and a refreshing willingness to look beyond traditional classifications. This allows him to find unexpected threads and connections, bringing together apparently unrelated figures such as Morton Feldman and Grandmaster Flash, Klaus Schulze and W.A. Mozart and Orson Welles, Leon Theremin and the Beach Boys. EMP is a big work, not one to be read in a single session. It is comprehensive and detailed, covering every genre of music from classical to rap, techno, anything and everything where electricity and music combine forces. For each of its sections there is an extensive list of recordings/book for the reader to explore further. It is a book to dip into, to read and return to. Inevitably, readers will agree with some of his judgements and disagree with others. Given the comprehensive nature of the work, that is hardly surprising. If your interested in seeing how music and electronic insturments grew up together and what their relationship was, this is a book you won't want to pass up.
|
