- Allsound – A Slashdot-styled news and discussion forum covering the gamut of experimental, fringe and avant-garde music and sound art. Updated daily.
- The Deep Listening Catalog – The main site for Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening Band and their record label, which includes such composers as Phil Niblock and Malcolm Goldstein. Experimental, avant-garde and minimalist music.
- European Free Improvisation – Large resource with profiles and links to articles and sites on non-idiomatic improvisational music, artists, and related independent labels.
- The History of Experimental Music in Northern California – An extensive archive of information about experimental music from the 50s through the present, including artists, composers, groups, labels and articles.
- Insine – A space where you can listen to and download music from new artists and labels in the experimetal/noise/electronica scene.
- L’entrepot – A resource center for unconventional tunes, especially electronic, experimental, self-willed pop and rock, lo-fi, and post rock. Reviews, interviews and links.
- Livingroom.org – Forum for experimental music, new artistic ideas, performance art, multimedia performance, live art, improvisation and avant garde creative endeavors.
- Bagatellen – Features interviews, reviews and discussion about current avant garde figures.
- Brainwashed – Weekly publication with a post-industrial slant. Features reviews, polls and videos.
- Dusted Magazine – Daily online magazine highlighting independent and fringe artists. Features a weekly radio chart and interviews.
- Erasing Clouds – Online magazine covering music, film and etc. Published every two to three months.
- ESTWeb – Home page for EST magazine, devoted to avant-garde, experimental and post-industrial music.
- Fake Jazz – A monthly on-line magazine featuring reviews and features pertaining to the psychedelic avant-garde.
- Halana Magazine – Online home for the infrequently printed fanzine. Includes interviews from out of print editions.
- Paris Transatlantic – Monthly E-zine covers new music worldwide with features, interviews and reviews. Reviews experimental music avant-garde, electronic music, post-classical, free and free jazz, improv, opera, performance art, and some sculpture, dance, and film.
- Earwaves Network – Online site for Earwaves and Radio 3000 radio shows (Santa Cruz, CA), and the Earwaves experimental music reviews.
- Where’s the Beat? – A radio show on CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal, dedicated to contemporary classical and electroacoustic music. With playlist, schedule, and links.
Experimentalism can refer to the state of philosophy, or a particular music style. If you are looking for the philosophical term, please bear in mind this is the incorrect article for use.
Experimental music is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. There is an overlap with avant-garde music. John Cage was a pioneer in experimental music and defined and gave credibility to the form. David Cope (1997), describes experimental music as that, «which represents a refusal to accept the status quo.»
The term usually refers only to European classical music, for experimental popular music see: art rock.
As with other edge forms that push the limits of a particular form of expression, there is little agreement as to the boundaries of experimental music, even amongst its practitioners. On the one hand, some experimental music is an extension of traditional music, adding unconventional instruments, modifications to instruments, noises, and other novelties to (for example) orchestral compositions. At the other extreme, there are performances that most listeners would not characterize as music at all.
While much discussion of experimental music centers on definitional issues and its validity as a musical form, the most frequently performed experimental music is entertaining and, at its best, can lead the listener to question core assumptions about the nature of music.
The Experimental Music Catalogue, founded in 1968 by Christopher Hobbs, publishes scores and recordings of experimental music.
Aleatoric music- Also called ‘chance music’ (Cage’s habitual usage). Music in which the composer introduces the elements of chance or unpredictability with regard to either the composition or its performance.
Graphic notation- Music which is written in the form of diagrams or drawings rather than using “conventional” notation (with staves, clefs, notes etc).
Microtones- A pitch interval that is smaller than a semitone. This includes quarter tones and intervals even smaller. Composers have, for example, experimented in dividing the octave into 31 and 53 microtones, and using this scale as a basis for composition.
Extended techniques: Any of a number of methods of performing on a musical instrument that are unique, innovative, and sometimes regarded as improper.
«Prepared» instruments—ordinary instruments modified in their tuning or sound-producing characteristics. For example, guitar strings can have a weight attached at a certain point, changing their harmonic characteristics (Keith Rowe is one musician to have experimented with such techniques). Cage’s prepared piano was one of the first such instruments.
Unconventional playing techniques—for example, strings on a piano can be manipulated directly instead of being played the orthodox, keyboard-based way (an innovation of Henry Cowell’s known as «string piano»), a dozen or more piano keys may be depressed simultaneously with the forearm to produce a tone cluster (another technique popularized by Cowell), or the tuning pegs on a guitar can be rotated while a note sounds (called a «tuner glissando»).
Incorporation of instruments, tunings,rythms or scales from non-Western musical traditions.
Use of sound sources other than conventional musical instruments such as trash cans, telephone ringers, and doors slamming.
Playing with deliberate disregard for the ordinary musical controls (pitch, duration, volume).
Use of ‘radical’ scores which serve as non-conventional written/graphic ‘instructions’ to be actively interpreted by the performer(s). Cage is credited with the original development of the radical score and this influence continued through other composers/artists such as LaMonte Young, George Brecht, Yoko Ono etc. and far beyond. The most radical score of all is often said to be ‘December 1952’ by Earle Brown, who studied under Cage.
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