An Individual Note: of Music, Sound and Electronics by Daphne Oram

Daphne Oram was a pioneering British electronic musician, composer, and inventor of a musical instrument called the Oramics Machine. She wrote a book called An Individual Note: of Music, Sound and Electronics, which is a fascinating combination of electronic music primer and philosophical manifesto. In it, Oram describes the math and mechanics of electronic music, complete with diagrams and formulas, but always in the context of the resulting sound and its effect on the listener.

She explicitly states at the beginning that while the book is instructive, it’s not meant to be a textbook, and is explicitly for the amusement of the reader. I found it amusing, and playful — as much like hanging out an expert who knows a topic deeply, but is still engaged in the joy of the topic and ignites that in their companion. And while I certainly learned many facts in the course of reading it, what made a bigger impression on me was her explorations of the nature of sound and music, and her engagement with the inherent mystery therein.

Working at the dawn of electronic music, Oram contemplates how a capacitor is similar to a composer, and how the juxtaposition of a composer with electronic instruments might function. She’s not just concerned with how it will work in isolation, but in relationship to the human act of creation.

Oram makes use of extensive analogies between various sound shaping techniques and the human body and experience. She presents a thesis that interacting with art, and specifically music, changes the listener if they can open themselves to the experience. Further, she explains how the profound experience of music is a phenomenon that is mutually arising between composer and listener.

So if I do give any advice, it would be to meet the music without any preconceived ideas. Remember that the signal reaching your consciousness is as much you as it is the music - it is the sum and difference of you and the music. If you can clarify vour own wavepattern and clear it of all irrelevances, before you modulate the music with it, then you have more chance of finding the experience rewarding. If you can become so sensitive to the music, so related to it, that it lifts you to a different region of resonance, then that achievement is almost as much to your credit as it is to the composer. - Daphne Oram

I’ve only touched the surface of this book here — it’s a profound work that stands among the most important books on music I’ve read in my life. She writes about sound, technology, humanity, drugs, dance, life, and everything in between. If any of that sounds interesting to you I recommend you seek out a copy.