Wiardgroup

Hi Grant (et al)

'electronic music' hmmmmm

Every musician knows that categories are bullshit and ...
...every entity that sells music as 'product' knows that they are
essential for business. So i guess the sides and terms of that
dichotomy are pretty clearly drawn.

As for the semantics:
i like 'synthesist', but in the strict sense, all art is a synthesis*,
and the artists know it, unless the artist is almost pathologically
egomaniacal (and that number is small.... certainly well under 48%!)

i attended a post-concert discussion after a major american symphony
performance and one of the members of the orchestra rebutted another
member's disparagement of 'electronic music' as artificial and
compromised, with the assertion that if there's a speaker on anywhere
within earshot then what the audience hears is at least partially
'electronic music' and that the chances of a purely acoustic listening
experience are dwindling to nill given the economics of scale inherent
in performance venues...and that he saw this as a good thing! 
   He cited that fact almost all of the rabid bluegrass purists who
loudly eschew the 'impurity' of electric instruments had never heard
the music on a porch ...instead, it was on a CD (speaker), or at a
festival (speaker) or on the radio (speaker)...
and the same went for most classical purists! "It's ALL electronic,
Now!" he asserted!

Man! the audience and the orchestra were ready to tar & feather him
right there and then!

-doc

* that is: all art is a reworking of previously established elements
and thus it has a context. (Cage & DuChamp's 'frame')