Sound Signatures: Crafting Your Electronic Music Identity

Sound Signatures: Crafting Your Electronic Music Identity explores ways to help electronic musicians establish their unique signature sound through new methods of sound creation and manipulation. It covers an extensive range of creative techniques for music production and sound design that might not be immediately obvious to those who are self-taught or at the beginning of their career or study programme.

Designed to provoke curiosity and foster creative thinking and experimental practice, this book spans 12 chapters covering synthesis, creative sampling, workflow techniques, vocal processing, use of noise and texture, and an assortment of ways to create and manipulate sound within a musical context. This book is not software-specific, instead, it focuses on underlying concepts and creative techniques that can be applied to any setup, whilst endorsing performance-oriented techniques in the studio to introduce new working practices. Featuring practical exercises to consolidate knowledge, diagrams, tips for further exploration, and online audio examples, this book encourages experimentation to develop an improved personal workflow whilst building knowledge and skills in electronic music production. These chapters are complemented by interviews with leading creative music production practitioners such as Holly Herndon, Benn Jordan, Sarah Belle Reid, Amon Tobin and Robert Henke.

Sound Signatures is ideal supplementary reading for students of music production and amateur producer-fans but is equally of interest to readers of all skill levels and professionals looking to hone their signature sound and develop their creative practice.

Nick Feldman has produced and performed electronic music across a multitude of genres since 1998 and has been teaching these subjects since 2012. He has a Master’s in Audio Production from the University of Westminster and holds posts at BIMM, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and ICMP. He is director of the Crux festival and series of audiovisual performance events.