Editorial: The sonic and the electronic in improvisation Electroacoustic practices have held a special place in the improvisation scene for a number of decades. From the amplified sound masses of AMM and the sonic experiments of Musica Elettronica Viva in the 1960s, to George Lewis’s Voyager system in the 1980s, to the Evan Parker ElectroAcoustic Ensemble in the 1990s and onwards, improvisors have deployed electronic tools and a broad range of sonic resources – sometimes in an effort to expand the available palette of sonic materials, sometimes in search of new means of developing or facilitating the process of spontane- ous music-making (as, for example, with Lewis’s Voyager (Lewis 2000)). But this is not the same as to say that improvisation has equally been a proudly recognised pillar of electro- acoustic music over this same period. It could be argued that electroacoustic improvisation has been sidelined somewhat, in favour of studio composition practices in the first instance, then later as a kind of lesser sibling of mixed music paradigms; a distant cousin to be eyed with some suspicion, as a minor dis- traction from the sanctioned primacy of compositional practices. Even as advances in real-time digital tech- nologies made onstage electroacoustic performance practices more feasible and more practical, the focus tended to remain firmly fixed on mixed music compo- sition rather than on the expanding possibilities that these technologies offered for improvisation practices. This is perhaps strange, since no musical practice is as closely linked with the ‘real-time’ as improvisation, with its focus on the ‘now’, on the immediate and the ephemeral, on the passing moment. A closer inspection, however, perhaps reveals a slightly different story: of a rich, albeit somewhat obscured, undercurrent of improvisation practices running through electroacoustic music. Scratch beneath the surface and one finds that inside quite a number of electroacoustic composers there is an enthusiastic improvisor eager for an opportunity to step into the light; and, there are many who are per- haps more broadly recognised in the electroacoustic community for their compositional output, who are also active onstage as electroacoustic improvisors. Why, then, is improvisation not afforded the same pride of place as more compositionally oriented practices? One possible answer is that significantly less atten- tion has been paid to improvisation in electroacoustic theory, writing and literature than is paid to the broad range of electroacoustic compositional practices. This might seem odd, since quite a lot of published litera- ture on electroacoustic music comes from the practitioners themselves. If improvisation is an impor- tant part of the community’s practice, why has the community historically shied away somewhat from improvisation in its publications and research? One possibility stems from the fundamentally intan- gible nature of improvisation. To begin with, compositional practices leave a clearer ‘trace’,a ‘neu- tral level’ object that might seem more susceptible to objective examination and analysis. This might be deceptive, however. A recorded improvisation also leaves a trace; it is perhaps spurious to assume some kind of absolute, de facto ontological difference between this and, for example, a studio composition. Both are available for listening; both are open to anal- ysis; and, although this might be deemed controversial by both improvisors and composers, these might not be as easily distinguishable in ‘blind’ listening as is commonly assumed. This points us back to the fact that a significant percentage of the theoretical and analytical writing in electroacoustic music studies comes from the prac- titioners themselves, a situation that risks confounding the aesthesic with the poietic, that is, that risks the unquestioned assumption that the priorities of an object’s creation are inextricably determinant of the nature and understanding of that object. The develop- ment of a composition often involves a process of explicit and deliberate construction, conscious deci- sion-making and a long string of structural choices; these aspects of the work are therefore very clear to the composer, as a result of which it is arguably natu- ral for a composer to write about these aspects of the work (which in turn makes it natural for students of electroacoustic music who encounter the work through such writing to assume that these aspects of the work are what defines the field). This contrasts dramatically with improvisation, both as a process and as an object of study. In impro- visation, the real-time flow of creative decision- making engages a very different cognitive process; all decisions are made ‘on the fly’, at a speed far Organised Sound 26(1): 1–4 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S1355771821000182 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771821000182 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 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