experimental music
Unconventional sound art
Experimental music is music that pushes beyond established conventions, testing new techniques, sounds, structures, or concepts.
The term covers a broad range—from avant-garde classical compositions to noise music to works incorporating unconventional instruments or chance operations.
What counts as experimental shifts over time; today's experiments become tomorrow's conventions.
John Cage's use of silence was experimental in 1952.
- sound artArt using acoustic phenomena
- indeterminacyLack of fixed outcome
- avant-gardeInnovative cultural pioneers
- John CagePrepared piano inventor
- improvisationSpontaneous, unplanned creation
musique concrète · tape loops · Brian Eno · deep listening · minimalism · synthesizers · futurism · found objects · sound design · free jazz · sonic · sampling · cacophony · atonal · unconventional · distortion · modular · noise
- avant-gardeDada, Dadaism, Futurism, Constructivism, Cabaret Voltaire
- Experimental Musicsound art, electroacoustic, serialism, twelve-tone, atonality
- New Musicworld premieres, John Cage, Philip Glass, John Adams, serialism
- digital mediawebsites, films, ebook, content creation, movies
- improvisationimprovised, impromptu, ad lib, freestyle, ad-lib
- College RadioDJ, playlist, airplay, broadcast, on-air
experimental musictraditional music
Culturally inherited sonic art
pop music · easy listening · adult contemporary · classical music · accessible music
experimental musicpop music
Catchy, commercial song genre
chart music · muzak · elevator music · jingles · hold music
experimental musictraditional music
Culturally inherited sonic art
folk music · classical music · roots music · traditional jazz · old-time music