Is it, as some would say (maybe disparagingly?), computer music?
At least in part.
It would be better to say that it is music with the help of a computer.
People may feel disturbed by the term computer, which could equal machine, which could equal without own (personal) creativity.
In general, electronic music is instrumental music. This leads to people wrongly calling it instrumental music. In some cases, electronic music also covers the marginal types of New Age or Minimal Music -- assuming that there are electronic instruments in general.
To give all readers who cannot associate anything with electronic music, I'll briefly quote an explanation of it given by KLEM, the Dutch "Association for Contact between People fond of Electronic Music":
»With Electronic Music we mean music as it is being made by Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, Kitaro, Neuronium, Michael Garrison and many, many others.«
According to this, you must at least know the music of at least one of these musicions. It isn't just synthesizer music like "Best of Beatles on Synthesizer", "Silent Night, Holy Night on Synthesizer", or "Synthesizer at its Best" -- I hope you know what I mean. Instead, it is like with any other type of music the mixture of melodies, rhythm, composition, arrangement, theme and interpretation of the music on the one hand and interpretation by synthesizer/music computer on the other.
Then, why is it so hard to define e-m? Is it possible to define where, for example, rock music ends and pop music starts? If this is possible then delineating e-m isn't that easy. That is because e-m is so various.
I'm certain that e-m is presently the most varied style of any music. It covers almost any style of conventional music like classical music, jazz, rock, pop.
Moreover, electronic music itself created a very unique style, which is typical in all e-m.
Composers of other music directions weren't less imaginative, but they didn't have the approprite equipment.
Because electronic music offers something for every taste, I agree with the presenter of the popular German radio programme Schwingungen (oscillations), who stated:
»The potential audience of electronic music is by far larger than it is now.«
If this is the case, listen to it!
