During the 20th century music has overcome strong and fundamental changes. One of them has been the introduction of new instruments; initially other sound producers like bells and sirens and even typewriters, but quickly the immense possibility of electrically produced sounds led composers to a whole new domain which can be defined as the domain of sound invention. Sound invention that a composer instead of using already existing sound, generally produced by musical instruments, will create special new sets of sounds with which he will work to compose his music
In this situation sound sources have no limits, any sound can be used to make music, it's up to the composer to choose the sounds that best correspond to his imagination and intentions. However, we can identify several sound trends as: using recorded sounds as they are or modifying them to obtain new sounds, to generate new synthesized sounds (as a synthesizer does, but also a computer), or to use the sounds of musical instruments and modify them while the performer is playing his music. These different situations receive different names in function of the type of sounds used and the nature of the musical performance: many composers use technology to enhance the instrumental sound during a performance, others like to compose only for listening as a kind of aural cinema and others mix everything.
At the beginning of the 20th century and after the 1950s, when all these movements began; technology to produce sound was difficult to find and even more difficult to use. Nowadays, computers and other sound devices permit a fast, simple and efficient control of sound production and composition, opening new and unexpected doors to our musical hearing.
When Pierre Boulez first started working with sound technology in the early 1950s, he wasn’t very happy with it; he found it cumbersome and not adapted to his musical ideas. He more or less abandoned this way and went back to it when technology had strongly advanced and computers were finally available however extremely expensive.
When he created the Ircam in 1975 his ambition was to bring together technicians and musicians around computers so to think technology from a musical point of view and develop specific tools adapted to musical thought. He composed several works using this technology and always experimenting new ways of thinking.
Many other institutions developed since the 1950s and are still alive and active in research and composition, looking for new ways to work and invent sounds. Electroacoustic technology and composition is today a part of a composer’s training and even young children experiment and create new sounds for everybody’s pleasure.
