Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Remixing One's Self: Ontologies of the Provisional Work
2. Performing Performance: Interface, Design, Liveness and Listener Orientation
3. Making it Up and Breaking it Down: Improvisation in EDM Performance
4. Looking for the Perfect Loop: Musical Technologies of Mediated Improvisation
Appendix
Works Cited

About the Author

Mark J. Butler is Associate Professor of Music Theory and Cognition at Northwestern University and is the author of Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music (Indiana University, 2006).

Reviews

"Playing with Something That Runs is an immaculate piece of popular musicology, with the potential to become one the cornerstone texts in our discipline. Its interdisciplinary approach provides an incredibly compelling insight into the performance and consumption of live EDM, and the companion website offers a great tool in bringing the discussions of recordings and performances to life through carefully curated audio and video examples." -- Toby Young
, Dancecult.net
"These reflections do not fail to pose many difficulties to the musical theory: where does the identity of the work lie? Is there a hierarchy between different "versions" of the same "composition"? Why are some compositions not intended to be listened to publicly but only to provide the raw material of improvisation?...What is the relationship between human and technology? In asking these questions, Mark Butler invites us to go beyond many of the common places
of musicology that have been settled since the nineteenth century as the objections between product and process, work and performance, composition and improvisation - and many othersâIt shows us that
popular electronic music is the current place for an intense widening of the spectrum of possible on the future of musical creation, both in the field of avant-garde and mainstream music." -- Emmanuel Parent, L'Université Rennes 2, Volume!
Winner of the 2015 PMIG Outstanding Publication Award from the Society of Music Theory