Electroacoustic Improvisation

Electroacoustic improvisation (EAI) is a form of free improvisation, developed from the 1960s and named in the 1990s, in which acoustic instruments, electronics, samplers, mixing boards and found objects are played in real time as sound sources rather than as vehicles for melody or beat. Pioneered by *AMM*, whose *Keith Rowe* laid the guitar flat and treated it as a sound generator, the music matured around Tokyo's onkyo scene and labels such as #Erstwhile Records#, with *Toshimaru Nakamura*'s no-input mixing board, *Sachiko M*'s near-silent sine tones and the reductions of *Otomo Yoshihide*.