Two parallel histories have shaped electronic music; one runs through clubs and the other through conservatories. The former electronic music has roots in disco, dub reggae, hip-hop—traditions in which the DJ, in search of records fresher and wilder than those in rival crates, is a central figure, urging producers to new heights of ingenuity. The latter electronic music comes out of the European classical tradition, which was seized, in the first half of the 20th century, with a similar drive to make some shit like no one had ever heard before. Composers devised elaborate systems for writing music that ventured deep into dissonance, away from the rules of tonality that had governed it for centuries. Around the turn of the 1950s, when it seemed that the possibilities for acoustic instruments had been exhausted, pioneers like Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen began cutting up tape and twisting knobs instead.

I studied the latter electronic music in college.…