Telecommunications, Speech Synthesis and the Birth of Electronic Music

The Radio Phonics Laboratory by Justin Patrick Moore is the story of how electronic music came to be, told through the lens of the telecommunications scientists and composers who helped give birth to the bleeps and blips that have captured the imagination of musicians and dedicated listeners around the world.

Featuring the likes of Leon Theremin, Hedy Lamarr, Max Mathews, Hal 9000, Robert Moog, Wendy Carlos, Claude Shannon, Halim El-Dabh, Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Francois Bayle, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Milton Babbitt, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Edgar Varese and Laurie Spiegel.

Press review by Steve Barker (The Wire)

“There are so many stories contained here of the innovations of scientists/musicians that at times it becomes impossible to appreciate fully the impact of their individual contributions to today’s music environment: Leon Theremin, Hedy Lamarr, Robert Moog, Wendy Carlos, Halim El-Dabh, Pierre Henry, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Milton Babbit, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire and Laurie Spiegel are all referenced, among many more. But the real attraction of the book is the stories of the largely unsung men and women behind the technologies driving the dominant musical genres of the 20th century and beyond.”

About the author

Justin Patrick Moore started his radio career in 1999 on Anti-Watt, a pirate station at Antioch College, Ohio. Between 2001 and 2014 he was one of the rotating hosts for the experimental music show Art Damage, and later for the eclectic On the Way to the Peak of Normal, both on WAIF, Cincinnati, where he still fills in on occasion as a DJ for the underground music show Trash Flow Radio. In 2015 he became a ham radio operator with the call sign KE8COY and started making friends in the shortwave listening community.

As a writer you may know him for his essays about music for Brainwashed.com.

Paperback, published in 2024, 280 pages.