For most of history, a typical musician would learn to play one specific instrument. As synthesizers became available to the public, it became commonplace for a musician to create their own instruments using hardware and software. By the early 2000s, digital audio workstation software allowed a musician with a laptop to have access to the tools of a record producer. These tools changed how music is made, and gave rise to new genres.

Creating electronic music on the computer is a practice much like software engineering. Iteration, modularity, and software architecture skills are required to build a song intelligently. Music engineering also requires working at numerous levels of abstraction: the synthesizer level, the song arrangement level, the mixer level, and the design of melodies.

Dom Kane is a musician and sound engineer who writes music for mau5trap, a label started by deadmau5. He has built software synthesizers, worked with numerous artists as a producer, and written music for film and TV. He joins the show to talk about working as a professional electronic musician. We also talk about the overlap between engineering and the different facets of crafting modern music on the computer.

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