Percussion instruments

Here are some examples of (mostly) unpitched percussion instruments. And here is a list of some of the more common used unpitched percussions.

Threnody - Penderecki

An animated score of a seminal work of the 20th century:

Ravel - Repetition

Ravel's famous Bolero (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra)

Berio

One of the foremost composers of the 20th century. Some recordings available on ubuweb. His folk songs are more then arrangements (and here is Voci a later piece which he subtitled folksongs 2). The series of sequenzas (e.g. viola, guitar) for solo instruments are a fantastic way to learn more about the instruments and imaginative ways to write for them. Coro integrates voices into the orchestra. His Sinfonia, particularly the 3rd movement, was discussed extensively. 

Russolo - Noise music

The new instruments designed and built by Russolo -  intonarumori:

And you can hear how they probably sounded. Futurists also used noise machines in combination with other instruments: Macchina Tipografica

Ondes Martenot

One of the early (1928) electric instruments. An introduction about the instrument:

Schoenberg's 'timbre' piece

In his book on harmony Schoenberg remarks that " it must also be possible to make progressions out of tone colours....progressions whose relations with one another work with a kind of logic entirely equivalent to that logic which satisfies us in the melody of pitches."
This is often linked to the 3rd of his orchestral pieces:

Henry Cowell

A pioneering and influential American composer. Described as "an inventor of sounds". Some of his short piano pieces are particularly striking:

vowels - formants

A spectral view of different vowels:

Spectral Music

Some examples:

• Gerard Grisey: Partiels
• Kaija Saariaho: Verblendungen
• Giacinto Scelsi: Konx-Om-Pax (though it wasn't called spectralism then). 
• Jonathan Harvey: Still. 

François Rose's Perspective of New Music article explains some of the composition methods.

Percussion instruments

A guide to many percussion instruments from The Orchestra: a user's manual project. 

Soundscape Composition

Listen:


Organised Sound 7:1 is an issue dedicated to soundscape composition with papers by some prominent practitioners including Hilegard Westerkamp and Barry Truax. 
Issue 14:1, on the topic of sound art, also has good, relevant articles. While issue 16:3 (listening) is also highly relevant.
Andra McCartney on Soundscape composition and electroacoustic music. 

FM Synthesis

A basic introduction to frequency modulation in Pd and a video tutorial for building an fm patch . A demonstration of the Yamaha DX7. An extensive discussion of the properties of frequency modulation from Barry Truax (with links to examples from his compositions using this technique). And a technical explanation of FM with illustrations of the sidebands and more from another master of the technique - Bill Schottstaedt.

Several illustrations of configuration for fm-synthesis sounds (bell-like, brass-like, etc.). A general tutorial about fm-synth with reference to various software implementations. 

This method was pioneered by John Chowning. Here he is explaining how he discovered this technique: 

 His piece Stria applies the Golden Ratio to constructing its fm-synthesised tones.

Computer Music Journal dedicated an issue to this important work, were you can read about the techniques used in the composition of this piece. And here is an article by John articulating his ideas about the link between synthesising new sounds and tuning systems that computers make available.

Granular Synthesis

Curtis Roads demonstrating the technique of granulation:

 

An introduction to the concept of using grains of sound. A central resource for granular synthesis with basic explanation, musical examples, and links to applications. Borderlands is an application (developed by a music technology students) for granular synthesis - an iPad version as well as windows). 

Electronic music examples

A large collection of recordings from ubuweb: History of Electronic Music.