List of experimental musicians

The following is a list of experimental musicians, where each musician is followed by a rationale:

• Robert Ashley - totalist television opera
• Derek Bailey - experimental guitarist
• Bjork -
• Boredoms - noise music
• Baschet Brothers - sound sculpture and fountains
• John Cage - aleatoric music
• Can -
• Joseph Celli - video, extended technique, improvisation
• Nicolas Collins -
• Crass - anarchist punk rock band with avant garde influences and elements incorporated
• Alvin Curran -
• Stuart Dempster - reverberant spaces, just intonation, extended trombone techniques
• Delia Derbyshire - pre-synthesizer electronic music pioneer
• Arnold Dreyblatt - just intonation
• Brian Eno - ambient music, algorithmic composition
• David First - drones and interference beats
• Fred Frith - free improvisation, Rock in Opposition
• Ellen Fullman - Long String Instrument
• Henry Cow
• Lejaren Hiller - first computer composition Illiac Suite (1957) with Leonard Issacson
• The Hub - interactive real time computer network: John Bischoff, Tim Perkis, Chris Brown, Phil Stone, Scot Gresham-Lancaster, Mark Trayle
• Jerry Hunt - computers and ritualistic performance
• Annea Lockwood - enviromental sounds
• Alvin Lucier - acoustical phenomena
• Merzbow - noise
• Gordon Mumma - live electronics
• Ben Neill - sound installations, mutantrumpet
• Pauline Oliveros - meditative music, just intonation, reverberant spaces, Expanded Instrument System
• Yoko Ono - "happenings"
• John Oswald - plunderphonics
• Paul Panhuysen - string and other sound installations
• Michael Prime - biofeedback from plants
• Harry Partch - just intonation, drama, opera
• Steve Reich - multimedia documentary opera
• Roger Reynolds - multimedia, spatial
• David Rosenboom - biofeedback (human)
• The Ruins - Japanese avant-punk, worked with Derek Bailey
• Pierre Schaeffer - Musique concrète
• Morton Subotnick - multi-media, electronics
• Richard Teitelbaum - electronics, extended technique, improvisation
• Throbbing Gristle - noise, "happenings", ritual
• Sonic Arts Union - Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, David Behrman
• Sonic Youth -
• Karlheinz Stockhausen
• James Tenney - alternate tunings, perceptual phenomena
• Velvet Underground - drones
• Iannis Xenakis - stochastic
• Frank Zappa - rock, jazz, "classical", freak out
• Evan Ziporyn - gamelan, Bang on a Can
• John Zorn - postmodern free jazz

See also: List of musicians by genre, Free improvisation (includes a further list of musicians whose work might be considered 'experimental')