Electroacoustic music originated in Western
art music around the middle of the 20th century, following the incorporation of electric sound production into
compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition to fixed media during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the
ORTF in
Paris, the home of
musique concrete, the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR) studio in
Cologne, where the focus was on the composition of
elektronische Musik, and the
Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in
New York, where tape music, electronic music, and
computer music were all explored. Practical electronic music instruments began to appear in the early 1900s, and "electronic sounds" were also produced using animation techniques by such artists as
Norman McLaren.