A "school", or aesthetic, of electronic music composition and performance that arose in the San Francisco, California area in the 1960s. The style first arose around 1960 as a fusion of the styles of the modern-classical composers working in the area, and technologists experimenting with electronic sound creation. At the time, no packaged music synthesizers existed (other than a few large installations, such as the RCA Synthesizer, which were all in the New York City area). So these composers turned to tape techniques, establishing the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1962.