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
