In recent years an intensive collaborative activity in live-electronic music has occurred in northern California. These collaborations, which came after the activities of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early '60s, are not easily separated into groups. Rather, this activity is more a geographic phenomenon involving composers from Berkeley, Davis, Oakland, and the surrounding bay area.

A cooperative effort among musicians from the University of California at Davis and Mills College in Oakland was responsible for the First Festival of Live Electronic Music. Presented in December, 1967, the festival comprised concerts, panels, and seminars, and included the work of the "northern California group" of composers Larry Austin, Harold Budd, John Dinwiddie, Anthony Gnazzo, Stanley Lunetta, and John Mizelle, as well as guest composers from other parts of the United States and Japan.