Your stomach makes a sound when it’s digesting food. But did you know you could take those minuscule sound bites and create a beautiful musical composition?

With electroacoustic music, almost anything is possible, electroacoustic musicians say.

This art form is produced from voice or instrumental recordings that are transformed electronically, or from sound generated by electronic devices like computers.

“You could take the first syllable of my last name played backwards and make that the drum sound you hear,” says Barry Larkin, associate professor of music and director of percussion activities. “There is literally no limit to sound sources.”

Electroacoustic music will be featured in a concert Saturday at the Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall in Music Hall.

The concert features guest composer Scott Wyatt, professor of composition and director of experimental music studies at the University of Illinois. Larkin, a percussionist, and another musician are each scheduled to perform one live piece.

Larkin says the tape accompaniment he plays along with sounds almost exactly like the sound he will be producing, so it’s hard to tell where the sound is coming from.

Sound will also constantly be traveling around the audience and coming from every direction.

This idea of spatial location is similar to the use of sound effects for films.

Electroacoustic composing, however, is done primarily for a purpose of independent autonomous art, says Christopher Hopkins, assistant professor of music.

“It’s a self-contained expression that strives to exploit the electronic idiom on its own terms,” Hopkins says.

Hopkins says the idea of performing an electroacoustic concert has been on his mind from day one. The day after accepting his job at Iowa State, he took one look at the surround-sound system in the Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall and he knew he wanted to have an electroacoustic concert.

The professionally installed surround-sound speaker system is not ordinary for college concert halls, he says, with a quality better than most movie theaters.

Hopkins says he would like to see it used to its artistic capacity, and this concert is one way of accomplishing that.

Though Iowa State is in the beginning stages of studying this medium, Hopkins says he is excited about where it could go in the future.

“I hope to see a program in music technology and more interdisciplinary studies between electroacoustic music and other electronic arts,” Hopkins says.

Hopkins first became interested in electroacoustic music when he took a class on electronic music, he says, and he’s stayed with it ever since.

“I’ve always been interested in the details of sound color,” Hopkins says.

“It was the perfect medium for me because there’s so much control of the interior of each sound.”

Who: Electroacoustic Surround

Where: Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall

When: 3 p.m. Saturday

Cost: Free