Recording

Where is the academic study of music today, and what paths should it take into the future? Should we be looking at how music relates to society and constructs meaning through it, rather than how it transcends the social? Can we ‘remix’ our discipline and attempt to address all musics on an equal basis, without splitting ourselves in advance into subgroups of ‘musicologists’, ‘theorists’, and ‘ethnomusicologists’? These are some of the crucial issues that Nicholas Cook has raised since he emerged in the 1990s as one of the UK’s leading and most widely-read voices in critical musicology. In this book, collaborators and former students of Cook pursue these questions, and others raised by his work – from notation, historiography, and performance to the place of music in multimedia forms such as virtual reality and video games, analysing both how it can bring people together and the ways in which it has failed to do so.

A recent renovation of the sound recording studio at the University of Victoria, School of Music, represents the first major capital project within the School since its opening in 1968. This case study presents an overview of the project from initial briefing to completion, including discussion of the design opportunities and limitations. Acoustical models used in the design process are presented and used to illustrate the challenges faced when attempting to balance control room performance for both research and teaching purposes.

Who produces sound and music? And in what spaces, localities and contexts? As the production of sound and music in the 21st Century converges with multimedia, these questions are critically addressed in this new edited collection by Samantha Bennett and Eliot Bates. Critical Approaches to the Production of Music and Sound features 16 brand new articles by leading thinkers from the fields of music, audio engineering, anthropology and media. Innovative and timely, this collection represents scholars from around the world, revisiting established themes such as record production and the construction of genre with new perspectives, as well as exploring issues in cultural and virtual production.

Table of contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors

Chapter 1: The Production of Music and Sound: A Multidisciplinary Critique
Eliot Bates and Samantha Bennett

Section 1: Situating Production: Place, Space and Gender

Chapter 2: Field Recording and the Production of Place
Tom Western (University of Edinburgh, Scotland)

Chapter 3: The Poietics of Space: The Role and Co-performance of the Spatial Environment in Popular Music Production
Damon Minchella (University of Birmingham, England)

Chapter 4: “An Indestructible Sound”: Locating Gender in Genres Using Different Music Production Approaches
Paula Wolfe (Sib Records, England)

Section 2: Beyond Representation

Chapter 5: Producing TV Series Music in Istanbul
Eliot Bates (City University of New York, USA)

Chapter 6: Reclamation and Celebration: Kodangu, a Torres Strait Islander Album of Ancestral and Contemporary Australian Indigenous Music
Karl Neuenfeldt (Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Australia)

Section 3: Electronic Music

Chapter 7: “All Sounds Are Created Equal”: Mediating Democracy in Acousmatic Education
Patrick Valiquet (University of Edinburgh, UK)

Chapter 8: Technologies of Play in Hip-Hop and Electronic Dance Music Production and Performance
Mike D'Errico (UCLA, USA)

Section 4: Technology and Technique

Chapter 9: Weapons of Mass Deception: The Invention and Re-invention of Recording Studio Mythology
Alan Williams (UMASS, Lowell, USA)

Chapter 10: Auto-Tune In Situ: Digital Vocal Correction And Conversational Repair
Owen Marshall (Cornell University, USA)

Section 5: Mediating Sound and Silence

Chapter 11: Listening To or Through Technology: Opaque and Transparent Mediation
Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen (University of Oslo, Norway)

Chapter 12: Six Types of Silence
Richard Osborne (Middlesex University, England)

Section 6: Virtuality and Online Production

Chapter 13: Intermixtuality: Case Studies in Online Music [Re]Production
Samantha Bennett (Australian National University, Australia)

Chapter 14: Crowdfunding and Alternative Modes of Production
Mark Thorley (Coventry University, England)

Index

ABSTRACT Since the invention of sound reproduction in the late 19th century, studio practices in musical recording evolved in parallel with technological improvements. Recently, digital technology and Internet file sharing led to the delocalization of professional recording studios and the decline of traditional record companies. A direct consequence of this new paradigm is that studio professions found themselves in a transitional phase, needing to be reinvented. To understand the scope of these recent technological advances, we first offer an overview of musical recording culture and history and show how studio recordings became a sophisticated form of musical artwork that differed from concert representations. We then trace the economic evolution of the recording industry through technological advances and present positive and negative impacts of the decline of the traditional business model on studio practices and professions. Finally, we report findings from interviews with six world-renowned record producers reflecting on their recording approaches, the impact of recent technological advances on their careers, and the future of their profession. Interviewees appreciate working on a wider variety of projects than they have in the past, but they all discuss trade-offs between artistic expectations and budget constraints in the current paradigm. Our investigations converge to show that studio professionals have adjusted their working settings to the new economic situation, although they still rely on the same aesthetic approaches as in the traditional business model to produce musical recordings.

"Der Band Auditive Medienkulturen versammelt aktuelle Forschungen zu medial vermittelten Klang- und Hörkulturen und bietet einen fundierten und breit angelegten Überblick über aktuelle methodische Zugänge im Feld der Sound Studies.
Die Fallstudien behandeln u.a. Recording Cultures von der Popmusik bis zur Bioakustik, Kulturen der Klanggestaltung vom Instrumentenbau über das Filmsounddesign bis zur auditiven Architektur sowie Rezeptionskulturen zwischen Ambient und Radio, Kopfhörer und Stereoanlage, Konzertsaal und Diskothek.
Indem sich die Beiträge den Zusammenhängen zwischen Klang, Medientechnologien und kultureller Praxis widmen, verdeutlichen sie auf je unterschiedliche Weise, dass es sich bei Klang- und Hörphänomenen um kulturelle Objekte handelt, die nicht unabhängig vom Kontext ihrer historischen Entwicklung sowie vielfältiger Materialisierungen und Mediatisierungen betrachtet werden können.

Mit Beiträgen von Cornelia Epping-Jäger, Sabine von Fischer, Golo Föllmer, Daniel Gethmann, Rolf Großmann, Marcus S. Kleiner, Friedrich A. Kittler, Sebastian Klotz, Volkmar Kramarz, Steffen Lepa, Daniel Morat, Sabine Sanio, Bettina Schlüter, Jens Schröter, Gregor Schwering, Jochen Venus, Axel Volmar, Thomas Wilke, Judith Willkomm, Bettina Wodianka, Rebecca Wolf und Hansjakob Ziemer. "