Critical Approaches To The Production of Music and Sound

Critical
Approaches to
the Production
of Music
and Sound
ii
Critical
Approaches to
the Production
of Music
and Sound
Samantha Bennett and
Eliot Bates
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
N E W YO R K • LO N D O N • OX F O R D • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY
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Names: Bennett, Samantha (Music professor) | Bates, Eliot.
Title: Critical approaches to the production of music and sound / [edited by]
Samantha Bennett and Eliot Bates.
Description: New York NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017024433 (print) | LCCN 2017038088 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501332067 (ePub) | ISBN 9781501332081 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781501332050
(hardcover: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Sound recordings–Production and direction. | Popular
music–Production and direction.
Classification: LCC ML3790 (ebook) | LCC ML3790 .C77 2017 (print) | DDC
781.49–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024433
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Contents
List of figures and tables vii

List of contributors ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 T
he Production of Music and Sound: A
Multidisciplinary Critique Eliot Bates and Samantha Bennett 1
PART ONE Situating Production: Place,

Space and Gender
2 Field Recording and the Production of
Place Tom Western 23
3 The Poietics of Space: The Role and Co-performance
of the Spatial Environment in Popular Music
Production Damon Minchella 41
4 “An Indestructible Sound”: Locating Gender in Genres
Using Different Music Production
Approaches Paula Wolfe 62
PART two Beyond Representation

5 Producing TV Series Music in Istanbul Eliot Bates 81
6 Reclamation and Celebration: Kodangu, a
Torres Strait Islander Album of Ancestral and
Contemporary Australian Indigenous
Music Karl Neuenfeldt 98
PART three Electronic Music

7 “
All Sounds Are Created Equal”: Mediating
Democracy in Acousmatic Education Patrick Valiquet 123
vi CONTENTS
8 T
echnologies of Play in Hip-Hop and Electronic Dance
Music Production and Performance Mike D’Errico 138
PART FOUR Technology and Technique

9 W eapons of Mass Deception: The
Invention and Reinvention of Recording
Studio Mythology Alan Williams 157
10 Auto-Tune In Situ: Digital Vocal Correction and
Conversational Repair Owen Marshall 175
PART five Mediating Sound and Silence

11 Listening to or Through Technology: Opaque and
Transparent Mediation Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen 195
12 Six Types of Silence Richard Osborne 211
PART six Virtuality and Online Production

13 Intermixtuality: Case Studies in Online Music
(Re)production Samantha Bennett 231
14 Crowdfunding and Alternative Modes
of Production Mark Thorley 253
Index 267
List of Figures
and Tables
Figure 2.1 IFMC Resolution Concerning the Preservation

of Folk Music, 1955 30
Figure 3.1 Space as workplace 49
Figure 3.2 Embodied emotional space 50
Figure 3.3 Aural architecture and spatial interaction 51
Figure 3.4 Ideals and reality 54
Figure 3.5 Technology and limitations 55
Figure 3.6 Systems sketch of creative practice 58
Figure 3.7 Creative practice as situated practice 58
Figure 6.1 Cover of the Kodangu CD 100
Figure 6.2 From the insert to the Kodangu CD 102
Figure 6.3 Map of the Torres Strait region 104
Figure 8.1 Monome “grid” controller (2008) 143
Figure 8.2 (A) Playstation 4 controller (2013);
(B) Xbox One controller (2013) 146
Figure 8.3 MLRv Max patch (2011) 149
Figure 10.1 Musical transcription of interaction between
Carl and the author 187
Figure 10.2 Spectrographic representation of interaction
between Carl and the author 187
Figure 10.3 Autocorrelation-based representations of
interaction between Carl and the author 188
Table 5.1 Fırtına theme 88

Table 13.1 Mix stem organization in Deadmau5’s
“SOFI Needs a Ladder” 235
Table 13.2 Contents of “REM AIF FILES” folder in
REM’s “It Happened Today” 236
viii CONTENTS
Table 13.3 Contents of “ADDITIONAL AUDIO”

folder contained within “REM AIF FILES”
in REM’s “It Happened Today” 239
Table 13.4 Mix stem organization in Bon Iver’s “Holocene” 241
Table 13.5 Mix stem organization in Skrillex and
Damien Marley’s “Make It Bun Dem” 243
List of Contributors
Samantha Bennett
Samantha Bennett is a sound recordist, guitarist and Associate Professor in
music at the Australian National University. She is the author of Modern
Records, Maverick Methods (forthcoming) and Peepshow, a 33 1/3 series
book on the album by Siouxsie and the Banshees. She has published
numerous chapters and articles on popular music recording, production,
technology and analysis, including in Global Glam and Popular Music, The
Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality, Popular Music, Popular Music
and Society and The Journal of Popular Music Studies. In 2014 she gave the
American Musicological Society lecture at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
and Museum Library and Archives, where she also held a 2015 research
fellowship.
Eliot Bates
Eliot Bates is a scholar specializing in the emergence and development
of digital music technologies, and the transformations to instrumental
performance practice that accompanied the adoption of computer-based
recording techniques. An ethnomusicologist by training, he has conducted
over three years of field research in Turkey, and is the author of Music
in Turkey: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (2011) and Digital
Tradition: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul’s Recording Studio Culture
(2016). Eliot teaches ethnomusicology at the City University of New York
Graduate Center, and previously taught at the University of Birmingham
(UK), Cornell, and the University of Maryland. In addition to his scholarly
interests, for 20 years Eliot has been a performer and recording artist on the
oud.
Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen
Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen is Associate Professor in Popular Music Studies
in the Department of Musicology and Research Fellow at the Centre for
Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion (RITMO), at the
University of Oslo, Norway. She has published widely on music production,
digital media, remix culture, mashups and sound studies, and is the
x LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
co-author of the book Digital Signatures: The Impact of Digitization on

Popular Music Sound (2016).
Mike D’Errico
Mike D’Errico is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Media Studies at
Pitzer College and a lecturer in the UCLA Music Industry program. His
research focuses on trends in software and hardware design, as well as the
development of interfaces for digital music and multimedia production. As
a DJ and electronic music producer, he has performed and published on a
range of topics including hip-hop, sound design, electronic dance music and
video games.
Owen Marshall
Owen Marshall is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Science &
Technology Studies program at the University of California—Davis. He
has a PhD in science and technology studies from Cornell University. His
research is concerned with the history and anthropology of science and
technology, specifically sound technologies and technologies of the voice.
He has also worked extensively in sound design, music performance and
radio production.
Damon Minchella
Damon Minchella has achieved substantial professional success in his
musical career that has included cowriting and performing on 15 top 20
singles with his own band Ocean Colour Scene and working with artists
such as The Who, Paul McCartney, Amy Winehouse and Paul Weller. During
this time Damon received two Brit Award nominations and performed at
Live 8. Damon is course leader and senior lecturer at the University of South
Wales and is currently performing and recording with the best-selling artist
Richard Ashcroft.
Karl Neuenfeldt
Karl Neuenfeldt trained academically in anthropology (MA—Simon Fraser
University, Canada) and cultural studies (PhD—Curtin University, Australia)
and has been active as a music researcher, producer and performer. In 2009
he received the Sound Heritage Award from the Australian National Film and
Sound Archives for his musical collaborations with Indigenous communities.
He is part of a music production team along with producer and audio
engineer Nigel Pegrum, former member of British folk-rock band Steeleye
Span, and Torres Strait Islander producer, audio engineer and musician Will
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xi
Kepa. Together they have produced and recorded numerous CDs and DVDs
with Indigenous Australian communities, groups and soloists.
Richard Osborne
Richard Osborne is a senior lecturer in popular music at Middlesex
University. Prior to becoming a lecturer he worked in record shops, held
various posts at PRS for Music and comanaged a pub. His blog on popular
music is available at: http://richardosbornevinyl.blogspot.co.uk. His book
Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record was published in 2012.
Mark Thorley
Mark Thorley’s research focuses on the impact of emerging technology
on the creative industries and draws upon his background as a classically
trained musician, technologist and entrepreneur. He has developed and
managed several academic programmes in the UK and is a pioneer in
bringing together universities and industrial partners throughout the world
to work on global music production projects. He is a senior fellow of the
UK Higher Education Academy and was previously director of the Music
Producers’ Guild.
Patrick Valiquet
Patrick Valiquet is a Canadian musicologist studying the intersection of
politics and technoscience in experimental musics. In 2014 he earned his
doctoral degree from the University of Oxford, where he worked as a
research associate on the European Research Council Seventh Framework
project Music, Digitisation, Mediation: Towards Interdisciplinary
Music Studies. Since then he has held postdoctoral fellowships at the
University of Edinburgh and the Institute of Musical Research, Royal
Holloway, University of London. Since 2015 he is also Associate Editor of
Contemporary Music Review.
Tom Western
Tom Western writes about music and sound in the production of nations
and borders. He is currently finishing his first book, National Phonography:
Field Recording, Sound Archiving, and Producing the Nation in Music,
which listens to histories of ethnomusicological field recording in the years
following the Second World War. He has also published in the journals
Sound Studies and Twentieth-Century Music. Tom is now living and
working in Athens, Greece, researching his next project on displacement
and cosmopolitanism in European popular musics.
xii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Alan Williams
Alan Williams is Professor of Music and serves as Music Department
Chair at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. An ethnomusicologist, his
research focuses on recording studio practice, and is particularly concerned
with issues of power and agency. He has published in the Journal on the Art
of Record Production, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and the Music
and Entertainment Industry Educators Association Journal and has chapters
in The Art of Record Production and The Oxford Handbook of Applied
Ethnomusicology. He has several production and engineering credits, and is
a songwriter and performer with the band Birdsong at Morning.
Paula Wolfe
Paula Wolfe was awarded her PhD at the Institute of Popular Music,
University of Liverpool, in May 2014. Her thesis documented the responses
of women artists, producers and industry professionals to the impact of
digital recording and marketing technologies in the first 12 years of the
digital era. It also offered a feminist reading of the debates that accompanied
the subsequent industry shifts. Paula has published on music production,
music technology and gender (2012) and music production, media
representation and gender (2016). She regularly presents her research at
national and international music conferences and her book, Women in the
Studio: Creation, Control and Gender in Popular Music Sound Production,
is due for publication in 2017. Practitioner as well as scholar, Paula is a
critically acclaimed artist-producer (Mojo * * * * Uncut * * *) whose third
album, White Dots, is due for release in 2017 (Sib Records).
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank Ladi Dell’aira for her generous assistance
with the manuscript. Her careful attention to detail greatly improved the
book. At Bloomsbury, we also would like to thank Leah Babb-Rosenfeld,
Susan Krogulski, and Giles Herman for their support and encouragement
along the way.
xiv
Chapter one
The Production of
Music and Sound: A
Multidisciplinary Critique
Eliot Bates and Samantha Bennett
Since the 1970s, the production of music and sound has been analyzed
in several distinct fields and with divergent theoretical frameworks and
methodologies. Phonomusicology is an umbrella term that encompasses
an assortment of approaches toward studying recorded music where
the focus is on recordings rather than on other forms of media (or on
live performance). While not all phonomusicological works analyze
production, there has been an increasing attention on the techniques of the
recording studio and therefore by extension on production as a practice.
The production of culture perspective, since the 1970s, has been a mode
of American organizational sociology for analyzing cultural industries. As
one of the few broader sociological perspectives to originate in the study
of music (and to be later applied to other industries), works in this field
have emphasized the structural features that enabled new musical genres to
emerge. The literature on the occupation of producer has resulted in a body
of scholarship that regards the producer as an auteur, composer, or overseer
of the production process. Finally, an outgrowth of phonomusicology is a
new academic subfield called the art of record production, which has placed
considerable attention on the techniques and technologies found at the heart
of recorded music.
2 Critical Approaches to the Production of Music and Sound
Phonomusicology
In recent years, discourses on sound and music production have broadened in
scope as more scholars engage in the space(s) existing between performance
and reception. Many of these new ideas have emerged via what Stephen
Cottrell called phonomusicology (2010), which is the study of recorded
music. This discourse posits the recording—as opposed to the score—as the
text, and notes important facets of music and sound production to include
recordist agency, the recording workplace and/or space, as well as non-
notatable sonic aesthetics present in recordings. This has led to key edited
collections analyzing recorded sound, including Greene and Porcello’s
Wired for Sound (2005), Cook et al.’s Cambridge Companion to Recorded
Music (2009), Amanda Bayley’s Recorded Music (2010), Simon Frith
and Simon Zagorski-Thomas’s methodology-focused The Art of Record
Production: An Introductory Reader for a New Academic Field (2012), and
Paul Théberge, Kyle Devine, and Tom Everrett’s Living Stereo: Histories
and Cultures of Multichannel Sound (2015). These works move the study of
music away from the previous focus on composition and performance and
toward the recorded document, whether artifact or digital file. They also
suggest the fruitfulness of analyzing the labor of production, even though
such considerations surface only within a few chapters.
Phonomusicology has certainly broadened the scope of analytical priorities
within popular musicology to include the sonically discernible extramusical
aspects of recordings in addition to traditional, commonly foregrounded
aspects of melody, harmony, meter, structure, and form. In popular music
analysis, the effects of sound recording and production technology on what
we eventually hear have until very recently been a secondary concern, if
acknowledged at all. This is surprising, since the intervention of sound
recordists and the technologies used in music production are commonly
foregrounded in recorded music. For example, how different would
“Strawberry Fields Forever” have sounded without the use of analog tape
techniques and manipulation or, indeed, the influence of George Martin?
Many sound production tropes, including techniques such as side-chain
compression, band pass filtering, and auto-tuning, are now well assimilated
into the pantheon of electronic music production to the point where
electronic music produced without such features is the exception rather than
the rule. In his 1982 article “Analysing Popular Music: Theory, Method,
Practice,” Tagg’s hermeneutic semiological method included a “checklist of
parameters of musical expression” (1982: 47) including “acoustical” and
“electromusical and mechanical” as two of seven categories. This early
recognition that production techniques were not extra-musical factors as
they strongly impacted what is eventually heard was an important milestone
in scholarly understandings of the music production process as well as
popular music analysis generally.
THE PRODUCTION OF MUSIC AND SOUND 3
Works including David Gibson’s Art of Mixing (1997) and William

Moylan’s Understanding and Crafting the Mix (2007) detail the construction
of mixes from a technical perspective and feature visual representations of
several basic parameters of recorded sound. These texts are designed to
assist those interested in improving their mixing technique, and to that end
are aimed at practicing recordists as well as scholars. Ruth Dockwray and
Allan Moore’s “Configuring the Sound Box 1965–72” (2010) prioritizes the
spatial, frequency, and dynamic attributes of a recording and draws meanings
from the relative positions of instruments within commercial popular music
mixes at the turn of the 1970s. Doyle (2005) recognized the impact of echo
and reverb on pre-1960s recordings, in particular the fabrication of space
in recorded music. Doyle’s comprehensive and insightful book foregrounds
the use of space, ambience, and environment as extramusical, yet essential
facets of recorded music as he highlights applications of echo and reverb
via multiple examples. Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen (2016) in contrast
focus on “digital signatures,” or traces of digital signal processing tools and
their use that remain or are foregrounded in popular recordings. Works by
Samantha Bennett (2015a,b) analyze recordings using a “tech-processual”
analytical method. This includes a focus on contextual issues, such as
the intentions of the recordist, workplace circumstances, and access to
technologies before detailing the sonically discernible impact of dynamic,
spatial, frequency, effects processor, and mix characteristics on what the
listener eventually hears. New studies in phonomusicology certainly benefit
popular musicology, but their scope and impact are far broader than that.
The production of sound and music from historical perspectives is
beginning to be documented, with key works including David L. Morton’s
Sound Recording: A Life Story of Technology (2004) and Susan Schmidt-
Horning’s Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio
Recording from Edison to the LP (2013) focusing on the historical trajectories
of sound recording technologies and workplaces, respectively. The historical
nature of recording technologies and workplaces as “concealed” facets
of the recording process has led to an insatiable, general interest appetite
for “behind the scenes” texts and documentary films that “reveal” such
processes and the oft-overlooked contributions to well-known recordings
made by recordists. The Classic Albums documentary series and books
including Milner’s Perfecting Sound Forever (2009) are good examples of
largely interview-based works revealing the tools, techniques, and personnel
behind canonized rock and pop recordings. This well-established and
popular format has continued with films including Sound City (2013),
which focuses on the Los Angeles recording studio of the same name, as
well as the Neve 8078 console, which recorded many of the commercially
successful records made in the studio. Documentary films including Moog
(2004), Mellodrama (2008), I Dream of Wires (2014), and 808 (2014) and
books including Tompkins’s How To Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from
WWI to Hip Hop (2010) center on specific electronic music technologies
and their impact on niche genres of recorded popular music. Bloomsbury

Academic’s own 33 1/3 series of books features plenty of titles that take such
revelatory approaches. Two in particular are D.X. Ferris’s Reign in Blood
(2008), which features detailed discussion surrounding the impact of Rick
Rubin’s production and Andy Wallace’s mix techniques on the 1988 Slayer
record. Joe Bonomo’s Highway to Hell (2010) takes a similar line, in that it
foregrounds the contribution made to the AC/DC record by recordists Mutt
Lange and Tony Platt.
Historical studies of music production do, however, tend to privilege
Anglophone commercial, pop and rock musics; studies on the production of
indigenous musics, as well as classical and jazz musics, feature far less in both
general interest and scholarly phonomusicological studies. This is possibly
due to the techniques involved in the recording of commercial musics as
opposed to noncommercial and/or Western art musics. Technological
and processual intervention has arguably been foregrounded in popular
music recording since the 1950s, with recordists such as Sam Phillips and
his pioneering “slap-echo” effect heard across most releases from his Sun
Records label (Zak 2010). In the 1960s recordings of The Beatles, we
hear prominent tape manipulation effects, as well as the consolidation of
musician and recordist vision via the impact of George Martin as producer
(Kehew and Ryan 2006). Using these historical examples does, however,
reinforce a recordist canon of sorts that in recent years has grown from the
concentration of both scholarly and general interest works focused on the
so-called “golden age” of Anglophone commercial recording between the
1950s and 1970s. Mine Doğantan-Dack’s Recorded Music (2008) diverts
from this well-trodden path by focusing on the aesthetics of phonography,
and the recording of jazz and classical musics from both philosophical and
critical angles. Recordings of classical and jazz musics have historically
tended to be more “transparent” in that a “performance capture” approach
is preferred. In saying that, recent studies by Klein (2015) suggest increasing
technological intervention in the recording and production of classical music
today. While there has begun to be some consideration of production-related
issues in the milieu of indigenous music (e.g., Gibson 1998; Kral 2010; Scales
2012), to this date outside of Anglophone music in the Northern Hemisphere,
there has been only limited work. Clearly, there is plenty of work to be done.
One fascinating area in sound and music production studies is that of
the recorded music artifact/document and the impact of digitization on
production, dissemination, and consumption of recorded sound. As one of
the foremost scholars in sound studies, Jonathan Sterne has argued that
simultaneous to the audio industry’s historical quest for high fidelity is a
parallel history of audio compression. In MP3: The Meaning of a Format
(2012), Sterne posits a historical and philosophical perspective on perceptual
encoding, data reduction, and the governance of format technologies. This is
a key work among many in music, media, and sound studies in that it situates
the MP3 as emerging from century-old techniques in audio compression and
not simply a symbol of musical devaluation. Sterne’s work is particularly

valuable to sound studies since the focus is on the format and technology
itself and not the ramifications of MP3 on music industry business models,
which make up the majority of studies on music file formats. In his 1969
essay “Opera and the Long Playing Record,” Theodore Adorno stated, “In
the history of technology, it is not all that rare for technological inventions
to gain significance long after their inception” (2002[1969]: 283). This is
certainly the case for the vinyl record format, boosted not only by a recent,
albeit unexpected, growth in global sales but also by scholarly attention.
Richard Osborne’s Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record (2012) considers
the format’s historical trajectory and ongoing appeal in the digital age, with
focus on technology, consumer demographic, and aesthetics. Bartmanski and
Woodward’s Vinyl: The Analogue Record in the Digital Age (2015) posits a
challenge to format obsolescence by arguing the place of the tangible object
in today’s almost entirely digital music world. Bartmanski and Woodward
recognize the importance of listener subjectivity, mediation, and other
reception matters, suggesting the vinyl record is “an icon of recording that
thanks to its remarkable affordances came to sit at the core of great cultural
transformations of the twentieth century” (2015: 5). Both texts consider
vinyl as transformative, not simply in terms of a music carrier, but also
the centrality of the format to social and cultural practices throughout the
twentieth century.
Consideration of these analog/digital, tangible/intangible binaries appears
throughout existing studies on the production of music and sound. Another
recent, emergent area concerns the production of sound and music in the
virtual world. Whiteley and Rambarran’s Oxford Handbook of Music and
Virtuality (2016) includes multiple chapters on the production of music
online. The role of participatory, fan-funded platforms is considered in Mark
Thorley’s chapter “Virtual Music, Virtual Money,” which raises questions
surrounding authorship and creative direction when multiple audience
members invest in a production process. Benjamin O’Brien focuses on the
production process as a collaborative one in his chapter “Sample Sharing:
Virtual Laptop Ensemble Communities.” Both these chapters consider the
production of music as a collaborative process, but also one that bridges
real and virtual economies, creative practices, and communities. These are
just two examples of production-focused chapters in a wider publication
that addresses new modes of music practice online.
Production of Culture
The production of culture perspective emerged in 1974 as a “self-conscious
perspective [that] challenged the then-dominant idea that culture and
social structure mirror each other” (Peterson and Anand 2004: 311–12).
Originally, it was one of several approaches within a movement in North
American sociology that were concerned with bringing a flexible concept

of culture to bear on the sociology of organizations and industries, while
continuing to acknowledge the importance of symbolic/semiotic systems on
the production of culture. As such, the perspective presented an alternative
both to then-dominant Marxist and functionalist perspectives. It additionally
has much in common with Howard Becker’s contemporaneous concept
of art worlds (1976), but with more focus on organizational/institutional
dynamics than on different types of professional individuals. Notably, the
production of culture concept emerged out of a decade of research on jazz,
rock, and popular musics and discoveries that the rise of rock and decline
of swing jazz (as the dominant popular music form, at least) couldn’t be
understood simply from aesthetic features, consumer demand, or the work
of the “individual genius” alone. The perspective has had considerable
subsequent adoption outside of music studies, becoming in the words of Paul
DiMaggio “hegemonic in the sociology of the arts and media” (2000: 108)
and framing studies of industries including fashion, visual art, restaurants
and microbreweries, and photography.
As Marco Santoro has noted, “the heuristic usefulness and epistemological
importance of the production of culture approach rests in the fact that
it is indeed attuned to the specificities of cultural objects as symbolic
representations and meaning structures, while still being focused on matters
to do with social institutions and modes of social organization” (2008: 8). By
looking primarily at the production of informally produced symbols, and by
treating music primarily symbolically, the focus remains largely on identity
construction and formation. Toward this end, concepts like “authenticity”
have been central in the production of culture perspective approaches toward
recorded music, as authenticity can be discussed both as a quality of a
symbolic object and as a social value within genre-specific music communities.
Correspondingly, the focus on symbolic aspects of production has meant a
lack of attention on other aspects of recorded music; in addition to having
symbolic value, recordings are material artifacts that facilitate very real
embodied experiences (i.e., those that transpire during the acts of production
or listening) and as such are irreducible to a symbolic valence alone.
While Peterson regularly revised and honed the production of culture
perspective in response to his ongoing research into music industries (and
especially the US country music industry), the standard model of the
perspective hinged upon six concepts: (1) technology, (2) law and regulation,
(3) industry structure, (4) organizational structure, (5) occupational careers,
and (6) the market. This six-part structure is useful to analyze when thinking
about what precisely defines production within this perspective—and it is
useful to scrutinize all that is occluded by focusing on these six concepts.
For example, absent are the very objects that production produces, their
aesthetic qualities, or the reception of these products. The perspective does
not contain any explicit conceptualization of time or temporal unfolding
and, therefore, is not well suited for analyzing the workflows of production.
Thinking through labor solely with the framework of careers or industry/

organizational structure misses most of what is interesting in the field
of production, for example, distinctive differences in how engineering,
arrangement, production, mixing, etc., are done for different forms of music
ostensibly contained within “the industry.” Peterson’s book on country
music (1997), for example, does not attend to recording studio practices in
any meaningful way; recording practices and studio-sited performances are
deemed inessential for understanding how country music, as an industry
structure, fabricated a cult of authenticity. The conflation of “the market”
with “the audience” (Dowd 2004: 240) correspondingly conflates consumer
activity with audience reception. Thus, there is little critique of whether the
commercial success of particular symbolic objects necessarily means that
consumers subscribe to the symbolic meanings intended by the producers
of those objects.
Keith Negus’s long-term study of the cultures of major record labels
situated in the UK provides a distinctive take on the “mundane mediations
of the music industries” (1999: 174) that largely follows the production
of culture perspective. The main aim of his research is to demonstrate
how “all industries are cultural” (ibid.: 23) and to provide a sociological
account of the creation and maintenance of musical genres. His first book,
Producing Pop, included a brief discussion of studio-sited production (1992:
82–93), which is discussed from the perspective of artists and repertoire
(A&R) representatives rather than the perspective of engineers, producers,
musicians, or audiences. None of the discussion of studios and engineers
appears to be based on ethnography conducted within studios, which
contrasts with the first-hand accounts he provides from A&R reps and
record label executives. In his follow-up book Music Genres and Corporate
Cultures, Negus further clarifies his research aim as understanding “how
staff within the music industry seek to understand the world of musical
production and consumption by constructing knowledge about it . . . and
then by deploying this knowledge as a ‘reality’ that guides the activities
of corporate personnel” (1999: 19). Negus’s focus on the industry and
organizational structure of record labels explicates “the conditions within
which great individuals will be able to realize their talent” (ibid.: 18).
While industry structure serves as one of the pillars of the production of
culture perspective, rarely is the term “industry” defined or problematized.
Instead, “the industry” is taken for granted as an empirical category, where
it is typically synonymous with the major transnational record labels and
radio conglomerates. But as recent ethnomusicological scholarship has
shown, “the industry” is perhaps not best understood as an empirical
category. Chris Washburne (2008) has shown how the New York–based
salsa music industry is best understood as a scene. Benjamin Brinner’s
study (2009) of Israeli-Palestinian ethnic music collaborations depicts an
industry that transpires at the intersection of the social networks of dozens
of individual musicians. Eliot Bates’s research (2016) into an emergent
industry for Anatolian minority language musics in Turkey theorizes it both

as an actor-network and as an inheritance of Ottoman-era craft guilds.
Louise Meintjes’s ethnography (2003) of South African record studios
situates the industry for mbaqanga music within sets of embodied practices
and complex articulations of racial difference and power. In all cases, the
industry does not exist so much as it is performed, contested, enacted,
negotiated, and recontextualized. It makes little sense in the early twenty-
first century to talk of “the music industry,” even as corporate mergers have
further consolidated the control of recorded, broadcast, and live music
performances (Williamson and Cloonan 2007).
The production of culture also lacks a coherent theory of technology;
it alternates between social and technological determinist poles but
lacks a consideration of the more nuanced relations between people and
technological objects that, for example, comprise the labor of STS as a
field. For example, Peterson (1990) suggests that the shift from 78 RPM
shellac to vinyl records had a direct role in the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll.
While this may have been the case for the United States in the late 1940s
and early 1950s, as Osborne (2012) has shown the situation in the United
Kingdom was different. The country was slower to adopt the new formats,
and new genres became popular without any wholesale change in format.
Works such as Wallis and Malm (1984) and Gronow and Saunio (1998)
have shown just how asymmetrical the adoption of media formats have
been in different countries. What is necessary, therefore, is a site-specific
consideration of how certain technologies become part of social formations
and cultural practices.
Another problem that faces the study of production concerns the
tendency to reduce the role of recordists, engineers, producers, arrangers
and other people involved in the production of recorded sound to that of
“intermediaries” and therefore equivalent to A&R reps, accountants and
other record label/ music industry employees. The “intermediary” concept
is quite problematic with regards to academic writings on popular music
production for a number of reasons. First, while the work of music critics,
publicists, A&R reps, accountants, record producers, engineers, arrangers,
or session musicians all do contribute to the subsequent “reception” of music
by audiences, the kinds of labor—and the effects of these different kinds
of labor—do not necessarily contribute in similar or symmetrical ways. As
David Hesmondhalgh has shown, some of the myriad uses of this term in
Anglophone scholarship on popular music and cultural industries come from
a pervasive misreading of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of intermediary, which
most specifically was concerned with the role of critics in the field of cultural
production (Hesmondhalgh 2006: 226) rather than the labor of what
Hesmondhalgh terms “cultural managers.” Second, the intermediary concept
is problematic as it assumes the presence of a specific relation between an
artist/musician/creator and an audience in which the intermediary mediates.
This inherits the legacy of early uses of the term “mediation” in reference
to the mediation between an individual and God, or subsequent uses of the

term to refer to diplomats and the mediation between sovereign states or
between an individual and the state. But the relation between a broad field of
creators and an even broader field of potential audiences is not clearly built
upon a binary relationship, especially when considering the complexities
of the circulation of physical media and networked distribution of digital
content and cultural products. As Hesmondhalgh noted, “we need a better
specification of the division of labour involved in mediating production and
consumption in culture-making organizations than that offered by Bourdieu
and by those who have adopted the term ‘cultural intermediaries’ from him
in these many different ways” (2006: 227).
A more productive, but simultaneously more expansive and diffuse,
concept of mediation transpires in the work of Antoine Hennion, where
the concern moves beyond simply navigating human social relations and
considering the role of nonhuman actors, especially technological objects,
on human interaction and creative practices. For Hennion, producers and
other studio workers have a vital role in mediating between the public and
the artist, but in doing so “the aim of the entire organisation of production is
to introduce the public into the studio” (1983: 189). Thinking of mediation
in this way is productive insofar as it permits the analysis of systems where
built environments or technological objects come to have a considerable
influence on creative and social labor, and provide much needed attention
on the ways in which certain objects occupy highly charged and influential
positions within cultural practices (e.g., the microphone, see Stokes 2009).
In a later work, Hennion addresses the sociology of music as a field when he
argues that “music enables us to go beyond the description of technical and
economic intermediaries as mere transformers of the musical relationship
into commodities, and to do a positive analysis of all the human and material
intermediaries of the ‘performance’ and ‘consumption’ of art, from gestures
and bodies to stages and media” (2003: 84).
Producers, “Production
Personnel,” and Auteurism
Concepts of sound recordist agency and the role of the sound recordist have,
in recent years, become key foci in both sound and music studies. In his
1977 article “The Producer as Artist,” Charlie Gillet theorized the role of
the record producer as similar to that of the film director. This prompted the
emergence of another disciplinary focus, that of “the producer as auteur”
which situated the producer as driver of a commercial musical project.
By 1990, an entire issue of Popular Music and Society was dedicated
to studies on the impact of technology—specifically sound recording and
music production technology—on recorded, popular music. Yet such early
studies recognized the complex intersection between musical composition,

performance, musician and recordist agency, and technology in the
production of recorded music. Muikku (1990), for example, categorized
producers into four specialist groups: those working for one record
company, freelancers, those working for their own company and artist-
producers. Others theorized the role of the record “producer” as similar
to that of a composer (Moorefield 2005) or film director, thus resulting
in a sub-discourse of “the producer as auteur” (Warner 2003). This line
of thought was perhaps most notably pursued by Evan Eisenberg in The
Recording Angel (2005), as he described:
But for the most part the small army of engineers, studio musicians and
assistant producers that takes part in a typical recording is simply ignored.
In charge of this small army is the producer, who is the counterpart of the
film director. (2005: 94–95)
The idea that a music production process is overseen by one individual

is, however, controversial and has attracted critique. In an early work, Ed
Kealy argues that, despite the shift from a craft union mode of organization
to an entrepreneurial one, sound recordists still very much were part of
a collaborative work environment (1979). In The Poetics of Rock, Albin
Zak focused on the difference between the production roles of producers
and engineers, as follows: “[Engineers] are the participants in the process
who best understand the technological tools in terms of their potential for
realizing musical aims” (2001: 165). Correspondingly,
Most rock producers play some sort of aesthetic role as well, which
may overlap with songwriting, arranging, performing, and engineering,
either in participation or in lending critical judgement or advice. Most
importantly, producers must nurture the overall process and preserve a
larger creative vision as the process moves through myriad, mundane
details. (2001: 172–73)
However, Zak stopped short of fully endorsing auteurism, instead reinforcing

the collaborative process involved in record production, as he stated: “But
the idea that a producer should be such an auteur—imposing his or her own
sound and vision on diverse projects—is controversial, as is the ‘artist/ record
producer’ conflation (unless, of course, the producer is also the featured
performer)” (2001: 179). In The Art of Music Production Richard James
Burgess categorized the producer in four interesting ways: The All-Singing-
All-Dancing-King-of-the-Heap, The Faithful Sidekick, The Collaborator,
and Merlin the Magician (2002). While these distinctions reflect Burgess’s
own professional practice and can therefore be taken as an accurate
reflection of recording industry roles within a particular production milieu,
the categories—particularly the final of the four—reinforce mythological
understandings of the role of the recordist in music production processes and

do little to theorize the impact on resulting recordings. There is, however,
acknowledgment that producers operate in both auteurist and collaborative
modes.
In his book Any Sound You Can Imagine, Paul Théberge considered the
impact of new digital recording technologies on the process and professions
of music production. This book focused on the so-called “democratization
of technology” (1997: 29–30) and the availability of recording tools to
performers in the 1980s and early 1990s, showing how producers become
consumers of technology. Links between the proliferation of cheap,
accessible, and predominantly digital recording technologies and new
recordist roles have been drawn by a number of scholars (Théberge 1997;
Katz 2004). The production, dissemination, and consumption of digital
music has undoubtedly resulted in a conflation of traditional recording and
production roles as defined by Zak. As Virgil Moorefield suggested, “At the
top of the current charts, one increasingly finds cases in which the producer is
the artist is the composer is the producer; and technology is what has driven
the change” (2005: 111). Mike Howlett’s “The Record Producer as Nexus”
is less concerned with the relationship between production technology and
personnel, more focused on the producer as an intermediary, and about
“engagement with otherness” in terms of “the song and the performance,
the engineering and the industry” (2009).
The Art of Record Production

The art of record production, sometimes termed “the musicology of record
production,” is a distinctive scholarly field that emerged largely out of
practice-led research initiatives in British universities (and later in North
America, Australia, and continental Europe). The annual conferences of the
Association for the Art of Record Production, and since 2007 the Journal
on the Art of Record Production, have been one of the main milieus for
the scholarly analysis of recorded music. In their introduction to an edited
collection, Simon Zagorski-Thomas and Simon Frith argue that “in the
studio technical decisions are aesthetic, aesthetic decisions are technical,
and all such decisions are musical” (2012: 3), which encapsulates one of the
main concerns of this branch of musical research. Conspicuously absent,
however, is any substantive consideration or theorization of the social.
Because of that, this field would seem to be the antithesis of the production
of culture perspective.
For example, Zagorski-Thomas (2014) employs an eclectic framework
drawing on actor-network theory (ANT), the social construction of
technology (SCOT), and a systems approach to creativity (especially
Csikszentmihalyi 1997) in order to propose a new approach to musicology
that is more responsive to the analytical challenges of recorded music. He
proposes a methodology that focuses around four questions: (1) who and what
the participants are in the study (including the possibility of technologies as
active participants), (2) types of knowledge and understanding, (3) types of
activity (including both the specialized labor of recording production and the
more general cognitive/physical activity), and (4) the ecology/environment
in which this process occurs. This framework enabled Zagorski-Thomas to
write with considerable detail about the techniques and technologies present
in the field of production, perhaps the greatest achievement of this approach
(especially in comparison to previous scholarship such as production of
culture perspective works).
Broadly speaking, the bulk of art of record production literature by other
scholars, even though it has differed in theorization, has stuck to variants of
this methodology, including the problematic dichotomy between the object
of study (the first three questions) and its context (the fourth question).
Specifically missing in such a framework is, for example, any necessary
discussion of musical meanings, power, identity, politics—and sociocultural
issues more generally. While the same could be said for most musicological
scholarship before the 1990s, what Philip Bohlman has noted as musicology’s
“remarkable capacity to imagine music into an object that [has] nothing to
do with political and moral crises” (1993: 414–15), the field has changed
substantially. It is not clear why it is necessary, in arguing for a musicology
of record production, to roll back the considerable achievements that
musicology has made in showing how music is constitutive of social realities
(e.g., DeNora 2003; Turino 2008). Analytical work, such as that carried out
by Tagg and Moore, is notably absent from the discourse too, as is work
considering the production of music and sound outside the traditional realm
of the commercial, popular music recording industry. That is not to say that
the Art of Record Production forum is not valuable; it most certainly is
and, to a large extent, it has made significant inroads into establishing and
continuing a vital discourse once absent from popular music studies and the
creative, artistic realm of audio engineering.
Still, space remains in sound and music production discourse for further
work. This book aims to address this notable gap, thus broadening the
discourse beyond the recording workplace and into domains such as
fieldwork, television, the Internet, and live music. Here, we present 13
innovative and original new ideas pertaining to the production of music and
sound drawn from both traditional and contemporary research bases and
methodologies. In order to widen the literature and contribute to this field
beyond the loci of records and recordings, this book is organized into six
key sections.
The chapters in Situating Production: Place, Space and Gender
(Section 1) begin with an exploration of the contexts of production,
but move beyond questions of context to understand how recordings
always carry with them traces of their spaces, places, and gendered modes
of production. Tom Western, in Chapter 2, moves our analysis beyond
the oft-assumed studio/field recording dichotomy to understand how

both are equally “artificial constructs of sonic manipulation,” especially
in relation to editing choices and microphone selection and placement.
Moreover, field recordings are a technology used to produce place—and
as such exist as forms of cultural production. Drawing on the early history
of ethnomusciology and the formation of the International Folk Music
Council (IFMC), Western shows how field recordings were instrumental in
the very foundation of the field of ethnomusicology and used by the IFMC
“to produce idealized versions of place.” Yet this process wasn’t (and isn’t)
unproblematic, as field recordings can also evoke a spirit of displacement,
leading listeners to project place onto field recordings.
In Chapter 3, in an analysis of UK-based popular music practitioners,
Damon Minchella considers how space becomes an intrinsic aspect of the
creative process of making audio recordings, and grounds practitioners’
experiences of the world. The chapter uses a novel framework that draws
on phenomenological enquiry, sound studies approaches to theorizing
aural architecture, and a systems model of creativity and is supported by
ethnographic data taken from long-form interviews. Minchella arrives at
three conclusions: that the “atmosphere” of a space has more effect than
other aspects of spaces, that technological and acoustical concerns are
secondary to the feel of the aural architecture, and that spaces leave an
imprint on the sound produced within.
Chapter 4 turns the attention to the significance of gender within
production environments, where Paula Wolfe explores three themes: “the
role of production within the creative process, the influence of the lyric
on the production process and the impact of gendered ‘cultural notions of
age’ on the women’s representation.” This is done through a comparison of
the Argentinian folk/electronica artist-producer Juana Molina with the all-
women rock band Savages. For Molina, there is no meaningful separation
between composition and production processes—both are part of a broader
creative act. For Savages, the work they did contributed to what they termed
an “indestructible sound,” and they cultivated a close relationship with a
male producer who facilitated their distinctive way of coming together as
four soloists.
While recordings often do significant work as representations of
culture, and questions of representation have been frequently assessed
in ethnomusicological literature, recordings go beyond representation
to constitute sociocultural realities in themselves. Section 2, Beyond
Representation, shows how an exploration of production labor enables us
to understand the broader cultural work that recordings do. Eliot Bates, in
Chapter 5, analyzes the production of music for a Turkish dramatic comic
TV show Fırtına, which constituted a project of “rethinking, reframing
and representing the Black Sea.” He specifically focuses on the labor done
by arrangers, a distinctive occupation in Turkey that is responsible for
orchestration decisions, project management, and the creation of the musical
and sonic concept for the TV show’s soundtrack. Despite the newness of the
TV series medium (private television broadcasts began in Turkey only in the
1990s), TV show music inherited many elements from album production,
especially an infatuation with arrangements of so-called “traditional”
folksongs specific to the region being represented. Ultimately, the productive
labor of arrangement, like the show’s script, stages an encounter between a
rurally marked Eastern Black Sea and an urbanly marked Istanbul.
In Chapter 6, Karl Neuenfeldt discusses the production of an album of
Torres Strait (Islander) music performed by The Custodians that draws on
contemporary styles and Western popular music recorded aesthetics while
preserving a sense of the traditional ancestral music. The album Kodangu
strives to “reposition Mabuyag Islanders, and by extension other Islanders,
in contemporary narratives, arguably functioning as an aural, textual and
visual memory device.” In doing so, Neuenfeldt shows how the production
process of making indigenous recordings “can be a means of reclamation
and celebration.” Simultaneously, production and creative labor can serve as
a form of research that goes beyond the audible to enhance the impact that
albums have once they circulate.
Section 3 moves the spotlight onto discourses of Electronic Music
production, an area rich in both technological and production aesthetics.
This section deals with electronic music from two unique perspectives:
Patrick Valiquet considers the historical trajectory of acousmatic music
and education in Quebec, Canada, before Mike D’Errico deals with aspects
of controllerism in the production of hip-hop before. Both these chapters
contribute considerable historical and contextual findings to studies of
music production.
Patrick Valiquet in Chapter 7 focuses on both the historical and the
educational as opposed to practical aspects of electronic music production.
Valiquet considers the historical context of acousmatic music before tracing
the origin and trajectory of its educational place in Quebec, Canada. Drawing
on extensive ethnographic work, Valiquet evaluates various observations on
acousmatic music curricula to include the place of theory, perception, and
technical skills. His findings exemplify the extent to which acousmatic music
pedagogy and concomitant production results in democratization. Critically,
Valiquet draws significant conclusions surrounding the masculine coding of
electronic music’s tools and the exclusion of women from electronic music
historiography.
In Chapter 8, Mike D’Errico explores the blurred lines between music
performance and production among DJ producers. In tracing the trajectory
of controllerism via turntablism, D’Errico posits computer game controller
design as integral to the playability of music software. His case study
focuses on Daedelus, a US DJ who places interactive audio control at the
center of his performance and production aesthetic. D’Errico’s findings
concern the necessity of failure in gaming and how such aesthetics “bleed
into the realm of digital music.” He also summarizes failure as evidence of
liveness and recognizes the enduring embodiment of analog processes in

new digital tools.
Technology and Technique are two aspects inherent to the wider
production of music and sound. In Section 4, Alan Williams and Owen
Marshall consider the aesthetics of music and sound production technologies
and techniques in two critical perspectives that focus on the historical
and contemporary aspects of music production, respectively. This section
recognizes that without tools and processes, the production of music and
sound is limited, yet applications of technology and technique are loaded
with historical and aesthetic meanings.
Undoubtedly, commercial rock and pop record production has led to a
mythologization of music production tools and processes; it is this intangible,
yet critical aspect of historical music production that Alan Williams explores
in Chapter 9. Here, matters including technostalgia and technological
deception are critically examined with reference to mythologized recordings
including The Beatles’s Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Williams
critically examines the power of music production technologies to reinforce
notions of performance deceit via a richly detailed set of examples drawn
from popular culture. Finally, Williams discusses an evident manufacturing
of record production mythology that perpetuates today.
Owen Marshall considers a current discourse in contemporary music
production in Chapter 10. He acknowledges the politics of auto-tune in
music production before focusing on conversation analysis as a technical
approach to vocal correction. In a meticulously detailed examination of a
music production session, Marshall’s case study focuses on “Carl,” a US
audio engineer who is observed applying pitch correction to a prerecorded
vocal track. Aspects of repair, repetition, and intonation are critically
examined in an innovative documentation of accountability in the pitch
correction process. In his conclusion, Marshall evaluates the extent to which
the tools of correction are concealed and, significantly, what is to be gained
by revealing them.
How is the production of music and sound mediated to listeners? Section
5, Mediating Sound and Silence, features two chapters exploring the notion
of music production from original angles. Here, Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen
focuses on the opaque and transparent in the reception of music production
aesthetics, while Richard Osborne studies the trajectory of the production
of silence.
In Chapter 11, Brøvig-Hanssen considers how technological mediation
in the music production process is perceived by listeners. After drawing
parallels between opaque/transparent productions and Smalley’s naturalist/
interventionist works, Brøvig-Hanssen goes on to frame her argument in the
context of French philosopher Louis Marin’s understandings of opacity and
transparency in the semiotics of paintings. Brøvig-Hanssen also considers
the foregrounding of “phonograph effects” in music productions before
focusing on Squarepusher in a case study of spatiotemporal fragmentation.
Additionally, a listener’s experiential comprehension of technological

intervention is considered with reference to applications of pitch correction
software in music production. She concludes by evaluating the opacity of
technological mediation as variable depending on listener and aesthetic
potential.
In an innovative study on approaches to the production of silence,
Richard Osborne revisits John Cage’s 4’33” as one of many examples.
In Chapter 12, Osborne first considers aspects of notated silence, before
recognizing the presence of silence as more prevalent in record production
than in notation. Osborne turns his attention to the politics of silence using
diverse examples from anarcho-punk band Crass to EDM act Orbital. Here,
Osborne also notes the presence of silence as a marker of peace in Sly and the
Family Stone’s “There’s A Riot Goin’ On” and in John Lennon’s “Nutopian
International Anthem.” The chapter then moves on to discuss notions of
memorial and technological silence. Finally, Osborne considers aspects of
economic silence and draws links back to John Cage’s composition.
In the final section of this book, Samantha Bennett and Mark Thorley
move the discussion on music and sound production into the online sphere.
Here, contemporary matters of virtual production are considered from two
distinct angles; Bennett analyzes stem remixing practices in online remix
communities, while Thorley considers the impact of crowdfunding as a
new mode of music production and a viable alternative to the commercial
mainstream.
In Chapter 13, Samantha Bennett recognizes the online communities
that form around remix competitions and events. Such communities have
formed on dedicated platforms such as Indaba Music and Beatport, as well
as through creative commons sites such as ccMixter and individual artists’
fora. Following a critical discussion on intertextuality in popular music,
Bennett examines four case study examples: Deadmau5’s “SOFI Needs A
Ladder,” REM’s “It Happened Today,” Bon Iver’s Bon Iver, and Skrillex and
Damien Marley’s “Make It Bun Dem,” before positing “intermixtuality” as
an online music production practice among community participants. This
virtual production engagement is, however, evaluated as part of a continuum
of (re)mix practice.
In Chapter 14, Mark Thorley investigates crowdfunding. This chapter
first considers established modes of music production before investigating
the potential “alternative” in online crowdfunding models. Here, aspects of
audience engagement and participation, economics and revenue streams are
critically discussed. Thorley goes on to consider the “barriers to entry” in the
established recorded music industry before he examines crowdfunding as
an, albeit highly complex, alternative. Thorley notes that the establishment
of a clear rationale, bypassing of the established model, and understanding
of supporter motivations and engagement mechanisms are key to
crowdfunding as a successful music production alternative. Additionally,
Thorley recognizes the potential of crowdfunding as an alternative mode
of production among communities of participants with whom there is

proximity and shared “alternative” values.
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Pa r t o n e
Situating
Production: Place,
Space and Gender
22
C h a p t e r TWO
Field Recording and the

Production of Place
Tom Western
Introduction
1955. The advent of rock (Peterson 1990), but also a significant year in the
histories of world music and of field recording. That same year, Columbia
Records released The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive
Music on its Masterworks imprint—a monumental anthology presenting to
listeners “the first systematic mapping of the folk or oral music tradition of
humanity” (Columbia Records 1955). Reviewing this World Library in the
scholarly press a couple of years later, ethnomusicologists Alan Merriam and
Charles Haywood (1958: 86) declared it “a major contribution to the study
of folk music,” going on to explain: “This, in large measure, is due to the
fact that all the material was recorded ‘in the field.’ There is no impression
of the recording studio here, no contrivances with mikes, or setting up of
proper balances. There is a pervading feeling of truth—this is how the folk
sings, dances, or plays.”
A clean, indexical relationship is given to the sound on record and sound
as it exists in the world, and a binary is created between studio and field
recordings. Studio recordings are understood as artificial constructs of sonic
manipulation, while field recordings are heard as the transparent capturing
of external reality. This thinking stretches back to the early history of sound
recording, and persists into the present. In this chapter, I will attempt to
challenge this binary by listening to field recording as a form of cultural and
24 Critical Approaches to the Production of Music and sound
knowledge production, with particular focus on how field recordings have

been used to produce place by linking sound to geography.
Field recordings do not only produce place. They have also been
employed by folklorists, ethnographers, ethnomusicologists and recordists
of other stripes to produce race, gender, class, ethnicity and identity. Often
field recordings produce all these things at once, forging associations in
the ears of listeners and playing active roles in processes of racialization,
nationalization, segregation, spatialization and more (Stoever-Ackerman
2010; Hagstrom Miller 2010). Sounds recorded in the field are always
suffused with politics, which then feed into listening experiences. In this
chapter, though, I keep my analytical ear trained on place: to probe how
sonic conceptions of place intersect with and absorb understandings of
ethnicity, identity and belonging; to critique the current reception of archival
recordings, which credit them with granting access to how places sounded
in the past; and to hear how places—particularly the nation—have been
produced through territorial acts of silencing.
My central case study here comes from the history of ethnomusicology:
the conversations about field recording that took place within the
International Folk Music Council (IFMC) in the mid-twentieth century. But
I will consider this history alongside perspectives from other modes of field
recording, arguing that while these genres have their differences, they also
have much in common, and can productively be brought to bear on each
other. The production of field recordings is highlighted throughout, showing
how sounds and music and representations of people and places have been
brought into being. I turn, first, to the many histories of field recording and
some ways of conceiving of them, before listening to ethnomusicological
conversations on recording at mid-century. I then focus on the concept
of place, and how it is produced in sound, before addressing the silences
involved in sonic productions of place.
Hearing the Fields

Field recording has many histories. Recordings made on location—and of
locations—traverse the trajectories of multiple genres of music and sound.
In scholarship, field recordings have been employed in, and in some cases
have been central to, various disciplines: folklore, ethnomusicology, cultural
geography, anthropology, biology and more. In art music, they have been
a source material for composition through most of the twentieth century
and into the twenty-first, with microphones and tape machines becoming
instruments in themselves, employed to create as well as record sounds.
In popular music, field trips made by now-iconic producers—Ralph Peer,
Fred Gaisberg, John Hammond—were hugely important in scouting artists,
establishing markets and globalizing the recording industry. The histories
FIELD RECORDING AND THE PRODUCTION OF PLACE 25
of folk and world musics, similarly, have developed alongside recording

technologies and their use in the field, often at the intersections of commerce
and scholarship.
Field recordings are also widely used in mass media. In film, a key part
of a movie’s soundtrack consists of environmental recordings used to create
ambience and produce a sense of location. In radio, location recordings were
central to the development of the medium, especially in its documentary and
drama forms; early radio theorists Rudolf Arnheim (1933: 30–32) and Lance
Sieveking (1934: 15–26) write of building sound pictures and presenting the
world to the ear. A related history is that of the recording of wildlife and
natural history sounds. And related to that is the activist practice of acoustic
ecology, which uses recorded sound to highlight the plight of various species
in the face of habitat destruction. More anthropocentric is work in sonic
ethnography, which uses field recordings to document and comment on
social life in different cultures. Straddling all of these disciplines and creative
concerns, and encompassing a lot more besides, is the ubiquitous and plastic
concept of soundscape recording (Sterne 2013).
The literature on field recording is equally diffuse, tending to inhabit
pockets of space across disciplines rather than cohering as one in itself. There
is not the space for a complete review here, so what follows in this section
is a discussion of the work that speaks most directly to the themes of this
chapter. For starters, the study of recorded music is rapidly expanding and
growing in volume. A name—phonomusicology—has even been suggested
(Cottrell 2010). Yet little in this recent run of texts has concerned field
recording, either as process or as product. The art of record production,
it seems, takes place in studios; field recordings remain largely outside of
disciplinary earshot. But leaving field recordings out of conversations about
record production perhaps inadvertently feeds into the notion that field
recordings are not produced at all. This despite the prominent role field
recording has played in various histories of music and sound.
Maybe this is because recording studios are such fertile sites for analysis,
so rich with interpretive opportunity and metaphor (particularly when
they are written about with such verve as in the work of Evan Eisenberg
(2005 [1987]: 130), for whom “the glass booths and baffles that isolate
the musician from his [sic] fellow musicians; the abstracted audience; the
sense of producing an object and of mass-producing a commodity; the
deconstruction of time by takes and its reconstruction by splicing—these
are strong metaphors of modern life”). Maybe it is because practices of
field recording are so varied, sounding across the numerous aforementioned
creative and scholarly enterprises. Or maybe it is because field recording
lacks a generally accepted definition, usually being defined by its supposed
opposite. If studio recordings are about modern techniques of control,
creating ideal sounds and removing the contingencies of place and space,
then “the field” is the reverse: uncontrolled sonic environments, real
locations and capturing them in their full complexity (Akiyama 2014: 6–26;
Gallagher 2015: 562).
Either way, the study of field recording remains scattered and under-
theorized. Yet while this is the case, there has been something of an explosion
in the circulation of archival recordings in digital online sound archives,
generating both public and scholarly interest. On the one hand, the reception
of these recordings upon their return to the aural public sphere is fluid and
mutable.1 Their meaning is open. But on the other hand, we are encouraged,
in both public and scholarly realms, to hear old field recordings as though
they grant us unmediated access to the past. To give a couple of examples:
the discourse that encourages the listening public to engage with online
sound archives posits them as “windows to the past,”2 while scholars have
written that through field recordings, in contrast with written fieldnotes,
“non-literate people can speak for themselves, events are captured without
the bias of the writer and certain phenomena that almost completely escape
the written word can be fully documented, such as dance and music” (Seeger
and Chaudhuri 2004: 2–3).
In both cases, the multiple mediations that are built into the production
of field recordings disappear. But various voices from across music and
sound studies explain why this is problematic, and I will now bring some
of these voices together to illustrate this point. For Mark Katz (2010: 2),
the “discourse of realism” in recording ignores a crucial point: “recorded
sound is mediated sound.” While for James Barrett (2010: 100), “where the
reception of musical performance is mediated through recording technology
the listening experience has been humanly organised by the controllers
of the recording and production process.” Sound recordist Chris Watson
(2009: 284), although not writing about music as such, likens the process
of recording nature sounds to conducting: “[I] found my recording position
by walking round the site listening for a preferred natural balance of all the
parts, similar perhaps to the conductor’s position in front of an orchestra.”
And location recordist Ernst Karel (in Masters and Currin 2011) makes a
similar point in a different way: recording is “not a matter of capturing a
sound that was there—it’s a matter of making the microphones do something
interesting.”
In many ways, these authors are all adhering to an argument laid out
in detail by Jonathan Sterne (2003), whose history of the origins of sound
reproduction is of great help in explaining how recording has never been
about capturing existing sounds, but always about getting people (or other
sounding entities) to make sounds specifically for machines. And these ideas
have been applied directly to the multiple histories of field recording by
Mitchell Akiyama (2014). For Akiyama, the assumption that field recordings
are faithful capturings of sound and place—things as they were—revolves
around the notion of presence in the field, or “being there.” Across fields of
ethnography, biology, acoustic ecology, and sound, ideas of transparency
and authenticity permeate understandings of field recording. But Akiyama
posits recording as a form of intervention that constructs its objects, rather

than the mimetic reflection of an original phenomenon. And he traces the
history that has created a binary between field and studio—a binary that
is largely fictitious and contingent: a development of the Victorian era,
glossing how the laboratory was present in the field and vice versa.
Ultimately, field recording is a studio art. About controlling and ordering
sound; about microphone configurations, polar patterns, parabolic reflectors,
boom poles, preamps, connboxes, mounts and windshields;3 about sonic
labour and cultural production; about constructing and operating mini-
studios, purpose built—sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively—in the
field. This is not to say that studio and field recordings are the same, that
there are not differences between them. But they both must be understood in
terms of production, and fall within the rubric of phonography. I will close
this section with a brief attempt to define this term so as to highlight the
creativity and agency involved in all recording, field included.
Although often associated with creative compositional practices that
utilize field recordings in sound art, suggesting a degree of artistry as much
as documentary, phonography, on a more general level, simply means “sound
writing” or “writing with sound.” Eisenberg (2005 [1987]: 93, 196–97)
posits phonography as an art form rather than merely a medium, defining
it as music (and I would argue his definition extends to sound generally)
“created in the process of recording.” Rothenbuhler and Peters (1997: 259),
meanwhile, insist that we take the -graphy part of the term seriously, asserting
that “phonography offers something like handwriting, with its tracing of the
quirks of the author’s body.” This is to say that we must consider all acts of
phonography as a form of cultural production, that recordists are always
present in their recordings, and that they continue to speak through them as
they circulate. Phonography describes the use of technology to organize and
inscribe social practices and sonic phenomena, and with this in mind, I will
now bring these ideas to bear on specific histories of field recording.
The Art of Field Production

Sound recording is written indelibly into the history of ethnomusicology. Eric
Ames (2003: 297) writes of comparative musicology—ethnomusicology’s
disciplinary forebear—as “the first discipline based on sound recordings.”
Many, perhaps most, ethnomusicological recordings have been field
recordings, but there has been relatively little focus on how these recordings
have been made, and what, consequently, they are. Indeed, the discourse
of objectivity in recording outlined at the top of this chapter, and a lack of
critical reflection on production practices in the field, are also written into
the history of ethnomusicology. In this section I will listen to mid-twentieth-
century conversations on techniques for recording folk musics, taking the
work of the IFMC as a case study and amplifying how sound was used
to represent place—specifically the idea of the nation—in Europe during
this time. Technologies and production techniques were much discussed, but
were at once obscured behind narratives of folk authenticity, national music,
the exigencies of salvage fieldwork.
A couple of canonic quotes to start with. Béla Bartók wrote in 1937: “I
can positively declare that the science of music folklore owes its present
development to Thomas Edison” (1976 [1937]: 294). And Jaap Kunst, in
1955, wrote: “Ethno-musicology could never have grown into an independent
science if the gramophone had not been invented. Only then was it possible
to record the musical expressions of foreign races and peoples objectively”
(1955: 19). Both these statements speak to the prevailing ideas—ideologies,
even—around technology, scholarship, and world and folk musics around
mid-century: ideas that centred on scientific research, which necessitated an
understanding of recording as an objective gathering of data. But they do
little to address the effects of technology on those being recorded, which
plug into bigger issues of power and privilege.
The invention and early use of sound recording technologies at once
profoundly altered the relationships between the fieldworker and those being
studied, while at the same time reinforcing anthropological assumptions
and prejudices (Brady 1999). The phonograph was used as part of colonial
staging, through which cultural difference was exaggerated, but colonized
peoples also sought to appropriate this technology, with inevitably complex
results (Taussig 1993). In the years that followed the Second World War, a
new technology became available, and was quickly adopted by individuals
and organizations producing field recordings. Magnetic tape was widely
used as a recording medium from 1947, having been patented in 1898,
developed in Nazi Germany, then appropriated—through confiscation of
equipment and free licensing of Axis-owned patents—by Allied forces as
the war ended (Brock-Nannestad 2009: 163–65). It was soon established as
the industry standard, supplanting wire recording machines that had been
prevalent before and during the war.
The improved sound quality of tape recordings—their signal-to-noise ratio,
ability to accommodate two or more channels, longer recording length and
relative ease of editing—rendered earlier technologies deficient.4 This didn’t
escape ethnomusicologists. Tape facilitated recording and archiving practices,
and stimulated discourses of fidelity. For Jaap Kunst (1955: 21), “the new
apparatuses not only enable us to obtain an infinitely better rendering—hardly,
if at all, inferior to the original performance—they also allow of uninterrupted
recording lasting, if desired, as long as 72 minutes.” And tape was one of the
factors that contributed to a rush to the field in the decade following the war.5
This was certainly the case in Europe. Across the continent, folklore
institutes sought collaborations with record companies and radio
broadcasters, hoping to make field recordings of traditional musics for
preservation and circulation. IFMC—now the International Council for
Traditional Music—was founded to organize and unify these endeavours.

Founded in 1947, the IFMC had a distinct European bias: just 3 of the 17
members of its Executive Board represented non-European nations (one of
those three being Klaus Wachsmann, a German-British ethnomusicologist
representing Uganda). At the heart of the IFMC’s aims was some high-
minded humanism, including in its constitution the objective “to promote
understanding and friendship between nations through the common interest
in folk music” (IFMC 1949: 4).
Recordings were central to IFMC ambitions. It placed priority on the
exchange of records between nations as an act of cultural diplomacy,
publishing an International Catalogue of Folk Music Records through
Oxford University Press. Council members heard field recording as a means
of shoring up national identities in sound, capturing musical representations
of places and peoples, and defending against the unwanted influence
of mass culture. But all this was predicated on establishing an essential
divide between kinds of—folk and popular—music and asserting selective
connections between sounds and places. Which is to say that the IFMC’s
focus on recording was to produce (idealized) versions of place—and I will
now turn to publications produced by the Council in its early years, to
understand why and how recordings were made.
The IFMC’s position in its first decade was an ideological admixture,
consisting of several equal parts: a continuation of the long-held Herderian
belief that folk music was the preserve of a rural peasantry, and had to be
collected from them; a stand against mass culture, advocating “traditional
ways of recreation” as “an antidote to empty and passive forms of amusement”
(IFMC 1953: 15); an anti-urbanity to counter processes that place people “in
a desperate condition of loneliness” among “the masses of great cities” (ibid.:
15); an effort to curb the musical cosmopolitanisms that ensued from the
movement of people from country to city and from nation to nation (ibid.:
12); and a rally against universal education and mass communication (ibid.).
By 1955, the outlook for folk music—as understood by IFMC—was so bleak
that a “Resolution Concerning the Preservation of Folk Music” was drawn
up, and sent to UNESCO and “all the governments of the world” (IFMC
1956: 1–2). I would like to present it in full (Figure 2.1).
Such a resolution reflected, and contributed to, normative models of
mid-century European musical folklore and anthropology. 1955 was also
the year Claude Lévi-Strauss, for instance, published Tristes Tropiques
(translated into English as A World on the Wane), painting a sad picture
of disintegrating difference in the face of commodity-driven monoculture.6
But my point here is that recordists and institutions affiliated with IFMC
carried these perspectives into the field with them, choosing what to record
and not to record on this basis. Of particular relevance is the positing of
technology as both a positive and a negative force, claiming it can only be
used for good purposes with sufficient expertise and authority, which are
accordingly granted to the Council. And despite typical mid-century claims
Figure 2.1 IFMC Resolution Concerning the Preservation of Folk Music, 1955.
to science, recording is imbued with all kinds of politics. The IFMC model
of preservation amounted to a form of purification. Traditions considered
“alien” were purged from conceptions of national music, and types of music
were artificially demarcated from one another. Soundings of place were
territorial. The power to define culture disappears with claims to objectivity.7
These political aspects of recording were coupled with conversations about
techniques and technologies. IFMC published a manual for fieldworkers on
The Collecting of Folk Music and Other Ethnomusicological Material in 1951,
aimed primarily at those doing research in Europe, with a geographically

expanded second edition following in 1958. Under the editorship of Maud
Karpeles, this latter edition is a 40-page document, containing much advice
and information on making field recordings. It is aimed at non-experts, with
an emphasis on how “much more precise technical means of recording”
enabled those with no musical training to make recordings, which could
then be analysed by others later (Firth 1958: 3).8
Here we find a point of divergence between the field and the studio.
The increased availability and affordability of portable recording machines
in the 1950s and 1960s led to something of a democratization of sound
recording, some decades in advance of the rise of the home recording studio.
Ian Rawes (2010) highlights the existence of hobbyist tape-recording clubs
that were founded across Britain during this period. Yet folklorists were
keen to maintain a distinction between professional and amateur field-
recording endeavours. A few years earlier, Karpeles had deemed “inexpert
observing and collecting” as dangerous, and that “amateur observers
should not be encouraged to interfere with traditional customs.”9 The idea
of the professional fieldworker was vital to folklore’s drive for academic
legitimacy (Bendix 1997: 46), and access to recording technologies
remained a form of technoprivilege. Stoever-Ackerman (2010: 62) writes
of how a sonic colour-line separates those who made recordings and those
who were recorded. And certainly the ability to archive and circulate
recordings, and to define and represent peoples and places, remained a
form of institutionalized power.
Even so, the IFMC manual gives advice on technical matters: recording
speeds, microphone choices, power sources, playback devices, microphone
leads, reducing wind noise and machine hum. And on personal matters:
finding informants, obtaining material, getting folk instead of popular songs,
and making concealed recordings by working “inconspicuously behind a
bush or in a hut” (Karpeles 1958: 17). Talk of concealed recordings brings
into focus another key issue in the production of field recordings: ethics. This
is a big topic, with perspectives varying from recording-as-expropriation
(Fox 2013) to recording-as-humanism (Reigle 2008). Awareness of the
problematic ethics of much twentieth-century field recording feeds into the
current ethnomusicological focus on repatriation: returning recordings to
their source communities in efforts to counter, even heal, what Aaron Fox
(2013: 523) calls the discipline’s “racist and colonial legacy.”
But focus is also given specifically to production. The limitations of
recording, as a medium, are acknowledged—“A mechanical sound recording
cannot by itself reproduce the actual quality of the living song or instrumental
tune” (ibid.: 19)—and so the quality of recordings, as a technical practice,
is emphasized: “It would be a mistake for the field worker to ignore either
the technical quality of his [sic] recording or its aesthetic presentation”
(ibid.: 22). Recordists are encouraged to think about using wall surfaces to
generate reverb and about mic placement in relation to different instrument
families. Detailed instruction is provided on recording ensembles, so as to

generate a good mix in a live setting:
In recording an ensemble, start with a general recording of the whole

piece, or a representative section of it, and then, without stopping
the machine, move the microphone near each performer, or group of
performers, in turn. The object is to give prominence to each contributing
element whilst still allowing the complete ensemble to be heard in the
background. (Fox: 21)
In other words, the recordist is encouraged to move in and among the

musicians to get their microphone close to each component sound source.
But the recordist becomes part of the performance as a result. These
methods were promoted to assist subsequent analysis of the music, yet
they also show how concern for the microphone and its positioning were
central to ethnomusicological recording endeavours. Knowledge production
came through analysis, which was reliant upon technology. This may seem
completely obvious, but it is exactly this concern for technology and
production that often goes missing in discourses of field recording, which
emphasize fidelity, transparency and verisimilitude.
Karpeles also approvingly cites Hugh Tracey’s “Recording African
Music in the Field,” another 1955 work, which similarly stresses the links
between sonic representation and creative use of microphones. For Tracey
(in Karpeles 1958: 22), “the microphone must be ‘focused’ like a camera
to select the salient features of the music and to present them in such a
way as to suggest a complete representation of the occasion.” And like
photography, this is a combination of documentary and artistry: “recording
is an art form operating within the limitations of a frame which demands its
own set of rules” (ibid.: 22). Two points emerge. First, the set of rules—to
echo Tracey’s language—that inform the production of recordings obviously
differs across recording settings. Studio recordings are clearly different from
field recordings, just as the various genres of field recording differ from
one another (though there are plenty of overlaps). Second, and at the same
time, all recordings are produced, and this is always at once a creative and a
technical act. Microphones are compositional tools. Karpeles’s and Tracey’s
recording guidelines speak directly to questions of balance and perspective
and record production as a form of performance—which is to say, everything
that Merriam and Haywood state that field recordings are not.
In 1986 Anthony Seeger urged ethnomusicologists who make recordings
to think of themselves as record producers. In discussing the ontologies of
sound archives, he wrote: “No archive preserves sounds. What it preserves
are interpretations of sounds—interpretations made by the people who did
the recordings, and their equipment” (1986: 270). This is remarkable for the
fact that it needed saying at all, some thirty years after the field-recording
moment under discussion here. Even the Columbia World Library—the
project that drew Merriam and Haywood’s affirmations on truthfulness

through its lack of sonic “contrivances”—had plenty of production. Alan
Lomax, who compiled this recorded anthology, wrote to a colleague: “In
all my albums I have helped the records a lot with the filter bank, the echo
chamber, and I’ve also had a good producer, who knew about making master
tapes for records, socking up all the gain that he could, but careful not to
sock on too much. It’s a specialized job” (in Western 2014: 293).10
Moreover, and to close this section, the aesthetic presentation of field
recordings is part of their production, and this feeds into the connections
between sound and place that are forged in both the production and reception
processes. In the case of the World Library, recordings were presented
in fragments, so as to fit many sounds onto two sides of a long-playing
record—each volume a bricolage to represent a nation. Such field-recording
projects can thus be heard as tape music, not completely unlike new kinds
of composition based on cutting, splicing and manipulating tape that were
gaining ground in art music at the same time. There are some connections
here. While plotting the World Library, Lomax wrote to a colleague with a
plan to undertake another project: to record “sounds and music of the great
cities of the world at night.”11 Lomax went to Italy to scope out sounds and
existing recordings in September 1953, exactly the same time as Luciano
Berio and Bruno Maderna were composing their Ritratto di città (Portrait
of a City)—a collage of city sounds in tape.
There is nothing to say that these projects were actually connected, or
that Lomax even knew of Berio and Maderna. But Lomax was a tape cutter,
and his presentation of field recordings on the World Library makes for a
dizzying listen. Each album can be heard as an aesthetic object as well as
an ethnographic document. Despite the discourse of science and fidelity that
at once permeates and masks the production of ethnomusicological field
recordings, once we accept the creativity involved in producing these sounds,
then we can understand this practice as sitting at the intersections of modernist
art and ethnography, of ethnological and surrealist collaborations. Picasso at
the Trocadéro, Lévi-Strauss in wartime New York—the category of “primitive
art,” so essential to the history of ethnomusicology—emerged at the meeting
point of modernist aesthetics and global culture collecting (Clifford 1988:
228, 236–44).12 With field recording, specifically, the result of this is very often
a sonic representation of place. Field recordists use sound and editing and
rhythm to produce it. And I will turn now to ideas on how exactly this is done.
Producing Place
Place is a fundamental concept in pretty much every type of field recording.
Alongside the ethnomusicological model described above, which was
concerned with sonic representations of nations and traditional cultures,
a bunch of examples can now reintroduce other histories of field recording

to this chapter: Walter Ruttmann’s Weekend portrays a weekend in Berlin
through a collage of words, music fragments and field recordings, creating
an audio snapshot of the city; Tony Schwartz spent a lifetime recording
the sounds of New York City, presenting them on the radio and on record
under such evocative titles as Sound Picture of New York, Sounds of My
City and New York 19; Annea Lockwood’s A Sound Map of the Hudson
River charts the textures, changes and repetitions of this body of water as it
moves through different places, and, probably most famously, the members
of the World Soundscape Project—notably R. Murray Schafer, Hildegard
Westerkamp and Barry Truax—have produced detailed sonic accounts of
Vancouver among other places.
An issue that relates back to the mid-century IFMC model of recording,
but also connects with any work that represents place, is that of deciding
what to record and what not to record, what to keep and what to discard,
which sounds are appropriate and which are not. On one level, this might
be a simple aesthetic decision. But there’s more to it than that. Samuels,
Meintjes, Ochoa and Porcello (2010: 335) write that in producing
recordings, “field recordists make decisions behind which lie histories of
ideas about what needs to be made audible.” Sometimes this will mean a
romantic environmentalism, wherein a dichotomy is set up between nature
and industry, with the latter being heard as degrading and noisy, and the
former as pristine, in need of protection and something to get back to.13
Often these histories will be concerned with identity, territory and
belonging. George Revill (2000: 597–98) tells us how sound can inform
“moral geographies of landscape, nation, and citizen,” while Martin Stokes
(1994) shows how music can be employed to make connections between
place and ethnicity, and the construction and maintenance of boundaries. At
worst, soundings of place produced through field recording can perpetuate
the idea of ethnos—Greek for nation, and referring to people of the same
race. In an essay on the intensification of globalization after 1989, Arjun
Appadurai argues that the idea of a national ethnos is fundamentally—
often dangerously—contained within the idea of the modern nation-state.
Appadurai’s analysis is particularly relevant here as he tackles head-on
the idea so often found in the discourse strapped to field recordings of
traditional musics, but that applies equally to assertions of nationness
through soundscape recording: that certain musics and sounds bear some
intrinsic relation to the land and that a nation can be expressed through
them. He writes: “The idea of a singular national ethnos, far from being an
outgrowth of this or that soil, has been produced and naturalized at great
cost” (2006: 4). Which is another way of saying that the flipside of sound
and representation is silence and exclusion.
In other ways, however, sound and sound recording can foster deeper
understandings of, and connections to, place. The person who has arguably
done the most in this regard is Steven Feld, whose recording work in
Papua New Guinea and elsewhere has aimed at shaping representations

of different ways of listening in different parts of the world, rather than
simply transporting our ears to these other places (Feld 2015: 12–21).
Not dissimilarly, Nancy Guy, in her work on ecomusicology, draws upon
Lawrence Buell to show how the concept of place points in at least three
directions at once: toward environmental materiality, social perception or
construction, and individual affect or bond (2009: 219). Field recording,
when done well, can sound out each of these directions.
On top of this, listening to places as produced through field recordings is
always complicated by the act of listening taking place somewhere else. Even
though, as Michael Gallagher (2015: 565–66) points out, we are encouraged
to “listen through” technologies to hear the recorded place, these sounds
are always merged with the sounds that exist around us in real time. As
Brandon LaBelle (2006: 211) puts it, “place paradoxically comes to life by
being somewhat alien . . . as a listener I hear just as much displacement as
placement, just as much placelessness as place.” And Akiyama goes further,
arguing that place does not inhere in recorded sound, but is projected onto a
recording by the listener—a sense of place is actually a placemaking (2014:
37). Often the only reason we have any idea where we are listening to is
due to supplementary information supplied external to the recording in
question, through track names, photographs and paratexts of other sorts.
One of the main ways that sounds are mapped to places is through the
genre of the sound map. Sound and maps may be uneasy bedfellows—
maps need grids and boundaries which don’t apply to sound; maps are two
dimensional while sound is three dimensional; by strapping sounds to visual
representations of place, sight is again placed above hearing in the hierarchy
of the senses—but they have a history, and seemingly a future (Ouzounian
2014). They are a site of increasing collaboration between scholars,
archivists and the general public. Whereas producing place through field
recording was previously the domain of a small number of recordists, the
situation today is different. Anna Schultz and Mark Nye have updated Kay
Kaufman Shelemay’s (1991) model of technological eras in ethnographic
recording (divided into phonograph, LP and cassette eras) to take account
of our “unbound digital era” (2014: 298–316).
At present, fieldworkers have been stripped of the technological
privileges that came with the exclusive ownership and control of recording
technologies. Now, almost anyone can record almost anything, and field
recordings are ubiquitous. Interactive sound maps allow users to upload
and share recordings online, collectively creating new representations
of place through network technologies.14 And while these are obviously
still mediated productions, at least people are now producing place for
themselves. Highlighting production is not to argue that the places that
are recorded do not exist; instead it aims to show how recording produces
realities (Law and Urry 2004: 395). Ultimately, field recordings continue to
bring places into being.
Conclusions
All of which is to say that—while I do not disagree that having sound
archives full of field recordings is a good thing, and that recordings
circulating beyond archives is an even better thing—we should be careful
not to uncritically celebrate the work of earlier field recordists. Tropes
of heroic salvage and noble ethnography serve to gloss over the power
relations inherent in histories of field recording. And this power is not
just that of wielding technologies; it is in defining culture—using sound to
construct relations between people, places and identities, which then inform
the reception of recordings and understandings of history. Listening to field
recordings as works of cultural and knowledge production allows us to hear
silences, decisions about what has been deemed worthy of recording and
how places have been produced through this sonic labour.
In this chapter I have sought to do two things to this end. First, to unsettle
a binary between the studio and the field that exists both in scholarship
and in the aural public sphere. Field recordings are productions, containing
many of the same technologies and practices as their studio counterparts.
Second, to highlight how these productions have served to bring places into
being. Recording projects have usually had some ideological agenda, often
to do with salvage and anti-modernity, or ethnicity and nation and territory.
Far from being truthful transmissions of places and pasts, field recordings
produce these entities in sound.
Notes
1 The idea of the “aural public sphere” comes from Ana María Ochoa Gautier
(2006). On the mutability of meaning in recordings, Martin Stokes (2010:
8) puts it better than I can: “Recordings are not simply inert objects of social
scientific or historical enquiry. They are energetic and conversational creatures,
alive to us in time and space.”
2 For an example of the discourse of “windows to the past,” see a crowdfunding
video for the website of archival field recordings made in Scotland, Tobar an
Dualchais: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYNnjrwBb4E.
3 It is very possible to make field recordings without much of this equipment, or
knowledge about it. Handheld all-in-one devices with built-in microphones,
such as the popular Zoom H4n, allow recordists to easily produce sounds.
Yet at the same time there are many websites on field-recording production,
offering advice on equipment and good practice, and many of the large online
forums on sound recording—such as www.soundonsound.com,
taperssection.com and www.gearslutz.com—feature sections on field
recording. In most threads, as is often the case in such forums, it is generally
agreed that the production of “good” recordings requires a raft of specialist
equipment, above and beyond entry-level handheld devices.
4 Signal-to-noise ratio describes the strength of a (desired) signal relative to

background noise or interference.
5 Philip Bohlman writes of the general trend whereby technological change
accompanies developments in the production and understanding of world
musics: “The history of recording technology unfolds in relatively strict
counterpoint with the history of world music itself, anchoring it in the
materiality of wax cylinders, long-playing records, magnetic tape, audio and
video cassettes, and the digital media of CDs and MP3s” (2013: 5).
6 More recent positions have critiqued this stance. James Clifford (1988: 14–15)
posits Lévi-Strauss’s narrative as “too neat”: assuming a “questionable Eurocentric
position at the ‘end’ of a unified human history, gathering up, memorialising
the world’s local historicities.” This kind of memorializing, for Clifford, assumes
a process of ruin and cultural decay, and fails to account for the agency of
individuals and groups to improvise local performances “from (re)collected pasts,
drawing on foreign media, symbols, and languages” (ibid.: 14–15).
7 Stuart Elden argues for an understanding of territory as a political technology,
more to do with relations between power and space, terrain and technique,
than with notions of land as an inert backdrop for states. Accordingly for
Elden, territory is never static, but is “a process, made and remade, shaped and
reshaped, active and reactive” (2013: 17). For excellent work on national—
and nationalist—music, see Bohlman (2011).
8 This division of labour between recordist and analyst predates postwar
technological change, and was an essential part of earlier comparative
musicology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Lobley 2010:
39–43). For an excellent account of how this division of labour worked in
practice, see Lars-Christian Koch (2013).
9 Joint Sub-Committee on Matters of Cultural Interest meeting minutes, 10
October 1947; Executive Committee meeting minutes, 23 October 1947.
English Folk Dance and Song Society Minutes, Volume 19, Vaughan Williams
Memorial Library, London.
10 Lomax’s concern with post-production techniques, and with sound quality in
general, were part of his efforts to give traditional musics an equal hearing in
the music industries alongside other forms of commercial recorded musics. He
later termed this “cultural equity” (Western 2014: 282).
11 Alan Lomax’s letter to D. G. Bridson, 25 October 1950. BBC Written Archives
Centre, R46/309/2—Rec. Gen. Alan Lomax File 2:1947-51.
12 André Schaeffner, who co-produced the French Africa volume of the World
Library, and who developed a musical instrument classification system in the
1930s, had previously worked with Georges Bataille to produce the surrealist
journal Documents in 1929–30.
13 These negative framings of noise have been subject to recent critique.
R. Murray Schafer’s work on soundscapes, which constructs this binary
between nature and industry, has been shown by Sterne (2003: 342–43)
to conceal “a distinctly authoritarian preference for the voice of one over
the noise of the many,” while Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman (2010: 63–71)
and David Novak (2014: 28) show how arguments about noise are always
imbued with prejudices on class and race.
14 Examples of interactive sound maps include the British Library’s UK

Soundmap (sounds.bl.uk/Sound-Maps/UK-Soundmap), the Radio Aporee
Maps project (www.aporee.org/maps/info/) and the Soinumapa project in
Spain (www.soinumapa.net).
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Chapter three
The Poietics of Space: The Role

and Co-performance of the
Spatial Environment in Popular
Music Production
Damon Minchella
Introduction and Preamble

Trying to park in NW8 was always a nightmare. The reserved area at the
front of the recording studio was too small to accommodate all of the
vehicles used by the building’s clientele. So, after the best part of half an
hour trying to find a place to park, to then be greeted in reception by a
glum-faced concierge only added to the underwhelming nature of the start
to the day’s work. “Who are you? Your name’s not on my list, wait here.”
Another half-hour wait ensued, and eventually, after having been finally
ushered through the hallowed portals of Studio Two, the day could now
start: the real business of making a record with all its attendant pressures
and excitement.
Encountering the drummer tuning up his kit quickly dampened this
fleeting feeling of enthusiasm; “The drums sound flat in here, what a pain.
Maybe right for The Beatles, but we don’t sound like them.” Perhaps the
engineer on the session, one who the band had recorded with many times
before, would have a solution. Or not, as it turned out; “Drums always
sound a bit lame in here, orchestras are a different matter, throw up a

couple of good mics and bosh!” Sadly, we were not an orchestra but a
four-piece rock group, with the usual drums, bass, two guitars and lead
vocal line-up. A quick hop up the stairs, from the live room to the control
room, revealed a visibly nervous lead singer, clearly weighed down by his
love, bordering on obsession, for the studio’s most famous clients, and the
guitarist, who was more concerned with taking photographs than picking
up an instrument.
Reviewing this day, years after the fact, has a rationale beyond being
just a trip down memory lane. Space is so much more than the realm of
surveyors and measurement; rather, it is central to our whole experience
and is an intrinsic factor in the process of creativity itself. Drawing on
extensive interviews with current professional music practitioners, this
chapter presents an investigation into the phenomenological impact of the
lived environment on the making of British-based popular music.
With its roots in the Greek word “to make” or “to create,” poietics is
a pertinent term for this research. Aligning with creation or production
aspects, the phrase “poietics of space” incorporates the lived environment
directly into the process of making music. Furthermore, it also allows
for the inclusion of active constructions and individualized adaptations
of the spatial environment; a theme directly highlighted by the research
participants. Poietics denotes a focus on the act of creating music, as
opposed to a concern with the reception of works or their formal or
structural aspects. However, this narrower focus should not be taken as
one that is too reductive in scope. As research participant Chris Potter
states, “the creative space can provide the spark that takes you away and
produces something worth listening to.” A “something” that helps to form
the popular music that can then be heard anywhere in the world at the click
of a button.
Two other terms used throughout this chapter require some clarification.
“Popular music” denotes music that is made based upon original artist-
led compositions, whether under the varying labels of “rock,” “indie,”
“electronic” and so on. As the participant base is not solely limited to
musicians but also incorporates producers, engineers, record industry
executives and a studio designer, the more inclusive term “practitioner” is
used. This also allows for the occasional plurality and blurring of specific
roles in the making of British-based popular music.
Building on existing and diverse literature that discusses the role
of the spatial environment, this chapter highlights the lived nature of
space as being a central factor in the poietics of popular music. Through
phenomenological enquiry I argue that our conceptualizations of creativity
should be updated to be properly attentive to spatial concerns and, as such, I
present a representation of creative practice that is underscored by the lived
environment in the conclusion.
THE POIETICS OF SPACE 43
Phenomenology and the “Science” of Experience

What is it to experience and what is it that we experience? These are
the two central concerns of phenomenology, which Smith regards as the
“first person science of consciousness” (2013: xi). With its origins in the
work of Edmund Husserl, phenomenology aims towards an inquiry into
the sense that is made when we engage with the phenomena of the world
and the elements of our experience. Husserl (1970 [1936]) sought to show
how the content within an act of consciousness becomes meaning for an
individual through the idea of “intentionality.” With an intrinsic awareness
of external objects and the ability to reflect on internalized mental states,
our consciousness is always related to a “perception of something” (ibid.:
§22). Simply stated, consciousness is intended towards something that we
experience, being either objects or acts of reflection.
For Husserl, acts of intention form meanings through our positioning
in the “lifeworld.” The intentional relationships that turn the contents of
consciousness into meanings are bound within and formed by the perspective
or “horizon of possibilities” (ibid.) of our experiential surroundings. As no
one lives in a vacuum, the lifeworld creates a spatial and temporal position
from which we experience. Such a non-static conceptualization for the
individualized content within an act of consciousness—which Husserl called
“noema” from the Greek for “what is thought about”—led Merleau-Ponty to
elevate the role of the body to a central position in phenomenology. With the
grounding of experience occurring through embodied perception, Merleau-
Ponty regarded consciousness as a “being-toward-the-world” (1945). In this
way, “our existence is too tightly caught (up) in the world” (ibid.: Ixxvii) for the
noematic sense or meanings we infer to be abstracted from the environment.
Due to this embodied nature, Malpas (2007) regards space as directly
informing our experience and the meanings that we derive. Stating that “our
‘inner’ lives are to be found in the exterior spaces in which we dwell, while
these same spaces are themselves incorporated ‘within’ us” (ibid.: 6), Malpas
views space as being the catalyst for our ability to have experiences in the
first place. On face value, this may appear to overstate the phenomenological
centrality of the spatial environment but consciousness is always conscious
of and directed towards something (Smith 2003). As such, and in alignment
with the views of Bachelard (2014 [1958]) and Nancy (2007), there is no
sharp Cartesian-like division between the inner self and the outer world—
spaces are not merely locations; rather, they act as a partial grounding of our
experiences. Accordingly, our imaginative and creative acts are never wholly
autonomous from our location: the external influences the internal. Indeed,
for Bachelard, “we do not (just) change place, we change our nature” (2014
[1958]: 222). Such an emphasis on the importance of the lived environment
makes the role of space central to Husserl’s original call to study “the things
themselves” in phenomenology.
Complexity and Creativity

Geographer Ray Hudson attributes to the spatial environment a complex
or manifold role in helping to form our “meanings, identities and practices”
(2006: 627). Aligning this with a move away from the outmoded and
de-contextualized Romantic view of creativity as one that revolves around
a solitary lone genius—a person devoid of unwanted outside interference
or influence—the concept of creativity as a systems model has largely
become the accepted view on creative practice. Under such frameworks
(e.g. Csikszentmihalyi 1988; Feldman 1999), the interdependence between
creative agents and their social and cultural contexts has been highlighted.
The systems view comprises two elements with which the creative agent
interacts. Firstly, the “domain” is the cultural aspect comprising a
background of conventions, techniques and knowledge—the “rules” of a
specific area of creative practice—with which an agent needs to “immerse”
themself. The “field” is the second or social aspect that partially constitutes
and controls the domain. This element is comprised of organizations and
groups who regulate and determine the shape of the field and can be seen
as the providers of the validation (or not) that a new product or idea needs
in order to be accepted. The wider framework provided by the systems view
has allowed for a recognition to be made of the relationships and exchanges
that occur across the creative process and any resultant creative outcome.
Due to acknowledgment of these contexts, there have been many studies
on the role of environmental factors in the creative process. Hudson aside,
the majority of geographers pursuing this topic have focused on the impact
milieus have on the diffusion and dissemination of creative ideas and
products rather than on the agency that a space may exert, as Meusberger
et al. (2009) confirm. Sociological and economic-based perspectives have
centred their discourse mainly on organizational aspects (Sailer 2011). As
a consequence, the specific relationship between the spatial environment
and the effect this has on the unfolding of the creative process has been
somewhat overlooked.
A smaller body of research has argued for more relational understandings
such as Drake’s (2003) focus on the complexities of space providing visual
and mental creative stimuli in craft and design industries. On a more general
level, popular music-related studies have somewhat skirted over the impact
of the recording studio as a “lived” space, regarding it rather more as one
link in a chain of mediations from an initial song sketch or demo through
to the final marketed CD or download. Two works that do directly relate
to such an experiential role are Chasing Sound by Schmidt-Horning (2013)
and The Musicology of Record Production by Zagorski-Thomas (2014).
Focusing on “the art of capturing a performance to the art of engineering an
illusion” (2013: 4), Schmidt-Horning provides an account of the changing
spaces and practices in recording studios from the late nineteenth century
until the mid-1970s. Although not written as such, Chasing Sound can
usefully be regarded as an in-depth historical background to the more
theoretical approach of Zagorski-Thomas. Combining concepts relating
to perception, cognition and creativity, a widescreen overview is provided
regarding the way music—and in the main popular music—is recorded, and
how differing recording practices may produce different meanings or “sonic
metaphors.” Zagorski-Thomas also directly engages here with the systems
view of creativity, which he regards as being able to cope only with “more
general attributes” (2014: 16) as it has “issues triangulating the individual
with the cultural domain and social field” (ibid.: 131). I consider this
capability of the systems approach in the conclusion to this chapter, but,
for current purposes, Zagorski-Thomas’s call for “an understanding of our
environment” (ibid.: 211) aligns with the phenomenological centrality that
Moran ascribes: “we don’t just take up space, we inhabit it, we relate to it”
(2000: 424).
Musical Spaces
Both Hansen (2006) and Théberge (2004) have suggested that, through
technological advances, the reliance on single locations in recording music
has been reduced. Clearly, advances in recording equipment and transmission
technologies have opened up creative possibilities in the production of music,
along with the ability to create virtual forms of acoustic spaces. However,
Théberge suggests that other aspects of a studio, such as “aesthetics and
organization” still create a “sense of place” (2004: 766). Furthermore, Blesser
and Salter argue that spaces combine four “social, navigational, aesthetic,
and musical” (2009: 64) aspects or attributes. So, while Williams (2012)
saliently highlights the change in auditory experience that wearing a pair of
headphones creates, leading to a removal of the external sonic landscape, this
is only a temporary modification of the “musical” space. The headphone-
wearing musician is still seated in a particular and multi-attributed space.
Whatever the technology that is enabling the production of music may be, it
is still placed and operated within real and lived environments.
The importance of the specific musical space is highlighted by Bates
(2012), who states that “recording studios . . . call attention to themselves
throughout the recording process”; by Gendreau, who regards the
environment as a “de facto collaborator” (2011: 41); and by Moylan, who
raises the point that the “interaction of sound source and the environment,
in which it is produced, will create alterations to the sound” (2002: 10). To
all intents, it can be argued that there is a degree of fusion of the acoustic
environment with the sounds produced there: an interaction of the sounded
with the sound-space. Regarding enclosed spaces as acting as “storage
containers for sonic energy” (2009: 135), Blesser and Salter consider each
spatial environment to have a unique “aural architecture” (ibid.: 2), wherein

a space has its own particular reaction to sound frequencies, enhancing
some while suppressing others.
Reybrouck argues that a musician’s process of audition within these
“sonic containers” occurs through a “closed loop” system (2006). There
is a tripartite and recursive interaction between an individual, the music
being produced, and the situated environment, rather than a stepwise flow
through a stimulus-then-reaction channel. For example, a guitarist will
modify their production of sound after sensory feedback—their perceptual
input—on the sound being produced. A new output is then created which
interacts with the environment and feeds back to the listener/musician as a
new input. In this way, “dealing with music . . . entails a constructive process
of sense-making that matches the perceptual input against a knowledge
base and coordinates it with possible behavioural responses” (2006: 45).
While this feedback process may operate at times on a subconscious level,
the environment is intrinsic to its provision. At the heart of this “loop,” a
music practitioner can be argued to “aim” for a state of equilibrium between
their “cognitive structures and the environment” (ibid.: 49), an equilibrium
clearly not immediately achieved, due to the aural architecture of Abbey
Road’s Studio Two, by the drummer in the introductory preamble.
Methodology
The participant interviews were conducted using an initial semi-structured
format, focusing on how each individual perceived the process of music-
making. This enabled a widescreen view to be obtained—one free from
prompting or suggestions of specific frameworks or theories. These initial
interviews were then followed up with more detailed discussions focusing on
specific responses deemed relevant to the research title. In this way, clarifying
questions and context-specific inquiry could be carried out, allowing for a
“richer understanding of the perspective of the person being researched”
(Norton 2009: 96). The resulting interview transcriptions were then coded and
analysed, using the thematic networks analysis approach founded by Attride-
Stirling (2001). Under this system, data is coded using a framework consisting
of the criteria being looked for (deductive codes) and recurrent issues in the
texts (inductive codes). These texts are then dissected into segments using
the coding framework and themes identified. Basic themes are placed into
groups with larger common issues, called organizing themes, which are then
summarized into overarching assertions, or global themes. This approach
enables connections to be explored between the explicit statements and implicit
meanings in participants’ discourse and emergent patterns to be analysed.
As part of what Samantha Bennett and Eliot Bates term my “auto-
ethnographic” approach, my own reflections as a fellow music practitioner
have been included, allowing for the addition of “well founded insights”
(Mostyn 1985: 118) or emic “cultural categories” (McCracken 1988:
23). There is still, by necessity, an interpretation carried out on a text or
interview transcription, which can lead to a provisional aspect in resultant
findings. However, a parallel can be drawn here with the formation of new
case law. Under jurisprudence, propositions and inferences are supported
with corroborative testimony and conclusions made, which may include any
necessary reservations. As such, findings are derived from predicates and not
unassailable “facts.” In the case of this chapter, the opinions of the research
participants to the research findings have been included and reviewed in the
concluding section.
Findings
The organizing themes have been grouped into five categories. While these
groupings are a useful way to focus on different aspects and allow for
more manageable analysis, there are some partial crossovers between these
demarcations. The categories do not stand as unconnected and discrete
entities, due to the very nature of the interconnection of the musical,
aesthetic, social and navigational aspects of the spatial environment. This
also mirrors the nonlinear nature of the situated creative act itself. Each of
the sections contains a related tabular figure showing the grouping of basic
themes into italicized organizing themes.
Space as Workplace
From the outside, making popular music can appear to be a rather glamorous
and romanticized activity. Situated reality is very different, as the seating of
music creation is regarded by practitioners to be a place of work: a form
of labour that has its privileges and occasional vacation-like locations, but
works in a workplace nonetheless. The social aspect of the environment is
highlighted under this category with the importance of community taking
a role in the success or failure of the environment. Mark Wallis comments,
“an awful lot of that good spatial environment comes, not only from the
room, but also the people who work, run and maintain it.” Steve White
confirms this aspect, along with the need for a suitable and comfortable
workplace setup:
I really loved Madness’ studio Liquidator. There were always members of

the band there and it felt very industrious and productive. That's the feel
that I really like. Same with the vibe when you walk into Studio 150 in
Amsterdam, you feel that you are going to get good stuff done. (White)
At odds with historicized views of creativity and industry marketing spin, the
atmosphere of a space is given primacy over questions of reputation that a
place may have—“I like a place that feels unpretentious . . . Abbey Road feels
very corporate” (The Temperance Movement)—and this is often combined
with a need for personalization over high-end acoustic specifications:
It doesn’t really matter how much has been spent on creating a perfect
acoustic space. They don’t exist. If the artist doesn’t feel comfortable in
the studio it will show on tracks. I love it when you can create your space
within the studio area and make it feel like your home where you want
to hang out, bringing a focus to the space you’re working in. Lighting has
a massive impact. If it’s stark you play stark. If the lighting reflects the
mood you’re after for the song then it makes the song more possible to
achieve. (Dugmore)
These comments emphasize the experiential and lived nature of the

workplace, where space is not just a “backdrop to action and experience,
rather (it is) the very ground and frame for such” (Malpas 2007: 173). From
attics and lounges, through technology-laden studios on industrial estates,
to rural retreats in England and Norway, the participants also accentuate
the aesthetic and navigational aspects of space as being directly intrinsic to
the creative act. Adam Ficek remarks that industry-standard urban studios
generally are “sterile and boring . . . they can seem a bit stifling and don’t feel
seamlessly creative.” The desire for a more relational location is furthered by
La Roux’s producer, Ian Sherwin, who discusses why they are currently using
his lounge as a recording space. “It’s just relaxed here. It doesn’t feel like work
and having the normal world coming in through the window makes you feel
really connected.”
Arguing for a more remote spatial location, Steve Sidelnyk raises the
phenomenological role of space in the formation of the music itself:
I always enjoyed residential studios. Music comes from silence and there
is a spark that grows into something else. That’s the great thing about
being together and away from everything else. You make a different type
of music than if you were in a city like London. Places like Hook End (a
countryside residential studio) gave you a different perspective about the
way you played or programmed, just because of the environment. Music
is indigenous. You go to a place and you make a certain record.
The importance of location sits alongside the need for a workplace of focus
and navigational simplicity. Tony English discusses how his approach to
studio design has rather more prosaic roots than would be expected of such
seemingly technology- and acoustic-dependent spaces:
If I look back at my room in my parents’ house, it was perfect for me—I

threw the bed out, built a modest studio in it, slept on the floor, it was my
band’s rehearsal room, my studio. It was perfect, much of my writing and

recording in that room was the best I've ever done. I'm trying to recreate
the same thing all these years later. I had all my gear exactly where I
wanted it, modest equipment that I got the best out of, an uninterrupted
workflow. That’s the ethos I try to instil if the client allows. (English)
While there is no “one size fits all” approach to a creative workplace, the
phenomenology of the spatial environment is part of the complex nature of
place and one that also impacts on the emotive aspects of music-making.
Atmosphere, location and community directly affect the success of a workplace

Reputation and acoustic “perfection” are secondary concerns
Writing and recording spaces can be regarded as workplaces.
An environment’s feel and location directly affects the work done there.
Acoustic perfection is secondary to an atmosphere that engenders creative work.

Simplicity and lack of interruptions increase focus.
Figure 3.1 Space as workplace.
Embodied Emotional Space

Drake regards spaces as “emotional phenomena” where an individual’s
response “will affect how they may use the attributes of that place for
aesthetic inspiration” (2003: 513). While Drake focuses on craft and design
industries, this also applies to music creation. Chris Potter suggests that
the workplace can have a direct impact on the mindset of musicians and,
therefore, the music produced: “The room can have a big effect emotionally
on the people who are making the music. The state of mind of the people
making the music is a key thing. You can play the part as it is or put all
of yourself into it and then that's a different thing.” Tristan Ivemy also
recognized this sense of an embodied and emotional space:
If you are doing music that has a full sound, that is more emotional, you
need to be able the hear it, to be in that place. Listening and monitoring
and how you react with it makes a massive difference. When you are
connected and it just flows out of you, you can play way better than you
ever have and a different listening experience will change that. (Ivemy)
Simpson regards existence as a phenomenological “being-with,” a sense and

experience of the world that is never fully completed but is always in the
process of being-made, where “we are always moving toward, or are in
approach to, sense” (2009: 2563). This ever-forming meaning-making ties in

with the experiential impact of the location, and as such, space helps to form
the sonorous present in which music is made. Discussing how one particular
recording location had a dramatic effect on the music being made, Fyfe
Dangerfield expounds:
Where you record makes a difference, definitely. (In Norway) it was very
different, overlooking a valley in the countryside. A massive barn for the
live playing and a cabin, which is the studio . . . blissful! Making music
there and going outside at 2am with the stars and listening to your own
music that you have just made, I can’t imagine a more idyllic way to make
music compared to recording on an industrial estate in Willesden (where
the previous record was made). That commute compared to waking up
and walking 20 seconds through Narnia. My God, that has a huge effect.
(Dangerfield)
Fyfe Dangerfield’s preference for the navigational ease and aesthetic pleasure
of a Norwegian recording studio over and against the more negative aspects
of an urban and industrial location highlights the organizing theme of
music-making and emotions (being) connected to the environment. The
second of the organizing themes, namely a space and its atmosphere can
engender or inhibit the creative process, is one that reflects the opinions of
the majority of the research participants, along with my own experiences
of professional music-making. Drake’s previously stated suggestion that the
“emotional response” (2003: 513) of an agent to their location may impact
on how they “use the attributes of that place” (ibid.) is one that carries
Music-making and emotions are connected to the environment
A space and its atmosphere can engender or inhibit the creative process
There is a connection between place and emotion
There is continual interaction with the environment during music-making
Spatial location and atmosphere can relieve external pressures on the music-
making process
There is a sense of music being embodied in the environment where it is made
Figure 3.2 Embodied emotional space.

weight with the realities of music creation as being a form of embodied

work that is inherently connected to the space within which it is conducted.
Aural Architecture and Spatial Interaction

So far, the musical or sonic aspect of the spatial environment has barely
been touched on, with the aesthetic, social and navigational aspects taking
precedence. However, this area is clearly of importance in the realm of
music-making. Arford and Yau (2011) confirm Blesser and Salter’s (2009)
contention that each space has its own unique aural architecture, which
finds further support in the experiences of the research participants. As
Andy MacDonald states:
Finding the right environment is so important and could depend on a

million different things. Lee Mavers (singer in The La’s) mainly used to
write on the toilet . . . sitting on the loo with his feet against the door
because of the way the guitar sounded and felt in there. In fact, this is
why he was never happy with the records—they never sounded like that
space to him. (MacDonald)
This highlights the mediation of the spatial environment on the direct

sound produced in Reybrouck’s “closed loop” system. Mike Smith, who
works with The Gorillaz, conveys the difficulty of trying to reproduce a
sound made in one environment in another location—a comment echoed
by Richard Ashcroft–and, returning to Geoff Dugmore, the suitability of a
specific sonic environment is called into question:
I’ve been in situations where a very large room has been booked to record
a very intimate song for example … in this circumstance it becomes very
hard to create the right sound to record such a type of song. In London
my preferred studios are British Grove and Kore. The sound of the two
rooms serve completely different purposes. (Dugmore)
Sound is mediated by the acoustic environment

Each space’s aural architecture may or may not suit an individual or a work of
music
A location’s aural architecture will impact on the work done there.
Sound sources interact with and are impacted on by the spatial environment.
Figure 3.3 Aural architecture and spatial interaction.

Max Heyes, the recording engineer from the introductory preamble

who viewed the drum sound at Abbey Road to be “lame,” highlights the
unsuitability of that particular space for his intended sonic outcome. The
unwanted amplitude patterns that Studio Two may have impressed on the
source sound of the drum kit, ones that the drummer was also unimpressed
with, reinforces Moylan’s point regarding how each acoustic environment
“functions as a sound quality, shaping the sound source” (2002: 266).
Indeed, Heyes suggests that “as an engineer, you have to get over the issues
with the place that has been chosen to record in. All you can do is your best
to minimize the awfulness!”
These comments about “awfulness” and “lameness” are partial descriptors
for the sensory data within each individual’s perceptual system. The
participants’ views can be seen to contain responses to two distinct areas of
the auditory experience of music-making. Responses can be to the auditory
aspects of in-the-moment recording—such as a drummer during a take of
a song—or to the sound of an instrument-as-recorded, such as a recording
engineer listening back to the drums. What is of note is that both aspects
are influenced by the specific aural architecture within which music is being
created. As Damon Wilson from The Temperance Movement states, “I’m still
amazed by the concept of what your ears think they are hearing and what’s
actually going on.” The use of such derogatory terms also reinforces Blesser
and Salter’s contention that every spatial environment has its own “tonal
preferences” (2009: 63). Simply put, those that “match the listeners’ aural
expectations are pleasing to them; spaces that do not are not” (ibid.: 61).
This question of suitability brings into focus the area of an ideal of recording
verses the actuality of specific and individuated recording practice.
Ideals and Reality

Former Universal Records artist Beth Rowley raises the potential issue of
pressure in the recording process: a pressure partially dependent on the
specific location being used. As a major label artist, Beth was placed in
a high-end studio, resulting in an experience far removed from her ideal
concept of such situated practice. Now working on her own budget in a
more low-end space, she states:
I record at a little studio called Fish Factory, which is great because unlike
RAK it’s a bit of a mess but has a much better and more relaxed vibe to
it. It’s much better for me to be in a place like that. There’s much less
pressure and the songs come out better. (Rowley)
RAK is a world-renowned studio with a roster of well-known clients.

However, for Beth, this more professional, less “messy” and potentially more
impersonal space impacted negatively on her recording activity, revealing
the individuated reality that the environment provides. Paul Weller, an

experienced user of high-end studios, also had a negative experience of RAK.
This instance of individuated reality was not, unlike Beth Rowley, down to
pressure. Rather, the sensory feedback that the live room provided for him
was deemed unsuitable, bringing about a premature end to the session and
a relocation to a more favourable studio, one that did not sound “shit.” As
a musician on this session, I found the auditory experience of RAK’s live
room to be a less negative one, which is echoed in the opinion of Jon Walsh,
a former recording engineer and a current A&R executive: “RAK is my
favourite studio because of its vibe and equipment.” These four differing
opinions on the very same space highlight the individual-specific nature
of the experience of the lived environment, one ranging from “pressure,”
to “vibe” and to the creation of sensory and auditory information. Ellie
Jackson, who records under the name La Roux, comments:
I love it here (in her producer’s lounge), it’s better for us. When you are
making tunes at home, you feel like you are just making tunes, you don’t
feel like you are “making a record” (speaks in a serious business-like
voice). All the pressure has gone. It’s always like, when you make a demo,
people say “your voice sounded really nice on that,” when you just sang
it in your bedroom or wherever. Then you go and stand in a studio and
it’s a really dead space and it makes me really un-vibed out as a vocalist.
(Jackson)
Ellie, in a similar manner to Beth Rowley, prefers a more instinctual

performance to one focusing on technically improved acoustic quality. Matt
Deighton makes a similar point regarding the recording of a specific song
in two different recording spaces, initially in a low-end facility in Wales and
subsequently in a more high-end facility in Manchester:
Newer Yesterday swung better in Oswestry. Then you move to Blueprint

Studios and all of a sudden it’s a different thing, a different feeling and
collection of emotions that are captured. It took ages to get it good again.
If Oswestry had been a well-equipped studio, it would probably have
been the master (take). (Deighton)
High-end professional studios often come with impressive reputations and

most have been designed to reduce acoustic “imperfections” in their inner
spaces. It would therefore appear that these would be “ideal” environments
within which to create popular music. The realities of practice, however,
reveal that less “clinical” spaces are often preferred. Richard Parfitt states,
“the reputation of a place quickly fades. You spend so much time in
these bloody places that it’s never about how great or famous a studio is
supposed to be, it’s about how it makes you feel.” In a similar way, for Andy
MacDonald studios “are like houses. When you go to view a house it’s how
Clinical environments are aesthetically and creatively undesirable and hinder creative output
Achieving a required level of performance and instinctual creation can be more difficult in
clinical spaces.
Acoustic perfection is secondary to an atmosphere that engenders creative work.
Figure 3.4 Ideals and reality.
it feels [his emphasis] that makes you want to be there, not how expensive it
may be.” Analogous with the views already shown regarding RAK, he adds
the caveat that “trying to get four or five people in a band to feel the same
way is never easy!”
Technology and Limitations

Technological changes have enabled a more flexible and adaptable approach
to what may or may not constitute an appropriate recording space. This
has not, however, resulted in the negation of the environment as a factor
in the success of any recording. In fact, such changes in technology have,
potentially, heightened the impact of the lived environment. Jamie Johnson
states:
The environment really makes a difference. Not so much from the

equipment or technical point of view: most technical things you can get
around. It’s never really for me about the equipment; in terms of the
studio, it’s the space itself. I worked with a famous singer and we were
between studios so we built this live room out of amplifiers, boxes and
blankets in a big open space and the desk was at the end of the room,
with a vocal booth made out of stacked up amplifiers and boxes. She did
all the vocals there and then went to Switzerland to a fantastic expensive
studio and did the vocals again properly and they were shit. Then onto
another expensive studio in Spain and they were shit. So in the end, the
original ones were used that were recorded behind boxes on a handheld
Shure microphone. (Johnson)
Jamie is emphasizing that space—as a lived environment—takes primacy

due to the quality of relatively inexpensive recording equipment. The need
for “clinical” and “sterile” but technologically superior spaces has been
obviated: atmosphere and perceptual input take precedence. Dead Sea Skulls
create their own workplace in a rather unexpected setting:
We record in my mum’s hairdressing salon. It allows us to be more creative

as we aren’t being creative by spending five grand in studios that we
didn’t know and felt wrong. We have all the time in the world to record
anytime. You make the best of what you’ve got and it becomes real and
you can hear the passion in the music. Good musicians understand the
limitations and create within them.
The use of space as a creative workplace can be aligned with the concept of
the environment as a technology itself. Arford and Yau’s (2011) views align
with the opinion of Tony English, who regards spaces as akin to acoustic
instruments, with each one having a unique timbre, tone and reverberation.
Musical instruments are instances of technology and, equally, each recording
space can be regarded as a technology. Ones that are essentially independent
of the technologies used within them and ones that bring their own unique
aural architecture.
Returning to La Roux, who is more generally known for making less
acoustic-dependent and more synthesized music, the impact of the spatial
environment is still shown to have precedence: one that stands over and
above the common technology of headphone-based recording:
It’s ok if you have a really great headphone mix but when I can hear my
own voice just coming back at me across the room out of those (points
to the speakers), I am way more happy, I feel like I am singing in a room
not like (adopts the serious voice again) “I am recording.” And otherwise
it’s just singing inside your own head. (Jackson)
Peter Gordeno, from Depeche Mode, echoes this point, stating the need to
feel music as sounding in the space of a room, not just interiorized in a pair
of headphones. A singer’s conception of their voice is made up out of a
combination of “bone conduction coupled with room resonance” (Williams
2012: 115). In this way, a removal of the spatial environment can be seen
as an upsetting of the “balance between direct conduction and reflected
sonic energy” (ibid.). As previously stated, the headphone “position” is
only temporary but the wider lived space is not and is a technology that
directly impacts on the process of music-making. No space, outside of an
acoustically “perfect” anechoic chamber, has a uniform response and all have
some degree of “acoustic defect” (Blesser and Salter 2009: 228). The way
The atmosphere and sound of a space take primacy over technological specifications
Technology lessens the need to use high-end recording studios.
Atmosphere and perceptual input take precedence.
Figure 3.5 Technology and limitations.

these then impact on the poietics of music directly informs the intentional
relationships made in the lived environment.
Conclusions, Commentary, and Creative Practice

The three global themes presented here reinforce the role of space and the
importance of the specific locations used during the diverse and complex
practice of music creation. The first global theme is the creation of music
is embodied in space, with the location’s atmosphere taking primacy over
other considerations. Lefebvre (1991) separates space into three distinct
concepts: space as an ideal, as a “stand-alone” material entity and as an
actualized phenomenon. The first two positions are purely abstract but
the last concept aligns with the nature of embodiment highlighted by the
participants. Steve White remarks, “there are some studios that I never got
into, that never felt right or worked for me”; Chris Potter reveals, “there
are three well known studios that I’d never use again”; and Tristan Ivemy
suggests that the importance of atmosphere runs so deep that “even if you
aren’t conscious of it, it’s what makes the difference. It’s about putting you
in an environment where you feel the vibe.”
The aural architecture and feel of the spatial environment takes
precedence over high-end specifications. This second theme may appear
to collapse partially into the previous one as they both cover “feel” and
“atmosphere.” This merely demonstrates the elevation of the atmosphere—
the “feel” of a space—in terms of the primary considerations for an
effective and creative workplace. What is of note here is the relegation
of technologically and acoustically advanced spaces—the “high-end
specifications”—to a lower level of consideration. Steve Robson adopts
this approach to his work, even going as far as “recording the vocals in
the control room with spill and everything over them because you get the
right feel and it sounds (his emphasis) so good in here.” Steve’s position
therefore brings in the second noteworthy consideration: the importance
of the aural architecture that is intrinsic to each and every space. This
viewpoint is mirrored by the producer and engineer Phill Brown, who
states in his memoires that “technology isn’t the problem—a good location
is” (2010: 309).
The third and final theme drawn is there is a unique impact on sound
and the creative process by every space. Although somewhat reductive, this
can be considered as the overarching theme drawn from all the research
conducted. This aligns with my experience of a multitude of spaces used
in music creation, where each and every one is different and all of them
are a conglomeration of musical, social, aesthetic and navigational aspects:
aspects which combine to foster or hinder the creative processes within
music-making. Commenting on the global themes, the participants offered a

general affirmation, with remarks such as:
I’m sure that all music makers will have stories that support your findings.
For me, the environment that I am in will always have an influence on
the creation of music, being as it is an expression of human emotion. (Ian
Sherwin)
This has struck a chord with me. I’ve often had very similar conclusions,
though I haven’t been able to articulate them until reading all of this,
when I’ve been in a space that obviously isn’t giving you that creative and
excited feeling. (Tristan Ivemy)
I would wholeheartedly agree . . . all the findings correlate with both
my own experience and beliefs. (Adam Ficek)
There were, however, some more nuanced comments that bear discussion.
Mirroring the comments of Chris Potter, Ali Staton remarked:
I absolutely agree and with the quality of technology now available, the
importance of space itself has become paramount. However, I have on
occasion worked in an atmosphere that was far from great but I was able
to deliver because I had confidence in the sound of the space. (Staton)
While this may seem like a partial lessening of my stated importance of a

location’s atmosphere as being a primary consideration, these comments
reinforce the position that there is no one particular element that an
effective creative space hinges on. Rather, the most important elements are
constituted by aspects of sound and atmosphere over and above concerns for
“high-end” specifications, and these more primary considerations will vary
for each practitioner. What does not vary, however, is the all-encompassing
phenomenological impact of the environment in the poietics of popular
music.
Figure 3.6 presents a sketch of a systems model of creativity, showing
the domain and field meeting with the individual practitioner within an
intersecting area labelled as creative practice. Zagorski-Thomas (2014)
suggests that the systems view is more useful as a theoretical overview,
lacking the necessary level of detail to reflect individual practice. However,
by inquiry into the experiences of relevant practitioners, real-world agency
can then be given to this sociocultural and contextual approach to creative
practice.
The intersecting area is the realm of situated practice, and therefore, the
lived environment needs to be positioned centrally to this systems sketch.
Accordingly, the building represents the spatial environment, combining the
social, navigational, aesthetic and musical aspects. As this research argues,
real-world creative practice is invested by the phenomenological impact
Domain
Creative
Practice
Field Individual
Figure 3.6 Systems sketch of creative practice.
of the lived environment, helping to form and inform the creative works
produced.
Drawing partially on anthropologist Alfred Gell’s (1998) work on the
social relationships of art, a representation of such situated practice is
shown in Figure 3.7:
The mobilization of aesthetic judgements through the course of

mediated practice and social interaction
[ < - - - The Lived Environment - - - > ]
Figure 3.7 Creative practice as situated practice.
The lived environment underscores the activities and meaning-making

processes—the intentional relationships—upon which creative practice
depends. La Roux may not be overemphasizing when she states, “the space
you are in provides a defining element in the music that you make.” From
the prosaic to the idyllic, the phenomenology of space acts as a lived event
in the poietics of popular music.
Summarizing through a final trip down memory lane, four musicians,
in a poorly heated two-room space with constant struggles to meet rent
demands, composed and created 72 songs. The cherry-picked “best” of
these went on to sell over 2 million copies. Fast-forward 36 months: now
without financial worries and with access to state-of-the art facilities, the
same musicians, in a similar time frame, succeeded in completing only 15
compositions, achieving significantly less sales. The initial period of success
may have changed their motivations, and time constraints due to touring
and promotion may have also had an adverse impact, but, as one of these
musicians, it can positively be stated that only one thing had really changed
and that change was a thing lost: the original lived space, the workplace
of creativity.
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Interview participants
Adam Ficek (Babyshambles)
Andy MacDonald (Independiente)
Beth Rowley (Universal Records)
Dead Sea Skulls (Raw Power)
Fyfe Dangerfield (The Guillemots)
Peter Gordeno (Depeche Mode)
Geoff Dugmore (Rod Stewart)
Jamie Johnson (Paul Weller)
Jon Walsh (Universal Records)
Ellie Jackson (La Roux)
Ian Sherwin (La Roux)
Mark Wallis (U2)

Mike Smith (Gorillaz)
Matt Deighton (Oasis)
Chris Potter (The Verve)
Max Heyes (Primal Scream)
Steve Robson (Paloma Faith)
Steve Sidelnyk (Massive Attack)
Steve White (Paul Weller)
Tony English (Damon Albarn)
Tristan Ivemy (Frank Turner)
The Temperance Movement (Earache)
Richard Ashcroft (The Verve)
Richard Parfitt (Duffy)
Ali Staton (Turin Breaks)
C h a p t e r f o ur
“An Indestructible Sound”:

Locating Gender in Genres
Using Different Music
Production Approaches
Paula Wolfe
Introduction
My intention in this chapter is to progress my response to what has been a
paucity of research in music production and gender. The attention paid to
female recordists has often been limited to noting their underrepresentation
(Frith and McRobbie 1978: 373–74; Théberge 1997: 185; Bayton
1998: 6; Cohen 2001: 232; Moorefield 2005: 110), and although these
observations are welcomed, they have gone no further. To date I have
examined the situation of women producing their own music in today’s
music industry (Wolfe 2012, 2017), and in this chapter I build on this
work to consider how choice of genre, alongside gender, might have
some bearing on women’s practice. I first came across Argentinian artist-
producer Juana Molina (Domino) from some footage of her performing
at the Glastonbury Festival in 2014. Simultaneously steering beats and
soundscapes from her keyboards, from her guitar and voice and from
the contributions of a live drummer and bass player, what struck me
was the innate complexity of the different elements she was navigating
onstage to create a mesmerizing sound described as folktronica, ambient,
AN INDESTRUCTIBLE SOUND 63
experimental and chillout.1 I assumed that the control she exercised to

create her live sound was replicated in the studio to create her recorded
sound through self-production, an assumption later affirmed on her
website. The previous autumn I had heard two members of the all-women
rock band Savages being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour
following the Mercury Prize nomination of their first album, Silence
Yourself (Matador 2013). In the course of the interview Gemma Thompson
(guitarist) and Jehnny Beth2 (lyricist and vocalist) discussed their music
and their position as women in the music industry. They also described
their desire “to create an indestructible sound” in their music (Thompson
in Murray 2013) and the importance they placed on their sound also
led me to assume that they had produced it themselves. In both cases,
my assumptions were in fact a flipped reaction to what Emma Mayhew
has described as “patriarchal assumptions” (in Whiteley 2004: 149)
associated with music production and undoubtedly were also influenced
by my own practice as an artist-producer. In the case of Savages, what
had added to my interest was the notion of a whole band self-producing,
a practice more associated with solo artists, as my previous research has
confirmed (Wolfe 2017). However, on trying to secure an interview with
the band a year and a half later, following the release of their second
album Adore Life (Matador 2016), I was directed by their label not to
the band but, much to my surprise, to their producer, Johnny Hostile.3
Presented with the situation of Hostile as a male producer working with
an all-women four-piece band, I was unsure prior to the interview how
the research was going to “fit.” What possible connections was I going
to establish between Savages, a mainstream rock band working closely
with their producer since their formation, and Juana Molina, a left-field
artist-producer creating ambient electroacoustic trance music? What
transpired, however, was that these extreme contrasts offered the very
nuances I was seeking, not just in terms of the cultural meanings that
accompany the situation of a woman artist-producer and a male producer,
but of the production process itself. As I discuss below, the multifaceted
nature of music production, as highlighted by Richard Burgess (2002),
Albin Zak (2001) and William Moylan (2002), allowed the different needs
of Molina as a solo artist and Savages as a band respectively to be met,
irrespective of their gender. I argue, however, that when positioning the
music production processes in the culturally gendered context that is the
music industry, the significance of their gender takes centre stage. In this
chapter, therefore, I revisit the core debates related to music production
and gender by presenting these two case studies, in which I draw on two
conversations that took place on Skype, with Molina in Buenos Aires and
Conge in Paris. I focus in particular on three key themes that emerged: the
role of production within the creative process, the influence of the lyric
on the production process, and the impact of gendered “cultural notions
of age” (Jennings and Gardener 2012: 3) on the women’s representation.
DIY Beginnings
Molina and Hostile share a similarity in that their production skills are self-
taught but their use of those skills in the creative process differs. Molina’s
work as an artist-producer is a weave of composition, production and
mixing, whereas Hostile’s work positions him observing and then guiding
the creativity of the band, “they do the job . . . I’m guiding them, that’s all
I’m doing” (personal communication, 24 February 2016). Molina’s decision
to self-produce followed her experience of recording a whole album in four
days in a commercial studio with a producer in the late 1990s. She described
the musicians as “really great” and that “everything sounded good” but that
“it wasn’t representing me, I couldn’t play that record live being myself”
(personal communication, 20 April 2016). The result was not what she
had in mind even though she did not know at that time “what that mind
was” (ibid.). In other words, although she had not found her own sound,
she knew that the sound produced for her by someone else was wrong
and so embarked on a creative journey to develop her sound for herself.
At this time Pro Tools was available only as expensive hardware accessed
through commercial studios, but the increased availability of other digital
recording technologies was starting to be embraced by the independent
artist (Théberge 1997; Ryan and Hughes 2006). Likewise Molina purchased
her first computer in 1997 and some recommended software and “started
to learn how to make it work” (personal communication, 20 April 2016).
Two years followed of intensive recording of new songs and a reworking
of existing recordings on cassettes and tape into the new digital formats.
Molina viewed these recordings as demos, but when she then decided “to
record this properly” (ibid.) she experienced the frustration of demo chasing
(see Massey 2009),
I realised that I had a record already done, with that quality, very lo-fi
quality but a gorgeous soundscape and soundfields . . . in an eternity
I wouldn’t have been able to record it again. (op. cit.)
She tried to improve what she already had, but when she played it to an
engineer, “it sounded like shit!” (ibid.). She discovered that she “had a
made a whole record with volumes and pans, that was it. There was no EQ,
no compression, nothing” (ibid.). She then spent a month working with
the engineer in post-production learning about frequencies, equalizers and
filtering and the result was Segundo, “the first record I made on my own
with the help of this guy” (ibid.). It took her two and a half years to make
the record but the result was that “I knew by then I was never, ever going
to come back to a studio” (ibid.). Molina’s self-taught route is similar to
that of other artists I have spoken to who accessed available technology in
this period. For instance, she learnt from mistakes to acquire what Thomas
Porcello has described as insider engineering knowledge. In addition
she transcended what Tony Grajeda (2002) has referred to as the barrier
between amateurism and professionalism. Furthermore the process was
solitary, a characteristic noted by Eddie Ashworth (2009). The result was
not just a product with which she could start her career, but the discovery
of a way of working:
The way I work is that I just go there and add something and then record
several things and edit and move around. So that’s how I started working
that way and developing little by little what you call skills . . . you just
dive into that world of music and computers that become one thing. (op.
cit.)
One of the core skills and challenges for the artist-producer, irrespective of
gender or genre, is the ability to combine clear artistic vision with objectivity
in order to be able to perceive and capture a significant moment in a recorded
performance that “could be the main thing” (ibid.). This is an aspect of the
self-production process that Molina relished: “I enjoy very much when I
have recorded something that is there but not quite so that I need to make
that thing that is there to sound the way it has to be” (ibid.). She compared
this process to the work of an artisan, in particular to that of an embroiderer,
and the core essence of a song like a single thread that may require her “to
unsew and to cut all those threads and do it again” (ibid.). Subsequently, she
“can’t separate composition from production at all” (ibid.) and emphasized
that even the mixing, rather than simply optimizing different aspects of
the track (Burgess 2002: 159), formed part of a simultaneous interrelated
act of creativity. Molina’s analogy is in line with Zak’s observations that
artists’ use of “recurring analogies to visual media and perception,” in this
case embroidery, is an indication that “like the visual artist, the recordist
handles the actual material of which the piece is made” (2001: 22–23).
Also representative of Moylan’s “new creative artist” (2002: 35), Molina
distinguished between her former way of working, akin to that of a singer-
songwriter writing complete songs on a guitar that she would then embellish
to “the way I work now” whereby
everything comes together . . . So the production, the composition and

the mixing, the three of them come at the same time. Like I said with the
embroidery, you [make] a flower here, you can’t move it there because
it’s already here and everything that comes later, comes later because that
flower was there. (op. cit.)
The development of her ear to recognize the potential of “that flower” leads
the production and liberates her from what she perceives as the restraints
of the blueprint of a song already established. Arguably, however, the only
difference is that it is a melodic line rather than a whole song structure or
lyric that inspires and then leads the production. So although it is suggested
that electronic music (a broad genre in which her music might be placed)
appeals to women artists due to its perception as a “tolerant, abstract
environment” (Awbi 2014: 14), I would argue that it is not so much the
genre that is appealing as the ability to create music as a self-contained unit
aided by technology or the ability to access what Jay Hodgson has described
as “a complete, self-sufficient musical language” (2010: viii). Conversely, a
whole band can enact such a compositional process through improvisation
but the simultaneous recording of the compositional/production process
lends itself to solo expression. In comparison, the situation of Hostile and
Savages establishes a clear distinction between composition and production,
yet interestingly the development of Hostile’s skills as producer and those of
Savages as musicians and songwriters took place simultaneously:
I wasn’t involved creatively, that’s their world . . . I started to record

them in my bedroom in London . . . we started to experiment all together
recording-wise very early on . . . I was able to tell what they need[ed]
by [making] mistakes with them and we all made mistakes in terms of
recording. (personal communication, 24 February 2016)
As with Molina, Hostile also made the transition from amateurism to

professionalism through his home studio and by learning from mistakes, and
yet their self-determined routes has resulted in contrasting interpretations of
confidence, identity and purpose. Hostile has developed a core confidence in
his own abilities as a producer:
I come from a very lo-fi DIY world with no money whatsoever, so today
I’ve got a bigger studio and I go in very big studios to produce stuff but I
feel that confidence in me that tomorrow I can go back in the basement
and work and [make] good music out of it. (ibid.)
In stark contrast, Molina states her early inability to make her own records
was exasperated by insecurity: “I’ve always been very insecure. I never had
that confidence that people get more and more now. I can see that young
people are born with better confidence” (personal communication, 20 April
2016). The situation of Molina’s creative confidence enacted in a private
space, juxtaposed with her stated lack of confidence in the public arena,
resonates with Paul Théberge’s suggestion that “the privacy of domestic
space becomes the ideal site of musical expression and inspiration rather
than the more public realms of night club and stage” (1997: 218) or the
equally “public” and gendered “realm” of the commercial studio (Bayton
1998: 6; Cohen 2001: 233–41). Although Molina has established a career
and has since returned to successfully record in a large commercial studio,
the interview is peppered with statements of self-doubt. And yet there is no
lack of confidence in her eloquent articulation of the production process
from which emerges her sound. I have established elsewhere a connection
between “a room of one’s own” (Woolf 1985 [1929]) and a studio of one’s
own (Wolfe 2012) to argue that the need for private creativity is particularly
significant for a woman artist when situating her work in the framework of
what remains a patriarchal industry. I do not suggest that the insecurities
Molina highlights are gendered, but the broader industry context in which
her work is positioned resonates with Savages’s publically stated desire “to
create an indestructible sound” in their debut album (Thompson in Murray,
30 October 2013), a phrase also repeated on the band’s website in reference
to their second. When I asked Hostile what this “indestructible sound” was
and why the band used the phrase to foreground their work, he offered two
answers. The first was that the description had served as an effective way of
Savages announcing their arrival as a new band, but secondly he said that the
band’s use of phrase made him “think the opposite—there is some fragility
that needs to be protected” (personal communication, 24 February 2016).
In sonic terms “an indestructible sound” provides “protection” for an artist
in three ways: it provides an aural framework within which the creativity
of each band member or solo artist can take place; it forms the identifiable
sound of a band or artist, crucial for marketing purposes (Théberge 1997:
193); and it provides a link to the visual image, again a necessary component
when marketing the brand (Lieb 2013). The band’s perceived need for their
sonic, and subsequently visual, identity to be “indestructible” might be read,
therefore, as a response, conscious or otherwise, to the historic positioning
of the rock genre within which they create as a masculine discourse (Coates
1997) and which has rendered the representation of women rock musicians
problematic. Although Savages require at this stage a producer to help them
achieve their sound, Hostile’s position challenges the “dictatorship of the
public” represented by the music producer (Théberge 1997: 219). He has
worked with Savages from their inception and his working relationship
is reflected in the way he described how he was “amazed just at the very
first rehearsal,” that he felt “deep love the first time I saw the band,” that
“they weren’t aware of what they were doing—that kind of magic was in the
room” and that he believed the band was “gonna be so important, not big but
important and maybe big but to me important” (personal communication,
24 February 2016). Subsequently, he developed and released the first single,
videos and live EP and released it on his own label, Pop Noir, and then licensed
to Matador (he still owns the first single and the first EP). Arguably any artist
or band sees their work as important, but the importance Hostile attaches
to Savages seems to stem from three sources: their unwillingness to bend to
industry pressures in terms of marketing, the importance that is attached
to the lyrics in the songs, and the dedication each member has to their own
instrument. This perhaps accounts for his description of them as “all solo
artists” (ibid.). He acknowledged that this resulted in band tensions at times
but more significantly it determined the pre-production and recording of
the second album to allow each band member the space to develop their
individual creative responses that then contributed to the whole band sound:
For the pre-production I had them solo in the studio working on their
instruments and their ideas without them talking to the others and then
they felt confident about what they were doing . . . you have to consider
people not as a group but as individuals and that’s how I found my
way sonically. I could focus on Gemma’s guitar for example . . . or one
pedal or just microphone and you can’t do that with other people in the
room. (ibid.)
He took the same approach with the bass player, Ayse Hassan, stating:
When you experiment sonically you have to be able to push, to go out of

your comfort zone and I figured out you can’t do that with other people
looking at you all the time. (ibid.)
What can be seen here is a need to avoid what Alan Williams (2007) has
described as the “inequalities of power” when “engineers and producers
freely communicate behind the control room window” while “recording
musicians must be circumspect and cautious.” Théberge’s creative “privacy”
was facilitated, therefore, through the use of Hostile’s own studio away
from the “public realm” of the commercial studio even though that was
re-entered once they were ready to record the album. Subsequently, Hostile
did not discuss the production process as arriving at a moment of realization,
in the way that Molina did as an artist-producer, but rather pointed to
an exchange of trust and intimacy in the producer/artist relationship that
resulted in the required performances. For instance, he describes Thompson
and Milton as “very creative about their instruments” but who sometimes
lose direction so he viewed his role as “just to know before them what
they want” and “will push them in a direction that they will feel naturally
comfortable with” (ibid.). So although the situation of Hostile as a male
producer, enabling a rock band of four women to realize their sound,
reinforces gendered perceptions about the male producer/female artist
dynamic (Mayhew 2004: 149–52), it is clearly a relationship of mutual
respect for the skills each of them contribute to the overall construction of
their sound:
They trust me in terms of ears. They have control in the live room, in their
instruments, they have absolute freedom in that. In the control room I’ll
be the one deciding what microphone to use, what plugins to use, all the
production aspects they leave it to me and all the structure as well which
is how to record in which conditions, in which studio and all that stuff.
We decide all that together. I will never make a decision without them
agreeing [to] it. (Personal communication, 24 February 2016)
Hostile’s knowledge and respect for the band members and for their
individual creative capabilities has clearly influenced his level of investment
in them and in the sonic trust they place in him. But there is another factor
to consider. At the time of the interview I was unaware that Hostile, as well
as being the band’s producer, is also the long-term partner of Beth. The
relationship, therefore, was not discussed but in hindsight its existence sheds
some light on Hostile’s responses throughout the interview that seemed to
position him as a fifth band member rather than as an entirely objective
outsider. It also has some bearing on the level of trust that characterized the
descriptions of his relationship with all the band members as their producer.
It is not unheard of for female artists to have relationships with and/or
marry their producers (Haithcoat 2016), and the gendered power dynamic
this introduces is certainly of interest, not least in terms of how it colours the
artist/producer relationship. This is not to suggest that this does not happen
the other way round as some women producers I have interviewed either
were at the time of interview in relationships with male artists or had been
approached by male artists they were producing. It is an interesting topic
that warrants further attention but is beyond the scope of a short chapter.
Music Production and the Lyric

The lyric plays a role in the production process, as noted by Moylan (2002: 71),
and that role differs significantly for Savages and Molina. For Savages, the lyrics
and melody provided by Beth form the starting point for the individual response
of each of the women as “solo artists.” Beth, in fact, shares her lyric ideas with
Hostile in their early stages, pointing to an access and trust that an “ordinary”
producer would not have, clearly influenced in this case by the couple’s long-
standing personal relationship, as noted above. The development of the songs,
therefore, is not the result of an entirely ensemble approach associated with a
band McIntyre (2008), but one in which individual interpretations are collated
and at times restructured by Hostile as part of the production process. This
approach, however, is not without its tensions. For example, the start of the
single “Adore” was a song written by Beth and inspired by the life of the San
Francisco poet and academic Minnie Bruce Pratt. However, in presenting the
song to the band, Hostile explained that
the band started to change things because it has to be a Savages song, which
is the normal process, but the tension out of that was so enormous that
“Adore” at some moments nearly didn’t exist. (personal communication,
24 February, 2016)
Conversely for Molina, the lyrics arrive at the very end of the production
process and are written for their sonic quality rather than for their semantic
meaning. Molina explains, “I write a whole song, the record’s done and
the lyrics are not even there and I need to write something in order to be
able to sing” (personal communication, 20 April, 2016). She quoted the

late Argentinian artist, poet and musicologist Leda Valladares, who told
her, “I sing to tell and you tell to sing . . . meaning that she needs to sing
in order to order to [say] what she wrote and I need to write to sing what
I composed” (ibid.).4 In line with the view that “recording becomes an
art when it is used to shape the substance of sound and music” (Moylan
2002: 36; see also Zak 2001: 46), for Molina meaning stems from the
sound of her composition and that determines the “substance” of the lyrics
she eventually writes. That process, however, presents an innate struggle
between the abstract and the concrete because the meaning is the sound;
therefore, if there are to be lyrics, she wants them “to sound exactly like the
melody and if there’s an A in there you need to sing an A” (ibid.). Molina
argued that lyric-determined songs facilitate collaborative work with a
producer, whereas producing a piece of music that infers meaning is a more
abstract process to share: “there are many artists where you can tell that
the important part of the song is the lyrics . . . for artists like that maybe
they can work easily with a producer and that won’t change too much what
they do” (ibid.). This is evident in Hostile’s work with Savages, who goes as
far as saying that “having such a strong lyricist . . . inspires me in the way
it needs to be delivered.” I asked whether the space and dynamics in Adore
Life that contrast to the first album, had been a direct response to the lyrics
and whether the close working of Beth’s vocals and Thompson’s guitar had
been intentional. He responded:
I wanted to get bigger drums than I had on Silence Yourself, I wanted

to get a bigger sound, something present in the lower end of things
. . . Before that everyone is in the same space frequency wise, it’s really
punked . . . whereas this time everyone has space to express themselves
and it’s probably why you think that the vocals and guitars are prominent
but in fact they’re just in their own space. (personal communication, 24
February 2016)
In Molina’s case the process is enacted in reverse as the lyrics need to represent
the sound already developed. Where the difficulty lies is in translating
meaning into words when, for Molina, the music already communicates its
own meaning and when “lyrics . . . wake[] me up from the enchantment of
music” (personal communication, 20 April 2016). Furthermore, she stated
that she would “be more comfortable” with what she did if people did not
call her a songwriter,
because the song is lyrics and music, that’s what songs are, and I am
rather a musician . . . I like the lyrics I write afterwards, after months of
despair . . . it’s such a complete different process and state. I mean music
is pure concentration and joy . . . it’s a journey, a trip and I am not, I don’t
exist, honestly I disappear . . . but when I write lyrics, everything becomes

heavy and tough and real and earthy. (ibid.)
When I asked her why she did not simply stop writing lyrics for her songs,
she replied, “Because then, how do I sing?” (ibid.) I had meant that she
might view her work as that of a composer only, but despite her claim that
“if I weren’t in the songwriting pigeonhole then I would [be] freer” (ibid.),
she felt the need to sing. Molina’s dilemma raises interesting questions, not
least the problematic representation of the woman artist-producer’s voice
that I address elsewhere (Wolfe 2016). How can a word sound like a note?
She was not referring to a lexical choice that might reflect a mood or an
evocation from a given melodic line nor to simplistic use of onomatopoeia;
rather, it is a grasping for verbal articulation of meaning that has already
been expressed sonically; allowing someone else to write lyrics for her,
therefore, was not an option:
I don’t think I could sing somebody else’s lyrics unless they are so myself I
find [they] have said what I wished I had said and couldn’t. I don’t think
that’s going to happen. (op. cit.)
She agreed that the sound or mood of the music can evoke images, so rather
than striving to make lyrics sound like the music, might she not describe
those images? Paint with words the way she paints with music? Her
response: “yes, but you need to be a very good poet to do that” (ibid.). She
does eventually manage to write conventional lyrics that best represent the
sound of the songs but the process sits uncomfortably, “everything I write, I
feel that ruins the song, ruins that mood in the song” (ibid.).
This struggle led Molina to publically announce that one day she would
“sing songs with no lyrics” (ibid.) but admitted that so far she had not dared.
What would she sing if she did dare? She replied: “the melodies that came
with their own sound” (ibid.). To illustrate, she recounted a story in which
a filmmaker asked her to write a song for a short film and wanted a copy of
the lyrics but there were none. She had effectively sung what sounded like
words to a non-Spanish speaker but were just utterances that she had felt
approximated the sound of the music she had composed. In other words, she
had “dared” to write songs with no lyrics and they communicated meaning.
Did it feel natural to just sing utterances that expressed sonic rather than
semantic meaning? Her reply is emphatic: “Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . and every
song has its own sound” (ibid.). Furthermore, she was amused to discover
that the “nonsense,” as she described it, contained plurals:
Sometimes I sing like “norromestos” and that “s” at the end is a plural of
that thing that has absolutely no meaning at all. So it totally could sound,
I mean for someone who doesn’t speak the language, it sounds like lyrics
but for the whole majority of Spanish speakers, they would easily tell that
there are no lyrics at all. (ibid.)
The importance Hostile attached to the lyric in the production process

concurs with Pete Astor and Keith Negus’s argument “that lyrics matter
to songwriters and lyricists” (2014: 196). They take as their starting point
Simon Frith’s assertion that lyrics are “words in performance” (1996: 166)
and that “the best songs, in short, are those that can be heard as a struggle
between verbal and musical rhetoric” (ibid.: 182). To progress these ideas
they position their discussion within three frameworks more commonly
associated with poetry analysis and which have been described as the private,
the public and the anti-world (MacLeish 1965: 202–05). In addition they
utilize the framework offered by nonsense verse in which “developing a lyric
from a half-formed set of utterances is an accepted way of creating both
song words and poems” (ibid.: 204). I draw attention to this work because
what can also be seen is that although Molina rejects the label songwriter,
her approach to lyric writing in fact finds favour in Frith’s reading. It can
also be positioned within the anti-world approach that “is often pushing at
the limits of semantics and syntax” (ibid.: 203). Furthermore it lies within
the remit of nonsense in which “the very choice of nonsense words gives the
song its lyrical potency” (ibid.: 205).
Situating Gender
When positioning the work of both Hostile and Molina in the framework of
a gendered contemporary music industry culture, Hostile’s sonic control as
“producer” adheres to “patriarchal assumptions” (Mayhew 2004) inasmuch
as Molina’s control over her own sound challenges them. When I questioned
Hostile about Savages’s choice to work with him as a producer rather than
produce themselves (three of the band members, Milton, Thompson, and
Hassan, have in fact started to develop production skills in their own solo
projects, as I discuss below), he commented:
I don’t think it’s due to the gender thing . . . As musicians they are
already in a world where musicians should be which is being supergood
at what they do and being absolutely passionate about their own
instruments and that’s it really. (personal communication, 24 February
2016)
However, “the gender thing” is an issue beyond the studio. Hostile stated,
“we are very strongly against a lot of things in the music industry, me as a
producer and them as a band” and that they often feel “anger” and “rage,”
citing the marketing of the band as a particular source of conflict. He recalls
being in rooms with some guys saying, “Well, they maybe have to focus a
little bit more on sex and maybe a more sexy image” and all that shit. I’ve
heard it, you know, I’ve heard it about Savages. So that’s how revolting
this fucking industry is. (ibid.)
It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that the band’s oft-expressed desire “to

create an indestructible sound” (Thompson in Murray 2013) is reflected in
their visual as well as sonic identity. Their oppositional stance may have also
contributed to the alignment of the band with punk in media reviews (see
Empire 2016 and Petridis 2016). Arguably, their “anger” and “rage” mark a
not unusual response to a patriarchal and capitalist value system that forms
the backbone to the music industry, and clearly Savages is not the first band
to challenge the notion of the “angry young man” as angry young women
in the genre of rock (Coates 1997) and punk (Reddington 2012). Nor are
they the first band to find themselves in a situation of high irony where
their anger is commodified as part of their marketing (Nehring 1997).5
Molina made similar distinctions. For example, she states that although she
has “never had the male/female problem” (personal communication, April
2016), she recognizes many prejudices of her own and referred to an album
she had admired for many years and had assumed was written by a man.
Her discovery that “it’s a girl not a guy”6 was not just a pleasant surprise
but proof for her that “there is no difference between men and women”
and that “music has no gender at all. . . . The only thing that tells us is the
voice. Honestly. There is no other thing that could tell that you’re a man
or a woman” (ibid.). In terms of the broader industry, she believed that
although the “gender thing” was “deeply installed,” it will die out, “when
all those dinosaurs are gone . . . within 60 years this problem won’t be a
conversation” (ibid.). However, she argued that “there’s something stronger
than the difference between being a woman or a man and that’s age.” In
some ways Molina’s observations echo work that has drawn on “cultural
notions of age” to re-examine the key issues of gender, sexuality and identity
accompanying older women performers in popular music (Jennings and
Gardner 2012: 3). However, she progresses these ideas in her assertion that
a woman artist’s age per se is used to contain her work in a way that does
not happen to male artists:
If you’re 18 they would also [say] that you’re that you’re only 18 but
they wouldn’t say it for a guy. A guy can be 18, 25, 30 or 80 and either
he’s great or he’s not, that’s it. (personal communication, 20 April 2016)
I concur with Jennings and Gardner that “from a feminist perspective, in

particular, these new debates on ageing are crucial” in their demanding
“new considerations of the ways that notions of youthful heterosexual
attractiveness dominate not only their own reception, but also the ways
that women in general within popular music are conceptualized” (op. cit.).
However, I suggest that the situation of Molina and other women artist-
producers who are in control of their sound adds a further dimension
worth considering. It is a given that image forms part of an artist’s brand
that is presented to the public, and although I have argued that women
in control of their sound are more likely to have control over their image
(Wolfe 2017), that control cannot determine the response of a music media
steeped in discourses of sexism (Davies 2001). Consequently, “cultural
notions of age” (Jennings and Gardner 2012: 3) or of race or of class are
simply extensions of the range of rhetorical devices employed to contain the
achievements of women artists in popular music in conjunction with the
gendered constructions surrounding music production. Molina stated that
she “struggle[s] with age because they make me struggle with age” (op. cit.)
and described a number of reviews of her previous album that started with,
“for a fifty year old woman blah blah blah blah” (ibid.). She also referenced
the media representation of a tour she did, with two bands Vetiver and
Adem and the artist Vashti Bunyan, whereby, “in every single article, the
only ages appearing were Vashti’s and mine. So the problem with gender is
age” (ibid.). When I asked her how she negotiated her representation, she
replied:
You can’t negotiate that, there’s nothing you can do . . . You need to just
swallow it. If you dwell on it, they will [place] even more focus on that so
when that happens you need to keep your mouth shut. (ibid.)
Molina’s response appeared to be one of resignation and yet the album

cover and video accompanying her last album saw her wearing a black mask
with three small eyes, one serving as her mouth.7 Although this image serves
as an appropriate metaphor for Molina’s interplay between music and
language—a mouth is a silent observing eye that communicates meaning
without a tongue, without words—I would argue that it can also be read
as knowingly playing with and challenging the “aged gaze” (Gardener in
Jennings and Gardener 2012: 111).
Conclusions
To return to my stated intention in this chapter, what remerges is that the
cultural context cannot be divorced from the practice in that questions
continue to arise from the creative and political dynamics when the virtual
compositional and production sketch-pad created in private is placed in the
public arena. I would argue that the response of Molina and Savages to their
reception is defiance, but it takes different forms and interestingly reflects
their sound: powerful drumming and dominant electric guitar underscored
by an insistent bass and an intense vocal performance in the case of Savages,
and a hypnotic understated playfulness in the case of Molina. Although the

means through which the music in each case is produced may be reflective
of the creative processes of a solo artist as opposed to a band, there is clearly
more to be said when gender is situated in the production paths that have
been chosen. If those pathways are a response to the gaze that follows
them then so too is the way they choose to visually represent themselves.
Savage’s assertive sound is overtly aligned to their image, represented by the
single raised fist on the album cover of Adore Life, the band’s monochrome
uniforms and Beth’s direct glare at the camera in their publicity shots.
Similarly, Molina’s image invites multiple interpretations in much the
same way that she plays with notions of language, preferring the music
to communicate its own meaning. Both visual approaches are as different
as the production choices that accompanies the music yet I would argue
that both are a response to a music industry culture that will contain their
achievements, with slight variations on the methods used in accordance to
the constructed gendered discourses they challenge: post-punk rock in the
case of Savages, and music production in the case of Molina. Those methods
will also be determined by their ages so that the demand for sexualization is
imposed upon Savages by virtue of being women in their 20s whereas ageist
discourse hounds Molina.
As we age and mature, the more we are able to be in control of how
we present ourselves, aurally and visually, to the world. Undoubtedly the
members of Savages will go on to experience new levels of creativity that
combine composition and production so that like Molina they will be able
to say, “I love when the screen disappears and even though you’re looking at
it, you’re only hearing and listening to music . . . only then I know that I may
have something good” (personal communication, April 2016). However, like
Molina, they will also knowingly work in a gendered music industry cultural
context characterized by contradiction. Music technology offers women
artists creative liberation through self-production allowing Théberge’s
“impossible music” (1997: 215–16) to be made, yet that liberation remains
at odds with methods of containing women’s achievements unchanged from
those noted by feminist scholars of popular music over the last 30 years. The
need, therefore, for women to create their own “indestructible sound” seems
ever more apparent.
Notes
1 See http://www.juanamolina.com/
2 Real name Camille Berthomier.
3 Real name Nico Conge.
4 The original Spanish reads as “cantas para decir y yo digo para cantar.”
5 See http://www.vogue.com/13422096/savages-jehnny-beth-hair-makeup-short-
haircuts/
6 The artist in question is Foehn (Fat Cat).
7 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7h3KDMJFU
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78
PA R T TWO
Beyond
Representation
80
C h a p t e r F IVE
Producing TV Series
Music in Istanbul
Eliot Bates
When we conceive of music in relation to the concept of production, what

specifically is being produced? The dialectic between the production of
culture and the cultures of production (Du Gay 1997) depends upon the idea
that production as a field is inseparable from culture and cultural issues. But
it is music’s uncanny ability to refer (even if only in the abstract) to objects
external to it that opens up a Pandora’s box of issues surrounding what is
contained within the field of produced music or what specifically music is
capable of producing. Indeed, music sometimes has a representational value,
which suggests that what is being produced are representations—of culture,
society, or something else (Barthes 1986; Nattiez 1990). Alternately, music
is often highlighted for its role in construction of identity (Gracyk 2001;
Beken 2004; Stokes 1994). Music also evokes emotional-affective registers,
and thus music can be said to produce emotional-affective responses in
audiences (Becker 2004; Berger 2009), even in cases of reduced listening
or ubiquitous music (Kassabian 2013). Produced music, especially when
foregrounding the presence of its technological apparatus, can also be seen
as a means of introducing the public to the recording studio and to the team
who produced the music (Hennion 1989), enabling us to hear the social
mediations within the production milieu that made such music possible
(Born 2011). And in the case of music for audiovisual media, musical sound
is inextricably interwoven with the unfolding narrative structure of the visual
media that it accompanies (Gorbman 1987). Thus, production studies, as
a field of study, is not simply concerned with chronicling the techniques

inherent in the labor of production, but rather entails a means of critically
interrogating this range of things that music is capable of producing and
that producers are capable of creating through music.
This chapter will explore a transitional TV series (dizi), Fırtına,1 that
aired in 2006–07 on Kanal D, one of the largest private television networks
within Turkey. The show was a weekly, hour-long dramatic comedy that
ran for 48 episodes spanning two seasons; the first 15 episodes (and the
most acclaimed) were filmed in Eastern Black Sea villages and towns,
primarily in the Aksu village in the Trabzon Province. With a large cast
of well-known actors and actresses, and a considerable production budget
(including what was at the time a large music budget), Fırtına was one of
the major TV series in the year that it ran; it was also released with subtitles
in Iran and the Arab world and thus gained international popularity. Fırtına
is musically transitional in several regards. It was one of the earlier series to
move beyond conceiving of music primarily in a background mood capacity
and to involve character-specific leitmotifs, meaning melodic, rhythmic,
or timbrally distinct figures that provide the show’s audience with more
information about the characters. It prefigured the subsequent expansion
of the role of music in enhancing the dramatic narrative, and it was one of
the first TV series to adopt film music conventions that had first developed
within the context of dönem films, an indigenous genre of historical fiction
films that featured elaborate contemporary arrangements of repertoires that
were both historically accurate and place specific (Bates 2016).
Referring to the rapid introduction of private, satellite television in 1991–
92 to Turkey, Şahin and Aksoy note that “the new media were instrumental
in bringing to the fore the defining tensions of the Turkish identity, such
as ethnic origin, religion, language, and group aspirations” (1993: 35).
By the time that Fırtına was in production, TV series had expanded past
this to explore questions of regional belonging and different modes of
Turkishness. Fırtına, whether considered via its script, its choice of actors
and actresses, the choice of film clips, or its musical component, stages an
urban (specifically, Istanbul) encounter with rural Anatolia. The tumultuous
love affair between the main characters Zeynep and Ali, while mediated
by the village experience and the many barriers concocted by their village
families, is ultimately an Istanbul-style romantic relationship that has been
transplanted to the comparatively foreign context of the Eastern Black Sea.
The series articulates a more than century-old urban fascination with village
culture and extends a common comic trope whereby village families fail to
understand contemporary urban modes of heterosexual love, while clearly
marked “modern” characters fail to understand the nuances of village
traditions. It also draws on well-known urban stereotypes about people
from the Eastern Black Sea Region, including a fervently religious character
who fits the “Oflu Hoca” (old teacher from the town of Of) stereotype
(Meeker 2002: 40–41).2
PRODUCING TV SERIES MUSIC IN ISTANBUL 83
As Vildan Mahmutoğlu (2007) has shown, the series not only explores
human romantic relations but also grapples with the impact of changing
economic conditions (especially privatization and globalization) and the
economic inequalities between different village families; the Tabakçıs own
a private tea factory while the Balcıs farm tea that they sell to the Tabakçis.
Thus, the show indexes that the primary economic activity of the coastal
Black Sea Region, tea cultivation, which began in the 1920s–30s as an
experimental national horticultural project, by the 1940s resulted in the
construction of the country’s first tea factory in Rize (a town that became
synonymous with tea itself) and became a self-sufficient state monopoly by
the 1960s (Ercisli 2012: 311). As the show progresses we witness the lead
character Zeynep working in the Tabakçı factory, always in front of her
computer, speaking with an Istanbul accent that resulted from her education
in Istanbul, putting her in a different social class both from her family and
from Ali, and articulating the labor divisions between farming and business.
Ali runs river-rafting trips for foreign and domestic tourists, and pursued a
tourism/hospitality degree at the regional Trabzon University; he is depicted
as different from Zeynep’s brothers, who were neither university educated
nor capable of developing a rapport with foreign tourists. This indexes a
more recent industry in the region, adventure tourism, which has brought
some much needed revenue at a time when little profit could be made from
tea cultivation.
Fırtına’s musical selections simultaneously evoke disparate cultural
geographies, largely through the strategic use of instrumentation. The use
of the Karadeniz kemençe fiddle, tulum bagpipes, and garmon accordion
clearly establishes the links to musical traditions of the Eastern Black Sea,
as these instruments are well known and (with the exception of the garmon)
not found in other Turkish regions, which is amplified by their appearance
on-screen in several episodes.3 Other instruments, for example, the kaval
end-blown flute, tanbûr and divan-saz long-necked lutes, Persian kamanjā,
and numerous Anatolian percussion instruments, suggest a more general
“Eastern” sentiment as the parts written for them lack region-specific
audible cues. However, the use of violin/viola, lavta, clarinet, classical and
electric guitar, and synthesizer pads suggests an urban, cosmopolitan cultural
identity too—music about and for the city (Krims 2007). In tandem, just
from instrumental timbres alone the show asserts a polysemic multicultural
ethos, which contributes much to the TV show’s project of rethinking,
reframing, and representing the Black Sea.
Arrangement
Key to understanding the genesis of both album and TV/film music production
is an understanding of the specific labor that falls under the purview of
arrangers (aranjör) and the process of arrangement (aranjman, düzenleme).

Arrangement is something that is done to “traditional” (geleneksel) music,
whether rural-folkloric repertoires or urban light art music. As a set of
practices, arrangement most distinctively entails orchestration of existing
repertoires, the composition of new sections (e.g., intros, breaks, outros)
and of short melodic-instrumental answer (cevap) phrases, and the project
management of the creative “team,” including studio musicians and
engineers, who will contribute to the arrangement. Many arrangers also act,
to a limited extent at least, as studio musicians and thus perform many of
the parts within their own arrangements, while maintaining a network of
preferred studio musicians who are able at short notice to perform parts on
instruments with which the arrangers lack performance competence. The
combination of the musical-creative roles and the managerial role ensures
that arrangers are firmly situated at the center of production workflows,
inhabiting a space that in other national contexts might fall under the remit
of the producer and the soundtrack composer.
Arrangement is an exercise in excesses, always entailing the tracking of
more parts than will end up surfacing in the final version. There are two
strategic reasons for this excess: it enables the creation of multiple versions
of the same motif with a minimal increase in labor, and it enables the
creation of musical variety in the show while still maintaining the ability for
composed leitmotifs to do their work of representing places and characters.
Pro Tools sessions of arrangements tend to include many muted-out regions
that have been kept around for possible inclusion in theme variants, because
of either a desire to increase the variety of the incidental music sections while
still preserving the leitmotif function or a lingering worry that the show’s
producer will object to a particular instrumental timbre and insist on a new
lead melody part at short notice. As I observed during this project and during
others, this tendency to excess and to edit has significant consequences on
the ontology of the musical work, as it means that there is no longer a
singular original from which versions derive; instead, the original resides
within a Pro Tools session that contains the capability (frequently leveraged)
to easily render multiple versions. As I will show later, arrangers often draw
on other past and current projects, creatively reusing whole works of music
or creating new works out of previously used backing tracks. Therefore,
arrangement, through its strategic reuse of material and intermediality,
moves us beyond any clear unitary concept of “the musical work” (Goehr
2008), whether conceived musically or socially. My inclination is to think
in terms of the broader oeuvre of the arrangers in question as being a large,
extended musical object, an interpretation that is inspired in part by Alfred
Gell’s notion of art as a distributed object, for example, his provocative
suggestion that “in that each of Duchamp’s separate works is a preparation
for, or a development of, other works of his, and all may be traced, by direct
or circuitous pathways, to all the others” (Gell 1998: 245; see also Born
2005: 20–23). In other words, arrangement style is not just an attribute
within distinct musical works, but comes to blur the distinction between
works themselves.
The music for Fırtına was co-arranged by Aytekin Gazi Ataş and Soner
Akalın, and I engineered and mixed the sessions for the first half of the
TV series.4 Both arrangers got their professional start in music through
the performing arts ensemble Kardeş Türküler (lit. “ballads of fraternity”),
which since the early 1990s in various forms has been the primary ensemble
in Turkey dedicated to researching and performing a diverse repertoire
of music from myriad Anatolian ethnicities. The group began life on the
campus of Boğaziçi University as an offshoot of the university’s folklore
club, where students and faculty had long collaborated with conducting
field research and with staging folkloric music and dance (Boğaziçi
Gösteri Sanatları Topluluğu 2008). Whereas the folklore club, like many
other university folklore clubs, had primarily researched regional Turkish-
language traditions, Kardeş Türküler became interested in minority ethnic
music communities, and their repertoire came to include elaborate multipart
arrangements of Kurdish, Zaza, Laz, Armenian, Arab, Romani, Alevi,
Assyrian, and Sefardic musical traditions originating from across Anatolia
and the Balkans and into Mesopotamia. Ozan Aksoy (2014) has interpreted
the broader mission of the group through the lens of cultural reconciliation.
Both Aytekin and Soner were active with Kardeş Türküler in 1999–2000
when the group was enlisted to create the music for the film Vizontele (2001),
a dönem (era) film set in 1974 on the eve of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus
and situated in the village of Gevaş in the eastern province of Van. Musically
speaking, Vizontele was a landmark Turkish film, featuring the most complex
and ornately arranged film score to date, and stood out for three arrangement
innovations that became subsequently imitated in many film and TV music
scores: first, a new approach to layering interlocking percussion parts together
to create complex polyrhythmic driving rhythms (Soner was one of the
percussionists most responsible for this innovation); second, experimenting
with extended performance practice on plucked string instruments (e.g.,
saz, lavta, ‘ûd) and the creation of riff-based textures; and third, creating
atmospheric textures with layered and heavily effected vocals and bodily
sounds including stomping, dancing, and rhythmic breath exhalations (Aytekin
was one of the vocalists who contributed to this). Thus, the Kardeş Türküler
experience not only exposed Soner and Aytekin to a diverse range of musical
traditions and extensive musical repertoire, but also provided them a milieu
for experimenting with extending the technique and performance practice
for local and foreign percussion, Anatolian plucked stringed instruments, and
vocals. It also introduced them to a professional network, centered around
the large independent record label Kalan Müzik Yapım, which provided them
with instant connections to potential collaborators and professionals within
the industry for what came to be termed Anatolian ethnic music (Anadolu
etnik müzik). Fırtına was the first major long-running TV show they scored,
and essential for exposing their creative work to an international audience,
and it led to even larger budget work, including scoring what has become
Turkey’s most famous and acclaimed TV show of all time, Mühteşem Yüzyıl
(Magnificent Century) (Bowen-Çolakoğlu 2016).
Music and Arranged Sound in Fırtına

For designing the series, several somewhat distinct kinds of musical
fragments were required. First, the show needed a theme—one that would
do the interpretive work that opening credits music does (see Tagg 1979), but
one that also could recur in varied forms to accompany important scenes in
the series. Second, the show needed leitmotifs that accompanied particular
characters. The most important of these is the leitmotif that represented the
love affair between the show’s co-stars, Ali and Zeynep. Third, the show
needed mood-appropriate music that evoked particular emotions; there
are comic, tragic, melancholic, and tension/suspenseful moods regularly
through the show. Fourth, much use is made of short synced instrumentally
or vocally produced sound effects, known colloquially in Turkish as tuş
(literally touch, click), which emphasize or interpret a single moment on the
screen. And fifth, longer passages from fully arranged songs were regularly
used in the closing credits; some of these were taken from commercially
available CDs that had been arranged by the TV show arrangers.
Compared to any of the other music, the theme song entailed the most
effort prior to the launch of the show. The opening credits include two
clips where people are whitewater rafting down the Fırtına River, shots of
fishing boats going out to the Black Sea, tea harvesting, characters walking
through areas with lush green foliage—in other words, stereotypical visual
representations of the Eastern Black Sea that strongly anchor the show in
the region. To accompany this, the show’s producers wanted an action-
packed theme, one that also situated the show in the Black Sea but was
simultaneously modern. However, as we discovered, this mandate left a lot
open to interpretation. Quite quickly Aytekin came up with a few motifs that
seemed to fit the bill, including the opening “heyya heyya heyamo heyya”
vocal part (“heyamola” is an expression shouted by fishermen in the region
and is a well-known expression specific to it), the descending A minor flute
melody that became the song’s core, and wrote and sang a third section
in the atma türkü song form (a Black Sea style that features rapid vocal
delivery and rhyming couplets). Soner came up with few percussion grooves
featuring askı-davul (a double-headed drum played with different sized
sticks), cajón box drum, and “effect” percussion (reverse cymbals, “ocean”
drums), and double-tracked or quadruple-tracked these. They hired studio
musician Eyüp Hamiş to perform the theme’s main melody on the kaval
end-blown flute, which gave the theme a “soaring” quality. However, the
producers were not happy with early mixes of the song, noting that to them
it sounded “too much Black Sea.”5 They suggested, perhaps flippantly, that
“if we added some Kurdish rhythms maybe it’d come out better.”6 After a
back-and-forth process, the theme was altered to feature more prominently
the electric guitar, which carries the melody the first time around, and the
vocals of the final atma türkü section were removed and replaced with a
breathy/percussive/overblown kaval flute playing a variant of the vocal part,
and a descending countermelody on electric guitar. Soner created a couple
of new percussion parts that provided a more driving, swung rhythm with
dense articulated 16th note subdivisions (perhaps his response to the request
for “Kurdish” rhythms, although this was not verbalized during the tracking
sessions). To increase the build and impact, for the final section Soner and
Aytekin overdubbed the sounds of them stomping on a large hollow wooden
box, and sounds of exhaling “heh” syllables that punctuate the downbeats,
drawing on a technique they had perfected a couple of months previously
when creating the song “Gülçini” for an album by Yaşar Kabaosmanoğlu
(Bates 2010). The stomping and exhaling was quadruple-tracked. The final
version met the producer’s criteria and worked very successfully to sonically
“brand” what came to be one of 2006’s most popular TV series.
The leitmotif that symbolizes the romance between lead characters Ali
and Zeynep was a simpler proposition to create. Since the kind of love that
is being portrayed is a modern one, meaning outside of the traditions of
arranged marriages common within the Black Sea Region depicted, and since
both Ali and Zeynep are marked as characters with university education
who speak standard Turkish rather than a regional dialect, this theme has
even less connection to the region and its musical styles. The leitmotif begins
with sparse arpeggios on two classical guitars played by Erdem Doğan,
followed by the entrance of a minor melody on octave-doubled clarinet
with answer phrases played on electric guitar and by Nejad Özgür on the
garmon (an Azeri and Russian variety of small accordion with a distinctive
key-clicking sound for each note articulation). On the repeat of the theme,
the melody is shadowed by vocal humming. Throughout the motif in the
background is a MIDI pad sound holding a steady drone. The mood of this
leitmotif is melancholic, specifically the emotional-affective state and kind
of melancholy known as hüzün (Stokes 2010: 125). Hüzün is an interesting
phenomenon as it became especially important in Turkey in the 1980s in
literature, movies, and music, and is not just any melancholy but rather a
particularly modern form of it. In her study of Orhan Pamuk’s writing, Banu
Helvacıoğlu explores “how melancholy in aesthetic production transverses
with melancholy as a historical condition of modernity and with melancholy
as a cultural condition” (2013: 164)—and much the same can be inferred
for this forbidden romantic love affair as depicted in Fırtına. I would argue
that the garmon accordion, in particular, in this leitmotif and in some others
where it appears, becomes a principal instrument of hüzün; its deep rubato
and distinctively strong ornamentation suggest a passionate emotionality,
and its relative foreignness to Turkish recorded music history and lack of
Table 5.1 Fırtına theme

time section description
0:00–0:03 lead-in wave sound (produced with an “ocean drum”)
0:03–0:07 A “heyya heyya” vocals doubled with divan-saz with delayed
electric guitar part (the wave sound continues)
0:00–0:16 A’ vocals continue, accompanied by 2 new clean guitar parts,
1 distorted guitar part, electric bass, cajón, and doubled
askı-davul drums (the percussion emphasizes 8th note
offbeats)
0:16–0:34 B main A minor melody enters on doubled lightly overdriven
electric guitar; percussion switches to 16th note
subdivisions and a more complex/driving part (the
accompanying parts continue)
0:34–0:42 A’ return of A’, but this time with the driving rhythmic feel of
the B section
0:42–1:00 B’ the A minor melody is now performed by doubled kaval
flue, “hey hey” syllable male vocals, and overdriven
guitar (with the same accompanying parts)
1:00–1:08 A’’ return of A’, with less vocals, and percussion switches to a
new driving part keeping 16th-note subdivisions
1:09–1:11 bridge everything drops out, and a rhythmic/breathy kaval flute
vamp only accompanied by askı-davul drums enters
1:11–1:20 C atma türkü section, with breathy/percussive kaval flute
melody, a delayed guitar part playing a single note,
and very strong percussion created from 4x askı-
davul drums, multitracked sounds of stomping on a
large wooden box, and strongly exhaled vocal “heh”
syllables on downbeats
1:20–1:30 C’ the atma türkü section continues, now with a descending
electric guitar countermelody
1:30 end the song ends with a guitar chord put through a 1/4 note
regenerative delay
overinscribed regional associations mean it lacks some of the predetermined

emotional-affective baggage that comes with strongly regional and local
instruments. Especially following this TV series, Nejad Özgür, Turkey’s
primary session musician on this instrument, has been much in demand for
album and TV scoring work, even as his name is barely known to the public
at large.7 The clarinet, played by session musician Serkan Çağrı (another
musician connected to the Kardeş Türküler professional networks), also
contributes to this hüzün affect with its deep vibrato and rubato playing.
In contrast, in order to create the theme for the Oflu Hoca character,
one who perhaps more than any other comes to represent the locality of
the show through his locally inflected wildly comic speech, the arrangers
employed the two instruments most immediately associated with the
Eastern Black Sea: the tulum bagpipes and the kemençe fiddle. The kemençe
(performed here by Tahsin Terzi) plays an ornamented two-note melody,
while the tulum (performed by Mahmut Turan) plays a simple phrase that
sounds similar to the first sounds that a bagpipe player plays when they pick
up their instrument to check tuning and immediately before they begin an
actual song. Neither constitutes a “normal” part that they would play for
a work of music, but the instrumental timbres are immediately distinctive
and are what solidify the placeness of this leitmotif. As the kemençe and
tulum are not particularly “comic” instruments, and there is not much of a
tradition of “comic” music in the region anyway, the arrangement depends
upon other parts to impart a comic affect. In particular, staccato notes on
electric guitar and the lavta (a guitar-like instrument with a rounded bowl
and four sets of double-chorused strings), glissando slides and sporadic
wah wah filter sweeps on a second electric guitar part, and a battery of
quickly decaying percussion sounds performed on found objects (tea cups,
water glasses, metal ashtrays) all help to bring the “comic” element to this
leitmotif.
The production of sound and music for TV series, while constituting a
distinctive niche within Turkey’s field of cultural industries, can not wholly
be separated from the production of music for albums or for feature films.
The professional networks for these largely overlap, meaning that the same
people are involved in the arrangement, engineering, and studio musician
professions.8
In the case of Fırtına, the production of the music for the first series
transpired simultaneously with the production of two albums, Yaşar
Kabaosmanoğlu’s debut album Rakani (Metropol Müzik Üretim, 2006)
and Gökhan Birben’s third album Bir Türkü Ömrüme (Metropol Müzik
Üretim, 2006). Music from these two Black Sea-themed albums of
arranged folkloric music was used in the TV series, and music originally
designed for the TV series ended up being used on Gökhan’s album. Both
the television series and the albums were (loosely) based upon a limited
repertoire of folksongs that folklorists or singers had recorded in Eastern
Black Sea villages. The effectiveness of the albums was first and foremost
dependent upon the perceived faithfulness of the arrangements to tradition,
meaning that innovations and newly composed material needed to not
interfere excessively with the primary task of conveying the folksong in a
regionally or locally appropriate style. In contrast, the effectiveness of the
TV music was concerned with the emotional-affective associations conveyed
specifically by and through the newly composed sections of arrangements.
These sections often differed considerably from the sound of folk music in
the region in terms of melodic structures, instrumentation, ornamentation,
and other aspects. Correspondingly, usually the only sections of album song
arrangements to be used in the TV soundtrack were those newly composed
intro and instrumental break sections. In some instances, material was
taken from the original multitrack DAW session files but new melodies
were written or new parts recorded. Overall, we can conclude that the
dependence upon the heavily arranged sections of album music rather than
on the primary vocal sections (where accompaniment stuck closer to the
traditions of the region) demonstrates that TV music as a whole features
considerably less connection to the traditional music in question and much
more connection to what I term the arranged tradition—the several decade
history of arranging folkloric resources in order to make stage productions
or recordings (Bates 2016).
Aytekin and Soner were hired to do the music for this series in part due
to their association with the extremely popular Vizontele films, as discussed
earlier. While the representational demands are different (Vizontele and
Vizontele Tuuba claim to make historically plausible representations
of politically important time periods and serve as a commentary on the
economic underdevelopment of Eastern Turkey), both Vizontele and Fırtına
feature “tension/suspense” (gerilim) scenes that require energetic music to
propel the action forward. The “tension” music in Fırtına is very similar to
the tension music in Vizontele; both feature the Hicaz melodic mode (B – C
– D# – E – F# – G) with an alternation between B major and C major chords
(the primary source of the “tension”), both feature interlocking riffs played
on plucked string instruments, both make striking use of high male vocals
singing “hey ey” syllables and treated with a thick, long reverb, and both use
complex, interlocking, and very dense percussion grooves elaborating on the
Çiftetelli (4/4) rhythm.9 The specific percussion and stringed instruments
that were chosen do differ, and the Fırtına tension theme adds drama with
a tremolo violin part (performed by Neriman Güneş) that emphasizes the
chord changes, but the more prominent similarities suggest how in just five
years an innovation in film music had become a convention in TV music.
For expediency I have written so far about these motifs as if they are
singular entities. However, for each one of them we created multiple versions.
For example, for the show’s theme there were versions without the vocals,
without most or all of the electric guitars, and ones without percussion.
There was even a version with only the solo guitar playing the main melody.
We made stand-alone versions of each of the theme’s three sections. The
theme variants surface regularly when depicting river scenes, but even in
later episodes when rivers no longer were depicted on screen, theme variants
were employed to accompany a variety of other kinds of scenes. For the
Ali and Zeynep character leitmotif, alternate versions were made with
electric guitar, the Persian kamanjā bowed string instrument, or the garmon
taking the lead melody instead of the clarinet. This variety is essential to
sustain interest over a long run of a TV series, but keeping the motifs still
recognizable maintains the sonic brand of the show. It also suggests that the
instruments that are called upon in TV music to carry a part’s emotional-

affective register are, at least to an extent, somewhat interchangeable. This
differs considerably from these instruments’ traditional roles in village
performance practices (Picken 1975).
One distinctive trait in the soundtracks to some Turkish film and TV
music is the use of instrumentally produced sound effects—what Aytekin
referred to as tuş sounds. Tuş is a colloquialism that is sometimes used to
refer to the act of clicking on a button on a screen, and in other contexts can
mean “touch.” In the context of film music, it refers to brief, synchronized
sounds that punctuate and emphasize a frame of the film. For Fırtına,
several dozen tuş sounds were made during the course of the production.
Often, they were taken from warm-ups when session musicians were in
the studio and thus constitute parts that were not intended to be used at
all; other times, the sounds came from the ends of melodies or percussive
passages that were pulled out of context and made into stand-alone motifs.
Partly to inscribe the “Black Sea”-ness of the show, many of the tuş sounds
were taken from tulum bagpipes. Since the parts originated in the sessions,
which ended up producing the series’ music, there is an audible cohesion
that justifies their usage.
As the dialog-intensive nature of Turkish TV dramas precludes the use
of much vocal music within the show itself (with the exception of certain
dramatic scenes without dialog), the one place where vocal music is most
often located is in the closing credits. One such song in Fırtına, “Ha Bu
Ander Sevdaluk,” was written by Aytekin and became the best known song
in the series, developing a life outside of its role in the show. Part of the
song appeared initially in a scene where several characters are leaving by
boat on a long journey and their family and friends, tearful, wave from the
shore, but the full work appeared in the closing credits to that episode and
many subsequent ones. This work is interesting since it was composed by
an ethnically Zaza-Alevi musician, but in the style of some of the slow sad
türkü (folksongs) from the Trabzon area (closest perhaps to “Oy Benum
Sevduceğum,” a song repopularized in the 2000s by folk music stars Erkan
Oğur and İsmail Hakkı Demircioğlu). While the text of the song has been
critiqued on social media sites for not wholly articulating the Trabzon dialect
of Turkish that the song purports to represent, that has not stopped the
song becoming part of the stage repertoire of numerous groups that perform
Black Sea popular and folkloric music, and even being covered by singers in
Albania and Bulgaria. I even heard it being performed by local musicians in
the Rize Province (just to the east of where Fırtına was shot), showing that
the song had made it back to the village. It is as if “Ha Bu Ander Sevdaluk”
was a newly located türkü rather than a pop song created for a TV series.
Surveying the broader labor of production for the series, the entire
creative process, from the initial song conceptualizations to tracking all the
parts, from editing selections to arrangement revisions, from the final mixes
to finally compositing fragments into episode soundtracks, was done in the
studio and without any written scores, and extremely quickly. The bulk of
the labor transpired over a two-week period, during which time we created
some 96 distinct mixed sound files (of durations ranging from five seconds
to three minutes in length) that in various combinations comprised the
soundtrack to the first several episodes of the TV series. Everyone involved
in the sessions—arrangers, engineers, and studio musicians included—had
an active role in the labor of production, although this work took different
forms. All of the session musicians that we worked with have an innovative
approach to performing in the studio that results in a performance that
is extremely consistent in amplitude, reducing or eliminating the need for
track-specific compression to be used, and otherwise attempting to minimize
the likelihood that the arrangers or audio engineers might feel the need to
manipulate the part excessively after tracking.
As so many parts needed to be tracked—more complex song arrangements
had upwards of 36 tracks, and sessions required alternate takes performed
on a multiplicity of different instruments—there was very little time for a
prolonged, dedicated mixing phase, so I tended to mix as I was tracking
and editing, relying mostly on conventional instrument-specific EQ and
compression settings and using the same reverbs and tempo-locked delays
throughout the project. There was also no time for experimentation
regarding microphone selection and positioning, so we developed a standard
go-to configuration for each studio musician we worked with, ensuring that
we could edit between takes done on different days without it being easily
perceptible. The routine use of the same microphones (typically a Neumann
U87ai for melody instruments or vocals, and whatever small diaphragm
condenser was available for small percussion) positioned in the same spot of
the room and at the same distance from the performer ensured a consistency
of sound that contributed to our ability to quickly EQ the track using
predetermined, instrument-specific settings rather than necessitating an
extensive experimentation with frequency bands. Electric guitar and electric
bass were always recorded direct rather than through amps, which minimized
the time spent playing around with cabinet and mic placement and fiddling
around with guitar tone controls on the amp. Two Waves Renaissance reverb
plugins were used on every session: one was a generic simulated hall reverb
with a 1.4–2.2 second decay time (depending upon the tempo of the track),
which was used on all vocals and melodic instruments except for bass, and a
simulated plate reverb with a 0.6–1.1 second decay time for the percussion
submix. The aesthetic preference was for a fairly dry mix, meaning that only
enough reverb was used to compensate for the artificiality imparted from the
close-miking of instruments and the deadness of the tracking room. However,
for certain leitmotifs, excessively long reverb and regenerative delay might
be used on a part or two (especially vocals, flutes, and effect percussion) to
produce a particular, pronounced spatial effect.
All mixes of folkloric music, or mixes inspired by folkloric production
conventions, tend to showcase one instrument that, as mentioned before,
is felt to have a regional significance; this part is always mixed up as if it

were a lead vocal, and the supporting parts are mixed so that all are audible
but none sticks out excessively.10 Since the music for TV series is typically
mixed 20 decibels below the dialog, and the music is in competition not
just with the dialog but with location sound and foley, the challenge of TV
series music is creating something that will convey anything at all at such
a low level, a phenomenon compounded by the poor quality of the audio
playback on most listeners’ TV sets. Subsequently, the most important part
of the frequency spectrum is the 200–8000 Hz range. Within that range, the
upper midrange band centered around 1.5–2.2 KHz was the most important
for imparting the audible aesthetic known as parlak (“shine”) (Bates 2010),
which in practice meant that often a 10 decibel boost would be used in that
band for important instruments and another extreme boost used in the same
range on the full mix.
Conclusions
Due to governmental restrictions and tight central control of the media
industries there has been only private TV in Turkey since the 1990s. The
comparatively recent phenomenon of television music quickly became a new
creative site and employment opportunity for those working in preexisting
music-sound production networks, in particular album arrangers and
film music creators (already two professions with significant overlap),
rather than a wholly new field with different personnel. Correspondingly,
TV series music inherited some of the cultural logics of film and album
music, including a long-standing infatuation with “traditional” music and
locally or regionally specific musical instruments. That some of these also
have ethnic associations (e.g., the kemençe is often associated with the Laz
and Pontic Greek ethnicities, while the tulum is most associated with the
Hemşin) serves to underscore a vision of Turkey that is multicultural at its
core but cosmopolitan in its outlook.
TV shows such as Fırtına, despite being fictional, create powerful
representations—in this case of the Eastern Black Sea Region and its
economic and cultural relation to Istanbul. Music comes to nuance these
representations, but in doing so moves beyond having a solely representational
or emotional-affective valence to constitute something new and distinct. TV
music is, however, in some ways the mirror image of album music. Albums
develop a filmic, dramaturgical aesthetic that surrounds material that then
must, to compensate, be overinscribed as traditional, accomplished through
an excess of instruments with local significance, and an exaggeration of
ornamentation and instrument-specific performance features. There is an
inherent paradox, therefore, in an album arrangement, that all the newly
composed stuff is in effect wholly inessential for the correct portrayal of
traditional repertoire, yet most defines the artistry of the arrangers (and the
whole production team). TV music, however, works by avoiding material
that is excessively inscribed as traditional, tending to focus on all the newly
composed filmic/dramaturgical material that was inessential for the correct
performance of the traditional song in an album context. But as I have
shown, arrangers routinely work in both milieus, and much of the material
they create for TV or film music may have had its genesis in outtakes from
album productions. As a profession, arrangement therefore strikes a delicate
balance between these two dispositions.
As I argued before, for production studies to do critical work necessitates
a nuanced understanding of specifically what is being produced, above and
beyond aesthetic art works. In the case of Turkish TV music, in addition to
the representational and cultural geographical aspects we are able to hear
the computer-based production workflow in action, and therefore able to
hear, to an extent at least, the social negotiations, technical decisions, and
collaborative performances that comprised part of the production process.
Moreover, the work concept has only a limited utility for theorizing the
music, as the dozens of incidental themes and multiple leitmotif variants
point to the need to frame individual sounds instead within the broader
oeuvre of the arranger—and by extension the entire production team.
Acknowledgments
My research was facilitated by a State Department Fellowship generously
provided by ARIT (American Research Institute in Turkey) (2006–07) and
a Fulbright IIE grant (2005–06). I wish to thank Ladi Dell’aira, Benjamin
Brinner, Heather Haveman, and Samantha Bennett for insightful comments
on earlier drafts of this chapter. I also wish to thank Soner Akalın, Aytekin
Gazi Ataş, Ömer Avcı, Metin Kalaç, Yeliz Keskin, Ayşenur Kolivar, Ulaş
Özdemir, Fatih Yaşar, and Yılmaz Yeşilyurt for their friendship inside and
outside the studios, and for their patience with my never-ending questions.
Notes
1 Fırtına literally means “storm,” but has a double meaning in the case of this
show, as it also refers to a well-known river that is popular for trout fishing
and whitewater rafting (both depicted in the show).
2 Oflu Hoca characters are particularly known for the puzzling or even
ridiculous sayings they make. Since the 1980s, amateur cassettes have
circulated featuring “greatest hits,” consisting of field-recorded spoken sayings
of various Black Sea men who listeners find to fit the stereotype.
3 The kemençe appears in an indoor dance scene where people wildly dance
the horon to live kemençe accompaniment. The tulum appears in a comic
scene where a man, hoping to serenade a woman, stands outside her second
story window and fakes playing the tulum while a friend of his, hidden in the
bushes, actually plays the bagpipes.
4 I worked as the house audio engineer for ZB Stüdyo from December 2015
until the spring of 2017, during which time I worked extensively with Soner
and Aytekin on their album, TV, and film music projects.
5 Fieldnotes, June 29, 2006.
6 It is hard to resolve on one interpretation of this particular studio moment. For
starters, there is only a limited tradition of playing percussion in the Eastern
Black Sea Region, so any percussive parts are inherently “foreign” to the music
(which has not stopped their use on many albums). However, despite the
widespread use of percussion in Kurdish regions, there is not one particular
percussion style that is unequivocally “Kurdish” in nature. Culturally, the
Eastern Black Sea is also the only part of the country where there is not a
sizable Kurdish population, so the suggestion that adding Kurdish elements
might be a productive strategy for lessening the Black Sea-ness of the theme
suggests a peculiar take on multiculturalism.
7 On the invisibility of session musicians in Indian film music, see Booth 2008: 5.
8 Some arrangers partly give up doing album work after becoming established in
the far more lucrative world of TV music, but will still arrange single songs for
albums of artists with whom they are friends.
9 While many melodic modes in Turkey do have specific emotional-affective
registers, there is nothing about the traditional associations with makam Hicaz
that would imply its association here with suspense. This could be termed a
postmodern recontextualization of the mode.
10 Interview with Metin Kalaç, April 10, 2007.
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C h a p t e r S IX
Reclamation and Celebration:

Kodangu, a Torres Strait
Islander Album of Ancestral
and Contemporary Australian
Indigenous Music
Karl Neuenfeldt
Music constructs our sense of identity through the direct experi-

ences it offers the body, time and sociability, experiences which
enable us to place ourselves in imaginative cultural narratives.
(Frith 1996: 124)
The stories told about the past speak powerfully to the self-image
of the story teller. Collective stories define collective identities.
Speaking about the past, we make for ourselves a present and
project a future. (Pue 1995: 732)
RECLAMATION AND CELEBRATION 99
Introduction
For Torres Strait Islanders (henceforth Islanders), music is a key component
of their sociocultural life as one of Australia’s two Indigenous peoples.1
For Islanders, music is simultaneously memory (the past), innovation (the
present), and imagination (the future). It is also culture and commerce and
sometimes also inherently political, albeit not always overtly so. The last
few decades have seen increased research, documentation and analysis of
Islanders’ music and music practice following on from pioneering work such
as that of Beckett (1981, 1972), Laade (1990) and Lawrie (1970). More
recent research on a wide range of the styles, uses and cultural production of
Islander music and music practices is found in the work of Beckett (2001),
Barney and Solomon (2010), Costigan and Neuenfeldt (2002), Lawrence, H.
(2004, 1998), Mullins and Neuenfeldt (2005, 2001), Nakata and Neuenfeldt
(2005), Neuenfeldt and Costigan 2004 and Neuenfeldt (2001, 2007, 2011
and 2014a,b).
However, relatively less has been published about the processes underlying
the musical production of what can be termed quasi-commercialized
recordings. They regularly combine the sometimes otherwise distinct genres
of ancestral and contemporary music and can have more of a cultural than
commercial agenda (Pegrum, Kepa, and Neuenfeldt 2008–15; Neuenfeldt
and Kepa 2011). In those instances, it is arguably not about the potential
monetary benefits but rather about the cultural cachet such recording
projects can accrue and the impact they can make. This applies equally to
recordings of secular and sacred Islander music.
The focus here is one such example of a quasi-commercialized Islander
music album of secular songs with a conspicuous cultural agenda: Kodangu.
It features ancestral and contemporary songs and was recorded in 2015 by
The Custodians, a cross-generational Islander family band (Figure 6.1). The
intent here is to examine the processes that informed its musical production
via description and analysis based substantially upon ethnographic
interviews with two senior members of the band and extended family,
the Late Dimple Bani Senior and Gabriel Bani, and the author's role in its
production. This overall approach is consonant with that of Durán (2011),
who has investigated how music production can be simultaneously a tool
of research and also have a cultural impact. This chapter argues Kodangu
strives to preserve ancestral music while also incorporating contemporary
musical styles and Western music production aesthetics, thus melding
past, present and future into what Frith refers to above as an “imaginative
cultural narrative” (1996: 124). Kodangu uses the resulting syncretic music
to address contemporary issues relevant to Islanders such as the roles of
historical influences and cultural protocols as well as the challenges of
language retention and implicitly the concept of communal copyright.
Contributing to debates on those issues is perhaps its foremost potential
100 Critical Approaches to the Production of Music And Sound
Figure 6.1 Cover of the Kodangu CD.
impact culturally, socially and politically, along with featuring music that is
written, composed, performed and recorded at a professional level—and is
also educational.
My personal and professional role as a co-producer of the Kodangu album,
along with Nigel Pegrum and Will Kepa, involved more than just music per
se. It also involved an academic background of research and involvement
in numerous previous music recording projects with Islanders.2 In essence,
combining my academic and musical interests in an album can be typified
as a personal striving to do research that, in Durán’s words, “is in a format
which is ‘useful and accessible’ to the people we are writing about” (2011:
246). The numerous previous albums and projects we have produced in
collaboration with Australian Indigenous communities, bands and soloists
have become an integral part of the soundscape of their communities. To
hear them being used and enjoyed, as entertainment and education, is
the ultimate reward for our role as producers in helping reclaim and also
celebrate Islander music in its secular and sacred forms.
A CD (compact disc) is of course purely a technology for carrying digitized

information. Nonetheless, it is a recording technology that has globally been
put to widespread and culturally significant use in the last decades in the
service of the reclamation and celebration of Indigenous peoples’ music
and traditions (Neuenfeldt 2007a; Scales 2012; Wilson 2014). It succeeded
the earlier analogous use of cassettes (Manuel 1993) and preceded the now
ubiquitous MP3 format (Sterne 2006) and the use of laptops, SD (secure
digital) cards and phones (Crowdy 2015). CDs not only are a technology
of convenience, reliability and replicability, but also provide excellent audio
quality and relative durability.
Briefly, several theoretical perspectives can provide insights into situating
and understanding the diverse roles of music recording projects such as
The Custodians’ Kodangu in shaping broader processes of cultural identity
(Hall 1990) and collective memory (Halbwachs 1980), as well as how music
itself has a particularly affective and effective role in identity formation
and reinforcement (Frith 1996). These perspectives will be reprised in the
analysis section at the end of this exploration.
The Kodangu Album's Contents—and Intents

Kodangu was funded by the Torres Strait Regional Authority through its
Culture, Art and Heritage Program. The Torres Strait Regional Authority was
established in 1994 as the Australian federal government's representative
organization for Indigenous peoples living in the Torres Strait region. The
album was recorded at two locations. The rhythm tracks, mixing and
mastering were done at Pegasus Studios in Cairns in northern Queensland.
It is a project studio owned and operated by Nigel Pegrum, formerly the
drummer with iconic 1970s British folk-rock band Steeleye Span and an
experienced session musician, producer and arranger, including numerous
world music and Indigenous Australian albums (Neuenfeldt 2005). Pre-
production with Gabriel Bani and co-producer Karl Neuenfeldt was also
done at Pegasus Studios, and Torres Strait Islander co-producer Will Kepa
assisted with arrangements and played bass, guitars and keyboards on the
rhythm tracks. Dimple Bani Junior played drums. The multi-tracked vocals
by Dimple Senior, Gabriel, Danny and Jack Bani were mainly recorded on
Thursday Island, the administrative centre of the Torres Strait region at the
studio of Radio 4MW. Nadene Jones of Nova Graphics did the album and
booklet design, with photographs and artworks supplied principally by the
Bani family (Figure 6.2). All the songs’ lyrics are contained in the booklet of
24 pages along with translations and explanations.
The album contains 11 songs and has 49 minutes of music. Members of
the Bani extended family wrote the songs with Dimple Bani Senior being
Figure 6.2 From the insert to the Kodangu CD.
the primary composer and author with contributions from his father, the
Late Ephraim Bani; his maternal uncle Erris Eseli; and his younger brother,
Gabriel. A notable facet of the album’s production is that the sequencing
of songs, usually done after recording, was already completed in keeping
with the trajectory of the broader story Kodangu was designed and intended
to tell. In essence, the album had a storyboard comprised of songs, which
points out the Banisʼ detailed planning and cultural research preceding the
actual recording sessions.
In order to explore the story the album was designed to tell, it is useful
to turn to the personal observations of Dimple Bani Senior and Gabriel
Bani. They deal explicitly and implicitly with the notion of how recording
Indigenous music can be a means of reclamation and celebration and can
simultaneously be informed by extensive research by artists and producers
that can serve to heighten an album’s impact. There are several songs that will
be singled out because of their aptness and what the Bani’s comments reveal
about the processes of culturally informed research and the complementary
aesthetics of culturally appropriate music production.
Geographic and Cultural Contexts

Mabuyag Island, traditional name Urpi Kigu Poeyadhras, is in the western
cluster of islands in the Torres Strait region of far north Queensland (Figure
6.3). It currently has approximately 250 residents and is serviced by an
airport, a school and health facilities. It is a small, tropical island set amid
the region’s many scenic islands, reefs and cayes that separate Australia and
Papua New Guinea (D. Lawrence and H. Lawrence 2004). Historically,
beginning in the colonial era it was an active centre for maritime industries
such as beche-de-mer and pearl shell gathering and consequently had a
diverse and sizeable multinational and Indigenous workforce as elsewhere
in the region (Mullins 1995). The traditional language of the western
Torres Strait region is Kala Lagaw Ya (and its dialects) and the traditional
language of the eastern Torres Strait region is Meriam Mir. Torres Strait
Creole/Yumpla Tok and Australian English are now more widely spoken,
hence the importance for sustainability to record the traditional languages
used in culturally significant contexts such as music (Grant 2014). Mabuyag
has a well-deserved reputation as a strong culture community, and music
and dance are of particular importance. As in many communities of the
region, emigration has reduced the home-island population on Mabuyag
with many emigrants now living throughout mainland Australia (Shnukal
2001). They are part of the major post–Second World War Islander diaspora,
with approximately two-thirds of Islanders now residing on the Australian
mainland. For some Islanders, especially youth, there can be subsequent
issues related to identity, being Islanders but not being in the Torres Strait
region (Watkin Lui 2012).3 Many Mabuyag people are also living within the
region because economic and educational opportunities are very limited in
such a small, isolated island community.
The Bani extended family is typical of this kind of Islander migration
pattern and diaspora. Members are widely dispersed, some living on
Mabuyag and Thursday Islands, others on Cape York Peninsula in the
nearby Northern Peninsula Area (NPA) on the Australian mainland as well
as others as distant as Western Australia. Notwithstanding this geographical
dislocation the extended family retains extremely strong links to their home-
island and its cultural traditions. As Gabriel Bani (2015a) confirms:
The family is originally from Mabuyag and we have three clan groups
and a major tribe [there]. The clan groups are Panay, Maydh, Sipingur
and Wagadagam is the major tribe—it’s when all the clan groups come
Figure 6.3 Map of the Torres Strait region.
together for ceremonies and also for their harvest festivals. The major
totem of Wagadagam is the crocodile. You will find other sub totems
because of intermarriage. And because of our relationships with Papua
New Guinea and the Australian mainland, there are also sub totems.
According to senior members of The Custodians, Dimple Bani Senior and

Gabriel Bani, they can claim a demonstrable hereditary right to represent
the Wagadagam tribe. It is partly based on genealogical records collected
about Mabuyag during the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to
Torres Straits in 1898 (Haddon 1904–35), one of the world’s first full-scale
anthropological expeditions (Herle and Rouse 1998). It was headed by
Alfred Cort Haddon and included specialists in diverse research foci such as
ethnology, psychology, linguistics and music. Regarding the role of headman

among the Wagadagam, Gabriel recounts it has been in the Bani family for
generations, both in the family's and in the community’s repository of oral
history and also documented by William Halse Rivers in the Cambridge
Anthropological Expedition’s reports (1904: Table 4).
Dimple Bani Senior and Gabriel Bani’s father, the Late Ephraim Bani
Senior (1944–2004), was a cultural custodian, linguist, broadcaster,
musician and visual artist. He was the seventh traditional headman of
Mabuyag’s Wagadagam tribe as well as one of the few of his generation to
have undergone a traditional initiation with his maternal uncles. As Gabriel
states, “As a custodian of traditional knowledge . . . a lot of things were
passed to him during that initiation time, which gave him that responsibility.
At the time he saw the erosion of culture, erosion of language and all that
stuff. Dad actually tried everything to do that work and that’s why he started
his work with linguistics and culture.”4 Consequently, an abiding concern
for culture was a part of their upbringing. As Gabriel reflects, “[We] grew
up in an environment of reading, research, all that side [of culture] but also
the side of the singing, the community, ceremonies, community celebrations
and all of that. . . . I think that’s where everything sort of began for us to be
where we are now up to, when Dad’s gone.”
Dimple Bani Senior, Gabriel’s older brother, was called on to be next in
line for being a headman for the Wagadagam tribe. Consequently, as Gabriel
explains: “We did [Dimple Senior’s] initiation in 2005, a formal initiation
with the government on Mabuyag. [Other government representatives]
came to Mabuyag: the TSRA [Torres Strait Regional Authority], the Island
Coordinating Council [ICC], the [Torres Strait Island] Regional Council
[TSIRC]. And all the Islander elders from as far as Murray [Island/Mer],
and Kaurareg elders and all the islands came. [That] set the stage for a lot
of work that we started.” Thus, the extended family members, and Dimple
Senior and Gabriel in particular in their generation, have direct links to the
core of the culture and accept and acknowledge a responsibility to preserve
and promulgate its worldview and lore. One artistic medium they have
chosen to help realize that obligation and aspiration is music.
Analysis of Select Songs

Some of the songs on Kodangu are analytically of particular relevance and
provide cultural insights into their writing and production. The first song on
the album, “Kodangu (Chant),” sets the stage for the stories and music that
follow. It also aurally flags the cultural agenda by being sung a cappella in Kala
Lagaw Ya accompanied only by warup/buruburu drum percussion, as would
have occurred in a ceremonial context.5 Adapted, and composed and authored
by Dimple Bani Senior, Gabriel Bani and Erris Eseli, it is an ancestral chant:
Mabuyag mura Mabuyag e. Garke kubiw laaga inu Mabuyag e. Kodangu

in kodangu e. Goegayth mura apasin mura apasin e. Explanation:
Mabuyag is a place of beginnings, a place for all people. This originates
from the Kod, the sacred meeting place of governance and initiation.
Tribes and all in the village revere what comes out of the Kod, with
humbleness and respect. (“Kodangu (Chant)”)
Dimple Bani Senior (2015), who also uses the honorific title ahdi, signifying
someone with considerable cultural knowledge, emphasizes “that chant is
the beginning . . . [It] was especially sung for my initiation when I was taken
from the kod to be initiated. So that’s the start of that history. That’s why
we began with that [song for the album].” As Gabriel adds, “That [song]
draws a context around the principle that it comes from the kod that we do
what we do. If it’s initiation that’s being done in this modern day, it’s still
here. What existed before is still here, in the midst of all the changes and
everything that’s happened.” The function of a kod or kwod is reported in
Haddon:
In every inhabited island there was a certain area set apart for the use of
the men which was known as a kwod. Some islands appear to have had
but a single kwod, others had several; for example, in Mabuiag. . . . Each
of these so far as I could learn was the kwod of a particular clan, whereas
the great kwod on the adjacent sacred islet of Pulu was what might be
called the national kwod of the Gumulaig [peoples of Mabuyag]. The
kwod corresponds to the club-houses . . . that are so widely spread over
Melanesia. . . . Speaking in general terms, these places are tabooed to
women and to the uninitiated, they are used as dwellings or meeting
places of the men, and in them various ceremonies are held; they
constitute the social, political and religious centres in the public life of
the men. (1904: 3)
The sociocultural, religious and political significance of a kod in the

Mabuyag region has been archaeologically investigated (McNiven, David,
Goemulgau Kod and Fitzpatrick 2009). The song and the album’s title are
modern-day aural and visual extensions of the kod's role as both a physical
and a cultural and sacred space. As Gabriel clarifies,
That “ngu” at the end [of the word kodangu] means “from the kod.”
And the songs on the CD [album] actually link us back to everything that
begins there, which is our value system and even the laws surrounding our
lives, our conduct, our everything, our vision, where we’re heading. So it
all reflects the fact that everything comes from the tribal perspective. To
get anywhere in this world, that’s where we need to set up our foundation
from. Dad [the Late Ephraim Bani] said all the time that, “man must first
find himself before he can conquer what’s outside.” You know, the most
important part is to establish yourself, your identity, who you are.
The chant is incorporated later on in the album into the song “Kodangu”
with other additional new lyrics in English and more elaborate production
using a guitar-bass-drums rhythm section, synthesized strings and complex
vocal harmonies. All quite common elements of a Western production
aesthetic but here augmented in both the chant and the song by a major
aural signifier of Islander culture: multi-tracked warup/buruburu drums.
The cultural agenda is reinforced in the English lyrics and also made more
accessible for Islanders and non-Islanders who do not speak Kala Lagaw Ya.
This mixing of languages and incorporating of ancestral musical elements
is a common strategy for contemporary Islander composers and authors
(Neuenfeldt and Costigan 2004). There is decidedly a cultural agenda, even
if the resulting song accedes primarily to Western production aesthetics. The
lyrics of “Kodangu” are as follows:
Through the songs and dances our stories are told. With the guidance of
the spirits we stand bold. Time will heal the scars through the seasons,
foretold by the highest heavenly plan. These islands are homes of a unique
race of people. Generations on we've survived on customs and values
we embrace. So here we are, we can react in a nation with a status of
warriors. We’ll be living forever in the islands of the Torres Strait. History
has come alive on our island [Mabuyag] as we have seen this is how it
used to be. To the sweet sound of music we are taking a walk through
the corridors of time. [Chant] We’ll be living forever in the islands of the
Torres Strait. (“Kodangu,” Kodangu 2015)
Along with an assertion of cultural uniqueness, the lyrics refer to Dimple

Bani Senior’s initiation as headman in 2005 and also make an implicit
reference to the Christian affiliation of many Islanders: “Time will heal
the scars through the seasons foretold by the highest heavenly plan.” The
two linked songs, “Kodangu (Chant)” and “Kodangu,” are lynchpins on
the album as they draw on the past in the service of the present—and by
implication the future.
An overt link to the future is in “Masters and Commanders,” composed
and authored by Dimple Senior and Gabriel Bani and featuring Gabriel’s
14-year-old son, Jack Bani Junior. Its lyrics and also its performance by
the youngest member of The Custodians are overtly focused on the next
generation of culture bearers. The title comes not from the Peter Weir/
Russell Crowe film of a similar name, Master and Commander, but rather
a quotation from the Late Ephraim Bani Senior: “For a healthy race of
people to exist has but one answer: they had managed to master the
environment and were in full command of their survival” (Bani 2015b).
The lyrics read:
It is another day in a place that is special, a life that is built on values

from above, [and] our survival day by day. The birds are singing. The
flowers are blooming. It is time again for work and play in a special
place bound by respect and kindness, humility and moral ways. Our
connection with the land and sea is quite unique in every way. These
values chart the course of this voyage through the challenges of life we
share. We are masters and commanders sailing on this journey, navigators
[and] seafarers blessed and proud to be making history. We’re turning
another page. The sun is setting; another day is ending, oh in this special
place. Birds have stopped singing; the flowers are closing. It is evening
in Zenadth Kes.6 To the sound of laughter there’s singing and dancing,
ceremonies are taking place. Our hopes and dreams will become reality,
yeah in the morning . . . Making history, Torres Strait Islanders.
The Kodangu booklet's explanation of “Masters and Commanders”

comments: “This song describes the beautiful setting of the Torres Strait
islands, reefs and seas—a unique home for a special people. Through time
we have mastered the seasons, the tides and the constellations. This song
speaks of our journey through time.”
While some of the songs on Kodangu are Mabuyag-centred, others
address pan-Islander concerns such as the recognition of Indigenous
peoples' claims to Native Title over portions of Australia's lands and seas.
One that does so explicitly is “Mabo: An Aylan [Islander] Man,” whose
title refers to Eddie Koiki Mabo, an Islander from Murray Island (Mer)
(Mabo 2015). He was a main plaintiff (along with Celuia Mapo Salee,
James Rice, Sam Passi and David Passi) in the landmark and protracted
legal dispute over whether or not Indigenous Australians’ occupation and
use of the Australian continent and the Torres Strait islands prior to the
arrival of European colonizers conferred any residual rights (Beckett 2014).
It was a complex, often acrimonious and socially divisive series of legal
cases that culminated on 3 June 1992 when the High Court of Australia in
the Mabo v. Queensland case recognized that some Native Title rights were
recognizable at common law. It overturned the long-held and politically and
economically convenient notion of terra nullius, that Australia was an “empty
land” when the British arrived to settle in 1788 (Sharp 1996).7 However,
the whole notion of any kind of residual rights was anathema to some
segments of Australian society, who feared it challenged and undermined
the identity of “white” Australians (Koerner 2015). Well-funded vested
interests in mineral extraction and pastoral industries, right-wing media,
conservative political parties and politicians, as well as entrenched and
unapologetic racists were keen to demonize individuals, organizations or
political parties involved in supporting the legal challenges and the concept
of Native Title that underpinned the very complex decision (Cunliffe 2007).
They also pointed out what was to them a key anomaly: that Islanders,
most having a different heritage and history from Aborigines, were not the
same as Aborigines. Therefore, because the case pivoted on Islander-specific

instances regarding land use and inheritance, the decision should not be
applied to all of Australia. Such a view would effectively disenfranchise
Aborigines further. In reality, of course both Aborigines and Islanders are
Australian citizens and thus supposedly equal before the law and holding
the same rights, privileges and obligations. Such obvious logic, however, was
conveniently ignored or dismissed as irrelevant, in congress with the deep
and abiding Australian race-based discrimination that undergirds—and
still underlays—the persistent and pervasive campaigns against Indigenous
peoples nationally (Reynolds 2001) and in Queensland (Kidd 1997).
As a main plaintiff, Eddie Koiki Mabo became the focus of the High
Court ruling, which is commonly called the Mabo Decision, and the
subject of widespread analysis in public forums such as newspapers and
academic publications, and also in popular culture in films (Perkins 2012),
documentaries (Graham 1997) and songs. Unfortunately, Mabo died just
months before the final adjudication, a legal decision that fundamentally
altered the existing race-based paradigm of destruction, dispossession and
dislocation that had been in place since the colonial era. That paradigm was
the basis for the wholesale destruction of many Indigenous communities and
their attendant cultures, languages and music in states such as Queensland
(Donovan 2002), although the application of race-based draconian
government legislation varied from place to place and was applied somewhat
differently in the Torres Strait region (Beckett 1978).
This controversial but crucial pan-Australian story is encapsulated in
“Mabo: An Aylan [Islander] Man,” composed and authored by Dimple
Senior and Gabriel Bani. Its lyrics celebrate the High Court decision but also
note that there were other aspects of Islander culture not entirely recognized,
such as local oral traditions and community lore.
I was thinking about the time when history was made through struggles and
sacrifices. We had to prove ourselves: who we were, what we had and our
own inheritance. Eddie Mabo, an aylan [Island] man, made history. Fought
with his plaintiffs to be recognised for all the Meriam [Mer/Murray Island]
families and also for all of us. It was a great victory. It doesn’t make sense
why we still have to live a lie. Life of an aylan man only he knew how an
Aylan man wanted to live. Mabo an aylan man boldly, they did so an aylan
man will live. The decision was handed down, now [it’s] history. Wiping
out terra nullius, every thing that we stood for was recognised. But also [it]
should’ve recognised our L.O.R.E. I was telling my children about history,
how their forefathers were and lived. They don’t have to prove themselves,
they know who they are and what they have, it’s their own inheritance.
Now it makes sense why we still have to live our lives. I know why oh why.
The song’s explanation asserts the local, regional, national and international
importance of the Mabo Decision:
The two most important pieces of documentation in Australia, recognised

by UNESCO today, are the Mabo Collections and the journal of the
British explorer James Cook. The Mabo Collection is part of the records
of the world. This significant Australian High Court decision took place
in our generation and created a new platform for us Torres Strait Islanders
to stand strong as a sovereign people. (Kodangu 2015)8
The previous three songs are examples of the Kodangu album as a cohesive
entity, a cultural artefact constructed to tell a particular story in a particular
way. In the album’s final song, “Zenadth Kes,” the lengthy explanation
summarizes explicitly what Kodangu's (2015) content and intent were
designed to achieve:
Now that we have invited you to experience a small part of our story, this
final song, Zenadth Kes, forms a bridge into the future. As our father the
Late Ephraim Bani explained: “This region is the home of Maluwlagalgal,
Kulkalgal, Maluyligal, Gudamaluiligal and Kaiwalagalgal [the various
peoples of the Torres Strait region]. This is Zenadth, our Torres Strait,
our home, our islands, our seas, our treasure from the past to the distant
future and into the cosmos. This is a supreme gift from the Almighty to
us, for our children, for our children’s children and for those who will
follow on this infinite journey into the inconceivable unknown, hidden
in the veils of the future. This is our beautiful tropical Torres Strait,
Zenadth, embedded in, and situated on this green planet called earth, a
paradise within a paradise.” This CD in itself is a fireplace, a campfire, for
us to sit where stories are told. As the words of the song say: "Towards
the evening the campfires continue to burn"; and as our father [Ephraim
Bani Senior] said: “From the time of our ancestors to the present day, let
us continue to breathe on the embers to keep the fire burning.”
The explanation closes with a Kala Lagaw Ya valediction: “Adhapudhay

Koeyma Eso—We are overwhelmed with gratitude, thank you” (“Zenadth
Kes,” Kodangu 2015). It perhaps summarizes the Kodangu album as an
opportunity seized by The Custodians to present their stories and cultural
agenda through songs. They have created an aural and visual equivalent of
a fireplace or campfire: a place for storytelling and a space for reclamation
and celebration.
Theoretical Analysis
We return now to the aforementioned theoretical perspectives (Hall,
Halbwach and Frith) that help to understand the album as emblematic of
Indigenous Australians striving to create their own narratives and collective
memories via music recordings and also to understand the role of music
production and its aesthetics as both research and impact.
Hall (1990) posits that a cultural identity is not immutable but rather
can be constructed and reconstructed via memory and narrative. In that
sense, as has been demonstrated by Dimple Bani Senior’s and Gabriel Bani’s
comments, Kodangu is demonstrably all about self-consciously constructing
and reconstructing a particular and also general Islander identity. In this
case the Banis can draw upon communal memories, some of which were
fortuitously documented by academic researchers working in the Torres
Strait region in the late nineteenth century. The songs on Kodangu, taken
as an entity, create a narrative as musical stories about cultural continuity,
cultural change and historic events, which are reflected in the use of language
and instrumentation in the production process and the actual sequencing of
the album’s songs. Kodangu is not inventing a narrative but rather using
recorded music to reposition Mabuyag Islanders, and by extension other
Islanders, in contemporary narratives, arguably functioning as an aural,
textual and visual memory device. As per Hall, it is a cultural identity being
made, or more precisely re-made:
Cultural identity . . . is a matter of “becoming” as well as of “being.” It

belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which
already exists, transcending time, place, history and culture. Cultural
identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything
which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from
being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the
continuous “play” of history, culture and power. (Hall 1990: 225)
The Kodangu album shows that what Mabuyag Islanders were historically
is no longer inevitably what they are now, regardless of where they live.
However, they can use information on what they were then in the past to
reshape what they want to become in the future—and music recording
projects can help serve that purpose.
Halbwach’s (1980) notion of collective memory posits that a group of
people possess a history as they remember it, albeit selectively. However, what
happens when a history has been either erased or only partially preserved
with only fragmentary recollections worldview or documentation of what
had been a full way of life and comprehensive? One of the few options
available is to reclaim what can be retrieved, and in that sense Kodangu and
the Bani extended family could draw upon the cultural information preserved
in, for example, the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition Reports.
Notwithstanding that those reports have been criticized as examples of
British, and Australian, colonial imperialism and anthropology's complicity
in such undertakings (Nakata 2007), in the case of Mabuyag Islanders
(and other communities also, for example, at Mer and Saibai Islands) that
documentation has provided some retrievable information. For the Banis,
having a direct link through inheritance to cultural credentials was crucial

in validating the mandate inherent in the entire Kodangu recording project.
Elsewhere in the Torres Strait region much of that cultural and social
information is now out of living memory and no longer retrievable,
and those collective memories are lost or fragmentary. The “accident”
of academic research conducted over a century ago has provided an
invaluable source for reclamation. However, for some Islanders it was
only inadvertently a celebratory exercise. Due to the twin British imperial
juggernauts of colonization and Christianization much more was certainly
lost than preserved. Kodangu, however, does attest that collective
memories can be at least partially retrieved to educate and enthuse current
generations. It is not the wholesale “invention of a tradition” (Hobsbawm
and Ranger 1983) but rather a repossession of what is retrievable via
a digital technology such as a CD album that can facilitate widespread
dissemination—and importantly replication—within extended family and
community networks, and beyond.
Frith (1996) postulates that music and identity are closely interrelated,
as in one sense music is very personal because it is the individual who
absorbs and reacts to it. In another sense, music is also often a collective
experience, even if consumed in private as part of fandom, and its contents
and intents can create cohesion for and identification with a group, be it
for good or ill. A person’s identity is often forged or reinforced in those
collective experiences of the personal. Kodangu can provide Islanders with
the personal and the group experience of music. While it is Mabuyag-centric
and has some songs only in Kala Lagaw Ya, some songs are partially or
totally in English, meaning a wider audience can not only access its music
but also hear its messages and absorb its stories. What listeners do with them,
of course, is personal but Gabriel says that people have reacted positively
when hearing the messages conveyed in the songs. However, there can also
be a tinge of sadness when the songs also may unintentionally highlight how
much cultural knowledge has been lost in some communities that did not
have the serendipitous academic research of sources such as the Cambridge
Expedition Reports to draw upon.
To return finally to the theorization of Durán, who observes cogently:
“My experience has shown that a CD, produced with sensitivity to a musical
culture nurtured by long research, has the potential to have a far greater
impact than a publication in a scholarly journal” (2011: 245). After all, like
many people, Islanders listen to a lot of music but very few read academic
publications, no matter how prestigious the journal or how emeritus the
writer or editor.
The aforementioned theoretical perspectives help appreciate how the
forethought The Custodians put into the production of the album and the
producers’ application of a culturally sensitive production aesthetic worked
in tandem to create an album with personal and collective value and a
forthright cultural and tangentially a quasi-commercialized agenda.
Conclusions
As stated in Chapter 1, for Torres Strait Islanders music is simultaneously
memory (the past), innovation (the present) and imagination (the future).
Kodangu definitely operates effectively at all three levels as narrative,
collective memory and music. This chapter’s description and analysis has
demonstrated that on the Kodangu album The Custodians band strives
to and arguably succeeds in preserving ancestral music and communal
memories while also incorporating contemporary musical styles and
Western music production aesthetics. It uses the resulting syncretic music
to address contemporary issues relevant to Islanders such as the roles of
historical influences and cultural protocols as well as the challenges of
language retention and communal copyright. Contributing to the debate
on those issues is perhaps its foremost potential impact culturally, socially
and politically, along with featuring music that is written and performed
professionally and is also educational. For all involved, Dimple Bani Senior
and Gabriel Bani, the extended family band members and the producers,
the Kodangu album shows the intrinsic value of collaborative research and
music production. To reiterate a point made earlier: Kodangu shows how
recording Indigenous music can be a means of reclamation and celebration
and can simultaneously be informed by extensive research by artists and
producers that can serve to heighten an album’s impact.
Notes
1 Indigenous peoples are among Australia’s most disadvantaged groups
(Australian Bureau of Statistics 2014). Aborigines and Islanders comprise 3
per cent of the population or approximately 670,000 people, with Islanders
numbering approximately 52,000 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011).
2 See discography.
3 See Beckett (2004: 13), who poses pertinent questions regarding mainland
Islanders’ identity: “But what kind of identity have the next generation made
for themselves? Who are their models and how do they identify themselves
to their own and to others? To be an Islander you must have an island, but
for the mainland-born this ‘island’ has to be discovered all over again, and
imagined.”
4 For examples of the Late Ephraim Bani’s linguistic and culture research, see
Bani 1976, 1987, 2004a–e. For documentary films on him see Calvert 2012
and 1997.
5 Warup/buruburu are wooden cylindrical drums often featuring a snake or
goanna skin tympanum and are mostly accessed via traditional trading and
sociocultural networks from Papua New Guinea (Lawrence 1994; Neuenfeldt
2016).
6 Kodangu's booklet (2015) states: “The term Zenadth Kes is mentioned in

several songs. It is an acronym from a combination of words in the two
traditional languages of the Torres Strait region. In Kala Lagaw Ya: ‘ZE’ stands
for Zey (south wind); ‘NA’ stands for Naygay (north wind); ‘D’ stands for
Dagam (Place/Side); ‘TH’ stands for Thawathaw (coastline). In Meriam Mir:
‘KES’ stands for a channel or waterway.”
7 See Koch’s (2013) discussion paper “We Have the Song, So We Have the Land:
Song and Ceremony as Proof of Ownership in Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Land Claims” for a discussion of the use of Indigenous music in the
substantiation and adjudication of some Australian Native Title decisions.
8 The Mabo Papers, held at the National Library of Australia, were placed on
UNESCO’s Memory of the World International Register in 2001.
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Discography (Select)
Badu Island Community. Badu Nawul: Traditional and Contemporary Music
and Dance from Badu Island, Torres Strait. Torres Strait Regional Authority,
Thursday Island. 2008, 2 compact discs 1 DVD.
Boigu Island Community. Boeygulgaw Sagulal A Mura Nangu Wakayil: Traditional
and Contemporary Music and Dance from Boigu Island Torres Strait. Torres
Strait Regional Authority, Thursday Island. 2011, 2 compact discs 1 DVD.
Central Queensland University. Sailing the Southeast Wind: Maritime Music from
Torres Strait. 2003, compact disc.
Central Queensland University. Saltwater Songs: Indigenous Maritime Music from
Tropical Australia. 2005, compact disc.
Church of Torres Strait. Augadhau Nawal: Songs of Our Lord Church of Torres
Strait. 2002, compact disc.
Custodians, The. Kodangu. Independent Release c/o Gabriel Bani, Box 42 Thursday
Island, Australia. 2015, compact disc.
Erub (Darnley Island) Community. Erub Ere Kodo Mer: Traditional and
Contemporary Music and Dance from Erub (Darnley Island). Torres Strait
Regional Authority, Thursday Island. 2010, 2 compact discs 1 DVD.
Iama (Yam Island) Community. Iama Wakai Tusi/Voices of Iama: Traditional and
Contemporary Music and Dance from Iama (Yam Island), Torres Strait. Torres
Strait Regional Authority, Thursday Island. 2008, 2 compact discs 1 DVD.
Mabuiag Community. Mabuiag Awgahhaw Nawul: Traditional and Contemporary
Music and Dance from Mabuiag Island, Torres Strait. Torres Strait Regional
Authority, Thursday Island. 2011, 1 compact disc 1 DVD.
Masig (Yorke Island) Community. Masigiw Nauoel: Traditional and Contemporary
Music and Dance from Masig (Yorke Island), Torres Strait. Torres Strait
Regional Authority, Thursday Island. 2017, 2 compact discs 1 DVD.
Murray Islands Community. Keriba Ged: Traditional and Contemporary Music and
Dance from the Murray Islands, Torres Strait. Torres Strait Regional Authority,
Poruma (Coconut Island) Community. Poruma Ngaulai: Music and Dance from
Poruma (Coconut Island), Torres Strait. Torres Strait Regional Authority,
Repu, Cygnet. Islander. Steady Steady Music. 2009, compact disc.
Saibai Island Community. Saibailagaw: Traditional and Contemporary Music
and Dance from Saibai Island Torres Strait. Torres Strait Regional Authority,
Thursday Island. 2 compact discs 1 DVD.
St. Paul’s Community. Bub Iba Kodo Mir: Family songs from St. Paul’s Community,
Moa Island, Torres Strait. Independent Release. 2015, compact disc.
St. Paul’s Community. Lagau Kompass: Music and Dance from St. Paul’s
Community (Moa Island) Torres Strait. Torres Strait Regional Authority,
Torres Strait Islander. Paipa/Windward. Canberra, National Museum of Australia.
2003, compact disc.
Torres Strait Islander Media Association. Strike Em!: Contemporary Voices from
Torres Strait. 2000, compact disc.
Traditional Songs of the Western Torres Strait, South Pacific, produced by Wolfgang
Laade. Folkways Records FE4025. 1977, LP.
Waiben, Ngurupai, Kiriri and Muralug Communities. Kaiwalagal Wakai: Music
& Dance from the Inner Western Islands of Torres. Torres Strait Regional
Authority, Thursday Island. 2011, 2 compact discs 1 DVD.
Warraber (Sue Island) Community. Warraber Au Bunyg Wakai: Traditional and
Contemporary Music and Dance from Warraber (Sue Island) Torres Strait.
Torres Strait Regional Authority, Thursday Island. 2008, 2 compact discs 1
DVD.
Filmography
Cracks in the Mask. 1997. Directed by Frances Calvert. Australia: Ronin Films.
Mabo. 2012. Directed by Rachel Perkins. Australia: Australian Broadcasting
Corporation and Blackfella Films.
Mabo – Life of an Island Man. 1997. Directed by Trevor Graham. Australia: Film
Australia and Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The Tombstone Opening. 2012. Directed by Frances Calvert. Australia: Ronin
Films.
Pa r t t h r e e
Electronic Music
122
C h a p t e r S EVEN
“All Sounds Are Created Equal”:

Mediating Democracy in
Acousmatic Education
Patrick Valiquet
Acousmatic music is a genre of experimental studio-based composition

founded in the 1970s by disciples of French composer and radio engineer
Pierre Schaeffer.1 Although it is sometimes defined in contrast with other
electroacoustic genres as a music made primarily from samples of “natural”
or “everyday” sound, strict acousmatic practice is articulated not in terms
of sound material but in terms of listening style. Although the aesthetics
and cultural politics of acousmatic music frequently involve questions of
mediation, the ideal is not to achieve a more perfect reproduction of sounds
in nature, but rather to discover the organic musical structures afforded by
the nature of inner sonic experience.
Schaeffer held a deep conviction that knowledge about music should be based
not upon formal and pedagogical rules inherited from tradition, but rather
upon the universal “structures of perception” underlying music’s articulation
in particular cultures, periods, or places (Schaeffer 1966). What he imagined
was not a new genre per se, but an experimental, interdisciplinary research
into the ways that modern recording and broadcast technologies could be
used to directly manipulate the relations between sound and experience at an
immediate level preceding the concepts, affections and motivations normally
associated with systems of musical convention (Palombini 1993). The few
compositions Schaeffer produced were mostly formalist “studies,” concerned
with manipulating the structure and sequence of a set of “sound objects” so

as to frustrate or erase any reference to their instrumental, technological or
natural sources. He adopted the term “acousmatic” to describe this “veiling”
of the merely “acoustic” facts of sound production and transmission, focusing
compositional and analytical attention on the perceptual experience of the
individual listener (Kane 2014). In principle acousmatic theories were not
to be deduced from rules or instrumental affordances, but induced from the
basic features of auditory experience itself.
For Schaeffer, this meant that the acousmatic approach could be applied
to the production of any music at all. The implication was that acousmatic
listening afforded better support for musical diversity than existing systems
based on melody, harmony and rhythm. Like his structuralist contemporary
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Schaeffer saw cultural diversity as threatened by the
advance of Western imperialism (Johnson 2013). He noticed that comparing
musics in terms of their adherence to Western formal standards made it
seem as if some were more correct, even more modern, than others. By
focusing on sound and listening, he thought, musicologists could develop a
synchronic perspective in which all musical expression might be treated as
equally correct and equally modern (Schaeffer 1966: 603–05).
Following Schaeffer’s retirement from the French public service in 1976,
control of his legacy shifted to ambitious disciples like François Bayle and
Michel Chion, and acousmatic research began to diverge from Schaeffer’s
pluralist politics. An acousmatic concert practice coalesced around the
use of elaborate, spatialized arrays of loudspeakers modelled on Bayle’s
acousmonium, and a performance technique known as “diffusion,” in which
composers routed their recorded compositions live to the array from a multi-
channel mixing desk (Emmerson 2007: 96). Refashioning the acousmatic
style as a “cinema for the ears” (Dhomont 1996: 24), second-generation
theorists placed a strong emphasis on the dramatic possibilities afforded by
juxtaposing familiar and unfamiliar sonic textures. Distinguished from forms
of electronic music privileging technical or formal registers of invention,
acousmatic music was thus reimagined as an art extending the perceptual
field with new “auditory and mental” images (Bayle 1993: 54). The ideal of
transparent, unmediated listening remained, however, and by extension the
genre retained some aspects of Schaeffer’s founding pluralism. In Britain,
for example, much acousmatic research in universities still focuses on
highlighting the music’s perceptual immediacy, either by training composers
to better anticipate listeners’ expectations (Weale 2006) or by designing
production tools that highlight the accessibility of acousmatic techniques
(Landy 2012). Acousmatic aesthetics have been unfairly marginalized, these
studies argue: if educators and the media simply offered the genre more
exposure, it would naturally manifest a wider appeal (Weale 2006: 190).
It is therefore important to distinguish acousmatic pluralism from both
the “relational” pluralism currently ascendant in music studies (Born 2010)
and the kinds of “multi-dimensional” pluralism now being applied in
“ALL SOUNDS ARE CREATED EQUAL” 125
epistemology and political ontology (Connolly 2005). All musics are equal
for the acousmatic listener not because their differences are all valid on their
own terms, but because their differences are secondary to human perceptual
structures, which according to acousmatic theory must all be the same. This
understanding was shaped both by a conjunction of post-socialist political
and scientific ideals in postwar France (Drott 2009) and by specific public
investments in the instruments market and in concert life (Veitl 1997).
When it took root elsewhere, such as in Quebec or the UK, it retained these
strong ties to the construction of cultural modernity. Notwithstanding later
reinterpretations such as those of Denis Smalley (1996), acousmatic listening
was not originally intended to be one “mode” of listening among many. For
its inventors, it was the only form of auditory discipline that would allow all
musics to manifest their true diversity.
The tension inherent in this ideology—the emphasis on universality
almost in spite of diversity—has made acousmatic music a fertile ground
for contestation, especially in the form of calls for aesthetic democratization
over the past few decades (Ostertag 1996; Waters 2000; Emmerson 2001;
Haworth 2016). The vast majority of acousmatic production takes place in
higher education, where its associations with experimentation, technological
innovation and interdisciplinarity have given it an important role to play
in postmodern and neoliberal manifestations of these debates. These new
modes of democracy seek to make acousmatic production more accessible
to novice musicians. They also put pressure upon acousmatic educators to
tolerate a more and more diverse range of musics. But does the friction
persist between this tolerance and the acousmatician’s critical stance on the
universality of perceptual structure? This chapter looks at how the politics
of listening are mediated in the context of formal academic production
training. Its focus is the prominent acousmatic scene in the Canadian
province of Quebec, which has been singled out for its “eclectic” sound
(Dhomont 1996). I am interested in how acousmatic composers learn, in
phenomenological terms, to “bracket” their particular technological and
cultural conditions, and thereby to understand the acousmatic aesthetic
as a natural consequence of their individual perceptual propensities (Kane
2014: 23–30, Schaeffer 1966: 270–72). I am also interested in whether this
bracketing endows acousmatic composers with a sense of personal agency
in the shaping of their political identities.
Acousmatic Training and the Transformation of

Cultural Citizenship in Quebec
The arrival of acousmatic education in Quebec coincided with a highly
mythologized transition in the history of Quebecois cultural politics. Until
the 1960s, the primary and secondary education system had been dominated
by strict Catholic clerical authorities, and the professions by an anglophone

business elite based in the province’s cosmopolitan centre, Montreal. The
francophone population was predominantly rural and working class.
Women received a lower level of education than men, were largely restricted
to care and service professions if they worked outside of the home at all, and
until 1964 were even denied the legal right to hold property (Dumont et al.
1983: 76; Lefebvre 1991: 76; Dickinson and Young 2008: 334). The period,
usually associated with the rule of conservative nationalist premier Maurice
Duplessis between 1936 and 1959, is often referred to in local accounts as
the Grande Noirceur or Great Darkness.
The death of Duplessis in 1959 helped loosen restrictions on labour
organization and ushered in a period of rapid urbanization and
liberalization. Through a combination of major industrial projects and
Keynesian economic policies, Quebec’s politicians placed power back in the
hands of the francophone majority, and thus helped give rise to a more
progressive left-wing nationalist movement committed to raising the status
of Quebecois language and culture (Létourneau 2006: 75–93). Inspired by
contact with liberation movements in francophone Africa, Southeast Asia
and Central America, young leftists reimagined the Quebecois resurgence as
an anti-colonial struggle against anglophone oppression (Mills 2010). Only
as an independent nation, they speculated, could Quebec truly realize its
aspirations to modernity and democracy. To counteract this rise of separatist
sentiment, the Canadian federal government launched a series of policy and
funding initiatives meant to effect greater integration of the Quebecois in a
transformed “postnational” confederation (Létourneau 2006: 89). By the end
of this period, the provincial government had enacted sweeping educational
and social reforms, secularizing all levels of instruction, guaranteeing
equality of access and drawing students from all over the province to larger
institutions in the urban centres. The federal government, meanwhile,
enshrined an unprecedented level of accommodation for francophones at
the national level in a series of legal and constitutional reforms. This period,
from the death of Duplessis to the first Quebec sovereignty referendum of
1980, is referred to as the Révolution Tranquille, or Quiet Revolution.
Before secularization, francophone student composers lucky enough
to attend the province’s universities were largely taught in a conservative
neoclassical style favoured by local composers who had studied abroad
with prominent French teachers like Nadia Boulanger and Darius Milhaud,
and were graded with a system of examinations modelled on the Prix de
Rome. Among the first Quebecois composers to take a serious interest in
Pierre Schaeffer’s research was Pierre Mercure, who in 1957 gave up on the
neoclassical orthodoxy and produced a series of tape compositions using
recorded material prepared during his second study visit to Paris (Richer
1992). Mercure became one of Quebec's busiest supporters of the avant-
garde, his activities peaking in 1961 when he organized a major festival
of new music that hosted the first concert of Schaeffer’s work in Canada
(Beaucage 2008; Stévance 2012: 159). Although he later died prematurely

as a result of a 1966 traffic accident, Mercure’s work also contributed to the
formation of the province’s first new music concert society, the Société de
Musique Contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) (Beaucage 2011). By 1967,
the post-serialist composer and SMCQ artistic director Serge Garant had
taken up a post teaching composition at Université de Montréal, bringing
the ideas of the province’s avant-garde into higher education for the first
time (Boivin 1996). A popular avant-garde exploded as well, generating a
genre known after Mercure's 1961 festival as musique actuelle (“current
music”) that mixed free improvisation, psychedelic rock, traditional folklore
and satirical performance art skewering the religious and economic elites.
This strongly Quebecois-identified aesthetics of new music gave young
composers a means of deconstructing previously denigrated local traditions
and exploring new forms of improvisation, stylistic hybridity and dialogism
(Stévance 2012: 51).
Schaeffer’s ideas about listening mapped easily onto Quiet Revolution
principles of authenticity, democracy and globally oriented modernity.
Collage-based tape musics had already seen increasing use in the
accompaniment of Quebecois film and dance, and by the end of the 1960s
Schaeffer’s particular approach began to attract a new wave of student
composers to Paris (Beaucage 2008). In October 1969, students Ginette
Bellavance-Sauvé and Hélène Prévost proposed a course at Université de
Montréal modelled on Schaeffer’s solfège to run in parallel with existing
training in composition and acoustics (Bellavance-Sauvé and Prévost
1969). Schaeffer himself visited the university in November for a week-
long engagement arranged by SMCQ co-founder Maryvonne Kendergi
(Beaucage 2008). His system seemed to fill a gap in the understanding of
the auditory “aptitudes” necessary for the successful musical maturation of
Quebecois society (Hirbour-Coron 1971: 42). It took particularly strong
root in connection with early childhood education, a domain with close
metaphorical associations to the nationalist project of separation.
The first full university course in acousmatic listening was initiated
in 1973 at Université Laval in Quebec City by Marcelle Deschênes, who
had just returned from almost three years studying with Schaeffer in Paris
(Lefebvre 2009). Policy makers were keenly aware of the behavioural and
cultural benefits that could be derived from inductive theories of aesthetic
perception, and thus workshops for children played a key role in Deschênes’s
project (Direction générale de l’enseignement élémentaire et secondaire
1973). She and her undergraduate students designed experimental games
and dramatic scenarios that imparted a holistic, multimodal framework
for developing children’s sonic awareness, at the same time introducing
them to a wide variety of audio media and musical traditions. In 1980 this
framework became the basis of the first official electroacoustic composition
curriculum at Université de Montréal, where Deschênes remained until
1997 as the programme’s principal architect and advocate.
Her course designs mediated between acousmatic theory and government

efforts to promote an open, secular alternative to traditional schooling.
The policy climate of the time amplified the pluralism at the heart of her
teacher’s work. The commission placed in charge of devising Quebec’s
educational reforms in the mid-1960s frequently struck a note of unity in
plurality informed by the same conservative humanisms that had inspired
Schaeffer in France. “To achieve a modern humanism,” its authors asserted,
“[the educator] needs, without neglecting to tap into tradition, to find in
the growing diversity of knowledge a new unity of culture” (Corbo 2002:
66). A sub-report on music education circulated to schools and universities
in 1968 characterized this growing diversity as a “crisis of language,”
identifying popular culture and media literacy as key fronts in the battle
to renew the legitimacy of the province’s musical expression (Deslauriers
1968). Joined with a body of musical research increasingly informed by
structuralist ideas about the formation of sociocultural subjectivity (Donin
2010), these policy initiatives encouraged educators to take an increasingly
experimental approach in the classroom. In a document setting out new
guidelines for primary music education in 1973, the same year Deschênes
began her work with children at Université Laval, policymakers explicitly
link this approach to the correct inculcation of the province’s musicians
as democratic citizens. “Arts education is an essential foundation of the
formation of the child, provided that it is done in the spirit of active pedagogy,
and consequently that the focus is placed on practical experience through
free expression. The child actively participates in sensory externalization,
and his learning comes from the fact that he experiments with musical
facts as they are presented to him” (Direction générale de l’enseignement
élémentaire et secondaire 1973: 1).
As reforms crystallized over the ensuing decade, the Quebec government
began to consider the consequences of its egalitarian policy measures. The
most famous of the assessments it commissioned is Jean-François Lyotard’s
The Postmodern Condition (1984), first published as a report for the
provincial council of universities in 1980. The gap left by the evacuation
of religious authority was being widened by increased access to higher
education, on the one hand, and advances in information media, on the
other. Where earlier policy makers had sought a solution to the crisis of
epistemological legitimacy in a renewal of shared unities, however, Lyotard
proposed an emphasis on pragmatic, local social bonds. Thus, the ideal
of knowledge as a progressive force of self-reproduction in the sense of
German Bildung should, for Lyotard, be replaced with an understanding of
knowledge as a special type of “language game,” a procedure adapted to a
particular purpose through the performative utterances of the individuals
involved in its immediate construction. The technologically mediated
breakdown of disciplines should not be held back, he argued, but rather
encouraged. Progress would then be achieved not through increasing
authority over language games but through “paralogy,” a kind of knowledge
moving against the existing logic of affairs, the importance of which may
not be recognized until later (Lyotard 1984: 61).
Acousmatic music rose rapidly to prominence under this new,
“postmodern” regime, with its flattened, relational understanding of
knowledge and heavy investment in widening access through new media
technologies. Instead of following Lyotard on the course of paralogy,
however, acousmatic composers and educators remained closely committed
to the humanist “grand narratives” that inspired both the initial reforms
of the Quiet Revolution and the theoretical challenges of Schaeffer. From
this older perspective, cultural diversity still had a unified generative basis
in human perceptual experience. There might be a plurality of sounds, but
there could be only one way to listen.
Acousmatic Pluralism in the Classroom

In the studio and the classroom, acousmatic pluralism has coalesced into
a robust repertoire of material and interpersonal conventions. To illustrate
this I draw upon material gathered from interviews, oral histories and
archival sources in Montreal between 2011 and 2015. This research
mapped social and technological differences between the universities,
where academic electroacoustic genres dominate, and the city’s vibrant
underground experimental music scenes, where generic hybrids and more
conceptual approaches tend to flourish. Having defined the Montreal sound
of the 1980s and 1990s, acousmatic thinking was still a powerful point of
reference for both academic and freelance musicians when I did fieldwork
there in the early 2010s, if only in the sense that it provided a foil for
emerging practices they saw as more complex and idiosyncratic (e.g. Adkins
et al. 2016). The acousmatic bracketing of culture and convention persisted
in both the felt quality and the prescriptive structure of the undergraduate
lessons and evaluations I observed.
The emphasis in acousmatic theory on sound as experienced was originally
shaped by an eclectic mix of influences from phenomenology, spiritualism,
and structuralist anthropology (Kaltenecker and Le Bail 2012). At its core
is a system of four “listening functions”—écouter (indexical listening),
ouïr (passive reception), entendre (qualitative hearing), and comprendre
(symbolic understanding)—which Schaeffer conceived to account for
the way meaningful acoustic experiences could be afforded by the basic
processes of auditory attention (Schaeffer 1966: 116). He understood these
functions not as distinct intentional attitudes, but as interrelated nodes in a
deep cognitive structure that synthesized the dialectical oppositions between
internal auditory intentions and external sonic phenomena into elementary
musical intuitions. The private experience of music was thus more primary
than both the materiality of musical instruments or sounds (which Schaeffer
collected under the category of the “concrete”) and the cultural conventions
defining systems of musical qualities or references (which for Schaeffer
constituted the “abstract”). Differences in style or skill could thus be seen
as relative and external factors in musical perception. What was essential
for Schaeffer was the individual experience that afforded such differences.
Instead of explaining the value of particular musical works, his system
focused on fostering awareness of the organizing capacity of human
perception and cognition, which he understood as the “common trunk” of
all musics (Schaeffer 1966: 627–29).
Classroom strategies aimed at fostering this focus on sensibility date
back to the earliest academic electroacoustic studios in Quebec. Many of
the academics I interviewed highlighted the importance of the curriculum
established by Marcelle Deschênes at Université de Montréal. These early
courses were among the first efforts to derive formal educational strategies
from acousmatic theory. They coincide roughly with the establishment of
similar programmes at the Universities of Birmingham and East Anglia in
the UK. At the same time, however, they are profoundly personal, coloured
especially by Deschênes’s ongoing interests in visual media and drama and,
as I have already mentioned, intimately connected to the policy climate of the
Quiet Revolution.
The course Deschênes taught at Université Laval between 1973 and 1977
took the name morpho-typology after the taxonomical approach to sound
analysis described in Book V of Schaeffer’s 1966 treatise. In her syllabus
Deschênes identified a need to move from finding sources of legitimacy in
conventional musical authority structures (systèmes musicaux) to individual
engagements with concrete “musical facts” (faits musicaux) in their cultural
and material diversity. “Sonic morphology-typology favours the personal
constitution of a new vocabulary,” she explained, “furnishing a solid basis
for improvisation, composition, and the comprehension of musical facts
which no longer correspond to the reference system of Western classical
music” (Deschênes 1977). The notion of the “musical fact” appears around
the same time in the work of French ethnomusicologist Jean Molino, who
argued for replacing normative theories of music with an empirical study
of the ways in which music is constituted in human social life (Molino
1990: 115). Deschênes stayed true to Schaeffer, however, in focusing her
attention not on the sociological factors that make musics so diverse, but
on the “universal data of listening and gesture, which precede all cultural
diversification.” To listen morpho-typologically was to participate in “the
search for a common denominator in all the particular uses of the totality of
possible sound sources” (Deschênes 1977).
Deschênes’s approach to technical skills shifted somewhat between
her early teaching at Université Laval and her later work at Université de
Montréal. In the first courses, strictly centred on the system of morpho-
typology, Deschênes develops an inductive approach. The idea was to
discover new technical and notational skills appropriate to the sonic
phenomena in question. Students were guided through three stages of

experimentation using only the studio’s microphones, tape decks and
record library for sound manipulation. The first stage consisted of
collective improvisations inspired by existing avant-garde compositions or
ethnographic recordings. In the second stage students collected fragments of
sound from their recorded improvisations or from compositions on record,
and then classified them according to Schaeffer’s perceptual categories. In
the third and final stage they produced graphic listening scores to illustrate
the relationships between the perceptual “objects” they had identified in the
recorded stream of acoustic material. Between 1974 and 1977 Deschênes
expanded the course to encompass a series of listening games for elementary
school children. Students from the morpho-typology course would
essentially conduct the same sequence of inductive experiments with the
children, and then take the children’s work as an object for further analysis.
By the time Deschênes had left Laval in 1977, she had assembled a database
of thousands of sound examples for further research, each accompanied
by an index card correlating it with a set of musical examples, and with
one or more improvisatory games that would dramatize its structure in
multimodal form.
In 1980 this collection became the basis for a course in “auditory
perception” for students in the new electroacoustic degree programme at
Université de Montréal. Here, however, with a newly equipped studio at
her disposal, and a mandate to focus on training students in composition,
Deschênes began to treat studio technique as a separate topic from listening.
She called the course techniques d'écriture, or “writing techniques,”
suggesting that studio production had an inscriptional rather than a directly
creative role (Deschênes 1980). From an acousmatic perspective, of course,
studio equipment and instruments are not the source of the music, but
rather a means of registering the composer’s listening to share with others.
Again Deschênes took a taxonomical approach, dividing the apparatus
into “sources,” “transformers,” and “formers” based on its function in the
compositional process. Techniques were presented first as auditory effects and
then illustrated with examples from the growing electroacoustic repertoire.
The lesson on the use of microphones, for example, focused not on the
acoustic characteristics of specific microphone types, but on the placement
of the microphone in space in relation to the sound source, and the possible
mechanical preparations the recordist can make to alter the sound captured
during the recording process. The illustration given was from Robert
Ashley’s 1964 piece The Wolfman, in which a performer shapes feedback by
changing the shape of his or her mouth in close proximity to a microphone
that is linked to a speaker system playing back a tape collage. The focus
of Deschênes’s microphone technique was thus not reproduction so much
as variation. The point is not to use the microphone to transfer a given set
of predetermined units like notes or words onto tape, but to discover the
particular ways that the microphone transforms the audible as such.
Acousmatic concepts could thus be detached from culturally and

historically specific aesthetic decisions. I encountered this implication
repeatedly in my classroom observations. “I keep telling the class,” one
instructor at Concordia University (which had recently named a studio and
an undergraduate scholarship in honour of Deschênes) told me, “music is
not an object. Music is about relationships. You understand a relationship
and you can transport it to any part of the spectrum, anything.” Instead of
being taught as the conventions of a particular genre, acousmatic principles
were being taught as the scientific fact behind all musical experience. Staff
readily admitted to me, however, that few of their students would go on
to identify with the acousmatic aesthetic. Since acousmatic production is
generally restricted to universities, doing so would almost certainly require
them to commit to the unforgiving pursuit of an academic career. Instead
students were encouraged to discover their aesthetic allegiances outside
the classroom. With acousmatically attuned ears, their instructors insisted,
they would be better at everything from noise to hip-hop to folk. Another
instructor explained:
It requires the sort of perceptual skill of knowing what’s going to work

for listeners . . . and just to be the cut above seems to be the goal that most
of these students have. So when presented with the acousmatic aesthetic
that tends to be the kind of core that the department has always been
about, well I mean, I think students are very practical in seeing what their
goal is, in being this cut above everybody else in terms of understanding
of sound, and they go for it because . . . anybody who can produce that
quality, and that type of balance, and that type of richness of spectral
invention, and all the rest of it, that’s got to be good, and that’s got to be
useful in some manner to them.
Instructors brought a similar attitude to the teaching of technical skills.

“What’s going to come out someone’s laptop is going to depend on what’s
in there, and also if they’ve got outboard gear at home, and if they are
really coming from a much more traditional studio perspective or a virtual
studio perspective,” I was told. “All of these things have influence on the
work, but in principle certainly my understanding is that creative work
is creative work. Compositional work is about the process.” So for the
instructors I spoke with, gear was interchangeable insofar as it could be
understood to operate transparently. Technical procedures were imparted
as transformations of auditory experience rather than as instructions for
operating specific machines. And indeed, for all of its association with
images of technological innovation in university marketing, acousmatic
production has evolved relatively few of its own tools or techniques. Once
students had a functioning Digital Audio Workstation software and a set of
reasonably priced monitor speakers, the rest was up to them. Left without
guidance, they turned to online sources to find tips about what equipment
to buy.
Since acousmatic theory taught them only that they should discern
what equipment was best with their ears, students learned to trust peer
recommendations most of all. Usually this corresponded with either
“industry standards” or whatever instruments would be most emblematic of
the genre they hoped to emulate in their extracurricular practice—a modular
synthesizer for drone, a hardware sampler for hip-hop, etc. In the classroom,
however, they still had no choice but to “transcend the technology.” The
productive possibilities of different technologies were eliminated in advance
by the notion that they were all fundamentally equal. Thus, students
generally separated the pleasurable, embodied side of their practice, in which
they identified intimately with pieces of equipment as commodities, from
the rational, detached nature of their studies, which they saw as revolving
around learning to listen well. Under these conditions, acousmatic music
as such took on the function of a kind of laboratory tool. An acousmatic
composition could be an exercise for demonstrating the different auditory
transformations possible with a given sound fragment, but it would rarely
be considered valuable as music. As a consequence, students often struggled
to reconcile their training in the genre with their own practices. As one put
it, “Somehow it feels like, in order to justify its own existence, the institution
needs to create its own separate forms. It feels like it would be more relevant,
at least to me, to sort of set that aside and just study what's out there.”
Conclusions
Later commentators have frequently remarked that Quebec’s acousmatic
style is uncharacteristically diverse for a genre so steeped in dogma. In a
widely cited 1996 article, for example, Deschênes’s colleague Francis
Dhomont speculates that Quebec’s composers must be essentially North
American in outlook. They are therefore more focused on the “here and
now,” and inclusive of sounds from a wider variety of genres and media
than their European forebears (Dhomont 1996: 27). He also goes on to
identify the “Quebec sound” as a specifically urban construction, linking
it to Montreal’s vibrant multiculturalism. The acousmatic composer in
Montreal, claims Dhomont, grows up with an innate conviction that “all
sounds are created equal” (ibid.: 25).
Dhomont’s account is ripe for critique. Claims to emancipation in
acousmatic production have failed to account for the reasons why, for one
thing, the privilege of “equality” is so rarely afforded to sounds made by
women. This is ironic on a number of levels, not least because acousmatic
music is so often set up as the “feminine” alternative to more scientifically
minded forms of electronic music production, such as those informed
by serialism. Andra McCartney (2006), for example, has suggested that

acousmatic practice provides a fertile environment for the development
of “soft” or “empathetic” epistemologies, which make it more amenable
to participation by women. Discourses associating the acousmatic with
equality and democracy seem to corroborate such a conclusion, but
the association of figures like Marcelle Deschênes with teaching rather
than composing or engineering reveals a clear division of labour behind
such assumptions. The tools of electronic music production, many of
them originally conceived for military research, are still heavily coded
as masculine (Meintjes 2003: 104; Rodgers 2010: 6–7; Born and Devine
2015), while responsibility for childhood development and the fostering
of sensibility is widely regarded as essentially feminine (Harrington Meyer
2000; Zimmerman et al. 2006). While it is important to celebrate the
participation of women in organizing electroacoustic training in Quebec,
then, it is crucial to recognize that this specialization has also contributed
to their being pushed out of the histories of more stereotypically masculine,
and consequently more highly valued roles. Deschênes, who is little known
in spite of her pioneering work, is herself an obvious victim of this kind of
exclusion.
There is clearly a difference between all sounds being created equal and
all sound makers being created equal. Embracing a plurality of sounds, as
Schaeffer himself sought to do, does not necessarily entail a questioning of
the social hierarchies that determine who is allowed to produce them. In fact,
by shifting authority from historically sedimented convention to immediate
individual perception, acousmatic theory may actually exacerbate such
inequalities. It hails the composer as a maverick, transforming the private
experience of resistance to institutionalized aesthetic norms into a shared
“structure of feeling” that works against the recognition of wider social
inequalities (Williams 1977: 132).
Efforts to further democratize acousmatic production thus face an
important ideological challenge. As long as acousmatic composers claim a
critical position based on theoretical assertions about universal structures
of audition, they complicate their own efforts to tolerate other musics. In
Jacques Rancière’s formulation, democracy is not a kind of unification
through collective intelligence; it is a form of dissensus, ensuring constant
opposition to absolute power (Rancière 2006: 96). Hannah Arendt (1968)
comes to a similar conclusion, arguing that politics must have an external
relationship with truth as it is conceived in science and philosophy. From
this point of view, the democratization of acousmatic music eventually
forces a choice between theoretical universality and musical plurality. And
in this sense the democracy acousmatic theorists and composers aspire to
mirrors the Quebecois cultural transformation from clerical orthodoxy to
modern secularism. Their challenge going forward is to decouple the grand
narrative of unmediated subjective agency from the valorization of new
auditory knowledges.
Acknowledgments
The research presented in this article was supported by a postdoctoral
bursary from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture
and by the European Research Council Advanced Grants scheme under
the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme, grant agreement
number 249598.
Notes
1 Although it shares several features with the older genre of musique concrète
(concrete music), the two are historically distinct. Schaeffer’s major theoretical
work the Traité des objets musicaux (Treatise on Musical Objects) (1966)
presents musique concrète as mired in theoretical contradictions and in need
of correction. His student François Bayle (1993) introduced the new term
musique acousmatique (acousmatic music) as a means of consolidating the
gains he saw in Schaeffer’s mature thinking. It did not become commonplace
until the 1980s.
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Chapter Eight
Technologies of Play in Hip-Hop

and Electronic Dance Music
Production and Performance
Mike D’Errico
In the first decades of the twenty-first century, electronic dance music and
video games emerged as dominant forms of popular cultural expression
(Matos 2015; Bogost 2011). The rise of electronic dance music as a
global industry parallels the proliferation of massive multiplayer online
video games, both manifesting the power of social media in mobilizing
previously isolated communities of gamers and musicians. More recently,
the visceral experiences of music and gameplay have converged in various
ways, specifically shaping the embodied practices of music and game
creators themselves. The success of music video games such as Guitar Hero
and Rock Band has influenced both amateur and professional musicians
to think through the practical connections between musical production,
performance, and gameplay. Dubstep pioneers Skream and Benga have
discussed the ways in which their use of the Sony Playstation video game
console to make beats has shaped the sound of contemporary dance music
(GetDarker 2014; Red Bull Music Academy 2011). In 2014, Red Bull Music
Academy even launched a documentary series titled “Diggin’ in the Carts,”
tracing the global influence of Japanese video game music from the 1980s
and 1990s on contemporary genres of electronic music (Red Bull Music
Academy 2014). Through interviews with game music composers and
hip-hop DJs alike, the series reveals unexplored relationships between the
TECHNOLOGIES OF PLAY IN HIP-HOP AND EDM 139
now ubiquitous experience of gameplay in everyday life and the technical

practices of electronic musicians.
Integrating theories of play from various branches of media studies
with analyses of the technical design of both music and video game
controllers, this chapter discusses the embodied practices of electronic music
production in relation to the haptic control inherent to gameplay. Together,
the coterminous rise of video games and electronic dance music charts an
alternative historical narrative in the evolution of digital media. Rather than
reifying the centrality of “analog” technologies such as the turntable in the
birth of popular music genres, the ongoing convergence of games and music
establishes forms of experimental play with emerging media as crucial to the
development of cultural production in the twenty-first century. By engaging
a transitional moment in the historical evolution of hip-hop, electronic
dance music, and interactive media, I provide insights into the physical and
cognitive structures of sonic embodiment in gameplay and human-computer
interaction (HCI) more broadly (Collins 2013).
From Turntablism to Controllerism

While digital music software has become commonplace in the studio and on
the live stage, the history of hip-hop has always been rooted in the “analog”
materiality and physical manipulation afforded by tools such as the vinyl
record or the Akai MPC sampler and drum machine. Musicologist Mark
Katz claims the physical immediacy of the record as the most important
reason for its success, as he describes the hand resting “comfortably on the
grooved, slightly tacky surface. . . . Pushing a record underneath a turntable
needle, transforming the music held within its grooves, one has a sense
of touching sound” (Katz 2012: 64). The “inimitable feel” of vinyl comes
through not only in the performance practice of the DJ, but also in the hands
of record collectors who value the dusty, aged quality of vinyl just as a book
collector values the original printing of a text. In physically manipulating
the deep wax grooves on the surface of a record, the DJ may sense he or
she is “touching sound” and being allowed immediate access to the musical
source and social context embedded within the object.
It is no coincidence, then, that an archaeological rhetoric pervades discourse
surrounding record collecting within hip-hop. The process of seeking out
new records for both creative inspiration and musical source material,
known as “digging the crates,” has become a rite of passage for aspiring
DJs and record collectors more generally (Eisenberg 1988). According to
ethnomusicologist Joseph Schloss, “one of the highest compliments that
can be given to a hip-hop producer is the phrase ‘You can tell he digs’”
(Schloss 2004: 80). The excavation of vinyl facilitates the construction and
preservation of hip-hop’s musical genealogy. Katz describes the materiality
of the vinyl as “a precious substance in hip-hop” that is “authentic,”

“elemental,” and “fundamental.” Present at and largely responsible for
the birth of hip-hop, Katz claims of vinyl: “There is more than just music
inscribed in those black discs; vinyl carries with it the whole history, the
DNA, of hip-hop” (Katz 2012: 218). In the late 1990s through the early
2000s, vinyl culture would confront a major practical and philosophical
dilemma with the emergence of digital tools for music production. For a
culture so intimately dedicated to the physicality of both the record and the
performer, what happens to the structure of hip-hop’s musical DNA in the
context of the perceived immateriality of software? How are techniques of
production and performance coping with the gradual collapse of vinyl as the
fundamental “substance” of hip-hop culture?
In 2010, Technics discontinued the production of the SL-1200 turntable.
The iconic model was lauded for its minimalist interface and direct drive
system, which afforded the DJ a particularly robust instrument with a
heightened sense of tactile feedback. The countless obituaries surrounding
the device’s death marked this moment as the end of an era, questioning
what would become of hip-hop in the post-SL-1200 age (Patel 2016;
Barrett 2010). In the same year, Apple introduced the iPad, a touchscreen
portable tablet that became particularly popular among digital musicians
seeking new ways of controlling the increasingly complex music production
software developed for laptops. These coterminous developments turned out
to have a major impact on the forms and techniques of hip-hop production
and performance, marking the convergence of multiple discursive spaces
within electronic dance music culture—studio artists became stage DJs,
laptops converged with mobile devices, and the lines between production
and performance became increasingly blurred.
While turntablism thrives on the physical dexterity of the DJ and the
visibility of the vinyl record, laptop musicians often struggle with constructing
convincing stage performances. Since the computer serves as the primary
focal point for the stage setup, laptop DJs are often accused of playing
video games or simply checking e-mail without offering the audience an
entertaining performance. DJ John Devecchis disputes the notion of laptop
performance as a form of DJing altogether, as he asks, “How do you know
the DJ is even playing? How do you know he’s not playing a prerecorded
set? How do you know he’s not playing Pac-Man while he’s supposed to be
DJing? I want to see the DJ doing something” (Montano 2010: 410). For
Devecchis, as well as many other DJs and fans of electronic dance music, it
is the lack of visibility in performance techniques that delegitimizes the skill
of the performer, while disrespecting the expectations of certain audience
members.
Debates concerning the proper techniques of electronic music performance
proliferated on the heels of such technological changes, eventually coming to
a head in 2013 as a result of a controversial statement by Joel Zimmerman,
also known as Deadmau5, one of the most globally renowned DJs at the
time. In a blog post titled, “We all hit play,” Zimmerman claimed to speak
for all of the “button-pushers” who were too afraid to admit that most DJs
“live” performances consist of simply getting on stage and pressing play:
“its no secret. when it comes to ‘live’ performance of EDM . . . that’s about
the most it seems you can do anyway. It’s not about performance art, its not
about talent either (really its not)” (Deadmau5 2013). In direct response
to DJs such as John Devicchis, who prioritizes individual skill and “paying
your dues” as a turntable DJ, Zimmerman celebrates the lack of skill and
technical accessibility of DJing in the digital age, claiming that “given about
1 hour of instruction, anyone with minimal knowledge of ableton and music
tech in general could DO what im doing at a deadmau5 concert.” The post
immediately went viral among the online community of DJs and electronic
music producers, inspiring heated exchanges and countless defenses of the
lineage of “live” performance in DJ culture, including Twitter rebuttals from
Zimmerman’s friend and fellow DJ Sonny Moore, also known as Skrillex.
The “button pusher” debate exemplifies many of the ongoing anxieties
musical cultures experience with the rise of new technologies. For some
audience members, the presence of a laptop on stage seems to negate the “live”
aspect of the event and thus their own physical presence at the club, leading
them to think, why not just listen to the music in the isolation of my home?
For some DJs, particularly those who have dedicated years of their lives to
learning the standard techniques of turntablism, the laptop delegitimizes the
creative labors of a musical tradition nearly half of a century old. Rather
than perceiving the technologies as threats to performance standards and
conventions, music theorist Mark Butler describes the increasing prevalence
of hardware “controllers” in the laptop performer’s arsenal as tools for
externalizing the perceptibly opaque creative processes happening behind
the laptop screen. According to Butler, “Rarely if ever is a ‘laptop set’ only a
laptop set. Instead, the internal, digital elements of the laptop environment
are externalized—made physical in the form of MIDI controllers and
other hardware devices” (Butler 2014: 96). In the wake of Zimmerman’s
commentary on the state of performance in electronic dance music culture,
both stage DJs and studio producers have increasingly turned to hardware
controllers as a means of heightening the physicality of their “live” presence
(Butler 2014; Hugill 2008; Gilbert and Pearson 1999). In doing so, the lines
between performance and production have become increasingly blurred for
digital musicians.
Controllerism and the Materiality of Software

“Controllerism” emerged in the late 2000s within the electronic music
community against the heated backdrop of the button pusher debate. While
the term could be used to describe a vast number of performance techniques
within electronic music, musician and hardware hacker Moldover broadly

defines it as being “about making music with new technology. Right now
controllers are where it's at, and so that's the name for the movement.
Button-pushers, finger drummers, digital DJs, live loopers, augmented
instrumentalists; we're all controllerists” (Moldover 2013). For Moldover,
controllerism represents a unique stage in the development of music
technology, one that materialized at a historical moment in which the vinyl
record ceased being the sole interface for performing prerecorded musical
material. Indeed, it is the vast proliferation of digital music controllers that
has defined electronic dance music production amid the perceived twilight of
vinyl, helping DJs and producers to navigate emerging tools and techniques
through new forms of musical practice.
The use of MIDI devices to control digital software is the most
common form of controllerism. In contemporary popular music since
the early 2000s, MIDI devices are commonly used as “live” instruments
that are manipulated in real time. Grid-based interfaces with rubber
pads have become commonplace in the studio and on the stage, allowing
the percussive triggering and automated sequencing of digital samples.
Indeed, controllerism represents just one of the ways in which the
lines between production and performance have become blurred in
contemporary digital music—a fact that is evidenced by the emergence of
FACT’s “Against the Clock” or XLR8R’s “In the Studio” series, both of
which reveal the significance of MIDI controllers in the creative process
of digital music producers. Designed by Ableton in collaboration with
Akai Professional, the company responsible for the infamous MPC series
drum samplers, the Push controller, for example, is marketed as a digital
controller that blurs the line between production and performance,
presenting a staggering degree of fine-tuned control while composing
using Ableton Live software. Ableton’s APC, Livid’s OHM, the Monome,
and Novation’s Launchpad, among many others, are specifically catered
to the “live” triggering and micro-manipulation of both musical patterns
and sonic parameters such as volume, effects, and mixer settings. Other
grid controllers are fashioned as entire studio workstations in themselves.
Native Instruments describes its Maschine Studio as an “ultimate studio
centerpiece for modern music production,” specifically emphasizing the
“unprecedented physical control and visual feedback” of the interface
(Native Instruments 2016).
While grid-based controllers dominate the digital instrument industry
through a carefully marketed alignment with proprietary music software,
other controllerists feel limited by the creative constraints resulting from
this integration. Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain started building open source,
minimalist controllers in 2006, seeking to construct “less complex, more
versatile tools” than the cluttered interfaces being marketed to electronic
musicians at the time. The company prides itself with operating “on a human
scale,” using only local suppliers and manufacturers, and embodying values
of environmental and economic sustainability in their design process. This

minimalist sensibility is embedded within products such as their Monome
“grid” controller, in which the only control mechanism on the instrument
exists in the form of small rubber buttons capable of sending simple on-and-
off messages to open source software such as Max/MSP (Figure 8.1). Rather
than perform with the seemingly prescribed options of proprietary software,
Monome users build and freely share custom software patches that can be
applied across a variety of artistic genres and creative needs.
As these examples demonstrate, controllerism surfaced as an attempt by
electronic musicians and designers to employ hardware as physical extensions
of existing instruments, simultaneously enhancing the sense of tactile
immediacy imbued by turntablism and distinguishing themselves from the
“we all hit play” paradigm detailed by Deadmau5. Indeed, Moldover defines
the primary motivation for controllerism using the same critical language
as vinyl purists, claiming “performers who use computer technologies as
musical instruments needed a way to differentiate themselves from people
who ‘check their e-mail’” (Golden 2007). At the same time, performing with
vinyl without employing extensive sonic manipulation is also not enough
for many controllerists, who emphasize “live” improvisation and the
physical display of HCI on stage. In this way, controllerism positions itself
as a progressive expansion of both laptop DJs and vinyl DJs who simply
“hit play.” If vinyl record performance foregrounds the agency and presence
of the musician, controllerist performance foregrounds the negotiation
between the musician and the “rules” of the software. This dialectical
relationship between hardware (human bodies, material technologies) and
software (processes, logics, and mechanics of code) finds a direct analogy in
the structures of video game play.
Figure 8.1 Monome “grid” controller (2008).

Controller Design for Gaming

The status of being a “button pusher” is not simply a denigrating term
for artists working with hardware controllers, but a metaphor for the
convergence of a gaming logic with digital music production. Speaking of
his own influences from video gaming, Flying Lotus talks about growing up
as an only child who “didn’t have too many friends, but I had Nintendo.”
Like many electronic musicians growing up in the 1980s, the dawn of the
gaming age, FlyLo cites that period as formative in his creative development,
proudly stating, “Those sounds are part of my youth, part of my history”
(Pattison 2010). Glasgow’s bass music pioneer Rustie talks about how his
production styles emulate the way gamers play, describing his experience
with the electric guitar and video games as “different means to the same
end, really . . . there’s not much difference between plucking a string
and pressing a button, I think” (Millard 2012). The 2000s witnessed the
emergence of a new generation of electronic musicians, one that grew up on
Nintendos, Game Boys, and Ataris, rather than their parents’ vinyl record
collections, and the production practice of pressing buttons and swiping
screens reflects this.
Recently, musicologist Roger Moseley introduced “ludomusicology” as
a theoretical model with which to analyze the shared experiences of play,
performance, and digital embodiment in both gaming and music production.
Most significantly, ludomusicology is concerned with “the extent to which
music might be understood as a game”—as a system of rule-based logics
that “constitute a set of cognitive, technological, and social affordances
for behaving in certain ways, for playing in and with the world through
the medium of sound and its representations” (Moseley 2013: 286). If, as
Moseley suggests, musical scores, software code, and hardware interfaces
constitute “the ludic rules according to which music is to be played,” what
might the technical practices of digital music producers say about the
shifting nature of musical performance and instrumentality as play?
In order to recognize the explicit connection between gaming and music
production, it is necessary to understand how the experience of play is capable
of facilitating creative experiences in general. The notion of constraints as an
engine for creativity and experimentation within closed, interactive systems
has become an overarching framework for explaining the allure of play as
a cultural force (Salen and Zimmerman 2004). In a succinct definition that
could be applied equally to music and gameplay, Bernard Suits describes
gaming as “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles” (Suits
2005). Whereas musical play is often conceived as allowing an unfettered
creative experience—the idea that technologies allows for the creation of
“any sound you can imagine”—embodied interaction with games and
electronic music may be more aptly characterized by the ways in which the
media resists or constrains the actions of the user (Théberge 1997).
Whether embedded within the instrumentality of music or gameplay,

constraints are most often perceived in the physical comportment of the
player as he or she interacts with a technological apparatus, the interface
shaping his or her embodied knowledge and practices. Dance scholar
Harmony Bench has examined the gestural choreographies through which
users comport themselves while engaging with touch-based digital media
devices, for example. Noticing the ways in which “their bodies curved
into supportive architectures with which they cradled touch-screens,”
Bench argues that these “digital media choreographies” encourage
the development of bodily techniques across media and technologies,
simultaneously ushering in new understandings of physical and bodily
comportment and serving as the mechanisms for that education (Bench
2014: 238). Bench specifically aligns musicianship with the sort of
“computational literacy” of gaming, detailing the significance of rote
repetition in the development of embodied knowledge within each
practice, as well as the ways in which each “demand[s] a corporeal training
that impacts operators’ experiences of their physicality” (ibid.: 243).
Think of the ways in which musicians, gamers, and computer operators
alike must constantly update their skills based on the rapid, and often
radical, changes made to common operating systems, game controllers,
and digital musical interface design (ibid.: 245). While scholars have
previously examined the “medium-specific” modes of embodiment that
reshape technological users’ bodily structures, Bench’s analysis is not
limited to a single platform, allowing her to highlight gaming and music
production as shared avenues for the embodiment of systematic design
constraints that ultimately function in shaping the bodily comportment
of the player.
Game controllers are particularly important conduits for the transmission
and negotiation of design constraints, aiding in the embodied cognition
of social values, haptic metaphors for technological interaction, and
expected patterns of use. In other words, controllers externalize the “rules”
embedded within digital systems. According to game theorist David Myers,
all video game controllers share at least two formal properties that directly
shape players’ embodied practices: “they employ arbitrary and simplified
abstractions of the physical actions they reference, and they require some
level of habituation of response” (Myers 2009: 50). For example, Xbox
One and Playstation 4 controller schemes (the most popular handheld
controllers at the time of writing) are similar in their dual-joystick layout,
abstracting a complex set of buttons and triggers to letters and shapes.
Abstraction in the hardware interface is thus used as a method for managing
the complexity of the software, allowing the player to physically internalize
the constraints of the controller that are required to succeed in a variety
of gaming genres. How might these design constraints apply to digital
music-making—a practice that asks the musician to navigate emerging
complexities in HCI?
Figure 8.2 (A) Playstation 4 controller (2013); (B) Xbox One controller (2013).
Controller Design for Music-Making

As with the development of motor memory in video games, training on
a musical instrument involves the internalization of the affordances and
constraints of a given instrument through the rote repetition of bodily
techniques and habituated responses. Musicologist Elisabeth Le Guin
discusses the ways in which cellists physically comport themselves in relation
to the cello during performance, molding themselves into a single “cellist-
body” through movement and action (Le Guin 1999). Just as gamers embody
the internal constraints embedded within the game itself, instrumentalists
develop an embodied understanding of the constraints embedded within a
given piece of music. Le Guin defines this skill as “anticipatory kinesthesia,”
in which the performer assesses the physical demands of a given piece on
their body, asking such questions as “What do I need to do in order to
play this? Where will I put my hands, and how will I move them?” Most
instrumentalists would not be able to articulate clear answers to these
questions, in the same way that most gamers would have trouble putting
to words such a deeply embodied practice. Rote repetition is thus capable
of facilitating the acquisition of tacit, embodied knowledge (Polanyi 1966).
As is the case with embodied knowledge in game controllers, the mappings
of musical software onto hardware ask the player to internalize a constantly
changing set of embodied musical techniques. This process of interface
abstraction may be most clearly exemplified in the minimalist design of the
Monome “grid” controller, which comprises a small rectangular box fitted
with a symmetrical grid of small rubber buttons and a USB port. Often,
the Monome is used as a controller for the Max/MSP visual programming
environment, which is itself a modular, open software that can be used for
a variety of creative practices from electronic music synthesis to the real-
time generation of 3D visuals. In this context, the button grid interface can
take the form of a pitch controller alternative to the keyboard interface, an
externalization of a step sequencer, a multitrack mixer or effects modulator,
a visual spatialization map, and any number of other tools. Approaching the
blank interface of an instrument such as the Monome, the musician must
focus more on the internalization of specific software affordances, rather
than the external affordances of the minimalist hardware (Upton 2015).
This internalization of software through hardware has two seemingly
opposing effects on electronic music production. First, as the processing
power for a given musical task is increasingly delegated to the software, the
physical and gestural manipulation of the hardware becomes increasingly
unnecessary. This fact is highlighted by trends in game controller and
interface design more broadly, which value the least amount of effort to
achieve the maximum output. In the context of games, a single, slight
flick of a Playstation 4 controller’s right trigger may just as likely fire a
gun, swing a sword, open a door, or detonate a series of explosives. In the
context of musical production and performance, the single tap of a rubber
pad may just as likely trigger a single snare drum sample, a four-bar drum
loop, or an entire musical album. In valuing the non-isomorphic design of
musical gestures, digital music controllers have encouraged both musicians
and audience members to develop new forms of embodied listening and
production. It is this transitional moment that sparked the vehement and
ongoing debates about human agency in performance detailed in the
opening of this chapter.
Increased complexity in software design seems to facilitate a decreased
complexity in hardware design, leading to what Bart Simon terms a “gestural
minimalism” in gaming that could equally apply to musical production and
performance (Simon 2009). However, as the player develops an embodied
knowledge of the software’s “rules,” he or she is able to dedicate more
attention to the physical control of the hardware itself. This leads to the
common experience of what Simon alternatively calls “gestural excess” in
gaming, when physical movements are made in excess of what the hardware
is actually capable of performing. For example, even though the joystick
of a controller may be the only mechanism capable of steering a car in
a racing game, the player often exceeds this limitation by gesturing with
the controller itself as a steering wheel, dynamically contorting their entire
body to the left and right as if controlling an actual car. This becomes a
subconscious attempt to overcome the arbitrariness of the digital “mapping”
by foregrounding the embodied metaphor on which the software is designed.
Just as these gestures function to translate the “rules” of the game to the
player, embodied metaphors can likewise translate a sense of musicality and
performativity to an audience. Or, in the case of studio producers, these
embodied metaphors provide the musician with an imagined audience
that can help guide their production practices (again, FACT’s “Against the
Clock” and XLR8R’s “In the Studio” series provide interesting case studies
of this phenomenon in action).
For electronic musicians, gestural excess represents a clear strategy
for conveying a sense of “liveness” to their audience, while developing
performance strategies for the embodied control of musical techniques

embedded in software (Auslander 1999). Describing a performance from
German electronic musician Stefan Betke (also known as Pole), Butler
writes about what he calls the “passion of the knob,” in which the producer
“seems to put his whole body into the extended turning of a knob,”
directing an “exceptionally intense expressivity toward a small, technical
component associated with sound engineering” (Butler 2014: 101). These
gestural excesses are highly choreographed, as the performer “telegraphs
‘expressivity’” to the prerecorded musical material, locating himself or
herself as the primary agent of the sounds being heard by the audience
(ibid.: 3). In a way, this mode of performance is meant to foreground the
“human” presence while effacing the technological apparatus. At the same
time, highlighting the physical practice of interfacial mediation likewise
foregrounds the mechanics and “rules” embedded within the apparatus,
thus indoctrinating the audience into new modes of listening to the interface.
In other words, gestural excess gives the audience a practical method for
listening to the electronic music controller as a process-based musical
instrument, rather than a tool simply to be used for the composition of
sound content.
Daedelus, a Los Angeles-based producer and DJ, has become infamous
for his use of controllers to externalize the mechanics of music software in
production and performance. The relationship between gameplay and music
is further highlighted by the type of creative work to which he dedicates
himself, including interactive audio installations, sound design for video
games, and controllerism in live performance. In a particularly fitting video
shoot produced by the news and media website Into the Woods, he performs
an entire “DJ” set in the middle of Portland, Oregon’s Ground Kontrol
arcade (Intothewoods.tv 2012). The video begins with Daedelus challenging
a fellow beatmaker to a game of Street Fighter 2, followed by a montage
of clicking and clacking button presses that trigger short bursts and choppy
audio samples from the machine. Surrounded by the flashing lights, bleeps,
and blips of vintage game consoles, the gestural excess of these two button-
pushers transitions seamlessly into Daedelus’s musical performance.
As the camera shifts focus from the game consoles to the musician standing
in the middle of the arcade, the visual frame immediately foregrounds a
technical setup comprising a laptop and two Monome controllers. The
“brain” of the operation consists of a Max/MSP software patch called
MLRv, which allows Daedelus to control simultaneously the playback and
fine-tuned editing of musical parameters in multiple audio samples. The GUI
consists of eight horizontal rows, each containing a sample, with options to
adjust volume, playback speed, and pitch just below each row. Using the
Monomes as controllers for the MLRv software, Daedelus then physically
manipulates the rows of audio in various ways. The 256-button Monome
serves as the primary control mechanism, mirroring the layout of MLRv by
dividing the 256-button grid into 16 rows. The rows then spatially fragment
the corresponding audio sample into 16 parts, allowing the musician to

play back specific moments in the sample by pushing the buttons within
the horizontal row. The audio waveform in the software literally becomes
externalized in the hardware, and the “rules” of MLRv become playable.
Daedelus’s performance mannerisms further highlight the gestural excess
witnessed during the gameplay depicted at the beginning of the video.
The Monome is angled upward, away from the performer and toward the
audience, and the laptop screen is out of sight, highlighting the physical
interaction between the musician and the hardware device. Every button
press by the performer is accented by a rapid withdrawal of his hand
from the interface, spatially exaggerating the spectral morphologies of the
sounds being controlled. While the 256-button Monome remains stationary,
Daedelus twists and contorts the smaller 64-button Monome, controlling
audio effects that are mapped to the device’s accelerometer (the same sensor
used in mobile phone technology). Rather than simply “pressing play” and
letting the computer do all the work, these moments of gestural excess—
combined with the abstract and minimal design of the hardware device—
allow the viewer to focus visually and aurally on the musical patterns as
they are chopped, stuttered, and looped by Daedelus in real time.
Ultimately, both video game and digital music controllers make tangible
the design affordances and constraints of the software being controlled. For
Figure 8.3 MLRv Max patch (2011).

gamers, the process of abstracting video game mechanics into the letters
and shapes of controllers allows players to embody the rules of games, and
therefore develop the skills required to succeed in gameplay. For musicians,
the process of externalizing the mechanics of music software programs
allows performers to convey “liveness” to their audiences, and therefore
engage with both listeners and technology on a more dynamic level. By
bringing together case studies in music and gaming, I have suggested a
play-oriented model of HCI that recognizes the interconnections between
hardware objects and software processes; design and use; play, production,
and performance (Moseley 2016).
Failure as Evidence of Liveness

Controllerism represents a single solution to a perennial question in digital
art: how to physically interact with and manipulate creative affordances
embedded in screens. The development of hardware for engaging with
music software has rightly been criticized as an unsustainable model that
runs on the desire for commercial profit—a model of planned obsolescence
that is paralleled in the games industry (Fitzpatrick 2011). However, the fact
that users continue to experiment with controllers, constantly challenging
themselves to learn new forms of embodied interaction with their tools,
highlights another important value in the experience of contemporary music
and games: failure.
The necessity of failure is obvious in the case of gaming, a medium that
teaches players to face death virtually over and over again. It is through the
process of death and resurrection that the player learns from their mistakes
in order to develop the skills necessary to “beat the game.” Recently, the
proliferation of “controllers” in media production and performance has
allowed the built-in possibility of failure and imperfection to bleed into
the realm of digital music. Composer Kim Cascone describes failure as “a
prominent aesthetic in many of the arts . . . reminding us that our control
of technology is an illusion, and revealing digital tools to be only as perfect,
precise, and efficient as the humans who build them” (Cascone 2000: 13).
Rather than praising the agency and virtuosity of the human over technology,
“liveness” is evidenced instead in the potential for failure inherent to the
process of navigating new relationships with technology.
Failure contradicts prevailing ideologies of innovation and progress
inherent to design and technology industries. Each year, Apple releases
swaths of computing devices, promising to make the lives of consumers
better through “user-friendly” designs that are easy to navigate and
seemingly fail proof. In exposing the potential for failure at the root of all
forms of mediation, controllerism represents a single instance of a twenty-
first-century digital culture in the process of resisting the perennial narrative
of technological process. Similar to parallel movements in interactive

media—net.art, indie video games, glitch aesthetics—controllerism embraces
vulnerability as a prevailing ethic of HCI. In each case, the imperfections of
both the individual operator and the software become evidence of “liveness.”
Technological change, in this context, is not simply about developing new,
shiny “digital” objects, but also playfully experimenting with the embodied,
“analog” processes ever present in music and media production. In an era of
increased technological control, dominated by proprietary software, global
surveillance systems, and the ubiquity of “smart” media, these technologies
of play remind us that music, like many of the games we play, consists of
rules that are designed to be broken.
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Pa r t f o ur
Technology and
Technique
156
Chapter nine
Weapons of Mass Deception:

The Invention and Reinvention
of Recording Studio Mythology
Alan Williams
Introduction
“Mythology” is a loaded term; similar to legend, it implies an oft-told
story meant to illustrate something of a culture’s inherited value system.
Joseph Campbell (1972) used the term to identify narrative schema found
across cultures and time periods, distilling thousands of heroic characters
and stories to a handful of recurrent archetypes and tropes. Roland Barthes
(1972b: 109–59) utilized the same term to describe a system of semiotics,
wherein objects can be read as text. For Barthes, the myriad associations
an individual derives from encounters with cultural artifacts form a set of
mythologies, where objects represent a history of ideas and actions, and
meaning is derived by decoding these representational symbols. Recording
musicians inherit a complex web of associated mythologies, whether in their
bedrooms hunkered over a software program with a graphic representation
of a piece of recording equipment they have encountered only as a
mythological icon, or comfortably ensconced in a world-famous facility,
absorbing the atmosphere of the location where canonical recordings were
created (Bennett 2012; 2016).
In his essay Musica Practica, Barthes (1972a: 149–54) makes a distinction
between the music one plays and the music one listens to. In the first instance,
the playing of music is located in the body, the physical act, something one
does. In the second, music becomes something one processes, deconstructs,
analyzes, reconstructs, and assigns meaning to. Barthes posits that music
mediated via technology falls so far toward the analytic that it creates a
desire to reimagine the experience of making, of doing. This desire is what
motivates recorded music fans to search for insights into recording practices
and histories. Representations of recording practice are found in a broad
spectrum of pop culture artifacts, from books and documentary films to
cartoons and internet memes. The reach of this collection of narratives
and images extends far beyond the relatively small number of professional
and amateur musicians, producers, and engineers, shaping even a casual
listenerʼs understanding of recorded music processes and establishing a set
of mythologies through which their experience of recorded music is filtered.
In this way, mythologies shape the way musicians, producers, and engineers
approach their work and, just as importantly, they have established the
criteria by which success and failure are measured.
There is another connotation of the term “myth”—something that
is untrue, false, a lie. A breezy description in a lavishly illustrated coffee
table book or a tightly edited documentary provides only a simulacrum
of knowledge; over time, the anecdotal takes on the weight of time-
honored fact. Such hazy hagiographies contribute to the formation of
broad cultural (mis)understandings of music creation for general audiences
while simultaneously serving as an inspiration for budding professionals,
composers, and performers. In North America and much of Western
Europe, a growing market for the merchandizing of recording mythology
has emerged to feed this desire to understand and to reimagine, though
I have not seen such a preoccupation with pop music production history
and processes in other parts of the globe. Acknowledging the limited scope
of US/UK-based examples, this chapter identifies several recurring tropes
that have emerged from the marketing of recording studio mythologies,
and examines how these mythologies influence the reception of recorded
music and shape the production process itself as new generations of creative
musicians reconcile their imagined recording studio experience with the
realities of actual practice.
Manufacturing the Myth

Though Rock discourse has often included material on recording techniques
and technology, information on studio practice was much more limited
during the first half century of sound recording. Yet even in its infancy,
there were attempts by the record industry to inform the public about the
intersection of technology and musical performance intrinsic to recorded
sound. Susan Schmidt-Horning (2013) has examined a large amount of
WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION 159
promotional material issued by the Edison laboratory, and especially the

monthly newsletter of Victor Records, which often featured descriptions of
recording sessions designed to promote both performing artists and updated
models of playback devices. Educating the public about process was an
essential component of marketing these new-fangled technologies, and
weaving descriptions of technological process into recollections of musical
performance helped to demystify how recordings were made and to cement
the notion of recording as musical document rather than technological
alchemy.
However, once recordings had become more widely adopted in the
marketplace, stories involving musicians and recording technology were
downplayed in favor of promoting rising stars who happened to be
captured by microphones and encoded on to discs. If Benjamin’s “aura”
(Benjamin 2008 [1935]) disappeared with mass manufacturing, the
obscuring of recording practice served to impart a different, mystical aura
to these commodities—the “magic” of recorded performance. Advances
in technology—electromagnetic microphones and amplification including
multisource audio mixing, early uses of disc-to-disc bouncing, and later
magnetic tape editing and multitrack overdubbing—all happened behind
the scenes without great public fanfare. Yet these changes in technology
necessitated new techniques that each recording performer had to adapt to,
and learn to harness in new and creative ways. This is how the stage was
set for creative recordists to weave narratives of studio wizardry into their
own marketed mythologies, from Les Paul through The Beatles, and into the
work of current EDM artists whose public performances mask the actual
methodologies utilized in their musical creations.
The Beatles in particular became the subject of an emergent mini-industry
in mythologizing the manufacture of aura. During the mid-1970s, several
books were published that framed their recorded output as artifact, whether
as casual critical overview highlighting album packaging or cataloging
releases with dates and chart positions (Carr and Tyler 1975; Castleman
and Podrazik 1976). These editions sat on shelves alongside often wildly
inaccurate biographies and memoirs of former employees, and even fans.
But a new strand of mythology emerged with the publication of Mark
Lewisohn’s The Beatles Recording Sessions (1988), which emphasized
process over product. With detailed descriptions of sessions, including dates
and hourly session info, take numbers including edits and overdubs, and
packed with previously unseen photos of the group at work in various
recording studios, the book provided a far more detailed understanding of
The Beatles’s recording practices.
The revelations contained in the book served two sometimes overlapping
audiences—Beatles fans who sought to understand their heroes’ creative
process and recording professionals and enthusiasts who wanted to know
how the iconic recordings were crafted. For Beatles fans, evidence of “genius”
abounded—the speed with which songs were composed, performed,
recorded, and distributed is impressive to even a casual observer. For studio

professionals, the book became the source for a new set of mythological
anecdotes—the against-all-logic success of the “Strawberry Fields Forever”
edit, the invention of automated double tracking, the use of a speaker as
microphone transducer, and so on. These mythological narratives were
further cemented with video documentaries that allowed viewers to hear
tracks in isolation, to see old model mixing consoles and tape machines in
action.
The interest generated by Lewisohn’s look into The Beatles’s process
resulted in a television documentary, The Making of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band (1992). As part of the feature, producer George Martin
illustrated how the album’s concluding track, “A Day in the Life,” was
constructed by isolating John Lennon’s vocal and guitar from the other
sounds already deeply embedded in the memories of millions of fans.
The moment was significant; in presenting the familiar in a totally new
context, Martin presented a radically different conception of the song (and
implying infinite alternative possibilities), while simultaneously illuminating
The Beatles’s recording practices for amateur audio sleuths. This subset
of the group’s audience was made up of both seasoned professionals who
recognized studio techniques they themselves had employed and a growing
segment of the band’s fans who were intrigued by the processes used to
create the sounds of their heroes’ recordings. The emergence of this type
of fan is a direct result of the growth of a market devoted to recording
mythologies. The transmission of recording mythologies via books and films
most often places artists (heroes) or recorded works (artifacts) at the center
of the narrative, but recording practices and processes form the actual
narratives behind these mythologies. In this regard, what is important is not
what an audience might learn about recording practices, but rather what
they think they have learned about them.
Soon thereafter, the production team behind the Sgt. Pepper documentary
was commissioned by the BBC to create a number of documentaries focusing
on the composition and technological creative process behind canonical
pop music recordings—the Classic Albums series. The initial offerings often
included segments similar to the Martin/Beatles playback scene, with behind-
the-scenes personnel such as producers and engineers isolating tracks so
that viewers could audition the pieces that comprised the “classic” whole.
Such scenes were commonly accompanied by choice anecdotes outlining the
processes used to achieve the result, often placing the heretofore unheralded
studio professional in the role of hero who utilized technological skill to
overcome problems both technical and musical. But as the series continued
over the years, these figures and their contributions were downplayed in
favor of the star musicians whose work was the subject of the films. Thus,
multiple and occasionally conflicting mythological narratives were crafted
from loose threads of historical memory and existing technological artifact
(Williams 2010: 166–79).
This void was partially filled by a steady stream of books offering photos,
histories, anecdotes, and technical details of various studios and the projects
that took place within them. Again, The Beatles served as central figures
in this developing arena. Lewisohn’s book established a market that was
whetted by books like The Beatles Gear (Babiuk 2001), a photobook survey
of various instruments played by the group during their live and recording
careers, a fetishistic celebration of a form of technology that helped
erstwhile musicians gain a measure of associative glory by obtaining copies
of similar instruments such as McCartney’s signature Hofner bass, or the
cornerstone of psychedelic progressive rock, the Mellotron. Playing these
instruments extended the mythological narratives to include musicians who
either imitated The Beatles directly or referenced “Beatleness” within their
own musical output (World Party, XTC, the production work of Jon Brion
to name just a few).
Just as The Beatles established a global market for British musicians, books,
and documentaries on a number of other bands and albums soon appeared
on bookshelves and television screens around the world. Some documented
the creative studio processes of major figures and canonical works (a small
sampling includes Elliot 1990; Buskin 1999; Granata 1999, 2003; Kahn
2000, 2002; Nisenson 2001; Fyfe 2003; Gill and Odegard 2004; Streissguth
2004; Pond 2005). Others featured the spaces in which recordings took
place—Abbey Road, Sun Studios, Motown, Columbia, Olympic, and so on
(Southall, Vince, and Rouse 1997; Cogan and Clark 2003; Lawrence 2012;
Massey 2015). Seasoned professionals, previously only names in a liner
note but now identifiable figures in their own right, have published their
memoirs—George Martin (1979, 1995), Geoff Emerick (2007), Phil Ramone
(2007), Ken Scott (2012), Glyn Johns (2014), to name a few. Pulling all these
streams together in an expensive and weighty tome, Recording The Beatles
(Kehew and Ryan 2006) features a song-by-song description of the steps
undertaken in the creation of each song, usually supported by statements
from various technicians associated with the recordings, archaeological
suppositions based upon existing photographs from sessions coupled with
track sheet notes that purport to illustrate who played what part, in what
area of the studio, and behind which gobo they sat or stood. Hundreds of
lavishly illustrated pages identify each piece of recording technology used at
Abbey Road during The Beatles’s career, with incredibly esoteric details to
satisfy the most knowledgeable/hungry enthusiast.
The fetishization of recording practice as marker of hipster authenticity
that these deluxe editions represent parallels that of the “resurgence” of
vinyl; the embrace of Mad Men era fashion and design. These forms of
“received nostalgia”—a longing for a time period that predates one’s
birth—signal a deep discomfort with the present/future. Artifacts and
chronicles of rock’s golden age signify a past dissociated from historical
context, even for people with only a tangential interest in popular music. A
book like Recording The Beatles certainly has appeal to multigenerational
“Beatlemaniacs” and recording studio professionals, but with its lovingly

photographed representations of 1950s era technology, it also serves as a
totem for a new generation of nostalgists.
Mythologies Shaping Practice

The music magazines of the 1970s featuring electronic music and recording
technology central to Paul Théberge’s (1997) study of an emerging consumer
recording market also serve as indication of a nascent industry in recording
practice mythology. Periodicals aimed at amateur musicians occasionally
offered brief glimpses of pop stars at work in the recording studio, but were
often vague and misleading regarding the specifics of studio practice. Trade
publications featured glossy photos of technology and facilities, but were
limited to those individuals who were already members of the professional
recording realm (Bennett 2012). The marketed mythologies of recording
practice that followed in the wake of Lewisohn’s tome reached far larger
audiences, and their own commodity value as product in turn warranted
higher production values. Behind-the-scenes photos captured the acoustically
treated surfaces, control rooms and isolation booths, microphones on
towering boom stands, and a plethora of musical instruments and cases,
amplifiers and cables scattered about the expansive rooms, all of which
defined the environments where musical heroes crafted their art. The texts
and filmed anecdotes referred to processes only partially explained—
tracking, overdubbing, editing, mixing—but from which even casual fans
began to form an understanding of studio practice.
Many musicians entering the studio for the first time during the 1980s and
1990s had absorbed a wealth of recording mythologies, and often set about
reenacting these mythologies in the course of their own recording projects.
As a result, these studio neophytes felt a deep cognitive dissonance when
trying to reconcile their notions of studio practice as shaped by anecdotal
books and articles with their own actual experience. In my ethnographic
research on social dynamics and power relations in the studio, subjects
frequently expressed a sense of demoralizing frustration regarding their first
studio sessions. Perfection was difficult to obtain under the microscope, and
the fascinating stories of studio experimentation they had read about were
at odds with the practicalities of recording studio economics; engineers and
producers were often resistant to any form of experimentation at all—“It
won’t work, and it would take too much time even if it did.”
If rock was born from a rejection of one set of musical/cultural values,
then punk represented a rejection of the values that emerged over 20 years
of rock as art and industry (Hebdige 1979; Savage 1991). Similarly, a
counter-mythology regarding recording studio practice emerged, one that
grew more powerful in the new millennium—a mythology of rebellion.
Alternative mythologies emerge wherein method is constructed as an

antidote to previously established, poisonous practice, where “how to do it,”
is determined by “how not to do it.” In part exemplified by the increasing
power of the artist over the recording process, rebellion was manifest in a
conscious rejection of more established recording practices and was (and
continues to be) especially evident in the trend to record in nontraditional
environments. Figures who challenged conventional practice in the creation
of their recorded work also began to harness the promotional power of the
record industry to spread the word, introducing counter-mythologies into
popular music discourse.
One of the earliest examples of an artist using his or her power to break
with tradition and explore new approaches to recording is found in the
career of Neil Young. After struggling through conventional studio practices
early in his career, Young began experimenting with various recording
environments and methodologies. Young's third album, After the Gold
Rush (1970), was recorded in the basement of his house, with a small
ensemble tracking live, without overdubs. He continued to employ the live
tracking methodology on his commercial breakthrough, Harvest (1971), in
sessions conducted in Nashville and in the studio he built in a barn on his
northern California ranch, Broken Arrow (Inglis 2003; McDonough 2003).
Far from a low-fidelity aesthetic espoused by later generations of home
recording enthusiasts, Young sought to achieve sonic clarity while rejecting
the practices of isolation and overdubbing that had become associated with
multitrack technology. He has continued to record in nontraditional spaces
for most of his career, providing a template for musicians of a similar bent.
Perhaps no individual has contributed more to the mythology of
nontraditional recording environments than producer Daniel Lanois. His
aversion to traditional recording studios, and his pursuit of recording
practices that breech the control room/recording room divide, amount
to a personal philosophy that insists on a holistic approach to recording
practices and physical space (Greenberg and Mather 2004). A musician
himself, Lanois established a recording studio in Hamilton, Ontario, called
Grant Avenue. A three-story Victorian house, Grant Avenue was a facility
without an isolated control room, where every room in the house was
wired for recording and an atmosphere of sonic experimentation permeated
the work that was made there. Brian Eno became a fan of Lanois’s work,
collaborating on a series of ambient recordings and bringing Lanois into the
sessions for U2’s The Unforgettable Fire in 1984 to serve as co-producer. As
documented in promotional videos for the album, Eno and Lanois insisted
on bringing the undivided space philosophy of Grant Avenue to the project,
recording in one large room in Slane Castle.
The commercial success of Lanois’s production work with U2 and Peter
Gabriel enabled him to purchase a house in New Orleans, where he installed
recording equipment and replicated the approach of his earlier set up at
Grant Avenue. Kingsway, as the new studio was named, played host to a
number of recordings that defined his sound, including Bob Dylan’s Oh

Mercy (1989), The Neville Brothers’ Yellow Moon (1989), and Emmylou
Harris’s Wrecking Ball (1995). With the engineer no longer controlling
access to communication networks via talkback mics and headphone mixes,
unmediated exchange between all participants is possible. The absence
of a physical divide also erodes the divisions between “musician” and
“technician.” A guitar player might be placed in service as a tape operator
while an engineer picked up a mandolin or percussion instrument (Clark
1996). The Lanois approach to recording was given great visibility in the
video for U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love),” and featured frequently in
promotional materials for Peter Gabriel’s So (1986) and U2’s The Joshua
Tree (1987). Though far from the first producer to work in converted
domestic space, Lanois’s highly publicized articulation of his approach as
a philosophy has entered the realm of myth; his name frequently invoked
as an icon of creative recording practices, his methodology emulated by
thousands of musicians, producers, and engineers—replacing a rejected
mythology with another mythology about rejecting mythology.
Fearing the Ever-Present Future

There is a scene in The Delicate Delinquent (1957) where Jerry Lewis
stumbles upon a theremin. As his nearby movements trigger the instrument
to produce a sound, Lewis slowly learns how to manipulate his body in order
to produce an ever more refined sonic result. Lewis is first frightened, then
baffled, then intrigued, and finally humored as he gains control over this
instrument that produces sound from thin air. It is highly unlikely that the
viewing audience had ever seen the instrument, and certainly less likely still
that they understood its operation. Lewis’s “performance” serves as a primer,
a first lesson in how to play the theremin. But the scene also underscores
the tensioned threat that futuristic technology poses for social norms. Given
previous uses of the unseen instrument to produce disconcerting/spooky
background scores for films such as The Lost Weekend (1945) and The Day
the Earth Stood Still (1951), the associative sound of the theremin signified
danger. The potency of this technological threat is underscored further
when moments after Lewis performs a phrase from Stephen Foster’s 1851
composition, “Old Folks at Home,” he is inspired to lose all inhibition and
jump into a frenzied parody of Elvis Presley. Released just as rock n’ roll
was upending America’s sociocultural equilibrium, the film scene sets up the
analogy—futurist technology will lead to Armageddon, whether as nuclear
implosion or as youth-led revolution.
Artists that took advantage of new music technologies were called upon
to defend the implementation of new creative practices associated with
a vaguely threatening futurism. A good example of this can be found in
the long segment of the television show Omnibus broadcast in 1953, in

which Les Paul and Mary Ford give host Alistair Cooke a tutorial on Paul’s
newly invented multitrack tape overdubbing process. With Cooke framing
the demonstration as a retort to a brewing controversy over recording
“tricks,” Paul proceeds to turn a series of knobs and dials mounted on a
gigantic wall-like machine, the “Les Paulverizer.” He plays a brief guitar
figure, then punches another button with a comedic extra pound of the fist,
and outpours a fully arranged version of the music, much to the audience’s
delight. Though played for laughs, it is not entirely clear that the audience is
fully in on the joke—indeed, it’s possible that this machine actually produces
the sounds that we hear. So, to clarify, Cooke then launches into a spirited
defense of Paul and Ford, and the overdubbing process, the acknowledged
“trick” used to create their recordings.
The camera then pans to allow for Paul and Ford to demonstrate how they
actually create their layered recordings with two magnetic tape recorders
plainly in view. Once again, Paul performs a brief guitar figure, and Cooke
requests that he play back the recording he has just made. At this point in
the broadcast, a curious breach in the veracity of the demonstration occurs.
Though meant to illuminate the actual process of recording, the legitimacy
of the explanation is dramatically undercut when the tape playback is clearly
not what Paul performed only seconds before. This unintended error humors
Paul, and perhaps Cooke, but is quickly glossed over—an unnecessary lie
presented as questionable truth, with Les Paul masterfully playing the role
of con man. Both the “Les Paulverizer” and the “actual” demonstration
obscure more than they reveal about the recording process; we see people
do it, but we have no technical understanding of how it is done. In this
way, multitrack recording is presented as a trick, just as the audience sees
a magician saw his assistant in half, yet has no inkling of how such a trick
is accomplished. And this mystery both comforts, “see, she can still move,
no harm done,” and confounds, “just how did he do that?” For a portion
of the audience, the trick is a challenge; they want to speculate, to figure it
out, to imagine being the magician exercising ingenuity and dexterity, not
just conjuring “magic.” But the majority of the audience would prefer to
preserve the mystery—they might ask how the trick is done, but they may
not really want to know.
One significant mythology created by such magic acts posits that recorded
music is a falsification designed to fool audiences into accepting fake
musicians as the real thing. As popular music grew more technologically
complex, listeners began to suspect that perhaps the artists whose faces
adorned their album covers were not actually responsible for the sounds
coming off of the groove. While The Beatles were at their most sonically
experimental, they lost their chart dominance in the United States to a fictional
made-for-television approximation of the fab four—The Monkees. If The
Beatles had turned the tables on traditional pop music industry practices
by writing and performing their own songs on record, their “authenticity”
was countered by corporate machinery behind The Monkees/Manques. But

the fact that their big hits were written by professional songwriters was
less of an issue than the widespread rumor that they did not play their own
instruments. The visual image of the group playing instruments in every
episode was an intentional misrepresentation of the process used to create
the sounds emanating from the television speaker.
The practice of replacing band members with more accomplished studio
musicians for recordings was commonplace—simultaneous with The
Monkees’s ascendency, records by the Beach Boys, The Byrds, the Who, and
many others featured the performances of musicians-for-hire (Thompson
2008; Hartman 2012). And while pop musicians who did play on their records
frequently lip-synced to these recordings when making television appearances,
The Monkees seemed to epitomize the mechanics of deception at the very heart
of syncing visual to audio. The problem was that The Monkees’s records were
good—state-of-the-art pop songs, performed with energy and confidence—
and they sold in very large quantities, outpacing The Beatles during the
era of Sgt. Pepper. The mythologies that surround The Beatles incorporate
recording technology as creative tool, artists manipulating machines. But The
Monkees mythology posits an alternative: fakes using machines to manipulate
audiences. It is recording technology that makes such tricks possible, and once
the seeds of doubt are planted, every record becomes suspect.
Though high-profile examples of studio-based trickery were more of an
anomaly than the norm, periodically inadvertent revelations of technological
fraud served to reinforce the mythology of technological deceit. When Milli
Vanilli was videotaped performing a concert where the musical backing
began to skip, it was clear the duo was simply lip-syncing to prerecorded
tracks. The practice of singing to recorded instrumental tracks was firmly
established in pop and dance music circles. Likely, many of these acts also
lip-synced as well. But the video clip of the group’s embarrassed attempt
to lip-sync to the skip gained attention across mainstream news media
outlets. Investigation into the process behind the recording of the album
revealed that the two models whose faces graced the album cover, and
whose bodies danced through their videos, had not sung a single note on
the album, a record for which the group had been awarded a Grammy for
Best New Artist. The award was subsequently revoked, and the scandal led
to a consumer rebate for those who had purchased the album (Behind the
Music: Milli Vanilli 1997). A decade later, Ashlee Simpson would experience
a similar playback issue during an appearance on Saturday Night Live, and
the technological deception mythology was resurrected anew in pop culture
discourse (Out of Sync 2004).
By this time, audiences had come to expect elements of sound playback,
including vocals, in live performance. But studio-based recording practices
became more scrutinized by music fans, especially following the inclusion
of GarageBand in the Mac operating system. With this free software widely
distributed to consumers, knowledge of digital recording practice left the
exclusive domain of the recording professional and served to enlighten

audiences about the possibilities for dramatically altering recorded sound
using a home computer. The animated television series South Park featured
an episode wherein Randy, the hapless father to Kyle, claims to be Australian
electro-pop artist, Lorde (South Park: The Cissy 2014). In the course of the
show, Randy attempts to prove his claim to her identity by demonstrating
to Kyle how he creates recordings as Lorde. With South Park’s trademark
crudely drawn animation, Randy is shown working a DAW program on
his laptop. Randy informs Kyle that he gets his best ideas while sitting on
the toilet at work. He records his awkwardly phrased, badly sung musings
and then imports them into the software when he gets home. With quick
keystrokes, he edits his phrases into more acceptable pop lyrics and creates
a minimalist Lorde-style beat; then by running his voice through various
audio processors, suddenly a quite passable imitation of Lorde is output to
the speakers. Kyle’s face turns to an expression of abject horror before he
passes out on the floor.
This scene became widely disseminated as an internet meme, a prime
example of how mythologies of deception conform to some audience
expectations that most of the music they have heard has been created by
talentless frauds and manipulated with powerful technological tools that
result in more “acceptable” performance. A second meme of a clip produced
by Canadian comedy television show lol:-) made the internet rounds at
around the same time as the South Park clip. Entitled “Sound Engineer’s
Hard Work,” the scene opens in the control room, with the engineer
frantically moving around the mixing console, while a producer stands over
him, enthusiastically mouthing the words to a song being recorded by a
female singing in the recording room on the other side of the glass (2014).
The engineer is moving with ever greater speed, sweating profusely, a look of
intense anxiety on his face. The triumphant pop anthem sounds impressive
as the camera pans past the control room and into the recording room itself,
wherein the audio changes to the sound of a woman screeching wildly off
key. The scene cuts back and forth between the two environments, so that
it becomes clear that the engineer is working technological miracles (in real
time!), turning an abysmal performance into something commercially viable.
Both clips illustrate how technology is cast as a weapon of mass
deception, and the millions of views they have received on the internet
indicate how widespread this mythology is in popular discourse. These
tropes are often cited as proof that contemporary music has no value and
that current technological practices result in vapid, hollow exercises in style
over substance. Older generations of music fans proudly admit that they
continue to listen to the same music they discovered in their 20s. This puts
current musicians in a difficult position; one solution is to emulate older
musical styles, and the most effective way to do this is to reclaim recording
technologies and practices from bygone eras, essentially a move toward
“technostalgia” (Taylor 2001).
Nostalgia and Revisionism

The naturalized processes that give way to myth do so over a period of time,
the ossification imperceptible until their rationale for existence appears self-
evident. The collision of historical eras results in a period of flux where
old practices continue to be enacted, even when new circumstances render
them no longer operative. For most of the twentieth century, technological
development was viewed as a boon for performers and audiences alike—
musicians could take advantage of new tools to expand their artistic range,
and consumers could bring themselves closer to experiencing musical sound
as if their idols were present in their living rooms, or increasingly, as if fans
had been granted access to the studios where the art was fashioned. But by the
end of the century, many musicians began to feel constricted by the practices
that had emerged and codified around multitrack recording processes, and
looked to the past for inspiration. Both jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis
and the alt-pop group They Might Be Giants made recording pilgrimages
to the Edison laboratory, now a National Historic Site, in Orange, New
Jersey (Fabris 1998). They Might Be Giants embarked on a project that
was less about capturing the aura of a bygone era than in playing with
the sonic signatures of the wax cylinder recording device. Eschewing the
electric guitars, synthesizers, and drum machines that defined their sound
in the 1980s, the group performed on acoustic guitar, accordion, tuba, and
minimal drum kit. The lyrics to “I Can Hear You” (Factory Showroom,
1996), the song they recorded at the Edison site, were explicitly about the
limits of sound reproduction and reinforcement, connecting the sound of
the voice coming off of the cylinder to that of a phone call from an airplane,
or the speaker at a drive-thru window. As such, the recording was a meta-
statement on audio quality rather than an attempt to reenact a mythic past.
By contrast, the purpose of the Marsalis session (released on Mr. Jelly
Lord—Standard Time Vol. 6, 1999) was explicitly to perform period jazz
music under conditions that resembled what the musicians who invented
the music might have experienced during the same period that the recording
technology itself was being developed. As artistic director of jazz at Lincoln
Center, Marsalis functions as curator of the genre, possessing depths of
knowledge and demonstrating considerable talent as a performer. Recording
jazz as his forefathers might have done makes that sense of lineage and
ownership explicit. When Marsalis stands before the acoustic horn of the
cylinder recorder, he projects his own sense of himself within the history
and mythologies of the musical form, and the automatic playback of the
recording provides the proof—he sounds just like the recordings he wants
to emulate. The Canadian band Cowboy Junkies embarked upon a different
path toward the nostalgic past, one that focused not on the technology itself,
but rather upon the practices associated with the technology (Timmins 1996).
For their album The Trinity Sessions (1988), the group looked to the “temple
of sound” model of Columbia’s 30th St. studio for its sonic template, while
emulating practice from the era of acoustic recording. Recorded in one day
with a single stereo microphone in an empty church, balances were achieved
by carefully positioning each musician in proximity to the microphone so
that the various amplitudes produced by the instruments and vocals could
be appropriately balanced, just as with the acoustic horn and gramophone.
The examples of nostalgic practice epitomized by the Edison Lab sessions
of Wynton Marsalis and They Might Be Giants illustrate attempts to emulate
the sonic character of iconic technologies. Comparisons between the audio
reproduction capability of wax cylinder used for these sessions and that of a
digital audio tape recorder employed by Cowboy Junkies demonstrate that
similar recording practice will yield dramatically different results depending
on the technology making the recording. The extremely limited frequency
bandwidth and amplitude threshold, along with the considerable surface
noise of stylus grinding against wax, nearly obliterates any audible imprint
of the Edison laboratory acoustics, while the Cowboy Junkies album nearly
drowns in the wash of the reverberant church ambience that is the record's
most identifiable and influential characteristic. All three projects exhibit a
nostalgic re-enactment of recording practices in their infancy. But it was the
Cowboy Junkies’s combination of live ensemble performance, state-of-the-
art technology, and the sonic character of physical space that would prove
particularly influential on a number of musicians, producers, and engineers
to follow, from Daniel Lanois’s atmospheric location recordings to the single
center stage microphone strategy employed during a concert at the Ryman
Auditorium to promote the soundtrack to the film O Brother, Where Art
Thou? (2000), which in turn was filmed for the documentary Down from
the Mountain (2000).
Nostalgia is selective—there are “right” and “wrong” pasts. During
his time fronting The White Stripes, Jack White preached the gospel of
analog tape, proudly noting that their albums were recorded cheaply and
quickly utilizing limited track counts, with no digital editing or processing.
Though White would subsequently champion even older technologies to
make recordings such as his collaboration with Neil Young, A Letter Home
(2014) recorded in a Voice-o-Graph consumer novelty recording booth,
his stance on analog tape mirrored his musical inspirations—pre-rock era
American blues and country (Hogan 2014). For White and many others
(Bennett 2012), the artifacts of the musical past are inextricable from the
technologies used to create them. If the music of the 1940s and 1950s was
better than that of the twenty-first century, so too was the technology and
its associative practices. The opening scene from It Might Get Loud (2008)
features White fashioning an instrument from a chunk of wood scrap,
a piece of wire, some nails, and a magnetic guitar pick-up. The Luddite
reactionary stance is countered by the inclusion of electric amplification.
White draws a line, but while he eschews the technologies developed in his
lifetime, he is comfortable including those established only a generation or
two earlier. His Third Man Records complex in Nashville includes a vinyl
pressing plant, the aforementioned Voice-o-Graph machine, and a studio
designed to resemble those that have been constructed in the back rooms
of radio stations, and furniture and musical instrument stores during the
first half of the twentieth century (Eells 2012). White is not anti-studio, but
rather anti-rock-era-studio.
It is instructive to contrast White’s stance with that of Dave Grohl, the
former drummer of Nirvana, and leader of neoclassic rock band, Foo Fighters.
For Grohl, the technologies, practices, and sonic temples of the classic rock
era serve as his inspiration. Like many musicians of his generation, Grohl
emulates the sound and recording practices of the 1970s when crafting his
own music. But he has gone beyond enacting mythology to proselytizing the
gospel of analog consoles, 2” tape, and the importance of the facilities where
his musical inspirations were crafted. In 2013, Grohl directed Sound City,
an ode to the studio where Nevermind was recorded, and from which he
purchased the Neve mixing console that now sits in his home studio. Sound
City accomplishes on film much of what Recording The Beatles does on
paper; it lionizes the figures, both musical and technological, who worked
at the facility, imparts an aura to the physical space itself, fetishizes the one-
of-a-kind console possessing magical properties, and purports to tell the
history of not only a studio, but also the music industry that fed it during the
studio’s glory days from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. Grohl followed
up the film with Sonic Highways, an eight-part series that featured various
cities and the musical styles and histories that emerged from them. Each
episode showed glimpses of Grohl writing a song that factored details of the
locale, and culminated with the song being recorded in a local facility. The
closing shots served to imply that the historical narrative was present and
ongoing, with dark overtones simultaneously hinting that these facilities’
days were numbered.
It is here that the conflicting mythological narratives come to a head.
Grohl overtly celebrates a mythological past that his documentaries are
meant to enhance and extend. But they are presented as evidence of a past
whose value far exceeds that of the present/future. In this way, recording
studios come to symbolize everything that Grohl and his fans/viewers value
most, a musical language based upon a body of work that is inextricable
from the technological processes used to create it—classic albums/classic
practices/classic rock. This argument is posited as a cautionary tale that
serves to justify to an aging demographic that the music of their youth was
in fact better than anything being created in the present day (unless it is
crafted using the mythological places/gear/practices at the center of the
documentaries). With magnetic tape at the center of this universe, “rockist”
musical tastes correlate to “analogist” studio narratives.
The false dichotomies of real/unreal, natural/artificial, true/false, however
imagined they may be, continue to exert a powerful influence over recording
practices and the reception of the resulting artifacts. Over time, practices
of the past that were labeled “unnatural” at the time become romanticized
as “honest” when compared to contemporary recordings. The passionate
rejection of digital technology is one of the principles of nostalgic recording
mythology established by figures such as Neil Young, Jack White, and Dave
Grohl. Yet a project like The Cowboy Junkies’s Trinity Sessions utilizes
digital technology while rejecting elements of studio practice that had
been formed following decades of analog multitrack tape use. The Wynton
Marsalis experiments with wax cylinders could be viewed as a rejection of
both digital and analog tape technologies, but the one-off nature of that
session signals not a sense that acoustic recording technologies are better
than those that followed, but rather that something has been lost as a result
of the dramatic alterations to conceptions of musical performance rendered
by subsequent recording technologies. The recent documentary series
Soundbreaking (2016) takes a broader view, weaving several mythologies
together that incorporate and welcome a wide variety of music genres
and recording aesthetics. In its egalitarian approach, all methodologies
are considered valid, even when contributors voice negative assessments
of particular practices. But the overall stance of the project still serves to
reinforce the archetypes, narrative tropes, and iconic heroes of previously
marketed mythology while appearing to function as a corrective to more
“rockist” slants to documenting recording history.
Conclusions
Apocryphal stories of studio heroism are far more appealing than a
complete documentation of four hours spent obtaining an acceptable snare
drum sound. Mythologies impose an imagined conception of doing, based
upon elements from stories told about the history of what has been done.
The stories are inherently flawed as factual truth, prone to elaboration,
conjecture, and outright fabrication. Yet they serve as a means of placing a
passive receptor into the active role of imagined doer. In a similar fashion,
stories place the past (and importantly, multiple pasts) in the present. The
imagined doer also imagines being. I am John; I am Paul; I am George; I am
Ringo. I am George Martin and Geoff Emerick. I am Mal Evans bringing the
boys a cup of tea (or “tea,” if I am also a Rutles fan). I am down on the floor
of Abbey Road Studio 2. I am up in the control room. It is 1966. It is 1969.
It is 1996 and I am Andy Partridge in the same physical space, aware of the
history I am living within as I pay for an expensive string overdub (Partridge
and Bernhardt 2016: 320–33). And I am me, reading Partridge’s anecdote,
and placing myself within his mythology, which in turn contains all of the
above-mentioned mythologies. The successful marketing of recording studio
technostalgia has begun to seep into contemporary practice, reflected and
refracted in the creation of new music by composers, performers, producers,
and engineers, as well as the reception of recorded music by its audiences,

who have learned to interpret what they hear through a prism of historical
archetypes and narrative tropes.
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February 10, 2017).
Out of Sync. 2004. Television Broadcast. Fox News, October 10, 15.22. https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCeUwu9gOzk&t=3s (accessed February 10,
2017).
The South Bank Show: The Making of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
1992. Television Broadcast. ITV, June 14.
South Park: The Cissy. 2014. Television Broadcast. Comedy Central, October 8.
Chapter ten
Auto-Tune In Situ: Digital

Vocal Correction and
Conversational Repair
Owen Marshall
Introduction
In recent decades, digital corrective tuning1 has become a standard practice
in many domains of sound recording, particularly that of major label pop
music production. Recording engineers regularly use software such as
Antares’s Auto-Tune or Celemony’s Melodyne in order to correct pitch and
timing problems, especially in vocal performances. While the technique has
gained popular attention through its overt use as an artificial-sounding
vocoding effect, its more common “corrective” use continues as something
of an open secret. This is due in part to a broader controversy concerning the
artistic implications of corrective tuning. While proponents argue that pitch
correction increases the efficiency of studio time and allows greater emotional
expression by reducing the burden of technical skill among musicians, critics
claim that the practice erodes artistic expression, depreciates talent, and
homogenizes music. Popular characterizations of auto-tune oscillate between
the transhuman technological sublime and an inhuman automaticism.
Scholars have examined auto-tuning’s resonances with broader
discourses ranging from the deep play of gender and identity in “camp”
(Dickinson 2001) to the recreational-therapeutic ambiguities of “doping”
(Ragona 2013) and the boundary-troubling potentials of cyborg hybridity
(Prior 2009). This work is complemented by more localized investigations

into the use of auto-tune, for example, by North African Berber musicians
(Clayton 2016) and Egyptian Coptic Christian singers (Ramzy 2016).
Alongside these wide-ranging and richly thematized readings of auto-tune,
my approach here may be taken as critical in that it is deliberately small
scale and mundane. Rather than add to a well-developed conversation
concerning pitch correction’s broader cultural meanings, this chapter aims
to account for it as a specifically situated and contingent socio-technical
practice. By examining an instance of vocal tuning in situ, I aim to show
how a tuned voice is collectively accomplished as an instance of “invisible”
infrastructural labor within a studio’s arc of work (Star and Strauss 1999).
Such an approach helps to answer the question of how certain engineers
(in this case, those working in the Los Angeles–area pop music production
machine) may come to experience a vocal performance as “incorrect” and
ultimately perform an appropriate instance of “correction.” Building on work
in the sociology of repair (Henke 1999), specifically ethnomethodological
approaches to repair and correction within domains of technoscientific
work (Suchman 1985; Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks 1977; Maynard
2013), I present a thick description of auto-tune as a mode of everyday
socially accountable action within the recording studio. Within a repair-
oriented framing, we can analyze digital tuning as an assemblage of activities
occasioning a field of practice, or what Michael Lynch has termed a “topical
contexture” (Lynch 1991). To that end, the tools of conversation analysis
(CA) (Sacks 1992) provide a useful way of highlighting the polyvocality
and temporal emergence of digital tuning in practice. Whereas auto-tuning
is often framed as a unidirectional and deterministic application of a ready-
made procedure (a pitch detection and correction algorithm) to a docile
object (a vocal signal), CA makes specifically legible vocal tuning’s turn-
based, temporally emergent, and fundamentally interactional structure.
Representing it as a conversation between the engineer and the vocal
performance being tuned helps to emphasize the practice’s dialogical
dimensions.
The vocal tuning work discussed here took place in late 2013 at a mid-
sized recording studio in downtown Los Angeles. The recording in question
is that of a California-based rock band with a male lead singer. “Carl”
is a Grammy-nominated audio engineer with many years of experience
recording top-selling popular musicians. The session is depicted here as a
three-way conversation between myself (a participant observer who had
begun working at the studio several weeks prior), Carl, and a prerecorded
track of a singer’s vocal performance, to which the corrective tuning is being
applied. Setting the scene in this way has two main effects. The first is that I
appear as a sort of Greek chorus—a correspondent of the unfolding action
within the scene and a proxy for a broader audience. Over the course of the
scene I echo, amplify, specify, laugh, and “hmmm” along with the tuner and
the tuned. By periodically asking after and helping to track the rationales
AUTO-TUNE IN SITU 177
that go into the task of tuning, I work to collaboratively bring out and make
collectively accountable the reasonings and heuristics of tuning that would
normally be used but not noted aloud.2
The second effect of the CA approach is to cast the tuner and the tuned
in something resembling a ventriloquistic relationship. The vocal track takes
the character of the tuner’s occasionally stubborn interlocutor, even as the
reader understands that the prerecorded but mid-tuning vocal track is in
a process of becoming, by way of the application of the tuning software,
a partial and secondary voice of the tuning engineer. Passing back and
forth between subjective and objective domains, the tuned voice works as
what Michel Serres called a “quasi object” (Serres and Latour 1995: 161).
The tuner-tuned interaction appears as an entanglement of two previously
separate vocalic agencies so as to produce the effect of a corrected voice,
which reflects the combined labor of the engineer and singer while also
“covering the tracks” of that labor. This is not a case, it should be emphasized,
of an agential subject imposing its will on a passive object. Rather, I would
suggest that the prerecorded voice presents a hybrid or second-order agency
by virtue of its entanglement with an actual client to whom the tuner’s
intervention may ultimately be held accountable.
At the same time, the prerecorded voice offers certain material resistances
by virtue of its partial connection to an actual vocal performance and the
material basis of that performance’s digital reproduction. At times the tuner
struggles with the vocal track and the tuning software, which asserts and
remakes itself in emergent and unpredictable ways. In these moments tuning
becomes a “dance of agency” (Pickering 1995) or a play of resistances
and accommodations between multiple material-semiotic voices. In this
particular session, Carl is working partly with vocal takes he recorded with
the band the evening before and partly with rough vocal tracks recorded by
another engineer at a studio across town. The analysis unfolds along three
praxiological themes: inscription, repetition, and intonation.
Inscription
As with much engineering work, tuning is largely a practice of eliciting and
assembling inscriptions (Latour 1987). As a noun, the term “inscription”
refers to a way in which an artifact embodies a mode of use. As a verb,
it denotes the production of enduring traces indexically or symbolically
related to some temporally emergent activity. A key topic of inscription
in vocal tuning is that of the pitch of the recorded voice over time. Most
tuning plugins share a common visual paradigm wherein time is typically
represented as running left to right along the X-axis while pitch and
amplitude are represented vertically, with higher notes corresponding to a
larger value on the Y-axis and larger objects representing greater energy.
This visual organization affords a uniform basis of comparison in the

form of a given musical scale, constructed from some set of possible notes.
Even within this paradigm, there are numerous interpretive contingencies
built into these structures of visual representation and comparison, which
manifest in the various technological styles (Hughes 1983) of tuning tools
available. In addition to functioning as “inscription devices” (Latour and
Woolgar 1986), each tuning program offers its own particular pre-scription
(Akrich 1992), or way of construing the task to which it is being applied,
while also participating in broader shared contexts of meaning (standards
of notation and signal representation, names of component functions, etc.).
These include locally applied naming conventions that make Pro Tools
sessions legible: Carl, for example, has appended “2N” to the label of one
of the vocal tracks, which he explains indicates that it is a tuned track.
1 Carl: 2 N. Which means it’s tuned. ((clack))3
2 (Instead [of)
3 Owen: [mmh:mm
Following the invitation of the keystroke, the prerecorded vocal track makes
its appearance. This particular take is an overdub, or double of the lead
vocal line, but at the end of the second line it veers slightly from the main
melody. The exact way it veers is, as yet, difficult to articulate. To my ears it
is unclear whether the problem is the pitch of the notes or something closer
to the way the singer changes the shape of his mouth over the course of the
“youuuuuu” refrain. Before the actual repair process can begin, this portion
of the vocal track needs to be made accountably repairable. Troubles become
repairable only in relation to their situation. For example, Carl explains
that while the line is not necessarily out of tune with respect to the scale of
the song, its position as a double of the main vocal necessitates correction
because it is currently “rubbing” against the main vocal:
4 S:4 Everything around youu↓uuu
5 Everything around↓youuuuuu↓uu [uuuuu↑
6 C: [If they doubled it
exactly like
7 this we could probably ↑leave ↓it and it’d be fine.
8 It’s just that (.) with all the other vocals
9 there’s no way
10 S: [Everything around ↑yooooouuuuuuuuuu↓uuuu
11 C: [ºIt just sounds like it’s rubbingº(.) really badly
12 O: ↑rubbing? (.)↓yeah
13 (8.6)
14 ((clack))
15 S: Everything around ↓youuuuuuuuu↓uu
16 (3.5)
17 ((>clack clack< clack))
The tactile metaphor of “rubbing” constitutes the trouble as a frictional

play of textures within the compositional scene. At first, however, the
precise way in which the line rubs is indeterminate. Is it a literal rubbing
sound that one might associate with experiences of, say, pencil erasers? As
I listen I work to imagine the sound in order to hear it properly, but neither
of these strategies of seem to track. Carl pulls the offending vocal line up in
the editing window of Melodyne. Whereas Auto-Tune tracks and corrects
pitch in real time, this version of Melodyne needs to first be “fed” the voice
that needs fixing. As the track plays into Melodyne’s grid, it forms a series
of reddish “blobs” of varying height (pitch), size (amplitude), and shape
(timbre). As the note-blobs are inscribed across the window, the rubbing
metaphor becomes more visually literal. The line hitches visibly downward,
forming a new blob apart from the other backing vocals.
The rubbing now appears as the kind you might experience if you
tried to push your way through a crowd of people moving in the opposite
direction. Perceiving the take as falling out of formation and jostling with
its neighbors, initially a task of imagination now becomes one of shared
observation. Carl is further able to see that it should not be a difficult job
to tune this line:
18 S: Everything around ↓youuuu↓uu↑uuuu↓uu

19 C: This one seems ((clears throat)) ºahumº (.)↓pretty easy
20 S: ↓youuuuuu↑uu↓uu
21 (5.1)
Having dealt with the inter-blob domain, the intra-blob now comes into
focus. He proceeds by first “centering” the pitch of the blob, pulling in the
drift of the inner line and making it adhere more tightly to the blob’s main
frequency. He then shifts it down to match the main vocal melody:
22 C: Pitch center it (.2)
23 then change the pitch
24 S: youuuuuuuu
Each Melodyne blob consists of a reddish membrane, which traces the
amplitude—or total energy—of the note at any given moment. The red
skin lightens toward the center of the note, which is positioned vertically
according to the blob’s average frequency. A red line snakes through the
blob, following the pitch drift of the note. If the singer hits the note dead-on
and holds it without any vibrato (fluctuations in pitch too small to qualify
as new notes) the line will be steady and sit within the blob’s membrane.
Notes performed in a vibrato-heavy or otherwise warbly manner will
zigzag and may escape the membrane entirely. They breach the blob, like
springs sticking out of an old mattress. As with the broader pitch-grid,
the note-blob as an inscriptional setting invites alignment, tucking-in, and
pulling together.
Repetition
Whereas inscription is about making something temporal endure in space, or
turning practices into artifacts, repetition is about making something spatial
endure in time, or turning an artifact into a practice. Techniques of inscription
and repetition are ways of producing, assembling, and redistributing relations
of similarity and difference. In the context of tuning, these modes of practice
take on a particular relationship of exchange. They serve as key methods
for the interactive production of identifiable troubles and accountable
interventions, what Lynch calls “turning up signs” (Lynch 1984).
Attending to repetition brings into focus the elements of the tuning practice
that are often easiest to take for granted. My presence in the work thus far, for
example, has largely proceeded by way of nonverbal affirmation (mmh:mm)
or echoing ([↑rubbing? (.)↓yeah). Though I am not adding much in the way
of new information to the actual content of the interaction, my presence is
a key part of how the situation is framed. My affirming and questioning
throughout occasions either a carrying on or a moment of explanation.
This repetitive work of attending is oriented toward the production and
circulation of accountability. Peter Weeks, in a study of temporal coordination
among members of an amateur string ensemble, uses the phrase “double
accountability” to refer to how ensemble members are able to identify and
repair troubles without the audience noticing (Weeks 1996: 216). In order
to identify, contain, and repair troubles in the vocal track, it is necessary to
produce, coordinate, and maintain multiple levels of accountability.
In the case of vocal tuning, we could replace Weeks’s “double” with
“multiple” (or “more than one and less than many”) accountability (Mol
2002). As material-semiotic things, voices come into being already marbled
with veins of error and intention. They occupy local “repair worlds”
(Jackson, Pompe, and Krieshok 2012) that practically configure their
modes of use while conditioning their possibilities for reuse and refuse. The
processes of recording and signal processing entailed in computer-based
music production allow these meanings and repairables to proliferate. To
a person not accustomed to hearing their own voice on record, the voice
can even appear as, to borrow Homi Bhabha’s phrase, “less than one and
double” (Bhabha 1994: 97). A recording of oneself, as a blurring of the
boundary between voicing and writing, has the troubling quality of a
putative interiority coming from the outside-in. Learning to hear a voice as
one’s own has the character of a social accomplishment.
Turning up and tuning out a sign of vocal trouble, similarly, takes work of
social coordination. Accordingly, just as he used inscriptions to make his work
visible to himself and others that might encounter this session in the future,
Carl is announcing his actions verbally in order to make them available to
me. Carl, the singer’s prerecorded voice, the clack of the keyboard, and my
gestures of attendance form a rhythm of work over the course of the session.
This rhythm is partially organized through a process of turn taking, as the

participants try to make way for, and respond to, one another.
When members of a musical ensemble encounter moments of temporal
disagreement, one key method of repair is what Weeks calls a “holding
pattern.” (Weeks 1996: 212) Holding patterns occur when someone does
something unexpected—plays a wrong note or plays the right note too early
or late, for example—at which point other members of the ensemble proceed
to alter their parts, perhaps by holding a note longer or shorter than usual or
repeating a phrase. Holding patterns invite corrections and make it possible
to repair troubles retroactively without making them accountable to the
audience. Like pilots taking second approaches in order to compensate
for a crowded runway, players employ repetition to collaboratively and
improvisationally enact situations as repairable.
Whereas the ensemble performances that Weeks describes feature an “all-
at-once” temporality, digital tuning work is distributed over more disjunctive
timescales. Instead of the holding pattern, we find the repeated take and the
use of looped playback as the primary modes of repetitive repair methods in
vocal tuning. These two modes of repair have a sort of nonlocal entanglement
in that they occur in well-differentiated spatiotemporal scenes, but anticipate
and refer to one another in order to produce the effect of a coherent voice
unfolding in a single moment. Through the use of a hand-written “comp”
sheet, vocal takes are catalogued, not like specimens from which an ideal
single representative can be chosen, but like salvaged parts that, with the right
tools, can be made to work well together. The practice of getting vocal takes,
in this instance, appears as a mode of repetition specifically preconditioned
by the possibility of repair after the fact.
Post-hoc tuning work, meanwhile, is largely treated as a practice of
procedurally recovering a feeling and spontaneity that is supposed to have
been disassembled throughout the process of exploding the voice into so
many individual takes. Decisions as to whether something in the vocal track
is “supposed to be there” imply the back-formation of a coherent vocal
supposition on the part of the vocalist, whether it was ever really there or not.
Tuning is usually directed only peripherally toward producing agreement
between the movements of a vocal trace and the quantized possibilities
predetermined by the pitch-time grid. This is because any agreement’s
adequacy as a criterion for “in-tuneness” is usually conditioned by an
understanding of what the singer was “going for.” Where clarity regarding
the in-the-moment intentions of the vocalist has been exhausted by the sheer
proliferation of moments and intentions over the course of the vocal take
process, the engineer resorts to continuously scrutinizing and fine-tuning a
single take. The looping function works like a rock polisher. It is an ordeal
through which the listener’s ears perform a due diligence, wherein rough
edges are removed, and a certain grain5 and sheen of the voice are made to
come through:
78 S: ↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uu↓uuuuuuuuuuu (.) ↓uuuuu↑uuuuuuu

79 ((click click))
80 ↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uuu↑uu↓uu↓uuuuuuuuuuu (.)
↓uuuuu↑uuuuuuu
81 ↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uu↓uuuuuuuuuuu (.) ↓uuuuu↑uuuuuuu
82 ((click))
83 ↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uu↓↓uuuuuuuuuuu (.)
↓↓uuuuu↑uuuuuuu
84 ((click click))
85 ↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uu↓↓uuuuuuuuuuuuu (.)
↓uuuuu↑↑uuuuuuu
86 ((click click))
87 [continues in this way for ~5 minutes]
88 ↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uu↑uuuuu↑↑uuuuuuuuuu↓uuuuuu↓↓uuuuuu
89 ((CLACK))
90 C: Sh(oo):↑t (3.0) º↓I’m not sure (it’s) supposed to be (↑there)º
91 ((clack))
92 S: ↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uuu↑uu↓uu↓uuuuuuuuuuu (.)
↓uuuuu↑uuuuuuu
95 ((clack))
96 ↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uuu↑uu↓uu↓uuuuuuuuuuu (.)
↓uuuuu↑uuuuuuu
99 ((clack))
100 [continues in this way for ~2 minutes]
101 O: ss:were you not sure what he was ↑going
102 [for? (.)↓err
103 S: [↑uu↓uu↑uu↓uuu↑uu↓uu↓uuuuuuuuuuu (.)
↓uuuuu↑uuuuuuu
104 (1.6)
105 C: Yeah
In everyday conversation, repetition is frequently deployed for general
repair purposes, and correction in particular (Heritage and Atkinson 1984:
41).6 The same could be said of everyday repair of technical objects (e.g.,
rebooting a computer or cranking an engine). Corrective tuning work, by
addressing a voice as both an object requiring technical intervention and a
source of subjective expression belonging to another person, straddles the
worlds of conversational and technical repair. The invitation to repeat is
simultaneously a way of turning up a trouble sign and a way of creating
a space in which that trouble can be dealt with. The repetitive techniques
of vocal correction are ways of testing a vocal track. Trevor Pinch has
used the example of the microphone check to illustrate the basic gesture
of “projection” involved in technological testing: a stagehand repeatedly
checks the mic in order to project that mic’s reliability once it is in the
singer’s hands (1993: 29). Repetition in tuning has a similarly projective
function: the engineer repeatedly tests the vocal performance for problems
and subjects them to repair. Tuning-as-testing provides a way of ensuring
that the voice will “work” across multiple contexts of audition.
Intonation
Within this process of contingent repetition and rhythmic coordination Carl
and I are improvising a sort of prosodic shorthand wherein our conversational
inflections come to move with, make room for, and respond to the musical
inflections of the singer. Again, the infrastructural invisibility of tuning work
in practice is apparent in the way it provisionally straddles domains of
meaning. Though conversational prosody and sung musical pitch typically
form distinct economies of sense, the specific context of showing someone
how to tune a voice produces a sort of “trading zone” between otherwise
disjunct structures of meaning (Galison 1997: 781). In this space of ambiguous
prosodic coding, the affirmations, questionings, tentativenesses, pressings-on,
and focusings-in of everyday speech become partially commensurate with
the meanderings of the singer’s voice as it moves along the terrain of musical
key and melodic motif. They assemble provisional structures of feeling that
allow the shared tasks of tuning, teaching, and learning to proceed.
Even when no one is looking over his shoulder, Carl can occasionally
be heard talking with or otherwise audibly responding to the Pro Tools
session. His interactions with the computer and the voices it summons forth
are usually nonverbal or interjectional. He laughs at, curses out, makes
frustrated noises with, and otherwise invites action from the sometimes-
fickle digital audio workstation (DAW) interface. Most of the prosodic
work taking place between Carl and me has a basis in our habitual everyday
interactions. These should not be mistaken for generalized rules for how
prosody might convey meaning in human speech, but are instead polyvocal
ways of producing shared sense, inseparable from Carl and my personal
histories of interaction. Learning to work with others in the studio means
learning how they speak and how to speak with them. With Carl, for
example, I quickly learn that when something needs to be done, or when
something has not been done correctly, he habitually raises the topic with
an upwardly inflected “oh yeah!” which will generally be followed by an
instruction. (e.g., “Oh yeah! . . . get receipts next time”). This paralinguistic
habit affords Carl the ability to perform a nagging concern as though it has
come out of nowhere and caught him by surprise. Without this interactional
history, the same inflection could enact entirely different meanings.
Some prosodic habits are more on the generic side, however: an upward
inflection, connoting a question or inviting a response, is often resolved by
a downward inflection ([↑rubbing? (.)↓yeah) as a way of indicating that I
am following along, that my understanding may have been snagged upon
a newly deployed term (e.g. “rubbing”), but as the singer continues and I
begin to hear what Carl means, I resolve my invitation to explanation with
a downward inflection ((↓yeah)). The barrier between our conversational
and musical ways of listening and speaking is a permeable one. As the
refrain’s familiar melody rises, it seems to require once again the resolution
of a falling tone. In response to Carl’s “centering” of the note, I respond by
offering a possible synonym, that is, correcting the “drift” of the note from
its center. My flat inflection mirrors that of Carl’s matter-of-fact procedural
accounting (as in line 22’s “then change the pitch”) as does the newly tamed,
pitch-centered, and drift-corrected note:
25 O: The [drift=okay
26 S: [Everything around ↓youuuuuuuuuuooo
Having fixed that particular note to his satisfaction, Carl plays back the
full phrase. He frames the playback by suggesting how he might have used
Auto-Tune instead of Melodyne, possibly with a “weird”-sounding result.
I imagine what the weirder possibility would have sounded like as I listen:
27 C: See with Auto-Tune on [that might sound weird ((coughs))
28 S: [Everything around
↓youuuuuuuuuu
29 Everything around ↑youuuuuuuuuu↓uuuuu
30 C: (clack)
31 S: Everything around ↓youuuuuuuu
32 Everything around ↓youuuuuuuu
33 Everything around ↑youuuuuuuu
We move on to the next line, which should be more or less identical to the
previous one, but presents new difficulties:
34 S: Everything around ↓youuuuuuuu
35 Everything around ↓youuuuuuuuu [uuuu
36 C: [º↑oooo↓oooº
Carl sings along, softly enough that I imagine it cannot be for my benefit.
I realize that he is providing himself with a reference to how the line is
supposed to go. He lets the line run and, again, compares his own sung
version with that of the track:
37 S: Everything around ↓youuuuuuuuuuuuuu [uuuu
38 C: [º↑oooo↓oooº
39 S: Everything around ↑youuuuuuuuuuuuu↓uuuuu
Instead of my usual “hmm,” I respond to the new difficulty with a “huhh,”

which is quickly answered by a severely off-pitch beginning to the next line:
40 O: huhh
41 S: Everyth-
42 C: Oops(.) .hh ha
43 S: [[being sharply retuned]] ↑u↓uu↑↑uu
44 (1.2)
45 -thing around ↑youuuuuuuuu↓uuuu↓uuuuu-
46 ((clack))
47 C: º↑uuu↓uuu↓uuu º ((clack))
48 S: -thing around ↑youuuuuuu↓u↓uuuuu↓uuuuu-
49 C: º↑uuu↓uuu↓uuu º ((clack))
50 S: -thing around ↑youuuuuuuuuuuuu↓uuuuu-
51 C: º↑uuu↓uuuu↓uuu º
52 S: ↓uu↑uuuu
53 ↓u↓uuu↑uu
Carl hunts for the right note, but it seems to be stuck between two quantized
options. As he searches for a note that works, I keep up the rhythm,
acknowledging the trouble with a laugh. Carl’s intonation matches the
uncertain searching of a vocal track in mid-tuning, rising and falling. I echo
his inflection:
54 S: uu↑uu (.5) ↓↓uu↑uu

55 O: haha.
56 C: ºwelpº ↑any↓wa:ys (that’s wha-)
57 O: haa. ↑some↓where betwe:en
58 C: uhn:ha↑
59 S: ↑u↓uuu- ((clack)) -thing around ↑youuuuuuu↓uuuuuu↓↓
uuu
60 everything around ↓youuuuuuu↓↓uuuuuu↑↑uuu↓uu
Though Carl still seems dissatisfied with the exact note he had to settle on,
he decides to play it back in the context of the lead vocal it is accompanying.
Carl’s voice becomes quiet with anticipation, and I clear my throat, as we
wait for the main vocal to respond.
61 C: ºlet’s=see if that passesº

62 O: ((clears throat))
63 C: ((clack)) ºt’s uhh, this oneº ((clack))
[Singer comes in doubletracked with backing vocals:]
64 S: everything around ↓youuuuuuu↓↓uuuuuu↑↑uuu↓uu
65 everything around ↑youuuuuuu↓uuuuo↓ooo
66 everything around ↑youuuuuuu↓uuuuo↓ooo↑oo↓uu
Apparently convinced that the tracks work well enough together that we
can move on, Carl articulates his satisfaction, again in terms of the need to
use Auto-Tune instead of Melodyne. The tools at his disposal provide a key
context for decisions about the adequacy of the intervention. I try to clarify
what Auto-Tune has to do with it, if it is not being used on the track:
67 C: ↑Oka:↓y=↑I’m ↓okay with=that (.) No Auto-Tune this time.

68 ºbus (.) toº (1.5)
69 O: Does >Auto-Tune not let you do <the ↑pitch drift> thing?
(.) Or.
[>’zit justa nother way of doing (.) things<
70 C: [Yeah. It might fight you (.) sometimes.
71 If it’s a long note it might go (.) up and [down
72 O: [uhuhh
73 C: ºOr um (sometimes maybe (.) sound too robot)º
74 O: mmhmm
75 S: everything around ↓youuuuuuu↓↓uuuuuu↑↑uuu↓uu
76 everything around ↑youuuuuuu↓uuuuo↓ooo
77 everything around ↑youuuuuuu↓uuuuo↓ooo↑oo↓uu
Later on, while working on the same song, we come to a falsetto backing
vocal for which Carl opts for Auto-Tune instead of Melodyne. He explains
that, given the quality of the vocal and the type of tuning needed, Auto-
Tune and its previously invoked potential for weirdness may be justified. He
does this playfully, with an exaggerated command that we agree to say the
weirdness is intentional:
78 ((clack))
79 C: Alright, well, Auto-Tune might help with that.
80 O: Mmhmm
81 C: And they’re high vocals so they can be a little weird
sounding.
82 (0.5)
83 O: Mmhmm
84 (2.3)
85 C: [[with raised pitch and rough timbre]] >jus=say it’s on
↑purpose!<
86 O: (laughs quietly through nose:) hfff hfff hff
87 S: uuuuuu↓uuuuuu↑↑uuuuuuu↓uuuuu
If I transcribe part of the above passage as a musical score (Figure 10.1),

certain aspects of the interaction become apparent. It becomes possible, for
instance, to see that each of the first two exchanges find Carl inflecting
downward and resting on the same note (approximately an F#) to which I
respond with an “Mmhmm” on the same, or nearly the same note. Carl’s
third turn (measure 9) begins on his low resting note and quickly jumps up
Figure 10.1 Musical transcription of interaction between Carl and the author.
by a perfect fifth, deviating from the gradual and downward sweeps of his
first two turns.
Spectrographic (Figure 10.2) and pitch tracking (Figure 10.3) analyses
make visible certain aspects of this passage not included in the above
transcription. They also, crucially, obscure elements of the passage,
specifically the line-by-line interactional rhythm with which each passage
sits within the broader exchange. Here are the spectrographic and periodic
pitch representations of the above exchange over time:7
Just as the raised falsetto pitch of the singer is departing from the typical
tonal range of the rest of the song, indexing a certain shift in character and
justifying a tuning technique that may be “weird sounding,” Carl is raising
his own prosodic pitch and applying a gravelly texture in order to enact
the playfulness of his justification for using a weird sound—“just say it’s
on purpose!” From our everyday interactions I know this is the tone Carl
uses when he’s half-joking. It is the same tone he uses on talkback when
faux-commanding the vocalist to do another take with a terse “again!”
With the vocalist absent, and his audience consisting primarily of myself,
himself, and the imagined future auditors of this vocal track, the implication
Figure 10.2 Spectrographic representation of interaction between Carl and the

author.
Figure 10.3 Autocorrelation-based representations of interaction between Carl

and the author.
is that the use of Auto-Tune in this case could be taken either as an instance
of inexpertly attempted “invisible” tuning technique or, alternatively, as a
deliberate creative choice.
In the context of his previous experience of uncertainty as to where and
how the vocal needs to be tuned, the half-joke serves as an acknowledgment
of that frustration and the possibility that the bit of “weird” tuning needs to
be declared and agreed-upon as intentional in order to be clearly accountable
as a deliberate decision. The injunction to “just say it’s on purpose!” serves
a dual role, drawing attention to an ambiguity in the tuning job while also
distancing us from some imagined strict criteria or audit of the tuning job
later on. At this point, we might take Carl’s previous statement that high
vocals are allowed to be a little weird sounding as playfully implying a strict
set of rules. My response of “mmhmm” does not indicate a recognition of
the play in this gesture, but my laugh two lines later serves to correct for this
lack of recognition.
Conclusions: On Producing an Accountably

Unaccountable Transcription
This chapter is not a transparent representation but a situated and
discretionary interpretation of my own experience learning the craft of
one aspect of recording engineering. As such, it is connected to the “actual
practices” of recording engineers less in terms of accuracy of reference
than in accountability to various audiences. My accountability includes my
readers and the system of scholarly production within which I am working.

The latter includes the terms of data collection, disclosure, and presentation
outlined in my Institutional Research Board approval. I have permission, for
example, to use the material collected from my interactions with engineers;
I can reproduce their words and details of their practices with the provision
that I anonymize them. I do not have this kind of permission from their
clients, whose performances, particularly their voices, are both raw material
and final product of an engineer’s everyday labor. Securing this sort of
permission would be unlikely, and even the act of requesting this permission
could jeopardize the reputation of my subjects.
As a pretext for institutionally accountable human subjects research,
this distribution of ownership of voice, and conditions for the collection
and textual representation of voice, should not (at least in theory) be
a problem since I am interested in the work of the engineers rather than
that of the musicians, whose performances they capture and manipulate.
However, the conceit comes into immediate tension with the fact that the
two parties, by virtue of the interactions that serve as the key data for this
project, are deeply involved in the production of one another as socially
accountable actors. The distinction between technical and creative action
is at its blurriest in the recording studio, precisely because this is the place
where the work of generating that distinction gets carried out behind the
scenes. It is not that emotional-creative and objective-technical roles are
dispensed with in-studio; in fact, the studio is precisely where these roles are
negotiated. The exchange entailed by this negotiation gets projected back to
an imagined preexisting role as musician or producer, even as these roles are
being actively produced.
The practical question becomes how to go about removing these
identifying marks, thus eliminating the risk that their performance will be
identifiable in its potentially embarrassing moments of becoming, without
losing those aspects of the tuning practice that I am interested in elucidating.
Working through this practical problem of representational ethics is also a
way of working through the problem of what makes the vocal performance
accountably that of the singer versus that of the tuner (meant here to refer to
both the tuning engineer and the tools they are using). Producing an account
that reveals the hidden work of the engineer and obscures the identity of the
performer is similar to describing a mold-making and casting process without
revealing the final statue. It is the production of something that is, for my
purposes, “accountably unaccountable” (or at least “plausibly deniable”).
This tells us something about what matters to the members of the studio
ensemble, because it reveals what I need to take into account as someone
taking part in and making myself accountable to this ensemble. Displaying
the tools of obfuscation, as with concealing the tools of correction, can help
decide whether and how they ought to be used. The very availability of
digital tuning, whether or not it is applied, has the potential to reshape the
conversation.
Acknowledgments
This chapter was supported in part by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation
Improvement Grant (award #1455647). It also benefited from the valuable
feedback of Samantha Bennett, Eliot Bates, Michael Lynch, Rachel Prentice,
Trevor Pinch, Steve Jackson, Mario Biagioli, Joe Dumit, Jim Griesemer, Tim
Lenoir, Colin Milburn, and Tim Choy.
Notes
1 For the sake of brevity, the terms “pitch correction,” “intonation correction,”
“pitch shifting,” “auto-tune,” and “auto-tuning” (the lowercase “a” indicating
the term’s common synechdochic use), while each having distinct meanings
and connotations, will be treated as roughly interchangeable unless otherwise
specified.
2 Collins (2010) would categorize this normally unexplicated, though practically
explicable skill, as “relational” tacit knowledge.
3 Transcriptions employ Jeffersonian Conversation Analysis notation (Heritage
and Atkinson 1984). Parentheticals denote pauses, (.) denotes a just-noticeable
pause, and arrows indicate upward or downward inflection. Horizontally aligned
brackets and indentation indicate simultaneity of statements on adjacent lines.
Quiet portions appear as in: ºexampleº. Onomatopoeia is used occasionally, as
with “((Clack)),” for an audible stroke of the computer keyboard.
4 S denotes playback of the Singer’s prerecorded voice.
5 Roland Barthes’s phrase “grain of the voice” is often deployed in Sound
Studies literature as a way of describing particularly “rough” or “distinctive”
vocal qualities. This reading, while not incorrect, is incomplete in that it fails
to capture the term’s use for critiquing (or at least socially and historically
situating) a “transmission” model of the voice, wherein coded emotion is
conveyed as a message. As Barthes writes, “The ‘grain’ of the voice is not—or
is not merely—its timbre; the significance it opens cannot better be defined,
indeed, than by the very friction between the music and something else, which
something else is the particular language (and nowise the message)” (Barthes
1977: 185). I use “grain” here precisely in this frictional sense, as something
that is produced where music meets language (which I construe broadly to
include the grammar of the tuning software in use).
6 Echoing a problematic word or phrase, for example, is one common device for
initiating repair:
A: my cousin’s seven inches tall
B: inches?
It can also be used for self-correction:
A: my cousin’s seven inches tall.
inches. feet!
Or as an acknowledgment of acceptance of other-correction:

A: my cousin’s seven inches tall
B: seven feet?
A: seven feet
7 These visualizations were produced with the phonetic analysis program Praat,
available at: http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ (Boersma and Weenink 2013).
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Pa r t f i v e
Mediating Sound
and Silence
194
Chapter eleven
Listening to or Through
Technology: Opaque and
Transparent Mediation
Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen
Despite an emerging interest in analysing the technological aspects of

popular music production (Bayley 2010; Cook et al. 2009; Frith and
Zagorski-Thomas 2016), scholars continue to lack a conceptual framework
for addressing previously ignored aspects of the sound itself. In this chapter,
I propose to add to the analytical vocabulary the concepts of “opaque and
transparent mediation.” Through theoretical discussions and brief analyses
of various music productions, I demonstrate the ways in which these concepts
may help to describe various listening experiences and musical paradigms.
Mediating technology is imperative to all forms of popular music-editing
operations such as splicing, and processing tools such as reverb affect the
sound whether we notice them or not. When we do not, it is because we
perceive the technological mediation as transparent, not because there is
none. Similarly, when we do notice those operations, it is not necessarily
because there are more of them than usual but because they are used in
a way that attracts our attention. If, for example, a track is spliced in a
silent spot, it will be much less noticeable than if the splice interrupts a
sound. The notions of opaque and transparent mediation help to clarify
that what is usually at stake is not whether the music is unmediated or
mediated, or how much mediation is involved, but rather how the mediation
involved in the music is perceived. Transparent mediation implies that the
listener’s focus is directed towards what is mediated and not towards the
technological mediation itself, whereas opaque mediation implies that the
listener is attracted to the act of mediation itself, in tandem with that which
is mediated.1
Opacity and transparency are obviously not inherent qualities of music;
listeners will perceive sound differently according to their personal musical
experience, context and history. For example, a music engineer may notice a
subtle use of compression on a voice, while a listener who has no experience
with music production may perceive the same voice as “natural.” Does this
mean, however, that one’s comprehension of mediation as either opaque or
transparent is arbitrary? Drawing on theories from ecological perception
and philosophy, I suggest that we are more likely to recognize technological
mediation at three specific moments. The first is when it disrupts the
spatiotemporal coherence of the music. The second is when it disturbs our
familiar way of hearing a sound. The third is when it operates at the border
between what we understand as being the music’s interior and exterior.
Opaque and Transparent Mediation

Music-editing tools and processing effects, such as the cut-and-paste tool or
the compressor and equalizer, can be used subtly to embellish and improve
musical performances but also aggressively to create unique aesthetic
effects via distinctive inscriptions of their own on the sound. These various
ways of using and perceiving mediating technology have been identified
by several scholars and assigned different names. In Capturing Sound:
How Technology Has Changed Music, Mark Katz introduces the notion of
“phonograph effects” to illuminate “the manifestations of sound recording’s
influence” on music and listeners (2004: 3). In some of his case studies,
such as his analysis of “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim, the term “phonograph
effect” could in fact be replaced by “opaque mediation.” Yet there is an
important distinction: “phonograph effect” describes any influence that
technology has had on music and the listener, such as how the three-minute
limit of a 10-inch 78 RPM phonograph record dictated (and, following
Katz, still impacts) the length of the popular song (ibid.: 32). Opaque
mediation, on the other hand, only describes the mediation involved in the
musical production that is experienced as exposed. Simply put, all instances
of opaque mediation are phonograph effects, but all phonograph effects are
not instances of opaque mediation.
“Opaque” and “transparent” mediation might further evoke Denis
Smalley’s distinction between the “naturalist work” and the “interventionist
work” (2007: 54). Although Smalley uses his term “naturalist work” in a
way similar to how I use transparent mediation, and “interventionist work”
in a way similar to how I use opaque mediation, I find his terms to be
LISTENING TO OR THROUGH TECHNOLOGY 197
problematic. First of all, the means of achieving transparent mediation might

involve just as much “intervention” as those achieving opaque mediation.
As Andy Hamilton argues in his critique of Boulez’s criticism of progressive
technology, “The purist recording is not, as Boulez thinks, the one without
intervention, but the one where intervention is directed towards creating
a realistic auditory image” (2003: 351). Furthermore, in relation to the
connotations of the “naturalist work,” we must recognize that opaque
mediation is experienced as both unnatural and natural, depending upon
various factors that I will return to later. Therefore, as a qualifier, “natural”
has little to recommend it.
The terms “opaque” and “transparent” mediation might also evoke
the French philosopher Louis Marinʼs application of the same concepts
to painting and semiotics. Marin proposes that “to represent” means, in
short, to present oneself as representing something else (1991: 60). He labels
the representation’s condition of representing something else a “transitive
dimension,” while he labels the representation’s self-presentation a
“reflexive dimension.” Similarly, recorded music is always the sum of (1) its
mediated sounds and (2) the sonic imprints of the technological mediation’s
self-presentation. Consequently, it has both a transitive and a reflexive
dimension. If mediation did not have a transitive dimension, it would not
in fact be mediation, since the term itself necessarily implies that something
is being conveyed. Likewise, to deny its reflexive dimension is to deny
that technological mediation transforms or adds new qualities to sounds.
While Marin uses the descriptors “reflexive” and “transitive” to explain
representation at an ontological level, he uses the concepts of “opacity” and
“transparency” to explain the experiential aspect of the reflexive dimension,
“the various ways in which . . . representation presents itself while representing
something else, the various modes of its self-presentation” (ibid.: 66). While
this description may sound like my notions of “opaque” and “transparent,”
there are certain differences that can be traced to the fact that while Marin
discusses representations, which are based on substitutive signs, I discuss
technological mediation that is not based on signs in this sense. Marin
observes that representational signs, such as letters or paint brushes, must
necessarily be experienced as opaque—they must be seen—in order to be
experienced in turn as transparent to what they represent—that is, in order
to be able to communicate meaning. Marin calls this the “paradox” of the
functioning sign: the sign or representation is at the same time present and
absent, opaque and transparent (ibid.: 55–56).2 The content of a book is
accessible only through its words and letters, and the content of a picture
is accessible only through its paint and brush strokes, but the content of
music, on a perceptual level, is different in this regard. Though we do not
have access to sounds except through mediation, we do not need to hear
the mediation as mediation (i.e. to acknowledge it) in order to hear the
sounds; often the listener does not notice the mediation as distinct from the
sound but associates it with the sounds themselves. When it comes to the
technological mediation involved in the production of music, opacity is, in

other words, not a means of fulfilling the transparency function.
Marin illustrates the various conditions of mediation with a metaphor:
“To be at the same time present and absent is a good visual and conceptual
definition of a transparent thing, a glass pane through which I look at
the landscape beyond. If there are scratches on it, or stains or blotches, I
suddenly see the window pane instead of the garden, its lawn and its trees”
(ibid.: 57). This might seem to be a good analogy for transparent and opaque
mediation: transparent mediation implies a self-presentation (of mediation)
that the listener can completely ignore, whereas opaque mediation implies
a self-presentation that is exposed and thus must be reckoned with. There
are, however, at least two problems with this analogy. First, it assumes that
the foregrounded technology is a flaw, or something undesired, which is
often not the case. Second, it suggests that the mediation is an intermediary
between the listener and the “real world.” While a recording can represent
a preexisting performance, it can never copy it; the recording medium is,
to borrow Theodore Gracyk’s characterization, the primary text in and of
itself (1996: 21). As Jonathan Sterne explains, recording has always been a
studio art: “Even in so-called live situations, the machine required a certain
amount of attention, care, and technique” (2003: 235). In line with this,
Evan Eisenberg questions whether “recording” is an appropriate term for
this format (2005: 89). Based on this acknowledgment, Sterne argues against
what he calls “a philosophy of mediation”: “The medium does not mediate
the relation between singer and listener, original and copy. It is the nature
of their connection. Without the medium, there would be no connection, no
copy, but also no original, or at least no original in the same form” (2003:
226). This argument is like Hamilton’s critique of what he characterizes as
the “transparency thesis”: “However one presents the transparency thesis,
it faces the obvious challenge that recordings are artefacts. The recorded
image, like the photographic image, is always crafted. It is not unmediated;
the medium is significant” (2003: 351). While I totally agree with their
reasoning, I still insist that a discussion of technological mediation and
transparency can be fruitful if we are aware of the different definitions of
the term “mediation” and if we distinguish between mediating/reproducing
events/performances and mediating/reproducing sounds.
The Latin mediates—the etymological source of the verb “to mediate”—
means “to be placed in the middle,” which tells us that mediation forms a
link between two different things, people or phenomena. In line with this,
the term “mediation” is usually meant to signify either (1) the process of
intervening or negotiating in a dispute in order to bring about an agreement
or a reconciliation or (2) an intermediary process realized through a medium
or instrument of transmission. The latter meaning of “mediation” indicates
two further subcategories relating to either the process of interacting or the
act of conveying. Mediation as interaction indicates a two-way process of
communication or affection, while mediation as conveyance indicates the
transmission of something from a source to a receiver, or from one place

to another. The latter form of mediation might involve communicating
something through representations, such as semantic meanings mediated
by alphabetic letters or images mediated by paintings, or it might involve
physical transmission of something through a material medium, such as the
physical transportation of contaminants through water or the processes of
sound transmission. “Mediation,” thus, has a variety of applications, but,
in my use of “opaque and transparent mediation,” I will reserve it for the
process of technological transmission of sound from a source, through a
material medium, to a (potential) receiver.
Music, in fact, is utterly dependent upon various processes of transmission
through a material medium in order to be heard or even to come into being
at all. For instance, a given acoustic guitar sound might have undergone the
following stages of mediation: after being brought to life through the vibration
of the guitar strings, it is first mediated (and affected) by the acoustic guitar’s
body, then by the environmental space in which it occurs. It might then be
electronically mediated by a microphone, and possibly by a compressor. If it
is destined for a recording, it will be further mediated by a mixing console,
a computer interface (which involves the mediation of a preamplifier and an
analogue-to-digital converter), then by a computer, and then by processing
effects and editing tools. Ultimately, it will be mediated by a certain recorded
format (such as LP, CD, cassette, MP3 file and so on). Before the consumer
can actually hear it again, it must be further mediated by a playback device,
and by speakers, and by the environmental space in which the speakers
are placed, not to mention the eardrum. In all these instances, a sound is
travelling through (or is being processed by) technological mediation, and
all these different processes of transmission contribute to the sonic result—it
is the sum of all these processes that constitutes a sound’s identity. Therefore,
sound and mediation cannot be separated at an ontological level. Yet, not all
instances of technological mediation are experienced as a sound’s identity.
For example, if a listener characterizes a sound as “cut up,” the listener
conceptually distinguishes between a sound and a production tool affecting
the sound’s identity. The mediation involved in this process (the cut-up tool)
is thus experienced as part of the music (or part of the music’s interior) but
separate from the sound’s “pure” identity.
While some will regard what happens when the output signal of an electric
guitar enters directly into a distortion pedal before output as mediation that
contributes to the electric guitar sound’s identity, others will regard it as
mediation that is applied to the electric guitar sound. In both instances,
the mediation merges with the guitar sound, but the extent to which we
experience it as integral to the sound or as applied to the sound will vary
according to who the listener is and what the circumstances are, among
other things. Instead of being inherent qualities of sounds, then, opacity and
transparency comprise what Max Weber calls “ideal types,” analytical poles
between which “real life” presents many intermediate positions, meaning
that they describe rather than define reality (1922 [1904]: 146–214). In
fact, the notion of opaque and transparent mediation has derived from my
interest in the many ways we listen, and specifically in the fact that some
of us focus on some forms of technological mediation involved in a musical
production rather than others, and that others of us might ignore those
same forms, and that all of this can change over periods of time that range
from minutes to decades or more. Moreover, sometimes we may experience
the same sound as both opaque and transparent, depending on what context
it occurs in and/or what context we compare it to.
This does not, however, mean that our experience of opacity and
transparency of technological mediation is completely arbitrary. While it
would have been very interesting to test this empirically, I here present a
hypothesis based instead on ecological theory: while people’s experience
of transparency and opacity seems to vary according to time, place, genre,
listener’s background and so forth, there seem to be typical moments when
mediation is usually experienced as opaque. These include those moments
when the technological mediation disrupts the spatiotemporal coherence of
the music, when it disturbs our mental imagination of the sound source’s
“pure” identity and when it straddles the border between “intramusical
mediation” and “extramusical mediation.” This hypothesis is also the reason
why I believe that these concepts can be used not only as perceptual concepts
but also as signals of alternative musical paradigms. In what follows, I
will explain some of the reasons why technological mediation is typically
experienced as opaque at these moments and exemplify some of the ways in
which musicians have explored these moments.3
Opaque Mediation as Musical Paradigm

According to James J. Gibson’s theory of ecological perception (1986), people
(and animals) understand new environments according to their previous
experiences with similar environments. The importance of previous experience
is emphasized by other scholars as well, such as Marc Leman and Albert S.
Bregman. Leman is principally concerned with people’s attribution of meaning
to sound through habits or conventions—what he calls their “cultural
constraints” (2008: 56), and Bregman is interested in the ways in which
experiential regularities form mental “schemas” that affect the perceptual
organization of sound (2001: 43). In his investigations into the listener’s
perception of the spatial image of electroacoustic music, Smalley similarly points
out that people have a “natural tendency to relate sounds to supposed sources
and causes, and to relate sounds to each other because they appear to have
shared or associated origins” (1997: 110). Sounds are, in other words, generally
source bonded, because, as Eric Clarke points out, a fundamental mechanism
of auditory perception is the identification of a sound’s origin (2005: 3).
When listening to music, then, we are likely to make sense of the sound
by comparing it with our previous engagements with sound—that is, an
experience with one sound environment becomes an instant resource for the
structuring and comprehension of a similar environment. For example, because
people in general have a great deal of experience with interpreting sound as
signifying space, their experiences with different acoustical reflection patterns
unconsciously allow them to imagine specific actual spaces when listening
to music.4 What is interesting is that in everyday life, we engage with very
different forms of sonic environments. For example, we regularly encounter
spatiotemporally coherent and source-specific sounds that follow strict
acoustical laws (such as an everyday conversation), but we are also surrounded
by soundscapes where anything and everything goes (such as musical
recordings and soundtracks). People’s awareness of alternative contexts, and
of what rules apply within them, remains very strong. For example, though
a technologically filtered voice may now be naturalized in a musical context,
thanks to the mind’s ability to adjust to new sonic environments with dispatch,
it would be uncanny indeed if the person next to us suddenly started speaking
in that sort of voice. Likewise, if the vocals of a contemporary pop music track
had not been compressed, equalized or processed, that track would likely not
become a hit, even though this is the vocal sound that we are most used to in
an unmusical setting. Relevant here as well is Gibson’s notion of affordance,
and particularly his observation that the same environment might afford
different things in different contexts (1986: 128).
Interestingly, however, it seems as though listeners often draw upon
several sources of reference simultaneously, such as comparing the filtered
voice both to how voices are heard in everyday settings and to how they
often appear in musical settings. Consequently, the filtered voice is at once
experienced as completely normal and as manipulated. To take another
example, it is only against the backdrop of our continued understanding of a
spatiotemporally fragmented soundscape as consisting of spatiotemporally
coherent sounds that have been disrupted that the concept of a musical
montage or collage makes sense. While music that evokes a sense of
surreality generally becomes naturalized over the course of time, the human
mind persists in meeting music not only on its own terms—as a musical
environment in which anything goes—but also in the context of everyday
life. As Smalley points out, “the idea of source-bonded space is never entirely
absent” (2007: 38). And, we might add, neither is the idea of a sound’s
acoustic qualities, such as its spatial and temporal coherence. This friction
between the ecological constraints of listening and the liberating processes
of naturalization generates a perceptual friction in which the technological
mediation involved in the music production evokes the listener’s familiarity
with a sound even as it subverts it. And it is at these moments when sounds
are defamiliarized that they are likely to be experienced as opaque.
Musicians and sound artists have always used recording technologies
artistically to subvert listeners’ expectations, including those linked to
previous experiences with sounds and with the acoustic qualities of sound
(its spatial and temporal coherence). In my summary of the ways in which
technological mediation has been deliberately exposed, I also identify a
third creative means of subverting listeners’ expectations—namely, the
introduction of what is usually conceptualized as the music’s exterior into
the music’s interior. That is, listeners seem to distinguish between what they
conceptualize as technological mediation that is part of the music (such as
the use of processing effects and editing tools) and mediation that is not
part of the music, although it still influences the sounds (a category typically
encompassing file formats and recorded formats, playback devices and
so on—that is, mediation applied after the music is “mastered”). Sounds
commonly understood as exterior to the music that are used in a musical
way often draw attention to themselves and are thus experienced as
opaque. Below, I give examples of all three ways of exposing technological
mediation to listeners while arguing that opaque mediation can, in addition
to functioning as a set of perceptual concept, also signal a musical paradigm.
Spatiotemporal Fragmentation
One of the ways in which technological mediation has been deliberately
exposed is through highlighting the music’s fragmented construction. While
the invention of the phonograph separated sounds from their sources and
allowed for overdubbing (see, for example, Day 2000 and Théberge 1997),
the invention of the magnetic tape recorder made it possible to literally cut
tracks apart and paste them together again through the process of splicing.
The spatiotemporal disjuncture of sound was further ushered along by the
magnetic multitrack tape recorder. Not only could parts be recorded at
different times and in different locations but also, because sounds could now
be recorded through several channels without being automatically bounced
onto a single track afterwards, parts could be treated separately even after
they had been recorded. Consequently, recorded music came to encompass
(and, in turn, imply) a patchwork of sounds recorded at different times
and in different spaces. Digital technology did not “split” these sounds any
further from their sources than the magnetic tape recorder did. However,
thanks to its malleable digital nature (its conversion of sounds into binary
numbers) and non-destructive editable environments, digital technology
has facilitated and accommodated already established editing operations,
making them even more frequent and profound.
Recording musicians have always experimented with the editing
opportunities associated with treating space and time as musical parameters,
including creative ways of exploring spatiality in music. Both delay and reverb
effects may be used to produce a virtual spatial environment that sonically
recreates any “worldly” space, but they may also be used to produce a
spatial design that clearly differs from any familiar actual space. Peter Doyle
points to music recordings as far back as the late 1940s and early 1950s
in which the virtual spaces reveal a “strong sense of ‘manufacturedness,’”
as he puts it (2005: 143). For example, Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant’s
“West of Samoa” (1954) alternates between “dry” and “wet” verses, which,
according to Doyle, “serve[s] to cast the listener in and out of a mysteriously
exotic, more than a little threatening soundscape” (ibid.: 156). When the
magnetic tape recorder became the standard recording medium, musicians
and engineers started experimenting with the tape path of the recording
machine to create an artificial echo or delay (Zak 2001 and 2012). An
example of experimentation with sonic spatiality in the digital domain is
Kate Bush’s “Get Out of My House” from her 1982 album The Dreaming
(EMI). In “Get Out of My House,” the digital reverb and delay present an
otherworldly musical spatiality that clearly differs from any actual physical
environment. One reason for this is the distinctive nature of the reflection
patterns that Bush applies, such as the gated drum sound: the reverb
first suggests a large and empty hall but is then cut off after only a few
milliseconds, rendering the “big” sound suddenly dry. The effect is almost
surreal, as Zak points out in his description of gated reverb as well: “We
are immediately taken from the acoustic world as we know it into a strange
soundscape of unknown dimensions where sounds behave in unfamiliar
ways and the air itself is controlled by machines” (2001: 80).5 The other
reason is the track’s combination of several different virtual spaces at the
same time. For example, at 0:46, the sound of the recording suggests three
different sound spaces simultaneously: a small, dry space for a male voice,
a slightly larger space for the female voice, and a much larger space for the
percussive sounds. While each of these juxtaposed spaces could be heard
to simulate an actual space, the sonic collage they comprise could never be
experienced in reality. Smalley describes this as a spatial simultaneity—that
is, an occasion when “you are aware of simultaneous spaces” in the music
(1997: 124). The listener is here likely to hear the mediation in question as
opaque—the technological mediation comes to the fore by giving away the
game of the music’s fragmented construction.
Another way to make mediation appear opaque is by exploiting the
cut-and-paste tool through an artful disruption of the acoustic qualities of
sounds, in this way highlighting the music’s fragmented construction. While
the cut-and-paste tool is often used in a discreet or entirely hidden fashion to
eliminate unwanted sounds or move a sequence from one take to another, it
is also quite common to take a more experimental approach to cutting and
pasting by highlighting these operations. In the analogue era, this type of
editing involved razor blades to physically cut and splice actual audiotape;
composers who experimented with it included William S. Burroughs, John
Cage, Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others. For
example, Stockhausen inserted leader tape—that is, blank, nonmagnetic
tape normally used at the beginning and ending of a track—between sounds

to create percussive, stuttering effects (2002: 135). Such artful disruption of
the acoustic qualities of sounds has a longer trajectory as well. For example,
Schaeffer produced a similar cut-up effect by using a disc cutter to lock
grooves in the phonographic disc to repeat the sounds therein (ibid.: 92). In
the digital era, the cut-and-paste operation involves the cursor and mouse-
click of the computer-based sequencer program, or some experimentation
with samplers or software, which is significantly less time consuming and
thus more common. As Caleb Kelly points out, stuttering and skipping
sounds “are now simply another part of the sound palette of the digital
producer” (2009: 10). For example, “50 Cycles” (Ultravisitor, Warp, 2004)
by Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) is characterized by clear traces of cut-
ups in its stuttering freeze-and-flow style. Jenkinson explains that he used
the Vegas DAW software by Sonic Foundry/Sony (now owned by Magix
Software GmbH) “to assemble literally thousands of edited pieces of audio”
when producing this track (Tingen 2011). The vocals are all chopped up, and
the sound pieces are often separated by short signal dropouts, so that each
sound starts and stops abruptly. Other times the vocal sounds are chopped
up, copied and pasted consecutively, producing a staccato stutter. The
vocal sounds are occasionally also repeated numerous times at such short
intervals that the listener hears a percussive “drumroll” effect rather than
a straightforward stutter. The song’s incomplete sounds, abrupt transitions
between sound sequences, signal dropouts, stuttering rhythms and other
percussive cut-up effects all demonstrate its spatiotemporally fragmental
nature and, as such, draw attention to the technological mediation involved
in the production of the song.
A third means of exposing a musical track’s spatiotemporal disjuncture
of sound, making the mediation appear opaque, is through the use of
samples that are recognizable to a broad group of listeners, or at least
recognizable as samples. With music that highlights the samples’
“quotation marks,” the mediation is likely to be experienced as opaque
because the samples reveal themselves as what they are: extracts from
a preexisting recording that have been inserted into a new context via
some technological means. While sampling has a long trajectory, I will use
contemporary mashup music as a case study here. Mashups are generally
characterized by their use of nothing but samples from popular recordings.
Usually, the manipulation of these tracks is concealed, to achieve an
audience response along the lines of “These tracks shouldn’t go together
but they do!” The meaning-making in mashups takes place within the
listener’s constant negotiation between the sources as presented in the
mashup and the sources as presented in their original contexts (see, for
example, Brøvig-Hanssen 2016; McGranahan 2010 and Sinnreich 2010).
The mashup, then, openly announces its own fragmented construction in
order to generate new meaning.
Mediation Comprehended as Applied to Sounds

While musical spatiality, cut-ups and the use of recognizable samples may
expose the technological mediation by highlighting the music’s spatiotemporal
fragmentation, the technological mediation involved in the musical
production process also often comes to the fore when it disturbs our notions
of a sound source’s “real” or pure identity—that is, when we experience
the sounds as sonically transformed by technological mediation. However,
as already mentioned, the elasticity as to what is regarded as “natural” or
“pure” sound is vast and will differ from listener to listener and context to
context. I will therefore exemplify this form of opaque mediation with the
technologically manipulated voice, since it is in a category all its own—as
Canadian composer and writer Barry Truax points out: “The first sounds to
which the ear is exposed as it develops in the foetus are human sounds, and
from that point onward, the voice and human soundmaking are the sounds
to which we are most sensitive as listeners” (2001: 33). Our sensitivity to the
voice is evident when we listen to singing that is clearly impacted by pitch-
shifting devices such as Antares’s Auto-Tune software, which can transform
slightly off-key sounds into exact pitch levels. While this effect, often referred
to as “auto-tuning,” is usually used subtly and discreetly in the service of
improving pitch in a given performance, it can also be used to eliminate both
the natural vibration of the human voice’s sustained tones and the natural
sliding transitions between different tones, which in turn makes the vocal
performance sound mechanical and robotic. This opaque use of auto-tuning
was made famous by artists such as Cher, with her 1998 hit “Believe” (one
of the best-selling singles of all time), and contemporary rap and R&B singer
T-Pain, who has made it a trademark of his sound. But over the last decade,
in particular, the exaggerated use of pitch-shifting tools has appeared in a
wide variety of popular music genres and supplied a wide range of aesthetic
effects.6 For example, in 2009 the American indie folk band Bon Iver released
their EP Blood Bank (Jagjaguwar) with their characteristic track “Woods,”
which is an a cappella choir performance consisting of overdubs of Justin
Vernon’s voice, in which each overdub is clearly auto-tuned. The folk- or
hymn-like melody, the polyphonic a cappella vocals and Justin Vernon’s
tender and passionate delivery of the lyrics create an introspective, almost
spiritual, atmosphere that supports the track’s message about seeking peace
and slowing the passage of time. The substantial and opaque use of pitch-
shifting on the vocals, in the manner of Cher and T-Pain, disturbs the vocal’s
characteristically “human” qualities, and yet, interestingly, this particular
hybrid of human and technology somehow manages to create a unique
emotional and sensual atmosphere that neither the human vocal nor the
technology could have managed on its own. Even though the vocal and the
pitch-shifting tool are completely merged in this song, the listener is likely to
experience the performance as a hybrid between the sound source and the
mediation applied to the sound source, because the technological mediation

upends our notion of a pure vocal sound.
Straddling the Border Between “Intramusical”

and “Extramusical” Mediation
A third way in which the mediation’s self-presentation is likely to be
recognized as opaque and as a means of creating an aesthetic effect is
through its challenge to our dichotomy between interior and exterior
sounds—between the sounds that “belong” to the music and the sounds
that reside beyond it. Above, I noted that stuttering, cut-up sounds draw
attention to the technology involved because they reveal that the music is
a fragmented constellation. Another reason why cut-up sounds are likely
to be experienced as opaque mediation is that they are often entangled in
associations of malfunctioning technology, such as a CD player that has
problems reading the information on a scratched disc or a computer program
that halts or freezes during playback of an audio file.7 While some music
productions are based purely on technological glitches, others stage the
glitchy sounds of skips, stutters, hangs and signal dropouts as passing effects,
between which we are meant to sense a coherent musical performance. This
is the case for Squarepusher’s “50 Cycles” (2004), mentioned above. Even
if we understand these glitchy sounds to be part of the composition, they
are not so easily released from their associations with technological failure.
That is, skips and stutters designed for aesthetic purposes are not what
we traditionally think of as music, yet they are somehow more artful and
musical than glitches occurring naturally. This produces a further ambiguity,
or perhaps a sense of double meaning: the skips and signal dropouts are
at once unmusical elements (that are played with in a musical way) and
musical elements in their own right. When these traditionally undesirable
and certainly unmusical sounds are used to musical ends, they seem to
straddle the border between the music’s interior and exterior.
It is arguably the music’s contradictory double meanings—it both is and
is not a traditional performance; the glitches both are and are not part of
the music—that supply its compelling tension. The cut-up sounds thus make
the listener aware of the recording/production medium’s double function, to
mediate and to be that which is mediated—it presents itself while it mediates
or represents something else.
Another instance of sounds that seem to straddle the music’s interior and
exterior is when the sonic imprints that the recording or playback medium leaves
with the sounds are used to aesthetic ends. Before the introduction of digital
technology, recorded sounds had always been enmeshed in the noises inherent
to the mediating process. Digital recording and playback media, on the other
hand, seemed to eliminate most of those sounds. In the age of their potential
absence, then, the noises from previous recording and playback media that had
been eliminated enjoyed a rebirth of sorts, as artists and listeners revitalized
and revalued what had formerly been regarded as simply the limitations or
by-products of the equipment. For example, as part of a countercultural
reaction during the 1990s to the promotion of digital technology’s “victory”
over low fidelity, several musicians made recordings during this time that
featured the sound of pre-digital recording and playback media, and pre-digital
instruments and other music equipment. Amplified vinyl noise, for example,
can be heard on Portishead’s “Strangers” (Dummy, Go! Discs/London,
1994), Alanis Morissette’s “Can’t Not” (Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie,
Maverick/Reprise, 1998), Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” (Mezzanine, Virgin,
1998) and Moby’s “Rushing” (Play, V2 Records, 1999). Vinyl noise and other
sounds associated with pre-digital technologies’ “limitations” are today very
commonly used as aesthetic effects in popular music productions. Yet even
though we understand these sounds to be conscious aesthetic choices rather
than a casualty of the available technology, part of their aesthetic value lies
exactly in their double meaning: they function as musical sounds at the same
time as they are thought of as intrinsically related to (outmoded) playback
media—that is, as the result of extramusical mediation.8
Conclusions
In this chapter, I have used the terms “opaque” and “transparent” mediation
to describe two analytical and perceptual poles between which there exist
many intermediate positions. In both instances, the mediation merges with
the sounds. Instead of describing how much mediation is involved, then,
these concepts describe the extent to which we experience the mediation as
integral to the sound or as applied to the sound. This experience will vary
according to who the listener is and/or what the circumstances are, among
other things. Transparent mediation implies that the listener’s focus is directed
towards what is mediated (the mediation is experienced as merging with the
sound), whereas opaque mediation implies that the listener is attracted to
the act of mediation itself, in tandem with that which is mediated.
While the extent to which the technological mediation involved in a
production is perceived as opaque or transparent will vary from listener to
listener, I argued that our experience is not completely arbitrary. Mediation
is usually experienced as opaque at those moments when it disrupts the
spatiotemporal coherence of the music, when it disturbs our mental
imagination of the sound source’s “pure” identity and when it challenges
our notion of what is “extramusical mediation” and what is “intramusical
mediation”—it is during these moments that it gains the most attention.
This hypothesis, which I based on theories on ecological perception, further
implies that these concepts can be used not only as perceptual concepts but
also as signals of alternative musical paradigms. In musical examples such

as those analysed in this chapter, the aesthetic potential of the mediation’s
self-presentation is scrutinized and its opaqueness celebrated. And what
is sometimes described as a lesser degree of mediation should instead be
recognized as transparent mediation and, correspondingly, as a rhetorical
attribute or aesthetic strategy that is every bit as purposeful as the alternative.
When music is criticized for being inauthentic because it is too reliant upon
technological manipulation, it is usually not the involvement of mediating
technology that is under attack. What is criticized, or alternatively saluted, is
instead the musical aesthetic that privileges its opacity over its transparency—an
aesthetic that seeks the overt and expressive use of editing tools and processing
effects, and that endorses the moments when these mediating technologies are
allowed to generate unique sounds and carry meanings of their own.
Notes
1 My notions of “transparent mediation” and “opaque mediation” were first
introduced in Brøvig-Hanssen 2010.
2 Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin apply the concepts of transparency and
opacity in a fashion reminiscent of Marin in their descriptions of different
forms of “remediation” (Bolter and Grusin 2000: 45).
3 For extended analyses of some of the songs discussed in this chapter (Kate
Bush’s “Get Out of My House,” 1982; Bon Iver’s “Woods,” 2009; and
Portishead’s “Strangers”), see Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen (2016).
4 For further discussion of the natural and surreal soundscape and ecological
perception, see Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen (2012).
5 For a discussion of how the British producers Hugh Padgham pioneered this
“gated reverb” effect using analogue technology, see Zak (2001: 79–81).
6 For discussions of the artistic use of pitch-shifting tools, see, for example,
Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen (2016), James (2008), Prior (2009) and
Marshall (this book).
7 Audio files require a large amount of processing power from the computer,
and in the 1990s, when processing power was still quite expensive, the
computer’s playback of audio files often ended in hiccups or crashes due to
buffer underruns.
8 For discussions of glitch music, see, for example, Bates (2004), Cascone
(2000) and Young (2002).
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C h a p t e r t w e lv e
Six Types of Silence

Richard Osborne
In 2012 the Hayward Gallery in London hosted an exhibition devoted to

“Invisible Art.” White canvases and empty plinths were put on display. The
exhibition was revelatory, not least in outlining the extent and variety of
intangible works. The show’s curator, Ralph Rugoff, compared the situation
in fine art to the situation in music, claiming that “in music you only have
one person do a piece of silent music but somehow in art, artists kept coming
back to the subject” (Brown 2012).
The music he had in mind is John Cage’s 4’33”, the “silent” composition
that is most commonly known. Cage’s work caused outrage at its premier in
Woodstock in 1952. The pianist, David Tudor, sat at his instrument but did
not play it. Instead he opened and closed the lid three times, marking out
the movements that comprise the 4’33” duration of the work. This caused
“a hell of a lot of uproar . . . it infuriated most of the audience” (Revill
1992: 166). Reactions have changed, however. 4’33” has become a cultural
touchstone. It is one of the most recognized and popular pieces of avant-
garde music, a composition that is both widely “understood” and widely
“misunderstood” (Gann 2010: 11). Rugoff is nevertheless mistaken when
suggesting that Cage is the only person to do a silent piece. In the first
instance, 4’33” has predecessors. Second, it is not silent. Third, there have
been further explorations of “silence.”
It matters where you listen. When it comes to the notated compositions
of art music, 4’33” has cornered the market in muteness. It has proven
difficult, conceptually, to move beyond Cage’s blank score. However, if we
concentrate instead on record production we find many new silences. These
recordings, moreover, introduce new theoretical ideas. In the following I will
outline six types of silence, sounding out hushed music that has too often
been ignored. I will commence with 4’33” and its art music precursors and
descendants. Second, I will look at recorded silences that consciously homage
Cage. Cage was not an advocate of recording process. As such, when 4’33”
enters the realm of production his work is immediately transformed. Third,
I will examine the use of silence to politicize record production. This usage
reflects the fact that to be silenced, or to choose silence, can be a radical
act; silence here constitutes a form of protest song. Fourth, I will examine
memorial silence. These recorded silences are consciously marked off from
the noise that surrounds them; they are a response to the amplification
of the modern age. Fifth, I will address the ability of silence to reveal the
characteristics of recording technologies. Silence has demonstrated both
the ambiance of analog records and the “alien clarity” of digital carriers
(Loder 1991: 94). Finally, I will attend to ways in which silence has become
entangled with the economics of music royalties and copyright. Some people
have questioned the right to author silence, while others have used silence to
quietly generate funds. Silent records tell a secret history of sound recording.
This history does, however, begin with the notated work of Cage.
Notated Silence
The precursors to 4’33” are few in number. Moreover, each of these works is
of a different character to Cage’s composition. They differ in their conceptual
intentions and they differ in their relationship with sound. The earliest silent
work documented is Alphonse Allais’s Funeral March for the Obsequies of
a Deaf Man from 1897. This punning composition consists of nine blank
musical measures. In 1906, Charles Ives wrote Central Park in the Dark
and its companion piece The Unanswered Question. In the first work “the
strings represent the night sounds and silent darkness”; in the second they
stand for “The Silences of the Druids—who Know, See and Hear Nothing”
(Brooks 2007: 102). In both they are scored silently. These compositions
are not mute, however. As the strings recede, other compositional elements
take their place. Erwin Schulhoff’s Fünf Pittoresken (1919) is quieter. Its “In
futurum” movement is made up solely of rests. Lastly, Yves Klein, whose
invisible paintings were in the Hayward Exhibition, was also an invisible
composer. His 40-minute Monotone-Silence Symphony from 1949 includes
20 silent minutes.
4’33” marks a revolution in the use of muteness. These predecessor
works aim for silence; 4’33” does not. It was inspired by Cage’s visit to an
anechoic chamber, a room that is insulated from external sound and which
can absorb all reflective sound occurring within. The chamber revealed to
Cage that “try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. . . . There is always
something to see, something to hear” (Cage 1978: 8). He became fascinated
SIX TYPES OF SILENCE 213
by the ubiquity of sound and sought to dissolve the boundaries between

intentional music and outside interference. Cage maintained, “If the music
can accept ambient sounds and not be interrupted thereby, it’s a modern
piece of music” (Davies 1997: 449). His composition is also influenced by
Robert Rauschenberg’s white paintings. It excited him that these works
“caught whatever fell on them” (Cage 1978: 108) and he admired them
as “mirrors of the air” (Cage 1990: 26). After seeing these paintings, Cage
felt he must press on with the composition of 4’33”. He declared, “I must;
otherwise I’m lagging, otherwise music is lagging” (Gann 2010: 160).
4’33” maximized the possibility of ambient intrusion: its 1952 premier
was consciously located outdoors. Kyle Gann has noted, “In setting 4’33” for
the first time in the sylvan deciduous forest of the Catskill mountains, Cage
asked his audience to listen to the murmur of American nature as music”
(ibid.: 28). Cage delineated what they heard: “You could hear the wind
stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops
began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made
all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out” (ibid.: 3). He
maintained, “The piece is not actually silent . . . it is full of sound, but sounds
which I did not think of beforehand, which I hear for the first time the same
time others hear” (ibid.: 191). Although Cage downplayed his agency in this
respect, 4’33” was presented as his own composition: it was framed and it
was performed. It was also copyrighted in his name.
Within art music it has been hard to author new “silences”; Cage has
claimed the idea of the blank composition. And so, while there have been
successor works to 4’33”, these have not escaped its spell. György Ligeti,
for example, created silences in homage. His Three Bagatelles for David
Tudor (1961) name-checks the first performer of Cage’s piece. Two of these
bagatelles are made up of a single bar that denotes a whole-note rest; the
third includes a single piano note. Cage too found the influence of his most
“important” work inescapable (Gann 2010: 15). He composed the music-
free 0’00” in 1961, a work that “does not depend on time” (Solomon 2002).
It is also known as 4’33” No 2.
Phonographic Cageian Silence

It is both ironic and fitting that the legacy of Cageian silence is stronger in
record production than within notated composition. Cage had an aversion
to sound recording. He was insistent that 4’33” should be performed only
in person: “What really pleases me in that silent piece is that it can be played
any time, but only comes alive when you play it. And each time you do, it is
an experience of being very, very much alive” (Cage 1981: 153).
Cage’s advocacy of the liveness of performance over the lifelessness
of records falls into a tradition that is as old as sound recording itself. In
1906, John Philip Sousa railed against “canned music,” maintaining that the
playing of records would replace the playing of instruments:
Under such conditions the tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until
there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant.
Singers will no longer be a fine accomplishment; vocal exercises will be
out of vogue! Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken?
What of the national chest? Will it not shrink? (Sousa 1906: 281)
Cage echoed these sentiments in a 1950 lecture:
Would you like to join a society called Capitalists Inc.? . . . To join you
must show you’ve destroyed at least one hundred records. . . . A lady
from Texas said: I live in Texas. We have no music in Texas. The reason
they’ve no music in Texas is because they have recordings. Remove the
records from Texas and someone will learn to sing. (Cage 1978: 125–26)
Cage was also a supporter of the anti-recording crusades of musicians’

unions. He endorsed the ban on recording sessions that was initiated in
1948 by James Petrillo, the head of the American Federation of Musicians.
Petrillo’s principal objective was to safeguard the livelihoods of performing
musicians, whose jobs were threatened by the increased use of recorded music
in venues and by broadcasters. There was also a phenomenological aspect to
union activity. The British musicians’ union, for example, campaigned under
the slogan “keep music live,” implying in the process that sound recordings
were dead. Cage saw a deadening hand in all recorded media, which is why
the unions’ campaigns piqued his interest. Speaking in 1948, he revealed
that “Since Petrillo’s recent ban on recordings took effect on the New Year, I
allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy of how normalizing the effect might
have been had he had the power, and exerted it, to ban not only recordings,
but radio, television, the newspapers, and Hollywood” (Kahn 1997: 568).
And yet, despite these views, it is appropriate that record production has
been the locus for Cage-inspired works. Sound recording was the object
as well as the target of his practice. 4’33” has an unrealized predecessor.
Speaking in 1948, at least three years ahead of the visit to the anechoic
chamber, Cage detailed his plans for a completely silent piece (Gann 2010:
160). He wished “to compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and sell it to
Muzak Co” in the hope that they would record it onto discs (Kahn 1997:
571; Gann 2010: 128). Cage stated, “It will be 3 or 4-1/2 minutes long—
those being the standard lengths of ‘canned’ music—and its title will be
Silent Prayer” (ibid.). Descendant recorded silences are more closely aligned
with this work than they are with 4’33”.
The Muzak Corporation launched their format of programmed music
in 1934. They consciously aimed to rob music of human character,
electing to use unobtrusive instrumental recordings, which they “piped”
into workplaces, transportation, and shopping centers with the aim of

stimulating trade and retail. Jonathan Sterne has noted that “In order for
there to be programmed music, music must already have become a thing—it
must be lived through its commodity status” (1997: 45). Muzak thrived
upon the tendency of sound recording to reify and commercialize music. By
mid-century, the format was becoming increasingly pervasive (Gann 2010:
130–32). Cage sought to silence the Corporation’s output, at least for short
periods, by offering them the use of Silent Prayer. The proposed lengths of
his compositions corresponded with the contemporary duration of 10” and
12” shellac records, which the company was then using to broadcast its
works.
In the United States, the menace of mechanical music was becoming more
widespread generally. It was in the mid-twentieth century that the jukebox
rose to prominence. Following the repeal of Prohibition, the number in use
grew rapidly, from about 25,000 in 1934 to quarter of a million by 1939
(Chanan 1995: 83). As well as transforming the market for recorded music,
the jukebox altered its repertoire. Music became louder, more percussive,
and electrified; rhythmic sounds were required for noisy meeting places
(Osborne 2012b: 119). This prompted further campaigns against recordings.
Cage itemized a news report from the New York Post, January 16, 1952:
“Darling,” said a fresh to a coed, “they’re playing our song.” For the
first time since a juke box has been installed in the Student Union of
the University of Detroit, she heard him. The place was swinging way
out to one of those new sides called “Three minutes of Silence.” That’s
it—silence. The student puts his dime in and he takes his choice, either
the 104 jump records on the big flashy juke box or on one of the three
that play absolutely nothing, nothing but silence. (Gann 2010: 133–34)
The idea of the silent jukebox lived on at Detroit University. In 1959 a

group of students set up “Hush Records,” manufacturing their own silent
discs as a means of combating the thud of rock ‘n’ roll. They also organized
a “silent music recital,” for which they issued a blank souvenir program
(Silent Music Recital 1960: 23). Despite these high art concepts, the students
gave no credit to the inspiration of Rauschenberg or Cage. The popularity
and newsworthiness of their schemes do nevertheless suggest the climate in
which 4’33” began to receive greater accord. As the power of noisy rock ‘n’
roll records increased, so did the power of silence. It gained advocates and
it gained resonance.
The response from within popular music has been twofold. There have
been artists who have defended the music’s uproar, witness Slade’s “Cum
on Feel the Noise” (1973), the Damned’s “Noise, Noise, Noise” (1979), or
AC/DC’s “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” (1980). Conversely, there
have been recording artists who have aligned themselves with Cage and his
dislike of sound recordings. This apparently contradictory behavior should
not come as a surprise. One of the effects of the pervasiveness of recorded

music is that, as per Silent Prayer, recordings have been the location for
critiques of the form. Popular music is mass culture that reflects upon mass
culture. Moreover, as Dave Laing has noted, many of the most pointed
dismissals of popular music have been found “within popular music rather
than between it and some more admirable artistic product” (1985: 15).
Cage has been useful in this respect. He has been an idol for performers
who wish to distinguish themselves from the mainstream. This is not to say
that recording artists who have assumed his mantle have a deep commitment
to or knowledge of his work. For example, there are bands that have nodded
toward the composer by issuing silent recordings that last for 4’33”. This
includes the Magnetic Fields, who in 1995 released a CD compilation of
their first two albums, The Wayward Bus and Distant Magic Trees, bridging
the gap between the two releases with dead air lasting this duration. In
2000, Covenant released a silent track of the same length on their album
United States of Mind. However, the very act of creating a sound recording
represents a misreading of 4’33”. This work is instead more closely aligned
with Silent Prayer than with Cage’s performative ambient piece. The
Covenant recording does nevertheless have a “keep music live” inspiration.
It is titled “You Can Make Your Own Music.”
Other recording artists who have paid homage to 4’33” have
misrepresented Cage’s earnestness. Some have considered the work to be
a prank, whereas Cage had been “afraid that my making a piece that had
no sounds in it would appear as if I were making a joke”; he stressed, “I
probably worked longer on my ‘silent’ piece than I worked on any other”
(Gann 2010: 16). An example of a humorous reinterpretation of 4’33” is
“(Silence)” by Ciccone Youth (an alias used by the alt-rock group Sonic
Youth). This track was included on The Whitey Album (1989), distributed
in the UK by the aptly named Mute records. The group joked that they had
produced a “radio edit” of Cage’s work, indicated by the fact their recording
lasts for 1’03” (The Whitey Album 1989). In doing so, they too drew their
work closer to Silent Prayer than to 4’33”. Cage’s Muzak recording was
planned for differing durations dependent on differing sizes of records.
While these artists allude to 4’33”, they do not recompense Cage. They
fail to credit him as the composer of their recorded silences. Covenant and
the Magnetic Fields betray a lack of faith that such work can be authored:
their silences bear no composer credits. “(Silence)” by Ciccone Youth is
credited to the members of the band rather than to Cage. In fact, Frank
Zappa is virtually alone in having produced a recorded version of 4’33”
that is silent and credits Cage as its author. His interpretation appears on the
Cage tribute album A Chance Operation (1993). This was one of Zappa’s
final recordings, a poignant conclusion for an artist who spent much of his
career pushing the boundaries of recording processes.
In addition, there are versions of 4’33” that credit Cage, but which take
liberties with his work. In 2002, Korm Plastics issued the CD compilation
45’18”, which features four versions of 4’33” and a further five recordings
that reference the piece. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth has another
attempt at the work here, but uses the concept of an empty score to liberate
his musicians to make “instantaneous and improvised music” (Gann 2010:
190). Other versions on the album, such as those by Keith Rowe and Pauline
Oliveros, are quiet but not entirely silent. There are also versions that,
contrary to Cage’s “live” music and Arcadian ideals, are focused on recording
processes. The one by Alignment, for example, features the amplification of
digital recording equipment that a listener would not normally hear.
And yet this maneuver is also supportive of Cage’s work. He intended 4’33”
as a framework in which to bring everyday sounds to life, believing these
sounds would gain renewed focus if they were staged. Cage stated, “What we
hear is determined by our own emptiness, our own receptivity; we receive to
the extent we are empty to do so” (ibid.: 191). And so, just as 4’33” brings
the ambient sounds of nature to the fore by situating them in a performance
context, Alignment’s interpretation brings the “natural” sounds of the recording
process to the fore by making them the focus of a recording. These sounds are
usually more forcibly silenced than the sounds of nature, however. As Andy
Hamilton has argued, a paradoxical aspect of the urge toward “realism”
within sound recording is a belief that “the medium is insignificant, and should
not intrude itself” (Hamilton 2003: 350). This is particularly the case within
classical recording, which is dominated by a documentary ethos that suggests
music should be heard as “originally performed” (ibid.: 351). And so, even if
the noises of recording machinery are present during a performance, they will
either be left unrecorded or be removed.
This is not the only recording aesthetic, however. Popular music recording,
as Hamilton notes, is less concerned with documenting a preexisting
performance; it instead produces “an entirely new sound object” (ibid.:
353). Nevertheless, here too the “non-musical” noise of machines—whether
the hum of recording equipment, the buzz of amplifiers and microphones,
or the metallic squeaks that drum kits can produce—is usually absent from
the final recording. Some artists do attempt a “natural” process by including
the ambience of machinery as part of their sound mix. Nevertheless, so
dominant is the aesthetic of noise reduction that any attempt to reverse
it can only be self-conscious, an example of popular music’s “inauthentic
authenticity” (Grossberg 1997: 225).
Recording processes are in evidence in the most commercially successful
version of 4’33”. Cage Against the Machine recorded the piece in 2010
with the aim of securing the Christmas number one in the UK singles
chart. This project, contrary to Cage, finds humor in the work. The group’s
name is a punning allusion to Rage Against the Machine, the band who
had unwittingly gained the previous year’s Christmas number one via a
similar campaign. Their comedic record captures the hum of equipment
in a recording studio, along with the shuffling feet and bodily sounds of
the performers (these background sounds also form the basis of a series of
remixes of the recording). This media conscious version of 4’33” is indicative

of another reason why such sounds have been included on recordings: they
signify the anticipation of a performance, the literal “buzz” of machinery
before the music starts. In this instance the performance never comes. The
sounds illustrate its absence.
As with the Rage Against the Machine campaign, the aim of this project
was to thwart the “Capitalist Inc.” music of the talent show X Factor,
which between 2004 and 2008 secured five successive Christmas number
ones. Rage Against the Machine’s noisy “Killing in the Name” halted the
sequence. The aim of the Cage Against the Machine song was to silence
through “silence.” It performed less well, however, reaching number 21,
while that year’s X Factor winner topped the charts. Cage had nevertheless
secured his first hit, a significant marker of the public appetite for 4’33”.
Political Silence
In the Cageian tradition, silence is viewed as a liberating force. In contrast, there
are recording artists who use silence as a means of highlighting oppression.
Throughout the twentieth century it was the physicality of records that
rendered them susceptible to categorization and censorship. Records could
be segregated via labeling practices, regulatory bodies could ban them, they
could be smashed or burned by outraged citizens, and they could be withheld
from distribution by protesting workers. At the same time, the physicality
of recording formats provided a means for redress. Mute recordings were
particularly useful in this respect. As with the performative instructions for
4’33”, a recording format provides a frame for a silent track. The silence is
given a home, sequenced between other pieces of music and/or detailed on the
label. It can make a statement. When it comes to political silence, the focus
is not usually on sound production techniques, however. The listener is not
directed toward the capture of silence or to ambient sounds. Instead, the focus
is on what is absent: the missing music or words that are triggered in the mind.
Mute protests have taken a number of forms. On some occasions the
target has been a particular song. In 1979, the anarcho-punk band Crass
opened the re-pressing of their album The Feeding of the 5000 with silence.
Workers at an Irish pressing plant had refused to handle the original version
due to the content of the track “Reality Asylum,” which accuses Jesus of
being a rapist, a gravedigger, and a life-fucker. When their distribution
company requested an edited recording, Crass gave them two minutes of
nothing, titling the piece “The Sound of Free Speech” (Berger 2006: 116–17).
On other occasions, the target has been an entire genre of music. The EDM
act Orbital responded to the implementation of the UK Criminal Justice
and Public Order Act in 1994. This legislation included “Powers to remove
persons attending or preparing for a rave” (s. 63). It was deliberately focused
upon dance music, attacking music “wholly or predominantly characterized

by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” (s. 63(1)(b)). Orbital’s
first release following the Act was the single “Are We Here?” which includes
a silent “Criminal Justice Bill?” remix. This trick was reprised in 2002, when
the band Slum Village spoke silently about the censorship of all popular
music, their target being the Parents Music Resource Center campaign to
demarcate records with stickers that warn of “explicit” content. The band
self-censored their own album Trinity due to its track “Silent (Dirty),” which
features “the dirtiest fifteen seconds of utter silence . . . ever not heard”
(Osborne 2012a).
Silence has also been used to campaign for peace. The title track of Sly
and the Family Stone’s 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On is timed at
0’00” (providing an echo of Cage’s 4’33” No 2). Sly Stone included this
soundless and duration-free track because he “felt there should be no riots”
(Dakss 1999). His sentiments are endorsed in John Lennon’s “Nutopian
National Anthem,” a three-second silent track on Mind Games (1973). It is
intended as the theme song for the Lennons’ conceptual country, Nutopia; a
place with no borders, no leaders, and no laws (“other than cosmic”), which
has a white flag as its emblem (Lennon and Ono 1973).
Taking a different vein, there is a series of silent records that passes
comment on political leaders. John Denver’s “The Ballad of Richard Nixon”
from Rhymes and Reasons (1969) is six seconds of silence. It provides a
deliberate recall of Denver’s cover version of Tom Paxton’s “The Ballad of
Spiro Agnew,” which occurs earlier on the same album. The two politicians
had recently been elected as president and vice president of the United States.
The Agnew composition has one line: “I’ll sing you a song of Spiro Agnew,
and all the things he has done.” The recording then trails off, implying that
the politician has done nothing. The silent Nixon recording suggests that
the president has done even less. Silence would later be used humorously
as a means of critiquing neoliberalism and right-wing politics. In 1981, Stiff
Records issued The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan, an album that
consists of two sides of blank vinyl. This record influenced Cherry Red’s The
Compassion and Humanity of Margaret Thatcher (2008), a box set featuring a
blank tape and a blank videocassette. Providing further evidence that this joke
can be expanded across different media, David King recently self-published
the book Why Trump Deserves Trust, Respect and Admiration (2016). This
work about the 45th US president features nothing but blank pages.
Memorial Silence
Political silence often indicates a lack of respect. Memorial silence, in
contrast, is reverential. The practice of marking two minutes of silence is a
relatively modern phenomenon and it is indebted to noise.
The increased mechanistic volume of everyday life prompted the Italian

futurist artist Luigo Russolo to publish Art of Noises in 1913 (1986 [1913]).
The following year witnessed the outbreak of the First World War. Russolo had
thrilled at the musicality of combat, quoting the poet Filippo Marinetti in his
text: “ZANG-TOUMB-TOUMB war noises orchestra blown beneath a note
of silence hanging in full sky captive golden balloon controlling the fire” (ibid.:
26). The Great War amplified these noises and, for the first time, recording
technology was able to preserve them. The Gramophone Company recorded a
bombardment in 1918 and issued it for sale to the public. It was advertised as
a “marvellous record” offering an “actual reproduction of the screaming and
whistling of gas shells” (An Historic Gramophone Record 1918).
It was because life and death had become so noisy that silence offered
the best means of contemplation and withdrawal. The first two-minute
silence occurred in Cape Town, South Africa, toward the end of the war. This
practice was adopted in London for the first anniversary of the Armistice in
1919; George V wrote to The Times expressing “desire and hope that at the
hour when the Armistice came into force . . . there may be, for the brief space
of two minutes, a complete suspension of all our normal activities” (Crook
2008). At the 1920 Armistice, Columbia Graphophone recorded the burial of
the Unknown Soldier, the first electric recording to be commercially released.
Recordings of the two-minute silence were also made, but for broadcast
purposes only. It was only when Jonty Semper issued Kenotaphion in 2001
that they were gathered on record. His compilation features 81 two-minute
silences, recorded either on Armistice Day or on Remembrance Sunday. The
first dates from 1929; the last from the millennium. The interest of these
documentary “silences” lies in the fact that they are not silent. We can hear the
sounds of nature and the sounds of recording processes. David Toop notes:
In 1986, two pigeons flapped their wings. In 1988 a baby was crying, a
child coughed, voices were raised and tape deterioration overlaid a patina
of decay that suggests 19th rather than late 20th century. In 2000, seagulls
flew overhead and a strange absence of lower frequencies emphasised the
vibrato in Big Ben’s tolling strokes. (2004: 42)
As the Semper release exemplifies, memorial silences are best captured on

albums. His compilation illustrates the variety of silences. Elsewhere, the
album format allows these commemorations to assume their proper form.
They mark out a space among a general flow of noise.
There have been a number of memorials. The West Coast Pop Art
Experimental Band’s 1968 album Volume 3: A Child’s Guide to Good &
Evil concludes with “Anniversary of World War III,” which pays silent tribute
for two minutes. In the following year, John Lennon and Yoko Ono released
the first of their silent recordings, “Two Minutes of Silence,” on Unfinished
Music No. 2. This track bears the artists’ usual mix of solipsism and global
politics. It marks the miscarriage of their child as well as being a memoriam
for “all violence and death” (Osborne 2012a). It comes halfway through
side two, sandwiched between a recording of the deceased baby’s heartbeat
and a recording of the Lennons listening to the radio. In 1988, Soundgarden
issued their own “One Minute of Silence” on Ultramega OK, claiming they
wanted to do a “heavy metal version” of the “Lennon arrangement” (True
1989: 10). Crass’s “They’ve Got a Bomb” from The Feeding of the 5000,
meanwhile, contains a prolonged period of silence within the song, included
so listeners can “consider the reality of nuclear war” (Berger 2006: 118). The
bombing of the Twin Towers in New York brought forth its own silences,
among them Soulfly’s “9.11.01,” released in 2002 on their album 3.
In each of these instances the recording artists are recognizing the links
between noise and human suffering. Although their work does not explicitly
reference Cage, he too drew upon this correspondence. As Douglas Kahn
has argued, Silent Prayer is surely inspired by Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial
Philosophy, which features a chapter called “Silence” followed by one called
“Prayer.” Huxley’s work is a compendium of world beliefs, but in the Silence
chapter he breaks from quotations to offer his own state of the nation’s
address:
The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical
noise, mental noise and noise of desire—we hold the history’s record for
all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous
technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That
most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio, is nothing
but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes.
And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the ear-drums. It penetrates
the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions—news items, mutually
irrelevant bits of information, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music,
continually repeated in doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but
merely create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas. (2009
[1945]: 218–19).
As Kahn notes, if Cage required the “spiritual impetus or moral justification

to silence any aspect of the mass media,” he would surely find it here (1997:
575).
Technical Silence
Memorial silence offers a critique of technological noise. There is, however,
a separate tradition of preservative silence that highlights the essence of
recording technologies. Some of these “silences” are unintentionally
revelatory, while others are the conscious creation of recording artists.
What is common about them is that they examine the relationship between
recordings and time. The promise of sound recording was that it would
immortalize sound. Recordings have nevertheless proven difficult to
preserve.
Death has haunted phonographic reveries. The first article about sound
recording declared, “certainly nothing can be conceived more likely to create
the profoundest of sensations, to arouse the liveliest of human emotions, than
once more to hear the familiar voices of the dead” (A Wonderful Invention
1877: 304). Thomas Edison promised an epitaph that would last through
the ages: “This tongueless, toothless instrument, without larynx or pharynx,
mimics your tones, speaks with your voice, utters your words: and, centuries
after you have crumbled into dust, may repeat every idle thought, every fond
fancy, every vain word” (The Phonograph and the Microphone 1878: 114).
Toop has suggested that a record’s groove is like the writing on a gravestone,
a supposedly permanent memorial. He has stated, “this black object is a
fantastic metaphor for death. . . . It has an inscription, just like a tomb” (2005).
The phonograph’s inscriptions have nevertheless been eroded with time.
Edison’s original tinfoil recordings lasted only a few plays. Shellac and vinyl
offered improvements upon this format, but they too have proven susceptible
to aging processes. As they grow older, the noise of the recording format rises
against the sounds of the music. The situation is more pronounced when
there is no music. Silent analogue recordings do not remain silent.
For some silent record makers this has posed a problem. The Detroit
students behind Hush Records discovered that the records they put in their
Student Union jukebox “were played so often they became noisy,” thus
negating their silent objective (Silent Music Recital 1960: 23). Others have
found pleasure in the patina. Christian Marclay’s Record Without a Cover
(1985) is deliberately issued sleeveless so the disc can accumulate damage
and dust. The recording has passages where Marclay DJs with old and
worn records, as well as passages with no music at all. As the record ages it
becomes difficult to tell which are its own scratches and which come from
other discs. Marclay, like Cage, wants to create a modern form of music; he
is in search of ambient sound. He has not sought his ambiance within a rural
idyll, however, but has turned instead to the organic sounds of technology.
For Marclay,
When a record skips or pops or we hear the surface noise, we try very
hard to make an abstraction of it so it doesn’t disrupt the musical flow.
I try to make people aware of these imperfections, and accept them as
music; the recording is a sort of illusion while the scratch on the record is
more real. (Ferguson 2003: 41)
Jio Shimizu reinforces this argument with his version of 4’33” on the 45’18”
compilation. It focuses on the analog noise of a “silent” record. His work
differs from Marclay’s, however, in that he uses the pristine reproduction of
the CD format to highlight the “natural” sounds of an analog record.
Digital recording and reproduction have brought forth new explorations

of silence. Although the claim to offer “perfect sound forever” has proven
untenable, the CD has provided a longer-lasting type of quietude (Milner
2009). It has been more faithful than analog silence in that it is less
susceptible to degradation, but also more artificial as it produces a hush
that has no equivalent in everyday life. This phenomenon has not passed
unnoticed. Released in 1994, just as the CD was becoming the leading sales
format, the Melvins’s album Prick includes the track “Pure Digital Silence.”
It is introduced by a member of the band: “and now, for your listening
pleasure, a few moments of pure . . . digital . . . silence!” More generally,
the CD era brought forth a boom in silent recordings. As well as offering
a monolithic form of silence, the CD gave artists more time in which to
shut up. The 30-track self-titled album by Fantômas (1998), for example,
includes four seconds of silence, rather than recording any music for the
“unlucky” track 13. Echoing this device, Leila Bela’s sixty-five-track CD,
Angra Manyu (2002) also includes a four-second silence, which is titled
“Pregnant Pause . . . Intermission.”
Curiously, a number of CD silences owe their existence to the earlier
vinyl format. Faced with the seventy-minute running time of the CD, many
performers struggled to fill it. They preferred instead to issue recordings
that lasted the shorter duration of an analog LP. Some artists toyed with the
new format, however, burying recordings within the empty expanses of the
digital carrier. These hidden tracks, such as Sigur Rós’s “Rukrym” (1997)
or Nirvana’s “Endless Nameless” (1992), are preceded by vast passages of
silence, which are sometimes calibrated into a multitude of empty tracks.
Elsewhere, artists have chosen to replicate the gap in listening that comes
between side one and side two of an LP. Robert Wyatt’s CD Cuckooland
(2003) includes 30 seconds of silence at its halfway point. Conversely, the
silence of the vinyl track “Magic Window,” issued by Boards of Canada on
Geogaddi (2002), owes its existence to the CD. It is listed as occupying the
sixth side of the vinyl package, but rather than being represented with an
analog groove, this disc contains a drawing of a nuclear family. Without its
CD equivalent, which plays soundlessly for 1’46”, it is difficult to know if
the unplayable vinyl version could be classified as silent.
Economic Silence
The CD prompted a rush of silent recordings; other digital formats have
raised questions about the public’s appetite for quiet. The uproar is different
to that first encountered by 4’33”, however. Cage’s work caused outrage on
aesthetic grounds. The concern more recently has been with silent income.
Consumers have long paid for silent records, but these recordings have
always been accompanied by something extra. The silent track will be just
one of a number of recordings on a single, LP or CD. It will have a label and

a sleeve. It will therefore have a context, akin to the performative framework
that Cage stipulated for 4’33”. Digital downloading works differently. Most
tracks are paid for on an individual basis and the accompanying materials
are scant. The meaning of many silent tracks is therefore lost just as the
question of economics is raised. Consumers have asked why they should
pay for silent recordings; they have also wondered who gets paid. This issue
was highlighted by bloggers who purchased downloads of “(Silence)” by
Ciconne Youth:
We’re amused by the fact that Apple is charging 99 cents for a song full o’
nothing, we’re even more amused by the fact that said track contains the
usual digital rights management code to prevent you from playing it on
any unauthorized systems. And the most amusing thing of all, of course,
is that the song has a [free] thirty-second preview. (Silber 2004)
Following up on this post, Brian Flemming created a mashup from all the
silent tracks he could purchase on iTunes. In making it available he satirized
intellectual property laws: “This remix is governed by a strict copyright.
I would have put that Palladium DRM shit all up on it if I knew how to
do that. In fact, the full title of the song is ‘Silence (remix) 2004 BRIAN
FLEMMING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED’” (Flemming 2004).
The turn to streaming platforms has lessened these concerns, as the
silent tracks on this format are not paid for individually. Streaming has,
nevertheless, added its own dimension to the economics of silence:
copyright income is the inspiration for creating silent works. The pioneers
in this respect were Vulfpeck, who released their album Sleepify in 2014.
They realized that when a track is listened to for more than 30 seconds on
Spotify a royalty is generated. Taking advantage of this, their album features
ten silent tracks, each of which lasts for just over half a minute. Vulfpeck
encouraged their fans to stream these songs on repeat “while they sleep”
with the aim of generating enough royalties to fund a tour (Jonze 2014).
This ruse managed to generate $20,000. It was swiftly copied by Michelle
Shocked, whose Inaudible Woman (2014) also had the aim of generating
tour funds. Shocked added two twists. One was that this “silent” recording
contains a high-pitched whistle audible only to dogs (as with The Beatles’s
inclusion of a dog whistle on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band this
action is questionable: these whistles are beyond the frequency range of all
commercially available recording formats). In addition, many of the tracks
are titled after male music industry executives, thus commenting on the
silencing of women within the profession.
Three earlier recordings address issues of censorship, ownership, and
silence head on. In 1987, the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (JAMs) issued
the original version of their album, 1987: What the Fuck is Going On?
This record takes full advantage of digital sampling technology, which
was then coming into vogue. It “illegally” appropriates a number of other

records, including “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. Following its release, the
group received a cease-and-desist letter from the Mechanical-Copyright
Protection Society, leading to the withdrawal of the album. They responded
by re-issuing the record with the copyright-infringing samples removed.
This updated version, 1987: The JAMs 45 Edits, features 25 minutes of
music accompanied by long passages of silence. Its sleevenotes explain how
to restore the missing samples: “you will need three wind-up record decks, a
pile of selected discs, one t.v. set and a video machine loaded with a cassette
of edited highlights of last week’s Top of the Pops.” They also contain a
warning:
We must inform you that to attempt any of the above in the presence of
two or more paying or non-paying people could be construed as a public
performance. If the premises that you are in do not have a music license
you will be infringing the copyright laws of the United Kingdom and
legal action may be taken against you. Under no circumstances must your
performance be recorded in any form. (JAMs 1987)
The JAMs were later known as the Kopyright Liberation Front, providing
some indication that the politics of ownership were their target from the
start.
Working in a similar manner, Paul Chivers (AKA Ramjac) released
“Everything The Beatles Never Did” in 2011. This silent download lasts
for 8’22”, the length of the longest Beatles recording, “Revolution 9.” It
retails at US$226, working out at $1 for every track The Beatles released
(the streaming version costs nothing), and comes with a transparent sleeve
that erases The Beatles’s 13 album covers. This recording is the companion
piece to Ramjac’s “All Together Now—Everything The Beatles Ever Did,”
an audible mashup of the entire Beatles catalog, which also lasts for 8’22”.
This record was removed from circulation due to copyright infringement.
These recordings concern the right to appropriate music. The final case
addresses the right to own silence. In 2001, Mike Batt’s group the Planets
released Classical Graffiti. This recording includes variations on several
classical themes, each of which is legally credited to Batt via his arrangements
of these public domain works. It also features “A One Minute Silence,” which
Batt registered as being composed by Mike Batt/John Cage. This punning
credit led to a dispute with Cage’s publishers, Peters Edition, who claimed
sole ownership of the work. A settlement was made amid much fanfare. Batt
later claimed this was a hoax, stating that Peters Edition “had no real claim
but he and the publisher decided to use opportunity to publicise the issue
of copyright” (Wombles Composer Mike Batt’s Legal Row ‘A Scam’ 2010).
The enactment of a musicological comparison, in which the two works
were performed in sequence, would also suggest the promotional nature of
this escapade. Nevertheless, it would seem as though the publishers had the
last laugh. A look at a copyright database will reveal that “A One Minute’s
Silence” is now credited to Cage alone.
This is unusual. I have detailed many recorded “silences” in this chapter,
but Cage is rarely credited as being their author. This is perhaps fitting, as
a recorded silence is inherently different to a performed silence. As such,
even the silences that pointedly homage 4’33” are doing something new
with Cage’s idea, if only through a misreading of his intentions. Many of
the works in the other traditions do not even use Cage as a reference point.
In their quiet manner all of these “silent” records have much to say. They
provide a counterpoint to and a commentary on their more voluble recorded
counterparts. Any history of sound recording is incomplete if it fails to
address the issues of non-sound recording and of the recorded commentary
upon “silence.” Why, then, are these recordings not more widely known?
Perhaps it is because few people have heard them.
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Pa r t s i x
Virtuality and
Online Production
230
Chapter Thirteen
Intermixtuality: Case Studies in

Online Music (Re)production
Samantha Bennett
Introduction
This chapter explores remix practice within online music communities,
specifically the ways in which participants engage with remix contests and
mix stems. In “The Listener as Remixer,” I defined mix stems as, “unlike a
full mono or stereo master recording, a mix stem is a sub-group, compiled of
individual instrumental or vocal recordings derived from the original multi
track recordings” (Bennett 2016). Online music (re)production and reception
is facilitated via competitions and other contexts whereby mix stems are
made available by artists for the purposes of participatory remixing. In
order to exemplify what I have previously defined as a virtual production
practice (ibid.), I critically examine four case studies: Deadmau5’ “SOFI
Needs a Ladder” (2010), REM’s “It Happened Today” (2011), Bon Iver’s
“Holocene” (2012), and Skrillex and Damian Marley’s “Make It Bun Dem”
(2012). As Johnson noted, most studies in online communities of practice
take a case study form (2001: 52), which is also a robust and preferred
methodology in emergent studies of online music communities (Jarvenpaa
and Lang 2011; Pinch and Athanasiades 2012; Michielse 2013).
The ways in which online music communities form, and their various
modes of practice, have been explored from a range of scholarly angles and
originate from research into “real world” communities of practice (Lave
and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998). This chapter builds on research focused
on online communities of practice, specifically studies in online music
communities, music production and reception, music and virtuality (Whiteley

and Rambarran 2016), as well as intertextuality in recorded popular music
(Lacasse 2000). Broadly speaking, this chapter contributes to the field recently
referred to as phonomusicology (Cottrell 2010) in that it offers new ways of
thinking about online music production in the context of recorded music.
In an early study, Preece et al. suggested that purpose, software
environment, governance structure, member demographic and size, all “shape
the character” (2003: 1023) of online communities. Plant offered a taxonomy
of online communities, recognizing differences in participation depending
on whether the community was regulated, for- or non-profit, open or closed
(2004: 55–61). In online music communities, such structures are apparent,
although many are “shell-like” in nature and allow considerable flexibility
for members. One such example is that of ACIDplanet, a Sony-owned
website and software application for online music collaboration activities.
ACIDplanet’s community is diverse, attracting casual users, amateur and
professional remixers, as well as enthusiasts. In an extensive online case study
of ACIDplanet, for example, Pinch and Athanasiades (2012) explored user
identity, collaboration, community, and reviewing of music in 35 participants.
They found that online music may “radically [reconfigure] the ways musicians
can form identities” and allocate “status” (2012: 499). Furthermore, they
found considerable activity within the user-driven environment of ACIDplanet
while also presenting evidence that strictly governed online music remix sites
fail to gain traction (ibid.: 496). In other words, the more flexible and open
the online remix community, the more attractive it appears to be with users.
The study of online music fan communities is still in its infancy, with online
ethnographies of social media engagement dominating the literature (Jones
2000 and 2002; Baym 2007; Bennett 2012). Rob Cover offered a typology
for analyzing remix texts, focusing on YouTube videos. Building on Lawrence
Lessig’s work (2008), Cover (2013) studied the intertextual roots and
narratives of what he called “interactive intertexts.” This study is, however,
more useful for the analysis of video “mashups” as opposed to music. Directly
relevant to this chapter, Jarvenpaa and Lang focused on structural aspects
of online music communities in their examination of both ccMixter and
remix.nin.com. While recognizing the importance of boundaries and boundary
management in the production of content of both sites, they also acknowledge
the “unprecedented creativity” (2011: 440) facilitated by such fora. Michielse
(2013) studied participants in the Indaba Music community. In focusing on
discussion threads and conducting participant interviews, Michielse considered
the “fluency,” “flexibility,” and “adaptability” to different sets of musical
circumstances as central to online remix practice. Indeed, three distinct sites of
online music production practice have emerged whereby the remix is the point
of focus: creative commons sites, such as ccMixter and Freesound, which
allow users access to copyright-free music, usually free of charge; dedicated
remix competition and contest host sites, such as Indaba Music and Beatport,
which allow users to download stems and submit finished remixes; and direct
INTERMIXTUALITY 233
artist-to-fan contexts whereby the artist releases stems from their website and
creates a portal for the submission of completed remixes.
As established in earlier work, there are multiple similarities between
professional and amateur, “real world” and virtual remixing practices (Bennett
2016). Studies as to the role of the remixer are, however, focused almost entirely
on the professional domain. Zak (2001), Théberge (2001), and Cunningham
(1998) all recognize the critical role of the mixer in commercial record
production. Hugill (2008) goes further to suggest “the mixer is central” to
the entire recorded music production process. Later, Izhaki (2007) considered
the presence of stem mixing in professional record production. However, little
is known about the demographics engaged with online remixing or, indeed,
the “profile” of the online remixer. Such practice is part of a wider form of
virtual artistic engagement, or as Duckworth termed the “interactive artistic
experience” (2003: 254), that may constitute fandom, music technology
engagement, and/or general music community participation.
What is clear about online remix practice is the vast quantity of remixes
produced as well as the presence of remix culture in a multitude of online fora.
Ultimately, remixes are intertexts, and this is an area worth exploring further.
Intertextuality and intertextual practice has a long history, particularly in
literature (Genette 1982; Clayton and Rothstein 1991; Stewart 1989). In
popular music, studies of intertextuality—to include those focusing on
remixes and remix culture—are broad. From sampling and allusion through
quotation, satire, and pastiche, intertextuality constitutes a multitude of
subcategories, as has been extensively explored by Lacasse (2000). Lacasse
considers hypotexts as models for later texts and hypertexts as texts based
on earlier texts. He refers to remixes using these terminologies whereby a
hypotext is the original recording, and where the hypertext is the remix or
adaptation of the hypotext (2000: 48). Accounts of intertextual practices
often focus on sampling (Goodwin 1990; Beadle 1993) or, more recently, on
sample-based genres such as mashup (Grobelny 2008; Navas 2010; Sinnreich
2010). However, intertextual practice exclusively in the virtual realm has
only recently been acknowledged as a site of scholarly enquiry (Cover
2013). Earlier in this emergent discourse, both Lacasse (2000) and Taylor
(2001) identified the implications of interactive remixing from authorship
and reception perspectives: Lacasse recognized the potential of interactive
remixing at the turn of the millennium, citing Peter Gabriel’s “Digging in the
Dirt” on CD-ROM as a key example (2000: 50), while Taylor recognized
the emergence of fan engagement with remixing (2001: 20). Online remix
(re)production practice is so distinctive from prior understandings of what
a remixer does—and, indeed, what a remix is—that I believe it deserves its
own term. I call this practice intermixtuality, since while there is a clear
presence of what Lacasse (2000) called the original hypotext (that being, the
cohesive, whole single from which the stems derived), the mixes created by
online remixers are not born from this hypotext (single), but from already
separated fragments, or hypertexts derived from the multitrack mix.
This chapter explores four key questions:
●● What elements of a cohesive multitrack recording or hypotext

are concealed, but later revealed when presented as mix stems or
hypertexts?
●● How do online remixers engage and interact with mix stems and
remix contests?
●● How, and to what extent, do artists engage fans via the music
production process?
●● What are the implications in terms of online music (re)production
and intermixtuality?
Each case study example will now be dealt with in turn, to include focus on
the circumstances surrounding each remix competition or context and an
aural examination of the stem components. These study sections will address
the first of the four aforementioned questions before the remaining questions
are addressed via a critical discussion on online production and reception.
Deadmau5—“SOFI Needs a Ladder” (2010)

This case study focuses on the stem release of “SOFI Needs a Ladder” by US
EDM producer Deadmau5. In 2010, Deadmau5 held a remix competition in
conjunction with creative commons sites Acapellas4All and Beatport. Four
stems were packaged together for a price of $3.99, available to download
for a limited two-week time period. The competition was billed as “The
Ultimate Remix Challenge” with a big prize—an opening slot DJ’ing at
a Deadmau5 concert, an official release on Deadmau5’ Mau5trap label,
headphones, Beatport credit, and a “bag of swag” with undisclosed contents.
A four-stage competition process was held, with a two-week download
period between September 21 and October 12, a two-week upload phase
between September 28 and October 11, a two-week voting phase between
October 12 and October 26, and then a semi-final phase between November
9 and November 18 whereby 10 remixes were performed live in front of
judges including Deadmau5 himself. The “grand prize winner” was chosen
and announced by Deadmau5 on November 23, meaning the entire remix
competition process spanned more than two months.
While four individual stems were released, each stem is a composite of
multiple components of the original recording and processing. In other words,
the stems do not feature single tracks of single instruments but rather groups
of compiled instruments and production, inclusive of dynamics and time-based
signal processing. Additionally, each individual stem was released at the same
length (6:41) as the original single. Since not all musical phrases begin at 0:00,
INTERMIXTUALITY 235
Table 13.1 Mix stem organisation in

Deadmau5’ “SOFI Needs a Ladder”
Stem No. Stem Name
1 SNALAcapella
2 SNALBass
3 SNALSynth
4 SNALDrums
this suggests an artistʼs intention for the stems to be aligned to the beginning
of a digital audio workstation (DAW) session in the first instance. This is
significant, since the idea of a remix is not to simply recreate the identical length
of the original recording, but to transform it in some way. SNALAcapella, for
example, is presented as a completely “produced” composite vocal stem with
multiple vocal recordings, as well as audible compression, reverb, and delay.
Furthermore, SNALAcapella does not sound until 1:33; the multiple silences
throughout the stem are commensurate with the vocal positioning in the
original recording. SNALBass features not only the synthesized, programmed
bass-like element, but also a range of synthesized percussive trills and stabs
consistent with glitch, or what Cascone called “post digital aesthetics,”
specifically “the aesthetics of failure” (2000: 12). SNALSynth also features a
synthesis line with all its production intact. Beginning at 0:05, the repetitive
note is initially presented awash with reverb featuring an infinite decay; then
as the reverb is manually wound out of the track, it is slowly “revealed” to be a
single note. Almost as soon as the note is exposed, the reverb is slowly wound
back in again, the entire rotation lasting until 1:05 and recurring twice later
in the stem. SNALDrums is also compiled from multiple instrument tracks
including an apparently natural snare drum, programmed drum elements, as
well as an extended breathy vocal phrase. Once again, all these elements retain
their dynamics processing. Presenting the stems in this way ensures the remixer
cannot separate many of the processed or original production aspects away
from the original recordings or programmed elements.
REM—“It Happened Today” (2011)

On February 7, 2011, US rock group REM released stems from their single
“It Happened Today” via their official website, REM HQ. This remix event
was not a competition context; REM’s producer Jacknife Lee simply stated:
“Right from the early stages of recording this song in New Orleans Michael
[Stipe] wanted to share the files with people to hear their different ideas and
versions. So here they are” (R.E.M.HQ 2011).
A link to a folder entitled “REM AIF FILES” containing no less than

126 AIFF files—as well as another folder entitled “ADDITIONAL AUDIO”
containing a further 69 AIFFs—followed Jacknife Lee’s announcement; the
entire stem release totaled 195 audio files.
Table 13.2 Contents of “REM AIF FILES” folder in REM’s “It

Happened Today”
Stem Stem
No. Stem Name No. Stem Name
1 ACOSUTIC GTR BRIDGE 2.aiff 64 JOEL BV BRIDGE 3.aiff
2 ACOSUTIC GTR BRIDGE 3.aiff 65 JOEL BV BRIDGE 4.aiff
3 ACOSUTIC GTR BRIDGE 4.aiff 66 KIK SNR BRIDGE 1.aiff
6 ACOSUTIC GTR BRIDGE.aiff 69 KIK SNR BRIDGE 4.aiff
7 ACOSUTIC GTR CHORUS 2.aiff 70 KIK SNR OUTRO.aiff
8 ACOSUTIC GTR CHORUS..aiff 71 LEADVOX BRIDGE 1.aiff
9 ACOSUTIC GTR OUTRO.aiff 72 LEADVOX BRIDGE 2.aiff
10 ACOSUTIC GTR VERSE 1.aiff 73 LEADVOX BRIDGE 3.aiff
11 ACOSUTIC GTR VERSE 2.aiff 74 LEADVOX BRIDGE 4.aiff
12 BACKGRND VOX 3.aiff 75 LEADVOX CHORUS 2.aiff
13 BACKGRND VOX BRIDGE 2.aiff 76 LEADVOX CHORUS..aiff
14 BACKGRND VOX BRIDGE 3.aiff 77 LEADVOX VERSE 2.aiff
15 BACKGRND VOX BRIDGE 4.aiff 78 LEADVOX VERSE..aiff
16 BACKGRND VOX BRIDGE 5.aiff 79 MALLETS BRIDGE 2.aiff
17 BACKGRND VOX BRIDGE 6.aiff 80 MALLETS BRIDGE 3.aiff
18 BACKGRND VOX BRIDGE.aiff 81 MALLETS BRIDGE 4.aiff
19 BACKGRND VOX CHORUS 2.aiff 82 MALLETS BRIDGE 5.aiff
20 BACKGRND VOX CHORUS..aiff 83 MALLETS BRIDGE 6.aiff
21 BASS BRIDGE.aiff 84 MALLETS BRIDGE.aiff
22 BASS BRIDGE 2.aiff 85 MALLETS CHORUS.aiff
23 BASS BRIDGE 3.aiff 86 MALLETS OUTRO.aiff
24 BASS BRIDGE 4.aiff 87 MANDOLIN BRIDGE 2.aiff
25 BASS BRIDGE 5.aiff 88 MANDOLIN BRIDGE 3.aiff
INTERMIXTUALITY 237
Table 13.2 (Continued)

Stem Stem
26 BASS DRUM BRIDGE 2.aiff 89 MANDOLIN BRIDGE 4.aiff
29 BASS DRUM BRIDGE 5.aiff 92 MANDOLIN BRIDGE.aiff
30 BASS DRUM BRIDGE 6.aiff 93 MANDOLIN CHORUS 2.aiff
31 BASS DRUM BRIDGE.aiff 94 MANDOLIN CHORUS..aiff
32 BASS DRUM CHORUS 2.aiff 95 MANDOLIN OUTRO.aiff
33 BASS DRUM CHORUS..aiff 96 MANDOLIN VERSE 2.aiff
34 BASS DRUM OUTRO.aiff 97 PERC BRIDGE 2.aiff
35 BASS DRUM VERSE 1.aiff 98 PERC BRIDGE 3.aiff
36 BASS DRUM VERSE 2.aiff 99 PERC BRIDGE 4.aiff
37 BASS OUTRO.aiff 100 PERC BRIDGE 5.aiff
38 BASS SYNTH BRIDGE 2.aiff 101 PERC BRIDGE 6..aiff
39 BASS SYNTH BRIDGE 3.aiff 102 PERC BRIDGE.aiff
40 BASS SYNTH BRIDGE 4.aiff 103 PERC CHORUS 2.aiff
41 BASS SYNTH BRIDGE.aiff 104 PERC CHORUS.aiff
42 BASS SYNTH CHORUS 2.aiff 105 PERC OUTRO.aiff
43 BASS SYNTH CHORUS..aiff 106 PERC VERSE 1.1.aiff
44 BASS SYNTH OUTRO.aiff 107 PERC VERSE 2.aiff
45 BASS SYNTH VERSE 1.aiff 108 PETER GTR BRIDGE 2.aiff
46 BASS SYNTH VERSE 2.aiff 109 PETER GTR BRIDGE 3.aiff
47 BRASS BRIDGE 2.aiff 110 PETER GTR BRIDGE 4.aiff
48 BRASS BRIDGE 3.aiff 111 PETER GTR BRIDGE 5.aiff
49 BRASS BRIDGE.aiff 112 PETER GTR BRIDGE 6.aiff
50 BRASS OUTRO.aiff 113 PETER GTR BRIDGE.aiff
51 EDDIE BV BRIDGE 2.aiff 114 PETER GTR CHORUS 2.aiff
52 EDDIE BV BRIDGE 3.aiff 115 PETER GTR INTRO.1.aiff
53 EDDIE BV BRIDGE.aiff 116 PETER GTR OUTRO.aiff
(Continued)

Stem Stem
54 EDDIE BV OUTRO.aiff 117 PIANO BRIDGE 2.aiff
55 GTR BRIDGE 3.aiff 118 PIANO BRIDGE 3.aiff
56 GTR BRIDGE 4.aiff 119 PIANO BRIDGE 4.aiff
57 GTR BRIDGE.aiff 120 PIANO BRIDGE 5.aiff
58 GTR CHORUS 2.aiff 121 PIANO BRIDGE 6.aiff
59 GTR CHORUS..aiff 122 PIANO BRIDGE..aiff
60 GTR OUTRO.aiff 123 PIANO CHORUS 2.aiff
61 GTR VERSE 2.aiff 124 PIANO CHORUS..aiff
62 JOEL BV BRIDGE 1.aiff 125 PIANO OUTRO.aiff
63 JOEL BV BRIDGE 2.aiff 126 PIANO VERSE 2..aiff
On first look it appeared that each of REM’s stem files was an

individual component of the multitrack recording, but this was not the
case. Each stem had been broken into sections by song arrangement, so
the file collection featured lead vocal and instrument stems for the intro,
each verse, bridge, and chorus plus outro. Additionally, some files clearly
contained more than one instrument, such as the vibraphone and celeste
stems. On closer listen, these stems feature considerable differentiation
in terms of presentation. For example, the “ACOSUTIC GUITAR” stems
feature two acoustic guitars panned center left and center right in the
stereo field (incidentally, multiple spelling errors are present in the stem
names as well as some apparent disorganization in terms of continuity of
numbering and additional periods, for example, in MANDOLIN 7..aiff).
The “BACKGRND VOX” stems are also presented quite differently.
Aside from audible noise gates, “BACKGRND VOX 3” appears relatively
dry with minimal processing. After 0.06 seconds, the stem truncates
midway through a vocal phrase, which demonstrates a lack of precision
in the preparation of the stems. Yet stems such as “BACKGRND VOX
CHORUS” feature significant dynamics and time-based signal processing.
“LEADVOX BRIDGE” also features its dynamics and time-based signal
processing intact, as well as some background instrumentation noise,
commensurate with a vocal performance delivered by a vocalist with one
headphone slightly removed from the ear.
The “ADDITIONAL AUDIO” folder features some of the more
interesting aspects of the stem collection. The “SNARE HANSA
INTERMIXTUALITY 239
Table 13.3 Contents of “ADDITIONAL AUDIO” folder contained

within “REM AIF FILES” in REM’s “It Happened Today”
Stem Stem
1 BASS SYNTH .aiff 36 DRONE GUITAR 9.aiff
2 BASS SYNTH 2 .aiff 37 DRONE GUITAR 10.aiff
3 BASS SYNTH 3.aiff 38 DRONE GUITAR 11.aiff
4 BASS SYNTH 4.aiff 39 DRONE GUITAR 12.aiff
5 BASS SYNTH 5.aiff 40 DRONE GUITAR OUTRO.aiff
6 BASS SYNTH 6.aiff 41 MANDOLIN 2.aiff
9 BASS SYNTH outro.aiff 44 MANDOLIN 5.aiff
10 BASS SYNTH sust 1.aiff 45 MANDOLIN 6.aiff
11 BASS SYNTH sust 2.aiff 46 MANDOLIN 7..aiff
16 CELESTE AND VIBRAPHONE 51 MANDOLIN 12.aiff
2.aiff
17 CELESTE AND VIBRAPHONE 52 MANDOLIN 13.aiff
3.aiff
18 CELESTE AND VIBRAPHONE 53 MANDOLIN OUTRO.aiff
4.aiff
19 CELESTE AND VIBRAPHONE 54 MANDOLIN.aiff
5.aiff
20 CELESTE AND VIBRAPHONE 55 SNARE HANSA STAIRWELL 2.aiff
6.aiff
21 CELESTE AND VIBRAPHONE 56 SNARE HANSA STAIRWELL
7.aiff OUTRO.aiff
22 CELESTE AND VIBRAPHONE 57 SNARE HANSA STAIRWELL
8.aiff SNARE ROLL.aiff
(Continued)

Stem Stem
23 CELESTE AND VIBRAPHONE 58 SNARE HANSA STAIRWELL.aiff
9.aiff
24 CELESTE AND VIBRAPHONE 59 UPRIGHT PIANO 1.aiff
build.aiff
copy.aiff
outro.aiff
27 CELESTE AND 62 UPRIGHT PIANO 5.aiff
VIBRAPHONE.aiff
28 DRONE GUITAR 1.aiff 63 UPRIGHT PIANO 6.aiff
33 DRONE GUITAR 6.aiff 68 UPRIGHT PIANO OUTRO.aiff
34 DRONE GUITAR 7.aiff 69 UPRIGHT PIANO- 3.aiff
35 DRONE GUITAR 8.aiff
STAIRWELL” clearly features ambience consistent with a recording

that has taken place in a stairwell at Hansa Studios (Berlin), with long,
reverberant decay times and a particularly “live” feel. In the context of
the original mix, this unique sound has been mixed with close-miked
recordings, as is evident in the “KIK SNR” and “BASS DRUM” stem sets.
The “UPRIGHT PIANO” stems feature plenty of pedal noise and shuffling,
consistent with a relaxed performance and microphone technique. Here,
the middle octaves of the piano are significantly louder than the lower
register, which suggests a single overhead microphone placement and not
a stereo pair, as is usual in piano recording. This extensive set of stems
exposes plenty of aesthetic production decisions pertaining to processing
and recordist gestures, many of which are concealed when heard as a
composite whole. To that end, REM’s “It Happened Today” stems are one
of the most revealing sets to date.
INTERMIXTUALITY 241
Bon Iver—Bon Iver (2012)

The next example features an entire 10-track album, with each song released
in the stem format via the remix competition host site Indaba Music and
Spotify. On August 2, 2012, US alternative folk act Bon Iver announced a
“call to arms” remix contest via his website. The competition was hosted
across a two-phase period: a remix submission period between August 3 and
August 31, and a voting period between August 31 and September 14. During
the latter stage, visitors to the site were able to vote for their favorite remix in
each song category, with a $1000 prize available to the highest voted remix of
each song, announced on October 3. Additionally, the winning remix in each
song category was compiled into an album entitled Bon Iver, Bon Iver: Stems
Project and released via Spotify. Remixes were also ranked in a variety of
ways within Indaba Music’s host page including “most listened submissions”
and even “top listeners,” acknowledging both those who submitted a remix
and those who spent time listening. The most popular remix was “Holocene,”
which is the remix of focus for this case study. Eleven stems were made
available, each named after the immediate locality of the recording space: a
converted veterinary clinic in Fall Creek, Wisconsin.
The stem names tell a listener little about what instrumentation may be
contained within them. Upon listening, however, it is clear that each stem
contains multiple instrument tracks. For example, the “chippewa_falls”
Table 13.4 Mix stem organisation in Bon Iver’s “Holocene”

Stem No Stem Name
1 bangorkook.wav
2 chippewa_falls.wav
3 eleva.wav
4 gilman.wav
5 grand_rapids.wav
6 heigh_on.wav
7 lake_hallie.wav
8 le_grange_wi.wav
9 long_plain.wav
10 mandolin_wa.wav
11 virginia.wav
stem features a granular synthesis line as well as vibraphone. “long_plain”

is a composite of saxophone and a ride cymbal. “lake_hallie” features a
kick drum, book brushes, and thigh strikes. “eleva” is an ambient-miked
full drum kit, “grand_rapids” is a drum overdub in the form of snare rolls,
and “gilman” features two closed-miked acoustic guitars panned center left
and center right, as well as an electric bass guitar centered. The lead vocals
are contained within “heigh_on”; this stem is a composite of two lead vocal
performances. These are two separate performance recordings as opposed
to the same performance “doubled.” It is possible to ascertain this due to the
differences in note lengths, breaths, and shuffling in each vocal performance,
as one is positioned to the center right and the other to the center left.
“bangorkook” features backing vocals; two male backing vocals are panned
to the right and center left with a reverberant female vocal centered. The
most cryptic of the stems is “mandolin_wa,” since it does not feature a
mandolin at all, but two contrasting synthesizer lines: one brassy, midrange
melody; and another low-frequency heavy, underpinning bass line. Finally,
“Virginia” features a combination of acoustic guitar and synthesis.
Each stem also features plenty of ambient noise, shuffling, and movement
consistent with both “live” and low-fidelity, or “lo-fi,” recording. These stems
reveal an altogether different recording aesthetics to the other featured case
studies. Both performances and recording techniques are relaxed and plenty
of natural room ambience has been captured, particularly on “lake_hallie,”
“eleva,” and “grand_rapids.” The stems also reveal combined instrument
performances separated out from what was clearly a live recording of multiple
instruments. It is possible to ascertain this from the presence of overspill in
the recordings. For example, there are vocal performances present on “lake_
hallie,” even though it is clear from the stem presentation that the foregrounded
instruments are kick drum, book brushes, and thigh strikes. The vocals are too
loud and present to be overspill from headphones, yet too quiet in relation to
the other instruments to be a fully integrated part of the stem. These stems are,
therefore, drawn from both closed and ambient-miked instrument recordings
whereby all musicians have performed the song in its entirety.
Skrillex and Damien Marley—

“Make It Bun Dem” (2012)
In 2012, the UK electronic dance music producer and dubstep artist Skrillex
and the Jamaican reggae artist Damian Marley announced a remix contest
via Beatport PLAY in conjunction with Sonny “Skrillex” Moore’s own label
OWSLA. The contest focused on their single “Make It Bun Dem” (2012), a
hit reggaestep song released in February 2012. This remix contest featured
three key sub-competitions: a “Grand Prize Winner” selected by OWSLA, a
“Community Pick” winner for the remix with the most public votes, and a
INTERMIXTUALITY 243
Table 13.5. Mix stem organisation in Skrillex and Damien Marley’s

“Make it Bun Dem”
Stem No. Stem Name
1 Skrillex-Bun_Dem-GUITAR.wav
2 Skrillex-Bun_Dem-SYNTH_BASS.wav
3 Skrillex-Bun_Dem-VOCAL.wav
“Skrillex Honorary pick” winner, chosen by Skrillex. The competitions ran

over a three-stage process including an upload phase between September
9 and September 18, a voting phase between September 19 and October
3, and a judging phase between October 4 and November 12. The “Grand
Prize” included an official release of the remix on Big Beat Records and
Skrillex’s OWSLA label, as well as a Pioneer DJ system and software. The
winner was announced via Beatport PLAY on November 13, 2012. A total
of three downloadable stems were released via Beatport PLAY, Big Beat
Records/OWSLA for the contest.
Each of the three mix stems features multiple instruments. “Skrillex-
Bun_Dem-GUITAR” includes a guitar track as well as a synthesized
version of the same guitar melody. Both the guitar and the synthesizer
retain their time-based signal processing: the introductory guitar features
a band pass filter effect as well as a panned echo effect consistent with
dub production aesthetics (Veal 2007; Kim-Cohen 2013). This stem also
features a synthesized percussive instrument performing a reggae rhythm
along with the guitar and synthesizer. Significantly, this stem features a wide
dynamic range, with the introductory guitar instrument (0:00–0:13) much
quieter than the synthesizer and percussive rhythm further into the stem
(1:36–1:51). “Skrillex-Bun_Dem-SYNTH_BASS” features a synthesized
bass element consistent with EDM, dub and reggae production. With
significantly boosted sub-frequencies, the bass stem is clearly designed to fill
out the lower part of the spectrum, commensurate with a production style
intended for clubs. However, this stem also features a melodic synthesizer
line with an octave effect (from 0:41) as well as a second high-pitched
synthesizer motif toward the end of the stem (2:30). Furthermore, the stem
features an ambient introductory synthesis line as well as filtered voice
effect appearing sporadically throughout. In total, this stem contains five
identifiable instruments, of which only one is the bass. “Skrillex-Bun_Dem-
VOCAL” also features multiple vocal elements as part of the same stem.
All the component vocal parts feature significant production, which has
been kept intact. Between 0:00 and 0:12, for example, Damian Marley’s
introductory vocal lines feature a lengthy pre-delay, lengthy hall reverb,
as well as a delay. Marley’s powerfully delivered verse vocals (0:13–0:40)
again feature a lengthy pre-delay, this time with a short, room reverb and a
single echo only on the final words of alternate sentences, specifically “fun”
and “run.” These verse vocals are also double-tracked. Heavily gated vocal
interjections of “rude boy,” which sound simultaneously to a prominent
kick drum, are also present throughout. The coda’s “pack up and run”
pay-off line commences at 2:58, with automated reverb wound in to the
vocal from 3:12, increasing in density before abruptly cutting out at 3:23 to
reveal the comparatively “clean” vocal track. “Skrillex-Bun_Dem-VOCAL”
ends with a similar “rude boy” vocal interjection, swiftly “wound down” in
terms of pitch and tempo by 3:25. These stems reveal significant production
elements, many of which are concealed in the context of the whole single.
Intermixtuality—Online
Re(mix) production and Reception
Within dance music culture, Gilbert and Pearson recognized a “community
of production” featuring “digital auteurs” (1999: 118)—computer musicians
who compose, perform, program, produce, and then disseminate their own
music. In the twenty-first century, not only have these communities of music
production proliferated in the virtual world, but also their practice(s) extend
far beyond dance music genres, as is evident in the REM and Bon Iver case
studies. Additionally, an extension of Hugill’s “digital musician” (2008)
is evident: remix contest participants are less creators or performers of
original music and more digital adaptors of existing texts. The engagement
with online music communities and the remixing practice(s) that bind them
is reminiscent of Théberge’s work on music technology and consumers in
the late 1980s. Théberge recognized links between music and technology
magazines and the discourses present within them and the consumption of
music technology among musicians (1997: 130). While this observation is
from a different era in music technology, there are parallels to be drawn
between the cycle of consumption and production of then-new, cheap digital
technologies of the late 1980s and online consumption and production
of digital remix materials: both sets of practices exist largely outside the
commercial mainstream music industry and both are examples of what Axel
Bruns called “produsage” (2008: 2–3), the simultaneous production and
usage of technologies. It is also pertinent to note that producers and users of
such technologies are also listeners.
The case studies featured here constitute just a tiny fraction of online
remix contests and, indeed, contexts. The practice has proliferated to such
an extent that it is now ubiquitous in dance music, particularly EDM; both
the Deadmau5 and the Skrillex and Damian Marley case studies exemplify
both the quantity of participatory engagement and the blurring between
amateur and professional remix practice that was clearly distinct in earlier
studies (Bennett 2016). It is this specific online production practice, whereby
INTERMIXTUALITY 245
a participant engages with stems, or hypertexts, fragmented from an

original, cohesive recorded single, or hypotext (Lacasse 2000), that I term
intermixtuality.
The collective practice of online remixing is, however, evident in modes
of reception as opposed to modes of production: rarely are remixes posted
with more than one author, and while remixers engage with the work of
others, they tend to mix alone. This is consistent with earlier findings, as
well as the majority of remixes attributed to a single author across all case
study examples. Additionally, remixers tend to fall into two distinct types:
those “inward looking,” who stay within the realm of the fan community,
remix host site, or forum, and those “outward looking,” a kind of remixer
diaspora, who may begin the remix process within a host site or forum, but
then disseminate their work across wider social media including YouTube,
and online music platforms such as Soundcloud.
In all case study examples, the participatory nature of the online remix
process is emphasized in the accompanying sets of guidelines. That said, the
remixers have no input in terms of how the stems are presented and the
artist grants no access to original multitrack recordings. In all instances,
the artists retain copyrights to original musical works and recordings. The
most significant commonality of all these case studies is that all stems are
presented with multiple processing and production components intact. The
stems do not feature instruments recorded in their “raw” form, and even
where the stems feature synthesized and/or programmed elements, these
too retain all dynamics and time-based signal processing. To that end, the
artist has controlled precisely which elements of the multitrack they wish the
remixer to hear, while simultaneously revealing aspects of production that
are concealed when the song is heard as its composite whole. These matters
suggest the process is not as participatory as it may appear. Even in the REM
example where the formation of nearly 200 stems is relatively rough, each
individual stem still retains its original production processing chain. Also
significant is that the stems are presented as uncompressed or lossless AIFF
or WAV files in all case study examples: these stems are digitally complete,
high quality (relative to lossy files, such as MP3) and as such are presented
in large file sizes.
Online remix contests prior to 2010 also tended to privilege the
participatory nature of the remix process, yet offered little reward. In the
cases of Kanye West, Nine Inch Nails, William Orbit, and Radiohead,
the remixes created as part of the contests and events were not officially
released, neither were remixers—or, indeed, their remixes—exposed in any
associated real-world event. In the case studies featured here, the prizes and
rewards extend much further; a continuum of intermixtuality is evident
that, while originating online, now infiltrates the “real world.” Deadmau5,
Bon Iver, and Skrillex all offered official releases as part of the contest prize
packages, suggesting artists are now more willing to offer tangible rewards
to remixers, as well as engage with remixers beyond the virtual realm.
In the Deadmau5 contest, thousands of comments and posts appeared across

multiple music and technology fora, including the Beatport PLAY comments
thread, but also Ableton Live fora, Logic Pro discussion threads, and YouTube
and Facebook comments. Additionally, many sub-communities were formed
on Soundcloud. Here, remixers “broke off” into smaller groups to discuss niche
aesthetic directions and more nuanced techniques. The number of competition
entrants remains unknown since the final number of entrants was not posted
in Beatport; however, thousands of remixes appeared across multiple online
music fora, including Soundcloud, InternetDJ, and YouTube. The reception
of the “SOFI Needs a Ladder” remix contest was, however, overwhelmingly
negative. Comments threads across all fora focused on DJ “beefs,” the initial
cost of stems, the “ripping off” of fans, as well as many competition conspiracy
theories. The most significant aspect of this competition was the speed at
which smaller online communities formed around the remix on alternative
fora, yet did not seem focused on or engaged with the competition itself. Here,
the “outward looking” remix diaspora is evident.
REM’s “It Happened Today” remix event generated a total of 211
remixes on an official Soundcloud “remix project group.” Other REM
remixes appeared sporadically across YouTube and Facebook, but with no
apparent formation of sub-communities. The official Soundcloud “remix
project group” was moderated by R.E.M.HQ, with regular moderator
engagement. Furthermore, with no “time limit” or prize attached to the
event, the take-up was slower, and thus, the fan/remixer discourse was
generally less “urgent” in nature. In contrast to the reception of Deadmau5
remixes, fan and remixer feedback was overwhelmingly positive across
broad topics. Comments included thanks extended to the producer and the
band for the opportunity, enjoyment and excitement at the chance to be
“creative,” technical support enquiries and help requests from those new
to music production and/or DAW software, and further requests for more
remix opportunities.
The main engagement with Bon Iver’s “call to arms” remix project took
place via Indaba’s discussion forum. Also interesting to note is that, of all
the mix stem case studies, Bon Iver’s remix contest generated prominent
journalism and critical commentary in online fanzines, journals, magazines,
and blogs. Overall, more than 1,000 remixes were uploaded to Indaba
Music across the album tracks with “Holocene” generating the most
remixes: 240 in total. Between eight plays and four thousand plays were
generated from each remix, with further remixes posted on YouTube,
Facebook, and Soundcloud. Fan engagement was overwhelmingly positive,
with the main discussion focusing on enjoyment, praise for others’ work,
vote requests, praise and acknowledgment to beginner remixers, and winner
congratulations. Parallels can be drawn between the REM and Bon Iver
contests in that both received positive feedback and engagement, and both
featured “inward looking” communities of remixers who largely stayed
within the realm of the remix’s host forum.
INTERMIXTUALITY 247
Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three mixes were submitted to the
Skrillex and Damian Marley contest, with many entries gaining hundreds
of comments. This remix contest generated significant engagement, not just
within the Beatport PLAY community but also across wider social media
and music fora. Twelve remixes gained over 10,000 plays, with three remixes
gaining over 1,000 votes. Comments varied between positive feedback on
remixes and prizes to negative views on the competition structure, the
remixes eventually chosen as winners, and participation by professional
and/or “signed” remix artists. This level of professional engagement
highlights a key difference between this contest and the other case study
examples. Multiple entries from professional remix artists were submitted.
For example, Norwegian remix duo Pegboard Nerds submitted a remix
that, while it did not receive a prize, was the highest played remix and also
featured the second highest number of comments, the majority of which were
positive. This remix did, however, receive substantially more engagement via
Soundcloud, where it has been played more than 1.4 million times. What
this demonstrates is a blurring between fan or “listener” engagement and
professional remix artists that was not evident prior to 2010.
The sheer quantity, and concomitant variation in stylistic design and
content, of remixes submitted to these contests is such that they transcend
categorization. For example, online remix practice spans Navas’s four
categories of “extended,” “selective,” “reflexive,” and “regenerative” (2010).
Online remixes are often longer than the original hypotext, feature added
or subtracted elements of the original mix stems, and, in some cases, feature
only a fraction of the original stem collection—many allegorize the original
hypotext and, since creative commons sites often feature open-ended
remix timeframes, remixes can be considered regenerative. What is evident
through studying intermixtuality is the potential of an online remix contest
to act as a nexus between the artist, fan, and music production process. In
most instances, the level of participant engagement is still superficial, but
the hosting of a remix contest is clearly more than a simple marketing tool:
it presents an ideal opportunity for an artist to engage their fan base, as
well as online communities, in production practice. Since the artist takes
for granted that participants possess both remix technologies (typically
computers and appropriate software) and skillsets (digital audio editing and
sample-manipulation techniques), this can, however, result in misjudged
expectations. For example, in the REM case study, many participants
expressed enthusiasm toward the stem availability and remix event.
However, multiple help requests from remixers to the Soundcloud moderator
were evident, suggesting a lack of understanding among participants as to
how to engage with and/or remix the stems. In these cases, assistance was
quickly given; however, there was a clear overestimation on the part of the
artist as to the experiential level of remix ability among the participants.
Conversely, much discussion among the Skrillex and Damian Marley contest
participants surrounded the provision of only three stems, each of which
featured multiple instruments. Participants expressed frustration as to their

lack of control over which instruments were consolidated into stems in the
first place. Here, perhaps the artist underestimated participant ability and,
therefore, unwittingly limited them from the outset.
Prior to 2010, the practice of fan remixing might be considered as playing
in a kind of music production sandpit. A fan can adapt a remix with plenty
of room for trial and error and within the confines of the online music
community. In saying that, the participant is not obliged to upload a remix just
because they have downloaded the stems. As pointed out by Williams (2010),
music recording and production is inherently private, with the operational
processes occurring behind closed doors. There are certainly parallels to be
drawn between the private nature of professional recording and production
and intermixtuality since the actual process of remixing rarely takes place
collaboratively; remixes produced by more than one individual are in the
minority. Neither do such practice(s) take place in the public sphere since the
software in which remixes are constructed is not viewable by others; this part
of the production process is usually conducted offline. By “public sphere,” I am
not referring to Habermas’s historical-sociological public sphere (1991: 1), but
rather the kind of open, online community fora in which participants might
discuss their work in view of others. In the online music community, however,
only some participatory practice(s) take place publicly. As Nonnecke et al.
noted, in every online community, there are public and nonpublic participants;
the latter are referred to as “lurkers.” This study on intermixtuality does not
account for such participants; however, the percentage of lurkers to public
participants is much higher in technical-oriented fora than in other fields such
as medicine (Nonnecke et al 2006: 8). Additionally, hierarchical structures
are also present in online music communities, as has been acknowledged in
both digital music studies (Baym 2012) and broader work on communities
of practice (Wenger 1998; Preece et al. 2003). These sorts of structures are
present both in the remixes that attract high numbers of votes and also in a
kind of “super voter” who posts regularly across multiple remixes. The site
of intermixtuality, while bearing all the hallmarks of an online community of
practice, is temporary and transient in nature. Ultimately, the nature of the
online community surrounds the reception of remixes, to include the remix
production process, as opposed to their production.
Summary
Intermixtuality is a potentially useful term to apply to online remix
practice for a number of reasons. It is important to note that this process
of online music (re)production begins with stem files, which have already
gone through multiple stages of production: a first stage via the original
multitrack recording, then a further stage as the instrument tracks, then
INTERMIXTUALITY 249
again as fragments of the multitrack recording are consolidated and

processed into the stem form for the purposes of remixing. This virtual mode
of music production adds another layer to studies in music intertextuality.
If we consider the recording as the original text or hypotext, then the stems
or hypertexts generated from fragments of the original are created, only
to then be further adapted and/or reappropriated. The malleable nature of
stems as digital files—as opposed to the CD-ROM example discussed by
Lacasse (2000)—is such that intermixtuality has the potential to produce
multitudes of hypertexts; the nature of the subsequent online dissemination
makes accurate documentation and, therefore, analysis challenging.
Key findings from this set of case studies include recognition of a continuum
of online (re)production practice and the “real world” acknowledgment of
online production practice. This is evident in the recent prize structures of
remix contests, which feature official releases, live performance support
slots, and production equipment.
Stems relating to dance music genres feature higher levels of engagement
and participation. This is linked to historical forms of remix practice present
in earlier pop and dance musics of the 1980s and, later, their concomitant
computer-based professional production methods. Such musics foreground
sample, loop, and sequenced phrases, and as such, audiences are more
likely to possess at least an awareness of, if not experience in, associated
production techniques. Regardless of genre, the potential of intermixtuality
to engage participants in the production process is still somewhat limited.
Remixers have no access to the original hypotext production process; an
altogether different form of virtual production engagement is, therefore,
created around the stems or hypertexts.
Intermixtuality elicits numerous potential lines of future scholarly
enquiry from a broad range of possible perspectives. Quantitative analysis
as to numbers of participants engaged with remix contests, as well as
further online ethnography, would generate a greater understanding of
both engaged demographics and responses: Who remixes? And why?
What about issues of gender and socioeconomic background in online
remixer demographics? These social lines of enquiry could tell us more
about the types of participants involved in online remixing and, where gaps
are evident, how others may be engaged. Certainly more work could be
done on the sonic construction of mix stems in the studio environment:
What decisions are made surrounding the composition of stems? And
what effect—if any—does the rise of stem remixing have on recordists and
mastering engineers? It may be possible that this type of remixing practice is
redefining the role of professional remixers and further work could certainly
address that. Another line of research pertains to the music industry and
the benefits of stem remix competitions and contexts as marketing and/or
fan engagement tools. How are mix stem projects used to draw fans into a
wider fan community? And what is the relationship between participation
in remix competitions and the purchase of recorded music or live concert
tickets? Existing work recognizes the prevalence of stem remixing in EDM

and dance music genres, so there is plenty more opportunity to investigate
the presence of mix stem practices across a wider genre spectrum. A
significant research problem, however, lies in the transient nature of remix
contests, the temporary hosting of competitions and contests, and the often
sudden removal of the discussion threads that contains significant evidence
of engagement and participation. Unlike broader phonomusicology, which
can address recorded music long after release, more urgency is required in
the field of online music practices.
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C h a p t e r Fo ur t e e n
Crowdfunding and Alternative

Modes of Production
Mark Thorley
Crowdfunding has rapidly gained exposure as a new way for musicians,

composers, record producers and all manner of music creatives to find
new ways of realizing their work. Among the general excitement, there is
often considerable media interest in musicians or producers who succeed
in crowdfunding a project that has been neglected by the mainstream. Such
interest plays into the recorded music industry’s long history of celebrating
recording artists and performers who find “success,” despite being largely
ignored by the mainstream. The narrative of the struggling musician who
carries on despite continued rejection lends significant credibility to how
they are viewed by fans and consumers. So when a music creative uses
crowdfunding successfully, it serves to first continue this narrative—that is,
the aspirant musician finds a way, through hard work and ingenuity to be
supported by enlightened and empowered followers. Secondly, however, it
throws just as much light on crowdfunding as a credible and effective way
for new music to be brought into a form wherein it can find an audience.
In this way, there is often as much excitement about crowdfunding and the
particular platform used as there is about the project itself.
There is, therefore, obvious resonance between crowdfunding as an
alternative funding mechanism and an “alternative” approach to music
production in its widest sense. Just as an alternative approach to music
production eschews the mainstream and obvious, so crowdfunding avoids
the usual functions of angel investors, shareholders and blatant commercial
exploitation. In this way, crowdfunding and an “alternative” approach to

production seem like comfortable and well suited co-habitees. However,
among the maelstrom focused on successful crowdfunded projects, the
unloved pitches remain just as that. The work does not come to fruition; the
producers, despite their potential, do not realize their concepts; and no one
is really the wiser.
This chapter looks at the relationship between crowdfunding and what
I term “alternative modes of production.” I first examine the established
model of music production before outlining what is meant by an alternative
mode of production. From there, I critique the immediate attraction of
crowdfunding before discussing four elements which need to be considered as
crucial to an effective relationship between crowdfunding and an alternative
mode of production. These elements are: considered rationale, ignoring the
record company model, anticipating potential supporter motivations and
actively engaging with participants.
The Established Model and Alternative

Modes of Production
Before the advent of sound recording, musician and audience shared the
same space and time—they would be in the same room with the audience
hearing the performance as it was played. Sound recording, starting with the
acoustic era and through the electrical, magnetic and digital eras, brought
a new disjuncture—the performance could be heard many years after it
was played and in a different environment. Schafer (1977 [1969]: 43–47)
terms this separation of sound from its source as “schizophonia,” noting
that it is electroacoustic production that has brought about the change.
Alongside this emergence of the recorded music product, however, a whole
new field of activity based around the discovery, management and economic
exploitation of music has emerged, namely the recorded music industry. As
the complexity of territories, markets and genres has increased, the recorded
music industry has taken an increasing role in filling the gap between the
music creator and the listener. A highly complex function beyond the scope
of this chapter and covered in depth elsewhere (Hull 2004; Passman 2009),
there are two key aspects of this increasing role. First, the “industry” takes
a significant portion of the funds spent on recorded music, and secondly, it
plays an increasing role in deciding what music is recorded, promoted or,
in other ways, supported. Off the back of the “technical” emergence of the
recorded music product, therefore, a massive machine (apart from the actual
recording process) has emerged. Turning to the first aspect, to the layperson
unfamiliar with the inner workings of the recorded music industry, the
proportion of funds given to a recording artist may seem low. For example,
while a recording artist typically receives between 8 percent and 20 percent
CROWDFUNDING AND ALTERNATIVE MODES OF PRODUCTION 255
of wholesale purchase price, there are usually many deductions for producer
fees, studio time, packaging costs, breakages and territory variations, such
that the actual figure is much lower. In defence of such contracts, though,
organizations such as the International Federation of the Phonographic
Industry (IFPI) are usually quick to point out that the additional costs of
promoting and supporting recording artists—in a major market such as the
United Kingdom or United States—could range from $0.5 to $2 million
(IFPI 2016). This reflects the considerable cost of supporting and promoting
recording artists to make them economically viable. Secondly, to maximize
the economic return on such an investment, the music industry does much
to mould and alter music before it is released. For example, it wields
complete choice over who is contracted to start with, how much they are
paid, what and where they record, whether the recording is released and
how it is promoted. Furthermore, control goes beyond this to encompass
exclusivity, the right of the record company (but not the artist) to terminate
and the retention of copyright in recordings even after dissolution of the
contract has taken place. A whole new set of intermediaries are involved in
controlling this process, their ultimate aim being to ensure that the music
produced finds a set of consumers who are willing to pay for it.
This existing way of working has received extensive criticism from
recording artists and producers. For example, in his unsuccessful court
case (Panayiotou v Sony Music Entertainment (UK) Ltd. [1994]), George
Michael referred to his recording contract as “professional slavery.” Similarly,
Prince wrote the word “slave” on his cheek in reference to his contractual
relationship with Warner Brothers. Both cases seem to pour scorn on the
apparent imbalance of control. The existing way of working has also been
critiqued widely in academic circles. Around the time that the “magnetic era”
of sound recording was beginning, Adorno and Horkheimer first introduced
the concept of the “culture industry” in Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002
[1944]). Here, they proposed that popular culture (as opposed to the
“higher arts”) is merely a factory production line producing standardized
cultural goods to keep mass society in their place. In this somewhat
pessimistic view, they state that “culture today is infecting everything with
sameness” (ibid.: 94). Schiller continues this theme, outlining the manner
in which corporatism is seen to negatively affect the production of culture.
Commenting on the commercialization of culture, Schiller states, “What
distinguishes their situation in the industrial-capitalist era, and especially
in its most recent development, are the relentless and successful efforts to
separate these elemental expressions of human creativity from their group
and community origins for the purpose of selling them to those who can pay
for them” (1989: 31). Schiller also draws heavily on UNESCO’s Cultural
Industries: A Challenge for the Future of Culture report. The issues addressed
by UNESCO are, by nature of the organization’s remit, global, and the
challenge addressed is summed up as “the gradual eclipse or marginalization
of cultural messages that did not take the form of goods, primarily of value
as marketable commodities” (UNESCO 1982: 10). However, since this time

many popular music academics have taken a slightly more pragmatic view.
However, the overwhelming fact that the pursuit of profit is intertwined
with the whole process is acknowledged, such as where Frith outlines that
the industrialization of music is “not something which ‘happens’ to music
but a process which fuses (and confuses) capital, technical and musical
arguments” (1987: 54). Given that much of the growth of the cultural
industries and, more particularly, the recorded music industry has been
driven by technological innovation, the question of whether crowdfunding
as a technological approach can offer an alternative is highly pertinent.
Although writers on the music industries have used the term “modes of
production” quite extensively, it was originally coined by Karl Marx in Das
Kapital (2009 [1867]). Marx’s reference to the combination of “productive
forces” and the “relations of production” has significant relevance to the
music industries and, in particular, the manner in which it has altered
during the past two decades. For example, the “productive forces” (tools,
machinery, labour) have altered significantly in the production environment
with the rise of project, home and laptop-based studios fundamentally driven
by improved computing power and storage. The “relations of production”
(power, legal frameworks, industry structure) have subsequently altered
under the influence of digital networks. Arguably, some elements here have
changed more substantially than others. For example, the rise of social
media and other emerging technologies has altered the relationship between
music producers and consumers (O’Hara and Brown 2006). However, legal
frameworks have often lagged behind technological change and struggled to
cope with changes in practice. The term “modes of production” is therefore
useful and has thus been used in a variety of contexts already. An example
of this is where Park, with relevance to Marx’s “productive forces,” outlines
“established modes of production resulting from ownership patterns” (2007:
118). Here, Park is outlining the control of production as being rooted in
the ownership of facilities, expertise and intellectual property. Using the
term more flexibly with reference to Tin Pan Alley, Wise explains the mode
of production prevalent there as “music provided on demand, tailored to
particular needs in a thoroughly professional, business-like manner” (2012:
502). Somewhat differently, referring to music rooted in a specific locale
(that of North Queensland and Torres Strait), Salisbury notes that whereas in
the past music performers were at the mercy of industry gatekeepers, “in the
current climate the ‘new modes’ of production have allowed Aboriginal and
Torres Strait artists to take control over their own careers and to promote
themselves directly to the consumer” (2013: 39). The term “new modes”
here seems to suggest a co-existence with established models wherein being
able to promote directly to consumers can overcome the issues to which
UNESCO (1982) makes reference, for example.
This chapter deliberately uses the term “alternative modes of production”
to imply that it goes beyond the “new” modes of production referred to by
Salisbury (2013). It does this with a focus on United States and Western
Europe though. It must be noted that issues such as poverty and rife
cassette piracy make territories (such as Africa) a totally different picture
to explore (Shepherd 2003: 639). So while “new” modes encompass the
use of emergent technology to promote and distribute directly to the
consumer, crowdfunding has the potential for a much deeper impact that
challenges the very assumptions and practice rooted in the sound recording
era. While much academic focus is still on the production of a recorded
artefact which the music consumer pays for, the producer of music or sound
can now deliver a whole series of auditory experiences to a listener, who
in return can provide a whole series of valued activities not necessarily
limited to the allocation of funds. The term also plays deliberately into the
challenges for production in an age of globalization. On this subject, and
with reference to the effect of increased company mergers and concentration
in production generally (not particularly music or media), Scholte notes that
“alternative modes of production have arguably never been as weak in the
world economy” (2005: 183). Notably though, much has changed with
technology since then, including the rise of crowdfunding. However, in a
more recent reference to how corporatism has pseudo-humanized popular
media in order to control copyright, Cvetkovski notes, “There is little room
for alternative modes of production in popular media” (2013: 67).
The Immediate Attractions of Crowdfunding

The pivotal attraction of crowdfunding is that the producer can connect
directly with their audience (and potential backer), as the cultural intermediary
(Bourdieu 1984) is taken out of the equation. This means that, first and
foremost, the producer need not go through the time-consuming (and often
unsuccessful) process of trying to secure a commercial arrangement with, say,
a record company. Just in terms of time and effort, this can seem attractive.
However, it may also be attractive from a philosophical standpoint,
particularly if the producer, with an “alternative” take on their own creative
output, dislikes the commercial orientation of major record companies.
Continued consolidation of ownership of record companies (and indeed
media generally) has done little to help the music industry’s poor reputation
for developing creativity. Although crowdfunding is often thought of as an
aspirant’s route to market, in fact, many music practitioners who have had
prior commercial contracts use it after previous (sometimes disappointing)
contractual arrangements. An established producer or practitioner may
also be attracted by the opportunity to leverage their fan base or network
through social media (though such a fan base may have been supported by
prior commercial partners). Secondly, and related to this, is the low-quality
threshold which exists with crowdfunding. With the established model, there
are commonly accepted approaches to pitching a potential product to, say, a

record company that are set by professionals in that field (Ursell 2006), and
this involves cost and time. In fact, as the recorded music industry has been
more challenged by the shifting sands of technology, its attitude to taking
risks has worsened. As Negus (1992: 40) notes, decision makers want to see
product that is already proven in the market—and the cost of this “proving”
falls with the producer. With crowdfunding there is no such threshold of
quality, so while crowdfunding platforms do vet projects for suitability,
this is a fairly broad approach checking for issues of legality and possible
ethics. Given that crowdfunding platforms are themselves dependent upon
driving traffic to their sites, even risky or edgy projects with no hope of
being funded can be attractive—this is often part of the marketing message
to potential project initiators. The quality threshold and associated cost is
therefore low. Thirdly, and related to the first point, is the ability to retain
greater control with the creative work. In a commercial relationship with a
record company, the producer has to surrender legal and creative control
of their work to the record company in return for the financial support to
produce work. The more creative and independently minded a producer is,
the more likely that this will be a problem particularly given the issues of
homogenization highlighted earlier. Lastly, a crowdfunded project means
that the producer retains more of the revenue. In contrast to the typical
figures discussed earlier, crowdfunding platforms generally take between 5
percent and 10 percent of the funds if the project is successfully funded. The
crowdfunding producer therefore gets more of the revenue and also has
control over how it is spent.
Against this backdrop, the potential of crowdfunding to significantly shift
practice for producers into an “alternative mode” cannot be underestimated.
However, much of the thinking behind its appropriation is understandably
grounded in the era of recorded music. The following sections, therefore,
outline four elements of consideration necessary to maximize the opportunity
for crowdfunding to support an alternative mode of production.
A Considered Rationale
The barriers to entry to the economically rewarding part of the recorded music
industry are high. Furthermore, even once a practitioner gains some sort of
commercial contract, success is far from guaranteed. In reality, according
to Frith, 90 percent of records make a loss (2001: 33), while according
to Kretschmer, 10 percent of records released account for 90 percent of
turnover for labels (ibid.: 425). Indeed, it is no accident that crowdfunded
music projects have grown in a time when signings to record labels have
declined. One such example of an established practitioner’s success in the
form of Amanda Palmer is discussed by Potts (2012). The fact that Amanda
Palmer had been in prior commercial relationships with Roadrunner

Records (of which Warner Music Group have held a majority stake since
2008) is often ignored. The pivotal point for Palmer came when Roadrunner
Records asked that a video be re-edited to change her appearance. The
ensuing backlash involved Palmer and her fans rallying against Roadrunner
Records, from whose contract she was eventually released. The manner in
which Palmer and her fans worked together against the record company is
referred to by Potts (2012) as resistance to, or outright rejection of, “cultural
norms”—collectively, they reacted to the record company’s control of the
creative product. In Palmer’s case, the end result was her being released from
her contract with Roadrunner Records, and secondarily the opportunity to
launch an independent career funded in part by crowdfunding.
The problem with this motivation, and why it may not always end so well,
is that it is largely “reactionary,” stemming from frustration with established
ways of working particularly in Artist and Repertoire (A&R) functions. In
managing music output, A&R has two main functions—deciding what artists
to contract and deciding how resources (financial and personnel) are used
in the development of their music and image (Negus 1992: 48). Deciding
to use crowdfunding from a reactionary stance is, therefore, a decision that
the A&R function can be better exercised for the benefit of the producer
by the producer themselves. However, this shows an under-appreciation of
both the depth and the breadth of A&R. For example, in terms of depth,
the A&R function takes many decisions such as where to record, what to
record, what personnel to involve, contractual terms and so forth. All of
these choices involve time and expertise in a bid to maximize economic
and critical results. While an established artist or producer may have some
of these skills, an aspirant music creator at an early stage of their career
(when they are most in need of this expertise) is likely to be deficient in this
aspect. Furthermore, the breadth of A&R is just as easily underestimated
and underappreciated whereas in actual fact, as Negus (2002: 506) notes,
even functions such as accounting and business affairs contribute to A&R.
So, the manner in which the recording process needs to be supported with
financial management, marketing, promotion and project management is
important but often overlooked.
The issue is that where there is frustration with other methods,
crowdfunding offers an alternative where the barriers to entry are low.
However, the typical work traditionally undertaken by A&R still needs to
be addressed, and indeed the success of any project is highly dependent
upon such work. As evidence of this, while there seems to be no quality
threshold for setting up a crowdfunding project, in fact, as Mollick (2014)
notes, the greater the preparedness (as a reflection of quality) of a project,
the more likely it is to be funded. In choosing to use crowdfunding as an
alternative mode of production then, the producer needs to have a clear
rationale for doing so based upon the fact that they have the expertise to
undertake the necessary work.
Ignore the Record Company Model

Given the prior discussions, it would be easy to think of crowdfunding as an
alternative where the crowdfunding producer becomes the record company.
The reality is, however, far more complex. In fact, D’Amato (2009) argues
that it is the crowdfunding platforms which are in many ways like labels
in disguise. The key difference is that the crowdfunding platforms are not
risking their own money but, rather that of the funders. The fact that the
platforms put little effort into unsuccessful projects but take revenue from
those projects that are successful is remarkably familiar. Additionally,
when platforms host unsuccessful projects which drive traffic to their site,
and build awareness of their brand, they are in fact offloading research,
development and promotional work to others. This is again very similar to
the way in which record companies traditionally allowed others to take on
risk from which they subsequently benefit.
Given that crowdfunding producers often use the medium because they
can retain ownership and control of the works, it is perhaps understandable
that they think of themselves rather than the platform as most like a record
company. So, although the emergence of disruptive technology (digital
networks, participatory platforms) would seem to have totally undermined
this model (in the same way that technology created it in the first place),
crowdfunding producers lack either the will or the foresight to think differently.
Decades of recorded music practice may well have led to entrenched ways
of thinking about intellectual property, its management and exploitation.
The problem is that while the producer may now have more control, it is
actually over a more limited set of options. For example, while a record
company maintains established commercial relationships with, say, labels in
other territories who can release and promote recordings under licence and
film/television companies to whom they can give synchronization licences,
the crowdfunding producer has no such access to this infrastructure. Nor do
they have the expertise to do the complex work usually routinely undertaken
by a record company to exploit and manage intellectual property.
In reality, then, though the producer retains much of the choice that a
record company held due to ownership of works, they need to think and
act quite differently. Whereas the “new mode” of production outlined
by Salisbury (2013) suggests some movement, an “alternative mode of
production” can, and needs to, change more.
Anticipate Supporter Motivations

Understanding customer motivations is obviously fundamental to the
approach of any business. Music taste is clearly very difficult to predict,
though, as the music industry’s low proportion of recording artists who
make a return on the investment attest to. Despite best efforts, commercial
success still seems a game largely of chance. If being able to predict what
music consumers will buy based upon decades of experience is a tricky
proposition, crowdfunding is fraught with even more unknowns, with its
geographically and culturally diverse set of possible funders.
The fundamental issue with crowdfunding, though, is that the potential
funder of a project is not a music consumer. They are not buying a music
product; instead, they are committing funds to a project yet to happen for
which they will get an experiential return. On this point, the work of Gerber
and Hui (2013: 8) is pertinent. In their work, the four main motivations for
funders are: collecting rewards, helping others, being part of a community
and supporting a cause. “Collecting rewards” means receiving some kind
of experience, acknowledgment or artefact, while “helping others” reflects
a more philanthropic approach to supporting those with whom supporters
have a particular connection. Being “part of a community” reflects the
motivation to be involved in the work of a select group, while “supporting a
cause” reflects backing a project that resonates with supporters’ values and
ties in with issues of personal identity (or identity to which they aspire). This
starts to show how the “alternative mode of production” could work for a
producer of music or sound, though thinking how the “offering” can address
these complex motivations is clearly a challenge. Importantly, though, the
crowdfunding producer does now have the tools and the flexibility (through
ownership and control) to propose a project which addresses funders’ rather
than music consumers’ motivations.
Given the general lack of research into the motivations of project
supporters, particularly for music, uses and gratifications theory has
considerable theoretical potential. The theory is an approach to examining
and understanding how people use media actively to satisfy defined personal
needs. It is relevant to crowdfunding because in making the decision to make
a contribution in exchange for reward, the crowdfunding project supporter
engages deeply with social media. The theory has already been applied to
social media engagement (Leung 2013), internet use (LaRose et al. 2001;
Ruggeiro 2000) and, furthermore, music listening (Lonsdale and North 2010).
The majority of research into uses and gratifications theory is based
upon McQuail, Blumer and Brown’s (1972) original work, which states
that media use falls into four categories: (1) surveillance (keeping up with
what’s going on in the world), (2) personal identity (who the user is), (3)
personal relationships (interaction with others) and (4) diversion (the need
for escapism or entertainment). A participant may use crowdfunding to stay
engaged with developments in new music online (surveillance), as a means
to express their sense of self and purpose (identity), as a way to be part
of a community (personal relationships), as a means of escape from their
usual life (diversion), or any combination of these. Much of this reflects the
findings of Gerber and Hui (2013) outlined earlier. Similarly, in relation to
music listening, Lonsdale and North’s research notes primary motivations
being related to distraction, with interpersonal relationships, personal

identity and surveillance being of secondary importance (2010: 131).
Engaging with crowdfunding would alter this balance, potentially bringing
interpersonal relationships, personal identity and surveillance more to the
fore. In fact, it could be argued that crowdfunding is actually an extension
of uses and gratifications theory because it allows users to decide on other
peoples’ media experience.
These admittedly limited areas of research underline how the producer
interested in an alternative mode of production needs to anticipate
supporter motivations as being very different to those of a music consumer.
While building an offering that ties in with these motivations may not be
immediately obvious, the freedom and control that the producer has can
enable them to do so in a manner not previously possible.
Active Engagement with Participants

Crowdfunding involves a new proximity of relationship between the music
producer and the audience more akin to the situation prior to the era
of sound recording. The mechanism of the recorded music industry and
cultural intermediaries seem, on the surface at least, to have disappeared.
This newly proximate relationship presents an opportunity to engage more
actively than before, bearing in mind the complex motivations of potential
participants.
Given the fact that much of the appeal of crowdfunding centres on creative
control, the benefits of engaging with participants actively, and potentially
relinquishing some of that control, may not be immediately obvious. In
examining the concept of control, two examples from the world of film are
relevant. The first is that of the Pottermore Platform and specifically how
a fan, Heather Lawver, developed a web-based fictional school newspaper
called The Daily Prophet. Rather than valuing and engaging with this fan
participation, Warner Brothers took legal action, viewing it as copyright
infringement. By responding in this way, as Gallio and Martina note, “this
case doesn’t bring any innovation: it is, in fact, a missed opportunity to
re-think the idea of the ownership of the contents, since the immersive
experience controlled by the powers-that-be is separated from the space
that the fan is given within the same world” (2012: 2). Gallio and Martina
compare this with the example of Star Wars Uncut, where fans created a
complete new film by submitting and editing a series of 15-second clips.
The copyright owners, LucasFilm, clearly had a case for legal action;
however, in this case they took a more relaxed view, which resulted in what
Gallio and Martina call “a clear example of a successful dialogue between
media corporation and fan bases” (ibid.: 3). As a result, the film went on
to be nominated for an Emmy Award in the Interactive Media category.
These two contrasting examples show how producers can choose to use the
creative efforts of fans constructively or not.
Involving customers as participants in the process of product development
is not totally new. The literature in service marketing has for some time
highlighted the customer’s role in service provision (Zeithaml 1981; Murray
1991; Blazevic and Lievens 2008). Crowdfunding furthers this concept of
getting the supporter to help form the offering, based on the notion that
their expertise and input will produce a better result. This also ties into
research around “lead-user” theory such as that of von Hippel (1986)
and von Hippel and Katz (2002). These works note that “lead-users” can
successfully anticipate needs and new innovations months and years before
the marketplace. It follows, therefore, that involving such active and useful
backers more closely should be constructive.
As noted earlier, the lower cost tools now available to many have changed
the “productive forces,” and new digital network connections have changed
the “relations of production.” Participants can therefore be involved in
projects in novel and interactive ways that can bring additional value to the
project, and provide them with a novel experience. This ties in with Benkler’s
argument that commons-based peer production is a viable alternative to
capitalist production where inputs and outputs are freely shared (2006: 62,
146). While crowdfunding does not strictly adhere to the ideals of commons-
based peer production (particularly as many crowdfunding producers wish
to retain and exploit copyright), it does draw on the “wealth of networks”
concept to produce a range of outputs such as experience and community
that are over and beyond surplus capital. Similarly, facilitating the active and
creative engagement of participants also draws on concepts explored by Lessig
(2008: 89–94). Where Lessig defines the “established model” referred to here
as an example of a “read-only” culture, involving participants reciprocally
means a “read/write” culture. Lessig notes that the commercial economy and
the sharing economy can co-exist in, for example, the hybrids of “community
spaces,” “collaboration spaces” and “communities.” As Lessig notes, “A
hybrid that respects the rights of the creator—both the original creator and
the remixer—is more likely to survive than the one that doesn’t” (ibid.: 246).
The producer engaging in an alternative mode of production therefore
needs to facilitate active engagement rooted in the new proximity with the
funder. By embracing lower production costs, the participant can be involved
in new ways that deliver value both to the project and to the participants
themselves.
Summary
This chapter has examined the relationship between crowdfunding as an
“alternative” funding stream and “alternative modes of production.” It has
shown that beyond the “new” modes of production, an “alternative mode

of production” now exists based upon the fundamental shift of emerging
technology. Not only can the producer adopt new ways to promote and
distribute recordings to listeners, those listeners can fund their work,
give them ideas and even co-create with them. The “alternative mode” is
therefore more reciprocal, more proximate and more innovative. This is a
significant shift for the producer of music and sound. Whereas the role of
music producer is established, it is still rooted in the practice and approach of
100 years of recorded music. Instead, it would now perhaps be better to use
the term “Sound Producer”—that is, someone who ultimately coordinates
an auditory experience for a listener. The capture of that event in a recorded
form need not be the case though—it could be a live event, mediated online;
it could be interactive or any number of variations.
Herein lies the potential of a true “alternative mode of production”
involving crowdfunding. Rather than the funding, ideas and control coming
from the recorded music industry, these elements come from the community
of participants with whom there is proximity and shared “alternative”
values. As this chapter has shown, however, this can work only through
careful consideration of the four elements discussed. First, a project needs
to have a considered rationale taking into account the need to address
work traditionally undertaken by A&R. So although the interface between
producer and audience has changed, many activities such as deciding what
material to develop and how resources are used remain necessary. Secondly,
the existing record company model needs to be ignored and replaced with
a fresh approach. While the crowdfunding producer does not have the
capability to act as a record company, they do have the newfound control
and flexibility to act in innovative ways that a record company could not.
Thirdly, supporter motivations need to be anticipated bearing in mind that
they are not music consumers. Instead, the complex motivations explored
here suggest that the producer has considerable potential to entice likely
supporters in new ways. Lastly, active engagement with participants needs
to take place in order to build novel sound experiences that bring value to
supporter and producer.
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Index
4’33” (composition) 211–19, 222–4 archives, sound. See sound archives

arranged tradition 90
Abbey Road Studios 46, 48, 52, 161, 171 arrangement 165, 225, 238
Ableton Live 141–2, 246 of traditional music 13–14, 82–7,
Aborigines 108–9, 113 n.1, 256. See 89–94
also indigeneity; Torres Strait artists and repertoire (A&R) 7, 8, 53, 259,
Islanders 264
academic training. See education, art of record production 1–2, 11–12
university Ataş, Aytekin Gazi 85–7, 90–1
acousmatic music 14, 123–34, 135 n.1 audio engineering. See engineering, audio
education 127–8 auditory perception 45, 52–3, 124, 127,
production techniques 125, 132–4 129, 131, 200
theory of 124, 125, 129–30, 133–4 Australia 98–114
acoustic ecology 25–6 occupation of indigenous
acoustics 2, 127, 169. See also space, territories 108
acoustic auteurism 1, 9–11, 244
deadness 53, 92 authenticity 6–7, 26, 127, 161, 165, 217
actor-network theory (ANT) 8, 11 folk 28
Adorno, Theodor 5, 255 auto-tune 15, 175–9, 183–8, 190 n.1
aesthetics 11, 15, 33, 58, 124, 132, 208, Auto-Tune (Antares) 175, 179, 184, 188
217, 235. See also glitch; lo-fi
audible 2 Bani, Ephraim 102, 105–7, 110, 113
production 4, 14, 92–3, 171, 240, Bani, Gabriel 99, 101–13
242–3 Bani Senior, Dimple 99, 101–2, 104–7,
Western 14, 99, 107, 113 110–11, 113
age, cultural notions of 73–4 Beatles, The 4, 15, 41, 159–61, 165–6,
agency 2, 9–10, 44, 125, 134, 143, 147, 170, 224–5
149, 177 Beatport 16, 232, 234, 242–3, 246–7
dance of 177 Black Sea Region 14, 82–3, 87, 91
Akalın, Soner 85–7, 90, 95 representation of 83, 86–7, 89, 93
American Federation of Musicians 214 Bohlman, Philip 12, 37 n.5, 37 n.7
analog tape. See tape, magnetic Bon Iver 16, 205, 208 n.3, 231, 241–2,
anechoic chamber 55, 212, 214 244–6
ANT. See actor-network theory (ANT) Born, Georgina 81, 84, 124, 134
anthropology 24, 29, 111, 129 Bourdieu, Pierre 8–9, 257
architecture, aural 13, 46, 51–2, 55–6 Bush, Kate 203
268 Index
Cage, John 16, 203, 211–26 culture 5–7, 9, 13, 27–30, 33, 36–7, 81,
Cambridge Anthropological 87, 93, 99, 102–3, 105–7, 109,
Expedition 104–5, 111–12 111–13, 124–30, 134, 140–1, 157,
classical music 4, 126, 130, 217 162
colonialism 28, 31, 103, 109, 111, 126 mass 29, 158, 166, 216, 255
comic affect 82, 86, 89, 95 n.3 multiculturalism 83, 93, 95, 133
compact discs (CDs) 101, 106, 110, 112, recorded music industry 72, 75
206, 222–3 village 82, 83, 85, 89, 91
composers 16, 70–1, 84, 89–91, 93–4, culture industry 1, 7, 89, 255–6
123–7, 129–34, 138, 203, 211–16, Custodians, The (band) 14, 99, 101,
225 104–5, 107, 110, 112–13
and field recordings 24, 27, 32–3
relation to producers 10–11, 13, Deadmau5 (artist) 16, 140–1, 143, 234–5,
65–6, 75 244–6
compression, dynamic range 2, 4, 64, 92, delay 88, 92, 202, 203, 235, 243. See also
196, 199, 201, 235 echo; reverberation
computers 145, 199, 204, 208 n.7, democracy 125–8, 134
244. See also digital audio democratization 14, 125, 134
workstations (DAWs) of sound recording technology 11, 31
laptops and performance 140, 143 Deschênes, Marcelle 127–8, 130–4
as musical instruments 149 digital audio workstations (DAWs) 90,
and music production 64–5, 94, 167, 132, 167, 183, 204, 235, 246. See
180, 183, 247, 249 also computers
controllerism 141–3, 148, 150–1 digital signatures 3
conversational analysis (CA) 176–88, digitization 4, 101
188 n.3 DIY (do-it-yourself) 66
copyright 212–13, 224–6, 232, 245, 255, drum machines 139, 142, 147, 168
257, 262–3 drums 41, 52, 70, 74, 86, 88, 105, 107,
communal 99, 113 113 n.5, 171, 203, 217, 235, 242,
creative commons 232, 234, 244. See also percussion
247, 263 dub reggae 243
Crass (band) 16, 218, 221 dubstep 138
creativity 47–8, 84, 132, 232, 246,
257, 263 echo 3–4, 33, 176, 180, 185, 190 n.6,
and field recording 25, 27, 32–3 243–4. See also delay;
in industrialist-capitalist era 255 reverberation
private 67–8 ecology, acoustic. See acoustic ecology
processes of 9, 13, 44, 56–8, 63–6, 75, ecomusicology 35
91, 141–2, 161 editing 13, 84, 91–2, 195–6, 208
of producers 257 digital 167, 169, 179, 199, 202,
spaces of 42–3, 49–50, 54–7, 59 204, 247
systems model 11, 13, 44–5, 57–8 tape 28, 33, 159–60, 203–4
vs. technical action 189 EDM. See electronic dance music (EDM)
and technological education, university 14, 83, 87, 125–34
affordances 146, 150 effects processing 3–4, 146, 149, 175,
technological processes 159–60, 164, 196, 199, 202, 204, 206, 208, 243.
166, 188 See also compression; delay; EQ;
crowdfunding 16, 253–64 reverberation
cultural geography 83, 94 Eisenberg, Evan 10, 25, 27, 139, 198
Index 269
electroacoustic music 123, 127, glitch 151, 206, 208 n.8, 235
129–31, 134, 200, 254. See also guitars 46, 51, 68, 70, 87–90, 92, 107, 144,
acousmatic music 165, 168, 199, 238, 242–3
electronic dance music (EDM) 138–44,
242, 244, 249–50 HCI. See human-computer interaction
electronic music 2–3, 14, 66, 124, 133–4, (HCI)
146–8, 162. See also acousmatic headphones 45, 55, 164, 238, 242
music; electroacoustic music; Hennion, Antoine 9, 81
electronic dance music (EDM) hip hop 14, 132–3, 138–40
embodiment 6, 8, 15, 43, 49–51, 56, 133, Hostile, Johnny (Nico Conge) 63–4,
138–9, 144–51 66–70, 72
emotional-affective registers 81, 86–9, 91, human-computer interaction (HCI) 139,
93, 95 n.9 143, 145, 150–1
emotions 49–50, 175, 189, 190 n.5, Husserl, Edmund 43
205, 221–2 Huxley, Aldous 221
engineering, audio 12, 44, 148, 203 hypertext 233–4, 245, 249
engineers 7–8, 10, 52, 64, 68, 84, 89, 92, hypotext 233–4, 245, 247, 249
158, 162, 164, 167, 175–7, 183,
188–9 identity 6, 12, 24, 34, 67, 73, 81, 98, 107,
environmentalism 25, 34–5, 143 112, 175, 232, 261–2
environments 163, 167, 200 cultural 82–3, 101, 108, 111
sonic 3, 201 Islander 103, 111, 113 n.3
spatial 42–58, 199, 202–3 of sounds 199–200, 205, 207
epistemology 6, 125, 128, 134 IFMC (International Folk Music
EQ (equalization) 64, 92–3, 196, 201 Council) 13, 24, 28–31, 34
ethics 31, 189, 258 indigeneity 99–101, 103, 108–10, 113 n.1.
ethnicity 7, 24, 34, 36, 82, 85, 93 See also Aborigines; Torres Strait
ethnomusicology 7, 13, 23–4, 27–33, 130 Islanders
experimental music 63, 123, 129, 203 indigenous music 4, 14, 101–2, 113,
114 n.7
fidelity 4, 28, 32–3. See also lo-fi inscription 179–80, 196
field recording 13, 23–37, 85, 94 n.2 devices 177–8
fieldwork 12, 28, 30–1, 35, 129 phonograph 222
films, dönem 82, 85 and studio production 131
Fırtına (TV show) 13, 82–3, 85–94 International Folk Music Council.
foley 93 See IFMC
folklore 24, 28–31, 85, 89, 127 instrumentality 144–5
Frith, Simon 2, 11, 72, 98–9, 110, 112, instruments 3, 37 n.12, 55, 83–4,
256, 258 86–93, 125, 129, 131, 133, 142–3,
146–8, 161–2, 164, 166, 169,
garmon 83, 87, 90 214, 234, 238, 241–3. See also
gender 12–13, 24, 62–3, 66–9, 72–5, 175, controllerism; drum machines;
224, 249 drums; garmon; guitars;
masculinity 14, 67, 134 kemençe; objects, technological;
geography 24, 34, 44, 103. See also percussion; synthesis; tulum
cultural geography (bagpipes); turntables; voice
gesture 9, 130, 145, 147–9, 180, 183, 188, plucked-string 85, 90
240 recording 52, 68, 245
Gibson, James J. 200–1 tape machines as 24
270 Index
intermediary 9, 11, 198, 255, 257, 262 lived environment 42–5, 53–9
intermixtuality 16, 233–4, 244–5, 247–9 liveness 15, 147, 150–1, 213
International Federation of the lo-fi 64, 66, 163, 207, 242. See also fidelity
Phonographic Industry Lomax, Alan 33, 37
(IFPI) 255 loudspeakers 55, 124, 131–2, 160,
intertextuality 16, 232–3, 249 166–8, 199
intonation 15, 183–8, 190 n.1 ludomusicology 144
lyrics 13, 63, 65, 67, 69–72, 101
jazz 4, 6, 168 nonsense 71–2
Justified Ancients of Mu Mu
(JAMs) 224–5 Mabo, Eddie Koiki 108–10, 114 n.8
Mabo Decision 108–9
Kardeş Türküler 85, 88 magnetic tape. See tape, magnetic
Katz, Mark 11, 26, 139–40, 196 Marclay, Christian 222
kemençe 83, 89, 93, 95 n.3 Marin, Louis 15, 197–8
kod 106 Marley, Damian 16, 231, 242–4, 247
Kodangu (album) 14, 99–102, 105–13, Martin, George 2, 4, 160–1
104 n.6 Marx, Karl 256
mashups 204, 224–5, 232–3
labor 7, 9, 83, 177 materiality 35, 37 n.5, 129, 139–43
infrastructural 176 media. See recorded media
production 2, 12–14, 82, 91–3, 189 mediation 5, 7–9, 15, 26, 44, 123,
language 8, 37 n.6, 71, 74–5, 82, 85, 125, 128. See also listening,
111, 190 unmediated
francophone 126, 128 of the built environment 51
mixing 107 opaque and transparent 195–208
musical 66, 170 social 81
traditional 99, 103, 105, 109, 113, technological 15–16, 18, 148, 150,
114 n.6 158, 195–200, 202–6, 208
Lanois, Daniel 163–4, 169 Meintjes, Louise 8, 34, 134
Latour, Bruno 177, 178 melancholy 86–7
lead-user theory 263 Melodyne (Celemony) 175, 179, 184, 186
leitmotif 82, 84, 86–7, 89–90, 92, 94 memory 14, 99, 111–12, 160
listening 6, 35, 148, 181, 201, 205, 241, collective 101, 113
261, 264. See also auditory motor 146
perception microphones 9, 13, 23–4, 26–7, 31–2, 36
embodied 147 n.3, 54, 68, 92, 131, 159–60, 162,
experiences 15–16, 24, 26, 49–50, 164, 169, 183, 217, 240, 242
52, 75 mixing 3, 7, 64–5, 92, 159, 162. See also
politics of 125 mix stems; remixing
and production aesthetics 3, 200 mixing consoles 124, 160, 167, 170, 199
reduced 81, 93 mix stems 16, 231–50
as a research technique 179 modernity 25, 30, 33–4, 82, 86–7, 123–8,
to silence 213, 218, 221, 223–4 134, 212–13, 222
styles of 123–5, 127, 129–33, 184, 200 anti-modernity 36
subjectivity 5 Molina, Juana 13, 62–75
and technological mediation 195–9, Monkees, The 165–6
202–7 Monome 142–3, 146–9
unmediated 124 Moylan, William 3, 45, 52, 65, 69–70
Index 271
MP3 4–5, 37 n.5, 101, 199, 245 of music production 5, 16, 232–5,
musical instruments. See instruments 247, 249
musicians 7, 46, 49, 72, 144, 157–9, ontology 32
161–70, 214, 253 of musical works 84
digital/electronic 138–43, political 125
147–50, 244 of sound and mediation 197, 199
female 67 (See also women, in music) overdubbing 87, 159, 162–3, 165, 178,
session/studio 8, 10, 25, 84, 86, 88–9, 202, 205, 242
91–2, 95 n.7
technical skill 175 Palmer, Amanda 258–9
as technological users 201–3, 207 Perception 43, 45–6, 52, 54–5, 129
musician unions 10, 214 auditory 123–5, 130–2, 134, 196
music industry. See also culture industries ecological 196, 200, 207
audio technology 4, 142, 244 gendered 68
definitions of 7–8 percussion 83, 85–92, 95 n.6, 105.
economics of 253–6, 258, 260, 262 See also drums
patriarchy 67, 73, 224 performance 14, 124, 140–4, 146–50,
recorded 5, 7–8, 12, 16, 24, 48, 62–3, 158–9, 167, 171, 198, 217–18,
72–3, 75, 85, 158, 163, 165, 170, 242, 254
249, 257, 264 live 8, 166, 169, 213
Muzak 214–16 and reception 2, 26
mythology 10–11, 15, 125, 157–72 and recordists 32
in the studio 7, 68, 92–4
narrative 28, 81–2, 110–11, 113, 139, vocal 74, 175–7, 183, 189,
157–61, 170–2, 232, 253 205, 238
cultural 98–9 performance practice 85, 91, 139
grand 129, 134 Peterson, Richard 5–8, 23
nation 24, 28–9, 33–4, 36, 37 n.7, 109, phenomenology 13, 42–3, 45, 48–9, 58,
126–7, 214 125, 129, 214
Negus, Keith 7, 72, 258–9 Phillips, Sam 4
neoliberalism 125, 219 phonograph effects 15, 196
noise 169, 206–7, 212, 217, 219–22, 240, phonography 4, 27
242. See also records, vinyl noise phonomusicology 1–3, 25, 232, 250
reduction 31, 217, 238 Pinch, Trevor 182–3, 231–2
signal-to-noise ratio 28, 37 n.4 place 12–13, 24–6, 35, 43, 106, 108, 125.
nostalgia 161–2, 168–71 See also workplaces
technonostalgia 15, 167 production of 33–4, 36, 82
representation of 28–9, 31, 33–4,
objects 43, 81, 157 84, 89
digital 151 sense of 45
quasi 177 play 139–40, 144, 146–7, 150–1
recordings as 10, 25, 27, 33, 132 game 138–9, 143, 145, 148–9
sound 124, 131, 217 of gender 175
symbolic 6–7 Playstation (Sony) 138, 145–7
technological 8–9, 182 plugins, effect 68, 92, 177. See also effects
online communities 141, 231, 244, 248, processing
250. See also virtuality pluralism 124, 128–9, 134
fora 36, 233, 246 poietics 42, 56–8
lurkers 248 Pole (Stefan Betke) 148
272 Index
politics 12, 24, 30, 37 n.7, 74, See also MP3; compact discs;
99, 106, 108, 123–5, 134, records, vinyl
218–21, 225 78 RPM discs 8, 196
popular music 2–4, 6, 12, 24, 29, 31, 42, and deadness 213–14
47, 57–8, 73–4, 142, 163, 165, recording studios 7–8, 44, 53, 142,
176, 196, 205, 207, 215–17, 219 147, 161–3, 170, 189. See also
academic writings on 8–9, 44, 195, performance in the studio
232–3, 256 atmosphere 48, 50, 52, 54, 56
Porcello, Thomas 2, 34, 64 commercial 64
postmodernity 95 n.9, 125, 129 design of 45
producers (record) 1, 4, 7–11, 13, 24, 32, electroacoustic 130–2
48, 66–70, 72, 82, 84, 141–2, 144, and field recordings 23, 25, 27, 31, 36
147–8, 162, 164, 244, 253, 255, home 66, 68, 163–4, 256
257–64 mythologies 158, 162
artist-producers 64–5, 68, 71, 74 nontraditional 163
production 1–16, 45, 64, 66, 68–9, 72, 75, project 101
81–2, 89, 94, 99, 111, and the public 9, 81
140, 144, 147, 211–12, recording technologies. See technology
218, 243, 257. See also aesthetics, records, vinyl 5, 8, 161, 170, 223. See also
production; art of record recorded media; turntable
production; labor, production; and DJs 139–40, 142–3
place, production of; production lock grooves 204
of culture noise 139, 207, 222
acousmatic 124–5, 132–3 REM 231, 235–40, 244–7
alternative modes 253–4, 256–64 remix artists, professional 244, 247
cultural 27, 103, 139, 255 remixing 16, 218–19, 224, 231–5,
field recordings 24–8, 31–3, 37 241–50
and gender 62–3, 74, 134 repair 15, 178, 180–3, 190 n.6
modes of 256 repetition 146, 180–3
online 231, 234, 244–9 representation 32, 81, 86, 90, 93–4,
production studies 195, 232–3 158, 189, 197. See also place,
self-production 63, 65, 75 representation of
signal processing 234–5 of performance 198
sound 124, 264 of recording practice 158, 162, 166
workflows 83–4, 175–6 and self-presentation 197–8
production of culture 5–9, 11–12, 81 symbolic 6, 157
produsage 244 visual 3, 35, 75, 178, 187–8
Pro Tools (Avid/Digidesign) 64, 84, 178, of women 63, 67, 71, 74
183 reverberation 3, 31, 90, 92, 195, 202, 203,
public sphere 248 208 n.5, 235, 240, 242–4
aural 26, 36 and acoustic spaces 55, 169
punk rock 16, 73, 75, 162, 218 rock 6, 8, 10, 15, 23, 63, 67, 158, 162, 170,
216. See also punk rock
Quebec 125–8, 130, 134 canonization of 3, 171
sound 133 romanticism 34, 44
Quiet Revolution 126–7, 129–30
samplers 133, 139, 142
reclamation 14, 101–2, 110, 112–13 sampling 142, 147–9, 204–5, 224–5, 233,
recorded media 1, 8–9, 37 n.5, 207. 247, 249
Index 273
Savages 13, 63, 66–7, 69–70, 72–5 speakers. See loudspeakers

Schaeffer, Pierre 123–31, 134, 135 n.1, Spotify 224, 241
203–4 Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) 15,
Schizophonia 254 204, 206
Schmidt-Horning, Susan 3, 44, 158 stems, mix. See mix stems
semiotics 2, 6, 15, 157, 177, 180, 197 Sterne, Jonathan 4–5, 25–6, 37 n.13, 101,
signal processing, effects. See effects 198, 215
processing Stockhausen, Karlheinz 203
silence 15–16, 24, 34, 36, 211–26, 235 Stokes, Martin 9, 34, 36 n.1, 81, 87
and copyright 224–6 studio musicians. See musicians, session/
Skrillex (Sonny Moore) 16, 141, 231, studio
242–5, 247 studios, recording. See recording studios
Smalley, Denis 15, 125, 196, 200–1, 203 Sun Records 4
social media 91, 138, 232, 245, 247, Sun Studios 161
256, 261 synthesis 55, 83, 107, 133, 146, 235,
sociology of music 7, 9 242–3, 245
sociology of organizations 1, 6, 44
sociology of repair 176, 180–1. See also tape, magnetic 31, 33, 37 n.5, 64, 131,
repair 164–5, 169, 202–3. See also
songwriting 10, 49, 65–6, 70–2, editing, tape
165–6, 170 analog 2, 28, 170–1, 220
Sonic Youth 216–17 compositions 126–7
sound 200–8. See also archives, sound; machines as instruments 24
identity of sounds; objects, manipulation 4, 33
sound; ontology of sound and Taylor, Timothy 167, 233
music; perception, auditory; tea, cultivation 83, 86
voice, sound of technology 2–6, 8, 10–16, 25–32, 35–7,
acousmatic 123–4, 129, 131, 133–4 45, 54–5, 64, 101, 123, 142–5,
ambient and natural 213, 217–18, 150–1, 159–60, 162, 166, 168–9,
220, 222 171, 207, 221, 224–5, 244, 256–7,
body 85, 87 264. See also democratization
and field recording 23–36, 93 of sound recording technology;
indestructible 13, 63, 67, 73, 75 objects, technological; mediation,
instrumental 51–2, 171, 199, 203 technological
production 1–4, 12, 15–16, 64, 68, 70, disruptive 141, 164, 260
74, 89, 164, 264 and education 125, 128–9, 132–3
relation to silence (See silence) failure 206
sound archives 26, 28, 31–2, 36 fetishism 161, 170
Soundcloud 245–7 and gender 75
sound effects 86, 91–2 testing 183
sound maps 35, 38 n.14 technostalgia. See nostalgia,
sound studies 4–5, 13, 26, 190 n.5 technostalgia
space 12–13, 42–5, 48–59, 163, 202. television music 14, 82–94, 165–7
See also creativity, spaces of; documentaries 161
environments, spatial Théberge, Paul 2, 11, 45, 66–8, 75, 144,
acoustic 45–6, 48, 53, 199 162, 233, 244
domestic 66, 164 Torres Strait 103–4, 107, 109–12, 114
fabrication of 3, 203 n.6, 256
and microphone placement 131 Torres Strait Islanders 14, 99, 108, 110,
274 Index
113. See also indigeneity, Torres vocals. See voice

Strait voice. See auto-tune; performance, vocal
Torres Strait Regional Authority and gender 73
(TSRA) 101, 105 grain of 181, 190 n.5
Tradition. See arranged tradition; culture, material-semiotic 177, 180
village; language, traditional recording of 53–6, 85–8, 90–2, 107,
educational 128 168, 180, 189, 203, 235, 238, 242
familial and village 82, 87, 105 sound of 70–1, 205
invention of 112 technologically manipulated 15, 85,
oral 23, 109 167, 175–83, 185–6, 188, 196,
recorded music 163, 213 201, 204–6, 243–4
traditional music 14, 28–30, 34,
37 n.10, 83–5, 89, 90, 91, 93–5, Wagadagam (tribe) 103–5
101, 127 Watson, Chris 26
TSRA. See Torres Strait Regional Authority women 126
Tudor, David 211, 213 in music 13, 14, 63, 66–9, 73–5,
tulum (bagpipes) 83, 89, 91, 93, 95 n.3 133–4, 224
tuning, digital corrective. See auto-tune; producers 62–3, 69, 71, 74
intonation workplaces 2–3, 12, 47–50, 52–6, 59, 215.
Turkey 8, 13–14, 82–95 See also place
turntables 139–41. See also records, vinyl
Xbox One (Microsoft) 145–6
UNESCO 29–30, 110, 114 n.8, 255–6
uses and gratification theory 261–2 YouTube 232, 245–6
video games 138–40, 143–6, 148–51. Zagorski-Thomas, Simon 2, 11–12,

See also controllerism 44–5, 57
vinyl records. See records, vinyl Zak, Albin 10–11, 63, 65, 203, 233
virtuality 5, 16, 202–3, 231–3, 244, 249.
See also online communities

Critical Approaches To The Production of Music and Sound

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Critical

1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square

First published 2018

© Samantha Bennett and Eliot Bates, 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-3205-0

Cover design: Louise Dugdale

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

List of figures and tables vii

PART ONE Situating Production: Place,

PART two Beyond Representation

PART three Electronic Music

PART FOUR Technology and Technique

PART five Mediating Sound and Silence

PART six Virtuality and Online Production

Figure 2.1 IFMC Resolution Concerning the Preservation

Table 5.1 Fırtına theme 88

Table 13.3 Contents of “ADDITIONAL AUDIO”

co-author of the book Digital Signatures: The Impact of Digitization on

Works including David Gibson’s Art of Mixing (1997) and William

and their impact on niche genres of recorded popular music. Bloomsbury

not simply a symbol of musical devaluation. Sterne’s work is particularly

American sociology that were concerned with bringing a flexible concept

Thinking through labor solely with the framework of careers or industry/

industry for Anatolian minority language musics in Turkey theorizes it both

to the mediation between an individual and God, or subsequent uses of the

studies recognized the complex intersection between musical composition,

The idea that a music production process is overseen by one individual

However, Zak stopped short of fully endorsing auteurism, instead reinforcing

understandings of the role of the recordist in music production processes and

The Art of Record Production

the oft-assumed studio/field recording dichotomy to understand how

liveness and recognizes the enduring embodiment of analog processes in

Additionally, a listener’s experiential comprehension of technological

of production among communities of participants with whom there is

Doğantan-Dack, Mine, ed. 2008. Recorded Music: Philosophical and Critical

Field Recording and the

knowledge production, with particular focus on how field recordings have

Hearing the Fields

of folk and world musics, similarly, have developed alongside recording

posits recording as a form of intervention that constructs its objects, rather

The Art of Field Production

Traditional Music—was founded to organize and unify these endeavours.

aimed primarily at those doing research in Europe, with a geographically

families. Detailed instruction is provided on recording ensembles, so as to

In recording an ensemble, start with a general recording of the whole

In other words, the recordist is encouraged to move in and among the

project that drew Merriam and Haywood’s affirmations on truthfulness

a bunch of examples can now reintroduce other histories of field recording

Papua New Guinea and elsewhere has aimed at shaping representations

4 Signal-to-noise ratio describes the strength of a (desired) signal relative to

14 Examples of interactive sound maps include the British Library’s UK

Fox, Aaron. 2013. “Repatriation as Reanimation through Reciprocity.” In The

The Poietics of Space: The Role

Introduction and Preamble

sound a bit lame in here, orchestras are a different matter, throw up a

Phenomenology and the “Science” of Experience

Complexity and Creativity

spatial environment to have a unique “aural architecture” (ibid.: 2), wherein

I really loved Madness’ studio Liquidator. There were always members of

These comments emphasize the experiential and lived nature of the

Figure 2.1 IFMC Resolution Concerning the Preservation

Table 13.3 Contents of “ADDITIONAL AUDIO”