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ARP 2009 Abstracts: A to K

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The Fifth Annual Art of Record Production Conference

hosted by the Division of Music and Sound,

ATRiuM, University of Glamorgan, Cardiff, S. Wales

on November 13th – 15th 2009.

Aguilar, Ananay

Royal Holloway, University of London

LSO Live: Reassembling Classical Music

I would like to use the recording practices of classical music as a site for exploring the music's values. The current transformations of the music industry, with the shift from physical discs to digital formats, the reduction in production and distribution costs, and the subsequent change in consumption patterns and accompanying legislation, provide an exceptionally rich arena for discussing the current state of classical music. Within this situation, the success of the label owned by the London Symphony Orchestra, LSO Live, is of particular interest as it highlights the many features that intervene in music making and reception, shaping the practices and perception of music in unpredictable ways. Thus, recording practices are here broadly defined, including, but not limited to, musicianship and musicians' daily schedules and overall agendas, engineers' recording techniques, studios and concert halls, recording and playback technologies and formats, as well as current marketing strategies. As one of the main threads in shaping the values and discourses surrounding classical music, the role of musicology will be discussed in relation to these practices, reflecting upon the intervening factors in mediating, sanctioning and perpetuating the values of classical music in the material form of an album.

Based on a study with the LSO throughout the season 2007/2008, when the orchestra, under Valery Gergiev, performed and recorded all Mahler symphonies, I will seek to trace the spaces where the values of classical music are negotiated on a daily basis. Informed by current anthropological and sociological debates, the field material includes observations of and interviews with musicians, engineers and staff beyond the LSO and its label. The story of the creation of LSO Live from the perspective of its marketing strategies will be explored alongside interviews and discussions carried out with musicians explaining their experience of setting up the label and its impact on their practices as musicians. Recordists accounts will bring into the picture their idea of classical music, liveness and changing recording technologies. My own experience within academia will provide reflections on the role of musicology in shaping the idea of classical music.

Prof. Mike Alleyne

Department of Recording Industry, Middle Tennessee State University

A Production Case Study of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.”

This examines Marvin Gaye’s innovative production style established in his 1970s releases, and the contrast and confluence of its culmination in the digital era of the early 1980s with the “Sexual Healing” hit single. The evolved synergy of his simultaneous roles as artist, songwriter, arranger and producer coincides with one of the most crucial technological junctures in popular music.

This production analysis of “Sexual Healing” makes reference to the song’s distinctive use of digital synthesizer and drum machine technology relative to the era’s black popular music. This presentation employs audio excerpts documenting key contexts of the song’s development and recording, from demo to completed work, providing valuable insight into its production construction. The  developmental process is especially important because of Gaye’s active participation in the creation and performance of most of the song’s instrumental elements and its final recording.

Arthurs, Andy

Queensland University of Technology

Performance Blue Prints: Has The Recording Become The Blueprint For The Performance? Can A Recording Be In Itself A Performance?

Until the start of the 19^th Century paper was still a luxury. Consequently it was scarce and mass production was not possible. Similarly, 100 years later the barrier to entry to produce recorded music was limited to those with expensive resources. While it was not until the 1950s that producing a recording became more readily available (with access to tape recorders), the means of manufacture remained in the hands of a few.  However it was not until the 1990s, thanks to digital production and later distribution, that recorded product moved from an economy of  scarcity to very quickly becoming one of abundance. The ramifications of this revolution are still being felt. Today many recordings are little more than a brochure for the “original” performance.

Every innovation spawns new uses, beyond what we imagine at the time of invention. Edison intended recording to be of primary use as a business dictating machine.

Never has there been a more misnamed product in the 21^st Century than “recording”. Far from recording being a record of events, it has become in itself a mode of creation. Since the 1960s recording has become a music-writing tool. Mitch Murray back in 1964 advised song writers in his book How to Write a Hit Song, “a tape recorder is one of the first investments you will have to make if you want to be a serious writer. Use your tape-recorder as often as you like.”

Now recordings are ubiquitous in the creation and realising of a musical performance:

·      As a creative composing tool

·      As a score for the performers to work from

·      As an embedded artefact within a performance

·      As a record of the live event

Innovation is repurposing as well as inventing. New models will emerge. Deep Blue is one such model. The 21^st Century orchestra Deep Blue utilise a hybrid live/recorded model at all stages in a 360 degree approach and are in the process of developing new multimedia interactive scores together with Australian music software company ITC  .   

The recording of the event is a form of recycling – an ecosystem where a sound is captured digitally, incorporated into a creative recording which then serves as a sound “score” for a live performance which is in turn the sound source for further digital capturing.

This paper will detail this process and evaluate the issues involved.

Ashworth, Eddie

Ohio University

The Post-Millennium DIY Explosion And Its Effects On Record Production

Is the record producer obsolete?  While those of us in the profession would be quick to refute that question, an increasing number of albums—many of them enjoying effusive critical praise and commercial acceptance—are in fact produced and/or engineered by the artists themselves.  From Bon Iver to Dr Dog, from Caribou to Burial, from Juana Molina to Death Cab for Cutie, musicians are increasingly embracing the “do-it-yourself” ethic and eschewing the traditional artist/producer relationship in favor of more individual strategies that DIY practices afford. 

This development should come as no surprise to careful observers of the recording industry, since innovations in technology not only spawned our profession but have periodically altered it as well.  Once, the notion of artist-produced-and-engineered recordings was as inconceivable as astronauts designing and building their own rockets to deliver them to outer space.  Recording studios were expensive “temples of sound” filled with gear that required seasoned professionals to operate.  Over time, their work devolved into “product” that was deemed “technically and commercially satisfactory” by record companies that were the de facto gatekeepers of content during much of the 20^th century. 

Today, many of those temples of sound have folded because the once-powerful labels that funded them are now desperately searching for new business models that cut costs and preserve their dwindling bottom lines. At the same time, recording and mixing gear that once cost hundreds of thousands of dollars is now accessible for a fraction of that by any musician with a credit card, and a willingness to crack open the most recent version of ProTools. 

Make no mistake: great producers are still working with great artists in great studios to create great records in the traditional manner.  However, it is clear that the tide is turning towards an industry where artist-produced recordings become increasingly more commonplace and vital, with music fans and tastemakers alike embracing the results.

This presents challenges to record producers and engineers, as well as to the professionals who teach and train future record makers, all striving to remain relevant in a marketplace where artists are empowered to self-produce and engineer their own recorded output.  In meeting these challenges it is important to understand the impact of DIY on our profession and the records we make.

To this end, the paper focuses on three key areas of analysis and discussion: new producer/artist paradigms that have emerged during the 21^st century in response to DIY recording practices; DIY-influenced aesthetic and sonic shifts evident in selected records released during the same period (along with the production choices and methodology behind them); and lastly the creative and cultural forces at work that facilitate acceptance of DIY production methods and resultant recording projects.  Also discussed are the pedagogical ramifications to the art of teaching record production at the college level in the context of this quickly evolving production environment.

Bennett, Sam

University of Surrey

No Way Computer! Risk Aversion As An Influence On Equipment Choice Among Record Producers Of The Late 1990s.

The UK popular music climate of the late 1990s was dominated by big beat, trip-hop and other dance sub-genres. The highly modern, computer-based sequencing platforms often used to create such music developed at an alarming rate, all the while giving the user increased options in terms of recording, editing and processing capability. Yet some late 1990s producers expressed a preference for earlier technology, the limitations of which significantly influenced their recording and production techniques. How did the limitations of technological precursors impact on the methodologies and working practices of some late 1990s producers?

This paper concentrates on the reasoning behind equipment choice and usage at the height of the late 1990s digital age, a decade on from the technological acceleration of the 1980s. Featuring examples by UK producers as varied as Fatboy Slim, William Orbit and Flood; factors for consideration will include equipment preference, producer knowledge, time constraints and the ‘learning curves’ of software sequencers.

Whilst avoiding the simplistic notions of nostalgia and pessimism, a detailed argument is offered for the complexities involved in the producer’s equipment choice; the extent of their accumulated knowledge of recording and production equipment, the creative application of technology and past successes were key factors influencing the producer’s decision making process surrounding equipment. This paper evaluates the extent to which the rejection of current computer platforms and software sequencers was ‘risk aversion’ on the part of some late 1990s record producers.

Richard James Burgess

Smithsonian Folkways Records

From Folkways to Smithsonian Folkways: An Entrepreneurial Journey from Individual to Institution.

Richard James Burgess of Smithsonian Folkways, the record label of the National Museum of the United States, will give an overview of the Folkways and Smithsonian Folkways record labels. This will cover Moses Asch's early attempts at running labels, his thinking and methodologies, even bankruptcies that finally coalesced into the complexity of Folkways. Burgess will discuss Asch's relationships with artists both as a businessman and producer; why Asch was afraid of having a hit record and how he managed that concern. The transition from Folkways to Smithsonian Folkways will be examined including Asch's justifiable resistance to an acquisition by the Institution and the reasons why Smithsonian was the only entity that would meet Asch's requirements. Burgess will review the dialectic that occurred in Folkways' early days at the Smithsonian with regard to meeting Asch's unique requirements and fulfilling the spirit of his original mission. Attention will be paid to the twenty years post-acquisition and the balancing of Asch's requirements with Smithsonian's own mission objectives.  The present day Smithsonian Folkways philosophy and operation as a self-sustaining non-profit entity engaged in the documentation and dissemination of disparate niche sound recordings will be covered. Current and projected business models that maintain the mission amid unprecedented turmoil in the marketplace will be explained. Burgess will also speak to the oxymoron of institutional-entrepreneurship; how to maintain an attitude and perception of independence whilst operating within a large bureaucratic institutional environment.

Burlin, Toivo

University of Gothenburg

The Imaginary Room: Recording Practice and Production of Art Music Phonograms in Sweden 1925–1983

Art music, like all other western musics, is fundamentally influenced by the media and technologies and primarily by the art of recording. But this is relatively undescribed and seldom contextualized in musicology. Since it is without a doubt a fact that art music has been strongly influenced by the media and recording technologies it is interesting to ask the question how, in the context of Sweden 1925–1983. This thesis discusses and contextualizes the idea of western art music as a separate and distinct musical genre, from different points of view. The question of the recording as a representation is examined. A model is developed for the analysis of representation in recordings, and the parallel development of art music and the music industry from the earliest electrical recordings to the release of the first CD in 1983 is discussed. The development of that part of the Swedish record industry which produced art music recordings is presented, and recording practice and production are examined. Editing and mixing, as well as the development of the professions of producer and engineer, are discussed, with the company Swedish Society Discofil serving as a case study. The philosophies of engineers and producers are discussed. Electronic music as a medialized music is examined, and unlike many discussions of electronic music the music of the phonograms are taken as the starting point of the examination. Ralph Lundstens career, especially Studio Andromeda, and recording practice are examined. Recorded works on phonograms are analyzed as Works of Phonography, Hyper notation and Multimedial Music Products, which means that they are analyzed primarily as recordings, not as interpretations of musical works.

Butler, Jan

University of Nottingham

Authentic Independents: Myth or Reality? 

The view of the independent record company as a site of creativity and credibility is often discussed as part of a dichotomy between major and independent labels.  Rock mythology in particular often pits the majors and the independents against each other, portraying independents as motivated by passion for the music and an interest in fostering creative talent, whilst the majors are motivated by greed and will attempt to commercially exploit anything successful that the independents may uncover.  The time when independents valiantly fought for creative freedom against the majors is often considered to have started in the rock n roll era, a period when independent record labels dominated the record charts, and to have continued through to the early 70s by which time the independents are understood to have been co-opted by the majors to find and develop new acts.  It is often this era that is harked back to as a time when independents “treated the concepts of artistry, independence and audience as somehow shared”, an ideal that is still apparently aspired to by more recent independent labels (Lee, WaxTrax! Records, 1995).

This paper attempts to assess whether the independents in the 1950s and 60s did indeed have a greater claim to creativity and credibility than the majors at that time.  Through looking at the treatment of the record producer in both majors and independents, it appears that although the independents were the first to develop the role of the entrepreneur producer, allowing the emergent figure of the record producer huge creative freedom in the studio, this practice of allowing producers great levels of autonomy was soon taken on by the major labels who soon began allowing greater creative freedom not just to producers, but to artists as well as rock developed in the 1960s.  This suggests that although we now view early independents as sites of creativity and credibility, usually in contrast to the major labels, the picture in the 1960s was more complicated than this.  It is my contention that the relationship between the majors and independents in the 1960s, far from diluting the ability of the independents to be credible and creative, instead allowed the idea of creative freedom and beliefs about the conditions required to create art within a capitalist system to permeate the majors to a much greater extent than they had previously, causing the latter to restructure their organisation.  This has had the effect of increasing artistic freedom across the whole record industry.  To explore these issues, this paper will consider the development of and relationship between Elektra Records and Warner Brothers, both of whom were increasingly successful as the 1960s progressed.  The two labels ended the decade in a mutually beneficial merger forming the music division WEA as part of Warner Communications which by then had become a highly successful major label carrying several of the biggest and supposedly most credible rock stars of the time on its books, including the Doors, the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix.

Dr Paul Carr

University of Glamorgan

The Big Note – The Ultimate Gesture: The Incorporation Of Time And Space In Performing, Composing, Arranging And Producing Frank Zappa’s Music



The Big Note – The Ultimate Gesture: The incorporation of time and space in performing, composing, arranging and producing Frank Zappa’s music

Widely regarded as one of the most prolific and versatile composers of the rock idiom, Frank Zappa’s ability to amalgamate numerous popular music styles alongside musique concrète, electronic, and serial techniques make him a fascinating case study on the interdisciplinary roles of performer, composer, arranger and producer. One of the earliest musicians to successfully and consistently experiment with fusing these skill bases, Zappa’s unique oeuvre is now gradually beginning to be recognized as one of the most prolific and original in the history of popular music. Using these factors as creative mediums, Zappa can be considered the only rock musician to consciously and consistently engage with both time and space throughout his entire career, having a compulsive fascination with ensuring his entire life’s work was considered part of his self titled Big Note, with many of his performances, compositions, arrangements and productions being part of an overarching and unifyingly premeditated organisational structure. Developing the terminology project/object to describe the difference between the completed work of art and the process of redefining it, Zappa made countless rearrangements of many of his compositions, and clearly considered individual works of art as being in a constant state of development, skilfully utilising available studio technology to create highly original ‘virtual performances’, always relocating the work into his current conceptual continuity practices. Examples range from the purely functional (For example re-recording all of the drum and bass tracks for Crusin’ With Ruben and the Jets (1967) to improve the aesthetic impact of the album), to the more experimental employment of Xenochonic and cut and paste techniques (For Example “Friendly Little Finger” from Zoot Allures (1976)) which brings together otherwise unrelated bass and drum parts), in effect synchronically fusing time and space environments. This paper proposes to examine how Zappa pushed the boundaries of available studio technology to develop compositions, (re)arrangements and performances/virtual performances of his work. After presenting an overview of his early career throughout the 1960’s, the discussion will progress to analyze albums such as Joe’s Garage Acts 1, 2 & 3 (1979), Sheik Yerbouti (1979) and the You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore (1988 - 1992) series, cumulating with his work on the synclavier during the late 1980’s – early 1990’s with albums such as Jazz From Hell (1986) and Civilization Phaze III (1993).




Per Dahl

University of Stavanger

When the microphone enhances the intimacy in a German Lied

When Edvard Grieg wrote the song “Jeg elsker Dig!/Ich liebe dich” in 1864, his notation was based on a performance practice where the concert hall was the constituting arena for musical expressions. The song is in line with the German Lied tradition where intimacy, intensity and afterthought are important characteristics. Of these three, only intensity is indicated in the notation, while intimacy and afterthought has to be created by the performer.

Listening to 210 recordings of Grieg’s opus 5 no. 3 ”Jeg elsker Dig!” from 1899-2005 made me conscious, the impact of the microphone and other recording technologies in the interpretation of this song.

In my survey I split the overall impression of the recordings in two categories of soundscape; the concert hall sound and the studio sound. In addition I made a subdivision if the sound elements were unified (singer and accompaniment in one room/the same acoustics) or divided (the acoustics of the singer’s voice seems to be different from that of the accompaniment). While recordings with concert hall sound might be either unified or divided, the typical studio sound is always divided.  My choice opens up for a categorisation of singers in the classical concert hall tradition to produce recordings where the sound elements are unified or divided, and to detect when these singers started using the opportunities in the recording studio.

The recordings reveal a stable norm of tempo variations through the century, with an accelerando in the midsection. As the text “Jeg elsker Dig” is repeated three times, it is possible to divide the interpretations in two groups; accelerando (repeating the text with equal meta-structures) or parlando (unequal meta-structures by performing regular text rhythms in an irregular way).

The results show that the classical concert hall singer did not change his/her way of singing from the acoustical to the electrical era of recording technology. In 37 recordings I could find the combination of a concert hall soundscape and the use of divided sound, the first being from 1950, that is a delay of 20-25 years compared to the optimal use of the microphone. However with the microphone and electrical recordings from 1925 a new kind of singer emerged: the gramophone artist with a beautiful voice in the studio, but with no strength or radiance of the voice in a concert hall. One characteristic for these singers was the use of microphone as their main expression tool resulting in enhancing the intimacy, mostly by the use of parlando.

The relative amount of recordings using parlando among classical singers was very high in the acoustical era, and then began a decline as the more literate accelerando took over the market. However, in the three last decades, the parlando suddenly reappears as a very characteristic expression in recording this song among classical singers. But this time not as in the acoustical era, but as expressions developed by the studio based gramophone artist.

Davis, Robert

Huddersfield University

We don’t write songs, we write dance tunes: production, performance and dance floor aesthetics

The evolution of record production from the 1960s established a model of production which privileged the creative role of the producer and established a model of production practice which was to serve as a model not only for the record industry, but for education in designing the many music production courses which developed during the 1990s. This model can be seen to be rapidly disintegrating as new paradigms are established in the production of dance music where the producer acts not only the arbiter of taste but also as the performer. 

Using ethnographic techniques, this paper explores the evolution of a new paradigm of production through the study of two emerging music producers working in the North of England. In particular, the study looks at the creative and entrepreneurial roles assumed by these producers and argues that they present a number of challenges to understanding production. In particular, the study looks at the changes in the creative decision making process where production aesthetics are informed by an intuitive understanding of dance floor aesthetics.

What emerges from this study is an understanding of the way that two producers work together not only in a creative way but in the extended network of individuals that sustain and inform their development as producers. The paper argues that the evolutionary process in record production and the development of the ‘cottage industry’ model has brought together the roles of performer, producer and promoter in a way that not only raises questions about our understanding of these roles but the way that we understand the changing nature of production.

Doyle, Peter

Macquarie University

‘Working For The Man’: Representing The Artist-Producer (Or Artist-Agent, Artist-Manager, Artist-Entrepreneur, Artist-Hustler) Relationship.

It is a commonplace of popular music studies that records are manufactured things, that the sonic ‘production’ itself is worthy of attention, that producers matter, and that in the larger history of popular music recording, producers not infrequently matter more than artists.

But despite that, the stories of producers, managers, entrepreneurs, engineers (often overlapping categories in the pre-rock age) remains largely untold, and uncelebrated. Over the past couple of decades have appeared many quality biographies of musicians, most typically ‘unsung heroes’ from outside the pop mainstream. So too have numerous histories of fringe scenes and subcultures. Yet such hugely important figures as Jack Kapp, Ralph Peer, Milt Gabler, John Hammond – each of whom had decisive influence on the emergence of twentieth century pop ‘genres’, and each of whom worked in both the mainstream and on its hipper fringes – remain little known and written about.

In this paper I wish to identify some of the narrative default settings which have been used to characterise the relationship between the creative artist and his/her first point of contact with ‘the business’ – be it producer, engineer, manager, agent etc. Descriptions of the artist-producer relationship, I will argue, typically invoke a number of very deep and enduring narrative tropes — mythic, archetypal, folkloric, literary and pulp – and these mostly operate to the detriment of the producer.

One near constant has been the valorisation of the artist as romantic, often tragic, indeed, as sacrificial figure, and with it a concomitant tendency to typify the producer/mentor/facilitator/’suit’ figure as shadowy, venal, mendacious exploiter,  and as unrepentant corrupter of artistic purity. The pop biopic, itself closely aligned to such forms as the boxing film, has served to lock in those settings.

Other representational strands co-exist with these: with the coming in the 1950s of what Keir Keightley has called ‘record consciousness’, for example, the producer was cast, again largely by default, in the role of the scientist or technician (buttoned-up and colourless, in horn-rimmed glasses, white dust coat), which as corollary, cast the studio as a kind of laboratory (maybe like the ones in the newsreels, where they find cures for diseases, or handle radioactive isotopes, or make atom bombs, or experiment on human brains). It was only a short step from there to the trope of producer as mad-scientist, deranged megalomaniac.

I will go on to suggest a number of other narrative templates – drawn from film, television,  journalism and literature – which might better help us as writers and researchers to elucidate the artist-producer relationship, without having to resort to simplistic moral absolutes.

Field, Ambrose

University of York

Performance Beyond Recording On Being Dufay (ECM Records 2071):  A Twenty-First Century Soundworld From Fifteenth Century Materials.

The production of ‘Being Dufay’ (Field and Potter, 2009) strikes a balance between the accurate presentation of recorded fifteenth century vocal music, and subsequently designed digital vocal treatments. Importantly, it is the combination of these approaches which work together to create the sense of performance on the record.  The album combines the sound worlds of early-Renaissance vocal music and contemporary electronica without attempting to ‘bend’ either style of music to fit the other.

This paper describes, with audio examples, some techniques used to extend the idea of ‘performance’ from beyond the initial recordings into being a keystone for the compositional processes of the whole album.  The chronological gap  in performance style featured on the record is bridged creatively through the use of digital modelling and production techniques, resulting in fluid boundaries between production, recording and composition.

A formant-based digital model of the singer John Potter was created to enable a continuity between original recording, and the subsequently composed electronic sound-world.  This model is performed and recorded live itself, generating sounds which sit half-way between the vocal and instrumental in timbre and behaviour.

An ‘organic’ approach to the vocals was taken within the composition and pre-mix stages of this production. The paper details how, instead of removing ‘unwanted’ breaths and other noises of the human vocal tract, these sounds (rather than the original performance itself) have been actively created through editing  to bring a sense of heightened-reality to the recorded presentation.

Conversely, techniques from film production, such as the recording of ‘room-tone’ and capture of Foley sounds are used within this music release to bring a sense of ‘human activity’ to abstract, synthesiser-based materials.

This paper documents how, as an artistic necessity, boundaries between composition, production, and performance can be un-necessary within contemporary record production.

Maria Hanáček

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

The Making of Rock Performances: Studio Settings and Recording Realism

Although studio technology became part of musical practice, it is seldom part of our conception of "music". It has certainly always been a part of rock music and yet it doesn’t fit neatly into an established discourse of the authentic. In this paper I will argue that the idea of capturing creative moments by simply "rolling tape" is so appealing to us because this ties up with a traditional conception of music as artistic self-expression.

This is also the reason why medial representations of the recording process follow a rather conventional pattern in restoring a close relation of recorded sound and the gesture of a performing musician. In particular, I will explore where the creative subject is discursively situated in the process of record production by examining so-called "making of" videos. These videos may have a documentary character - not least due to their studio settings - but they are not innocent representations of a studio reality. I will argue that they fulfill the function to portray work in the recording studio as a creative process and to (re-)produce subject positions for musicians and producers, which fit into a genre ideology.

The videos I will examine represent instances of recording realism. This is such an important concept because it leaves the idea of "performance" untouched. Multi-tracking and close-mic'ing certainly changed performance practice and transformed musicians into recording artists. But our notion of rock music depends on the genuine expression and the integrity of the artist. Thus, even though the use of cut’n’paste is acknowledged, the ultimate goal is a coherent performance. While a certain amount of artifice is acceptable, the musician may never be wholly substituted, since he is the central point of the underlying conception of “music”. The videos studied make sure the creative subject takes centre stage in the recording process and they legitimate the use of technology by assigning it a merely supportive role.

Howlett, Mike

Queensland University of Technology

The Producer Performing: An Investigation Of Production From The Artist’s Perspective

After many years producing musicians the author returned to the studio as a musician being produced. This paper investigates the experience of the performing artist when under the creative direction of a record producer from the perspective of an experienced and successful producer as artist.

As a performer in the studio an artist relies on the producer’s guidance, direction and encouragement. An unspoken relationship is formed of compliance and submission to external counsel. Questions of trust and confidence in the artistic authority of the producer are raised. Negotiations of critical evaluation take place that will inform the outcomes. The nature of the dialogues that take place reveal firstly, a unique language derived from prior musical experience, and secondly, perhaps more significantly, the intrinsically musical and artistic role of the record producer in such close engagement with the creative imagination and aspirations of the artist.

Performance in the studio is an intimate form of self-exposure—more so, this paper argues, than on the public stage, where the artist/audience relationship creates a structural differentiation, a distance. The studio is a kind of audio microscope that reveals subtle imperfections, and challenges the artist to find deeper levels of meaning in performance. What are the demands made of the producer by such a position of responsibility? How is performance practice affected by the studio context?

This investigation applies methodologies of reflective practice to propose ways of understanding musical performance in the studio and the producer/artist interaction.

Hudson, Gareth

Newcastle Conservatorium of Music, Australia

The role of the producer as composer within a collaborative studio context and the influence  of new technology.

Jarrett, Michael

Pennsylvania State University

Against a Musicology of Record Production

To make a point, to correct a tendency motivating the study of record production, I shall be intentionally contentious.  Any attempt to institute a theory, history, or practice of record production grounded on what Professor Allan Moore calls the wide array of “musical decisions which go into the making of a track” is a mistake, as it establishes record production as a predictable, rationalized process. A musicology of record production would merely shift the control of music making from musicians to record producers.  (Phil Spector, not Darlene Love; Berry Gordy, not Mary Wilson.)  However suspect this emphasis on the musical decisions of autonomous, quasi-divine creators might be, it constitutes musicology as a discipline—and it could institutionalize a musicology of record production.  Musician, as a meaningful designation, is made possible when someone can claim authorship of a performance; producer is made possible when someone—not necessarily a musician—can claim authorship of a recording.  But we ought to be haunted by Walter Benjamin’s statement: in the age of mechanical reproduction, art acquires “entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental.”  (Darwin, for example, showed us that design—an “artistic function”—is not dependent upon the intervention of mind; design needs no author.)  At the heart of the record-making process lies a fundamental automatism (analogous to photography and filmmaking).  If only in theory, the record producer can extract something of aesthetic value accidentally.  Or we might ask, what conscious qualities of a great recording are not implied from the outset by electrical reproduction technology?  To create a record, does a producer have to know music or make musical decisions?  Does the producer create a recording, or does the recording—its design—retroactively create a producer?  Benjamin suggested that a mechanistic process, not authorship (or divine intervention), best accounted for the work of art in the modern era. To understand record production, then, in terms of the “musical decisions which go into the making of a track” is to ignore the fundamental difference between previous ways of making music and new ways of recording music.  It retreats from the “entirely new functions” of art that would make the study of record production valuable. I want to suggest that, in its attempts to consider the human being and technology, film theory and not musicology has provided us with useful ways of theorizing record production: the dialectic of capturing environments (emphasizing automatism) vs. designing space (emphasizing authorial control).

Kromhout, Melle Jan

Independent Scholas, Amsterdam

As Distant And Close As Can Be. Lo-Fi Recording: Site-Specificity And (In)Authenticity

In my paper I will elaborate on the music studio as a conceptual frame for the cultural, aesthetic and above all ideological meaning of popular music. I will do this by focussing on the phenomenon of lo-fi music production and the way it expresses ideas about the space and place in and of music and related questions regarding (musical) authenticity and inauthenticity.

While, as Philip Auslander writes in his book Liveness, it is indeed true that ‘the live performance is a recreation of the recording, which is [...] the original performance,’ the aesthetics of hi-fi recording are still attached to an ideal of unmediated authenticity. Whereas the actual recording almost always takes place in the specific, standardized space of the studio (somewhat equivalent to the famous ‘white cube’ – the white walls of a gallery or museum – in the visual arts), it aims for the eradication of specific place and the construction of idealized space and imagined authenticities, which are nevertheless accepted as real by the general audience.

Since the advances of digital technology made it possible to make relatively professional sounding recordings with the use of affordable consumer electronics, the studio became a conceptual place through the design and workings of audio hard-, and software: every place can be transformed into a studio – a tool for the eradication of that place and the construction of innumerable other ‘spaces.’

In a reaction to these developments, some artists stick with lo-fi production aesthetics while the means for making hi-fi recordings are at hand. On the one hand, through the use of inferior recording techniques and recording outside of a studio lo-fi presents a different, supposedly more sincere, authenticity related to place and physicality: the musical equivalent of site-specificity. On the other hand, it is just as well an explicit ‘represented performance,’ an attempt to consciously reflect on the representational nature of recording and its inherent inauthenticity.

            In the paper I elaborate on lo-fi recording and its relation towards its hi-fi counterpart, using literature on (the history of) audio recording, the concept of noise – one of lo-fi’s most distinctive features in opposition to hi-fi – and the conceptualization of spatiality and physicality in and of music. Since, as Stan Link points out (in “The Work of Reproduction in the Mechanical Aging of an Art: Listening to Noise.” Computer Music Journal, 25:1, 2001: 34–47), there now exist ‘some very high-tech means to achieve “lo-fi” ends,’ I focus on whether lo-fi is or isn’t moving away from the hi-fi aesthetics of the music studio, what meanings are actually performed through lo-fi aesthetics as a strategy for authenticity, relying on site specificity and physicality, and what this might mean for the construction of the music studio as a conceptual framework in the study of popular music.