Abstracts ARP08 (part 2)

Doug McDonald        University of Chicago
The Internet and the Recording: Or the Loss of Materiality

There has been a lot of interest in the conceptualization of the musical recording as form of material culture. In Jonathan Sterne’s extensive study of the cultural history of early recording “The Audible Past: The Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction”, he explains how early recording technology was intimately intertwined with the emerging perception of American society as being a product of Modernity. In another direction Theodore Grazyck’s “Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock” argues that the true ontological value of a rock song can only be found in its recorded form. Both of these turns echo the movement from the live stage into the studio in the late 1960’s by The Beatles or the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (is it any wonder that The Beatles last full album was named after their famed recording studio Abbey Road?).  These musicians felt, as did many at the time, that the studio was a unique site of creativity which was not akin to the type of performance done live on stage.
Through out the 1970’s the studio became an expressive force where its many means of electronic mediation of a performance elevated the producer, engineer, and sound mixer to the same creative level as the musicians themselves. Their work created discrete musical pieces (from Pink Floyd’s technical masterpiece “Wish You Were Here” to the clever overdubbing and mixing that made the Sex Pistols sound so raw on “Nevermind the Bollocks: Here’s the Sex Pistols”) that could never be reproduced in a live venue.
My Paper will contrast this body of research with the new phenomena of music being released straight to the web (IMEEM, Buzznet, MySpace, Facebook, etc).  My argument being that while bands in the past would tour as means of promoting sales of their in-studio albums, now, with the commodity status of a recording irreversibly under-minded by pirate downloads, the studio creation has come to serve the function of simply promoting a live performance itself, as this becomes the primary source for a musician and the music industry to generate income.  Evidence of this might be demonstrated by the fact that as the New York Times (03/15/08) recently reported that at the last South by Southwest Music Festival the industry side of things was represented more by Talent Bookers and Agents looking to fill the empty stages of the country then with Producers or A&R workers looking to sign new acts to take into the studio. What happens then to the idea of the studio as unique site of creativity when the music that is being created is aimed at a representation of what Philip Auslander so brilliantly theorizes in his book “Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized  Culture” as simply, the live?

Phillip McIntyre        University of Newcastle, Australia
The Systems Model of Creativity: Analysing the Distribution of Creative Power in the Studio.

It has been proposed that creativity comes about as result of a system in operation rather than, as a Romantic ethos would have it, being the result of the action of single individuals alone. Furthermore, Pierre Bourdieu has argued that the field in which cultural production occurs can be described as an arena of social contestation. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests, as well, that conflict within a field may also have an effect on that creative field’s output. If these statements are true then questions of power relationships become important in any analysis of creativity. In particular, analysing the systems approach to creativity and what this model has to say about the distribution of creative power in the studio may reveal important truths about creativity itself. It may also shed some light on the nature of the collaboration that occurs within creative groups; in this case those that consist of musicians, producers, record companies and technicians.

Alexei Michailowsky    Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brasil
‘ Who’s Film is it Anyway?’ or ‘Hearing the Picture, Seeing the
Sound’.

According to the ‘An Open Letter from your Sound Department’,
written by John Coffey, with the help and support from Randy Thom , Jeff Wexler and number of other distinguished film audio professionals suggests that ‘Not All is Well at the Western Front’. The current state of affairs puts in question the recognition of the level of audio contribution to the artistic and the creative vision of the film, by other film practitioners, and requires further examination of relationship between the Foley artist/ sound designer/ composer/ editor/ director/ producer.
The tension, misunderstanding and at times the atmosphere of
mistrust is also apparent in education environment, between students from audio production and film courses.
The paper questions if there is the role for educators to play, in not only bridging this gap, but also in improving the mutual understanding of two fractions, influencing change and possibly pointing to the new, alternative approaches to the collaborative efforts and the continuity in creation of the sound for film.
Some of the questions and issues paper discusses are:
Back to the Future. Revisiting of the film masters ‘forgotten’
manifestos, relating to the role of audio on film, (Lang, Eisenstein,
Pudovkin, Vertov).
Who’s film is it anyway? The AV production: frustration, mistrust and issues of ownership. Crossing the barricades, concurring fears?
The new technologies, audiences, expectations and the opportunities.
The role of education in nurturing the audio-visual film collaborators of the future.

Justin Morey        Leeds Metropolitan University
Arctic Monkeys - The Demos vs. The Album

When Arctic Monkeys released “Whatever You Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”, in the UK in 2006, the overwhelming success of the record had been insured through the buzz created about the band by fans on MySpace and other social networking sites. Central to this was the circulation and wide availability of demos originally given away by the band at live performances. As a result, a significant part of the audience for the first studio album was already familiar with alternate versions of the majority of its tracks prior to release. There seems to be a consistency of opinion that certain songs are better in their demo version, so what is it that makes them better, and how far does the recording environment and practice have a bearing?
In this paper it is proposed to investigate the qualitative differences between the demo and the commercial releases, from the point of view of both the listener and the producer, along with a comparative technical study of some of the recordings. The paper will also explore how the technical and creative process and environment of the demo studio differ from that of a larger commercial facility, and how this impacts on the finished record.
The methodology will include interviewing individuals involved in the production of the original demos and the studio album, and investigation of the response of both fans and critics to both sets of recordings. The issues addressed by this research include the extent that different recording environments can be seen to have had an impact on the finished records, either in terms of the band's response to these environments, time constraints, creative approach or quality of equipment. In addition, the research questions whether the audience’s responses to the songs are governed by notions of romanticism, exclusivity and discovery (or a tendency to prefer the one you heard first), or whether there is a certain spontaneity to performance and/or production attitudes that enlivens a demo, which is lost in the process of creating a product that is acceptable for commercial release. This raises further questions on how far notions of low fidelity and authenticity are linked by listeners.

William Moylan    University of Massachusetts Lowell
Considering Space in Music

This paper will examine ways in which spatial elements appear in music recordings and consider how they impact the music itself.  It will examine several recent and historically significant recordings to explore broad concepts, and will then focus on a single recording and its use of space to enhance its musical materials and relationships.
We know that music coming to us through loudspeakers (or ear buds) will have spatial qualities that differ from live, acoustic performance.  Even recordings that most accurately capture and reproduce the spatial qualities of a performance/ensemble will impart some change to spatial qualities that are inherent to the medium.  In practice, mixing, microphone and signal processing techniques have become tools to capture, transform and create spatial qualities and dimensions of recorded music that cause it differ from live, acoustic sound.  Sound stage dimensions, perceived performance environment, location and width of individual sounds, along with their distance location and environmental characteristics, are the qualities (or elements) of recording/reproduced sound shaped in the process.
These spatial qualities in turn shape recordings in many ways, from the overall qualities of the recording to subtle characteristics of individual sounds.  They can be controlled with great precision to craft the qualities of the music and the recording.  The impacts can be subtle or profound, as spatial elements can complement the music or add special dimensions to the sounds—and with less attention perhaps detract from the music or diminish the quality of the recording.  These spatial elements can become an integral part of the composition or add important ornamental character.  They can transform musical materials and relationships; provide added dimensions to instruments and voices; enhance the overall musicality of the recording; give added meaning and character to a song’s musical parts; contribute to a convincing presentation of the song; enliven and enhance the delivery of the message or the emotive expression the song/music is communicating; provide a context or point of reference for the recording/music, and much more.

Pete O'Hare        University of Abertay, Dundee
Undervalued Stock: Britain’s most successful chart producer and his economy of production.

This paper explores the production practices of Mike Stock, the most successful producer/songwriter in British chart history. He is perhaps more familiar when addressed within the context of his two business partners Pete Waterman and Matt Aitken. Under the SAW (Stock, Aitken and Waterman) partnership the three men dominated the British charts during the mid 1980’s and early 1990’s.
The contribution of Stock’s production style, to the overall commercial success of SAW’s operation, will be examined. From the direct targeting of the Gay club scene, Stocks mix of HI-NRG and Tamela Motown, to his no-demo’s policy of recording.
Technological developments in recording at this time also had an influence on the production practices employed by Stock. The introduction of MIDI instruments, sampling and advances in multitrack recording allowed Stock and his Partner Matt Aitken to assume the role of the band. The artist was left to supply only the vocal, all of which had a direct impact on the length of time spent in the recording studio. The paper explorers the effect this had on his relationship with the artists he recorded, including debates surrounding notions of creative control and Authenticity within the production process.
Stocks achievements as a producer have been greatly undermined by industry and press accounts, which tend to devalue his success as a direct result of his production practice. Therefore the paper examines the relationship between Stock and the record industry at a time when SAW had 27% of the pop chart market with records released through their own PWL label, the most successful independent record label in British chart history.

Justin Paterson    London College of Music
Cutting Tracks, Making CDs: A comparative study of audio time-correction techniques in the desktop age

Producers have long sought to “tighten” studio performances. In the early days of tape editing, the razor blade and ears were the only solution. The advent of digital audio emancipated this practice: early approaches to increasing rhythmic accuracy involved cutting up samples of loops and playing back quantized sequences of the resultant sample segments, standalone DAW’s allowed more complex cut and paste functions, and with the advent of Propellerheads “Recycle”, the transient detection became semi-automated although MIDI was still used to replay segments. Contemporary samplers offer built-in beat slicing. Software-based DAW’s now come with proprietary functions to emulate this and dedicated “beat-slicing” plug-ins exist, but only the latest generation of platforms allow relative ease of use on longer takes. Each method has advantages and disadvantages in terms of ease/speed of use, transient preservation, implied subsequent workflow and (usually) unwanted artefacts. The impact on the music we take for granted is profound: the “tightness”, the groove, and the stylistic derivations- the list goes on, and continues to shape modern genres.
Whilst rhythmically consistent material with clear transients is readily automatable with contemporary tools, working with complex mixtures of note-values still presents a challenge and requires much user intervention.
 This paper performs a comparative study of different audio quantize techniques, often on rhythmically complex performances. It will seek to identify necessary methodologies and implied workflows through the use of Recycle, Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Live, Melodyne, Kontakt and more. It will examine potential creativity and lateral uses, and the current level of man-machine interaction will be explored.
This will be set in a historical perspective, and the impact of such producer-mediated performances upon the development of certain popular genres will be considered. By understanding how we got to the state-of-the-art, the future of rhythmic manipulation will be considered and speculated upon.

Hannu Puttonen    University of Lapland
Amen Break:  remix as a form of folk culture

In the acoustic folk music tradition, artists trade licks and melodies. It developed without the commodification of musical creation that has fueled the copyright law debate. Unlike modern-day electronic folk music tradition, where artists sample each other sampling, and which necessitates the use of the actual sound recorded by the ‘original’ artist, the folk tradition merely involved the appropriation of musical themes and songwriting trends. As the Internet and new folk forms make traditional copyright look increasingly irrelevant, we´ve made the transition from a culture which was all about the ownership of physical property to a culture which is more about temporary experiences and spectacle. Remixing is a way of exploring your own musical history, and presenting it to someone else. In the turntable culture, seizing that opportunity is the only sensible response. Curation becomes more important than origination. Transformation more viable than origination. Recontextualization more functional than production. A new form of folk process in the making.
    Another thread in the presentation is the story of the most famous break apart from Funky Drummer: ‘Amen’, a hard driving snare-and-symbal sequence from the B-side Amen My Brother by the soul group The Winstons. Chopped up, processed through effects, re-sequenced, Amen Break has been used in thousands of tracks, and is still being reworked. To trace the history of the Amen Break is to trace the history of a brief period of time when it seemed digital tools offered potentially an unlimited amount of new forms of expression, where cultural production, at least musically, was full of possibilities by virtue of being able to freely appropriate from the musical past – to make new combinations, and thus, new meanings.

Chris Russell        University of Wisconsin - Madison
OCremix - a video game remixing community

The video game music remixing community OCremix.org is a privately run organization which hosts fan-made mixes of video game themes. The site currently hosts over 1,500 remixes and boasts over 20,000 forum members. Each mix submitted to the site is reviewed first by the site owner (David Lloyd) before being forwarded to a separate panel of judges selected from the community. The standards for acceptance are high – the mix must have some percieved musical “value”, and must “show significant attention to sound quality, mixing, mastering, and utilization of effects”1. Less than 5% of submissions are accepted. What inspires a submitter to create a mix with little chance of acceptance, and no chance of income? Why does Lloyd shoulder the considerable financial burden of server and bandwidth costs?
With the advent of commercially available mixing software (Cubase, etc), one only requires a PC with a powerful sound card to produce one's own music. This paper will focus on the ways in which the shift from hardware to software has allowed production to move from the professional to the amateur level, using the OCremix community as an example. My working methodology, then, will be primarily ethnographic in nature, relying on the now commonplace media of internet forums and e-mail to conduct interviews and distribute questionnaires. Through these techniques, I hope to tease out the constructions of identity behind amateur music production and consider the impact of these burgeoning communities on the industry as a whole.

Steve Savage    San Francisco State University
“It could have happened” – the evolution of music construction.

One of the favorite parts for me of being a recordist is applying the “it could have happened” aesthetic in making recordings.  This is the process whereby musical performances are constructed using the wide-ranging capabilities of a digital audio workstation, and one of the standards used to judge the acceptability of the final recorded “performance” is whether or not it could have happened—whether the musician might reasonably have played or sung what has been constructed.  The implication behind “it could have happened” is, of course, that it didn’t happen.  That is, the recording presents a musical performance that did not happen on the specific time line that the listener hears. 
Such activities expand the creative partnership of music making to include recordists—not just in the advisory role (traditional for the producer) but also in the construction of the content used in the final recorded performance.  “It could have happened” performances are a key element in the transformation of music-making—in which the new paradigm of construction is replacing the old linear progression from composition through performance to master recording.  Of course audio editing has allowed for all kinds of “impossible” music as well—all the way back to musique concrète and before.  The DAW has significantly changed our ability to make music that could never have been played as presented —and I love that stuff too—but for me, it’s the hugely expanded palette of “it could have happened” music that I enjoy the most. 
    This paper explores the “it could have happened” ethic of popular music construction, using clips culled from recent recordings that I have made.  It will include screen shots that follow the specific musical constructions.

Susan Schmidt Horning    St. John's University, New York
“When High Fidelity Was New: How the Recording Studio Became a Musical Instrument”

Long before Eno’s 1983 description of the recording studio as his musical instrument, recording engineers, producers, and musicians had begun to exploit the creative use of recording technology.  As early as the 1940s, Sidney Bechet’s “one man band” experiment and Les Paul’s disc-to-disc recordings portended the future of multi-track recording.  But the 1940s also saw the first declarations of the studio as an instrument in its own right, an acoustical space with identifiable characteristics that became integral to the music of that era.
When we think of instruments, musical or technological, we think of objects manipulated by human hands.  The recording studio is also an architectural space which captures the sounds to be recorded, but the nature and significance of that space has changed over time.  Early recordings could not capture room tone because of the weaknesses of acoustical recording, and today the space is inconsequential since it can be artificially created.  But for a time in the mid-twentieth century, the studio was considered “the final instrument that is recorded.”
This paper uses technical literature, oral interviews, memoirs and recordings, to document the development of the recording studio during that critical juncture in its evolution, when the introduction of high fidelity sound made it possible for the first time to exploit studio acoustics.  As dead studios gave way to live rooms—from Masonic temples to dance halls—the music of the era had airy dynamics, space for invention, and an audible sense of the room in which it was recorded.  That space was also occupied by groups of musicians, technicians, arrangers and producers who collectively contributed to the recording as the room lent its acoustical stamp.  As studios have diminished in both size and number, so it seems has the aural space and the social and musical dynamics that were once integral to the process of making records.

Christopher Tabron        New York University
Crosstalk: Meta-Temporality in TV on the Radio’s Young Liars EP

The work of composers like John Cage, the tape loop experiments of Les Paul, the studio manipulations of George Martin, and Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète demonstrate how the 20th century bore new meaning into what the delineations between creative artist and sound engineer could embody. Using these relationships as a point of departure, this paper traces the seminal work of TV on the Radio’s, Young Liars EP (2003), to understand the ways in which the artist/engineer hybrid engages a relationship between practical and theoretical realms.
A noisy opus, Young Liars is of particular interest because of the recording
techniques and technology employed in its composition. Recording their first record entirely in a Brooklyn apartment, the band’s aesthetic and compositional work is examined in conversation with the prevailing recording techniques and aesthetics of popular music, as well as the way in which it complicates traditional performance paradigms. Through interviews with the band’s producer and engineer, David Sitek, this work reflects upon how his unconventional method of recording gestures towards a theoretical paradigm. Among many such gestures lies meta-temporality; the rethinking of time outside of that which is relegated to chronology. At its crux, this work engages the contributions of the artist/engineer hybrid as a corollary to thinking about the traditional sound engineer as both a performer and a theorist. These moments of overlap and of sonic crosstalk are used as a basis for understanding what generative ethnomusicological work can be created through considering the confluence of technological and theoretical realms.

Paul Theberge    Carleton University, Ottowa
"The End of the World as We Know It:  The Changing Role of the Studio in the Age of the Internet" 

In June of 2007, Sony-BMG announced that it would be closing its Manhattan recording facility, and by August, Sony Music Studios, a multi-studio recording, mastering, and sound stage complex had ceased operations.  One engineer, more than a little dismayed by the news, remarked in an on line forum that "the world is coming to an end." 
On the surface, the closure of Sony Music Studios was the latest in an ongoing history of such closures: the studio had fallen victim to a combination of changes in record industry fortunes and the voracious New York real estate market.  At a deeper level, however, such closures need to be put into a larger historical context, one that takes into account the changing nature of the recording studio and its role in the recording industry. 
In this paper, I want to briefly revisit the history of the recording studio, paying attention to the varying industrial and technological changes that have given rise to a number of different studio configurations – the diverse "world's" of the recording studio as we have known them.  This diversity, I want to argue, is not just historical in nature but also a contemporary fact: in many ways, we are now confronted with as diverse a range of options as at any time in the history of the recording studio, although the distribution of those options has changed radically. 
In the new industrial context of shrinking profits, the imminent demise of the CD as a commodity form, and the Internet as a primary medium of music distribution, the present range of studio options poses both challenges and opportunities for musicians, engineers, and producers.  This paper will discuss a number of recent attempts at adapting the economics and technology of sound recording to the demands of an emerging industrial organization. 

Mark Thorley        Coventry University
The gatekeeper’s dead – should we dance on the grave?

The means for composing, performing, recording and distributing sound recordings is now available to all artists. The only real requirement is that they have the economic means to buy into the technologies and services necessary to engage with the processes. This ‘democratisation’ which has changed the recording process and now the distribution process is in distinct contrast to previous situations which involved a ‘gatekeeper’.  Typically, in any number of roles (manager, producer, engineer, A&R person), the gatekeeper would control the economic means which ultimately lead to artists success both creatively and artistically.  Many of the criticisms of recorded music (such as homogenisation, short-term development of artists etc.) have been attributed to the presence of the gatekeeper. For these reasons, the democratisation which technological development has brought about has generally been welcomed by artists and consumers of music. This is because artists are being freed from the control of the gatekeeper, allowed to express themselves more freely and engage with global markets.  Consumers are also welcoming of the facilitation of browsing and experiencing music which is new to them, without any need to commit immediately to a financial transaction.
It could be presumed therefore (as the title suggests), that now the gatekeeper is dead, we should dance on the grave. However, this paper seeks to demonstrate that this is not necessarily the right reaction. Whilst the decline in influence is explained, and the perceived improvement to the recorded music environment outlined, it is shown that there are some disadvantages to the shift. In looking at the actual role of the gatekeeper, the positive effect is examined as is the detrimental effect on the recorded music environment associated with its loss. As way of conclusion, strategies are suggested to replicate the positive influence of the gatekeeper.

Robert Toft        University of Western Ontario
Hits and Misses: Crafting a Pop Single for the Adult Contemporary Market in the 1960s

The art of crafting successful pop singles can be a hit and miss affair, and this paper addresses the notion of hits and misses through a consideration of ‘(They Long to Be) Close to You’ by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. In September 1963, Bacharach produced the first version of the song with Richard Chamberlain, but the recording was, and still is, considered an artistic failure, as was the version Bacharach produced with Dionne Warwick a year later. It was not until Richard and Karen Carpenter recorded the song in 1970, without input from Bacharach, that the full potential of ‘Close to You’ was realized.
But what made the two Bacharach versions miss the mark, while the Carpenters, to use Bacharach’s words, ‘nailed it’? Musicologists have struggled to find ways of discussing the aural landscape of songs without becoming fixated on the harmonic procedures that underpin vocal melodies, but if one identifies the elements of a recording’s sonic surface that contribute to its success (that is, the distribution of musical ideas and instruments in mix, as well as performance style and narrative flow [by this I mean the creation and release of emotional/musical tension]), the scholarly discourse on recordings may be reconfigured to address those features of a recording which shape, and ultimately determine, its sonic vitality. Through this approach, the deficiencies of Bacharach’s misses become as readily apparent as the strategies The Carpenters employed not only to maximize the emotional impact of the song but also to score a hit.
Specifically, this essay considers how groove (particularly the rhythmic interest generated in the instrumental backdrop), instrumentation, melodic style in the orchestral parts, tempo, manner of performance (both vocal and instrumental), and the disposition of the song’s sections (verses and bridge) generate a narrative flow that either enhances (The Carpenters) or diminishes (Bacharach) the emotional impact of the story told in the lyrics.

Rob Toulson, Charles Cuny-Crigny, Philip Robinson and Phillip Richardson   
Anglia Ruskin University
The perception and importance of drum tuning in live performance and music production.

Intricate setup and tuning of acoustic drums can have a great and valuable impact on the quality and contextuality of the instrument when played alone or as part of a music group performing live or in the recording studio. Indeed, many record producers will spend a number of hours achieving the preferred drum sound at the start of a studio project. Similarly, live performances may require an exact drum sound every night, so knowledge and repeatability of drum setups can be a valuable asset. Drum tuning, however, is a rather subjective matter. There is no correct benchmark for ‘in-tune’ like there is for most other musical instruments, it is therefore very difficult to define why a particular drum setup might sound good when another does not.
A research study has been conducted to assess how performers and producers interpret and value the importance of drum tuning in their specific field or music genre. Research has been conducted by a combination of one-to-one interview, focus group discussion, questionnaire, and through the authors’ own experiences of drum performance and recording. This paper presents and discusses the results of the study.
Conclusions of the research show that advanced musicians do have the ability to tune drums by ear, and do greatly value the differences that can be made. Less advanced musicians are aware of the benefits that can be made by knowledgeable drum tuning, but many do not possess the skills to achieve the desired results. Unfortunately, owing to the subjective nature of drum tuning, there is currently no qualified method for educating novice practitioners. Of the music producers interviewed, the importance of drum tuning was high on their agenda, and there is evidence that any technical methods for standardising or benchmarking particular drum setups would be embraced. This paper therefore discusses drum tuning, with particular reference to analysed waveform data, in an attempt to demystify the methods used and provide a first step towards advancing knowledge and further educating performers and producers alike.

Zachary Wallmark   
The MP3 Revolution and Its Effects on Consumption and Listening Patterns

In the late 1990s, the compact disc began losing its preeminence in the music market as the more flexible, cheaper, and downloadable MP3 format took its place. Since the MP3 began its rise in popularity, CD sales have fallen precipitously to record lows, and online music downloading – both legally and illegally – has become the most prevalent method of music acquisition for young people in the United States.
This paper will address two facets of this musico-technological transformation. First, drawing from data generated through survey research on over 240 high school and college students, I will explore contemporary trends in the way young people acquire their music. The data reveal many fascinating new realities about contemporary music consumption. But more than just examine the shifting nature of the music market, I will address how this format change has altered a more fundamental characteristic of our musical culture: indeed, I contend that online music has affected the way people listen.
The digital music revolution has affected listening habits through two interrelated factors: inferior audio quality and diminished monetary value. MP3 files lack the sonic clarity of the CD format. In addition, unlike CDs, MP3s lack physical embodiment, a precursor to the perception of monetary value by consumers. Combined with the fact that a majority of listeners download music for free, MP3s represent a significantly diminished investment compared to the purchase of CDs. Without a high level of sonic fidelity and financial investment attached to them, does the MP3 format therefore encourage “shallow listening”? Drawing from the survey results and Riddell’s concept of “dataesthetics” (2001), I will demonstrate that values are changing as we transition ever more fully into the MP3 age: where once audio quality and physical ownership drove the music market, today consumers are more interested in fluidity, speed, portability, and convenience. This paradigm shift has affected the way people listen to their music in profound and novel ways.

Alan Williams    University of Massachusetts Lowell
“I’m Not Hearing What You’re Hearing”: The Conflict and Connection of Headphone Mixes and Multiple Audioscapes

The mediated experience of making music under headphones places musicians outside the sonic landscape of the immediate physical environment. But headphones also create alternative audioscapes for performers, malleable alternatives to a static, singular experience. Recording studio participants exercise a great measure of agency in shaping and controlling their auditory experience. Of course, just who is allowed to exert this control is a more complicated matter. In many cases, that power lies in the domain of the technician. The engineer's ability to construct the monitoring signal that is sent to musicians in the performance space via headphones reinforces a hierarchy that places musicians in a subservient position to those who inhabit the control room. Musicians are only allowed to hear what the technicians let them hear.
Technologically imposed division inherently sets up oppositional binaries between recording studio participants. The performance space/control room divide pits musician against technician, and isolation places musicians in conflict with one another, whether physically imposed by baffles and booths, or psychologically imposed in the form of multiple headphone mix audioscapes. This paper, based on field research, will address how technological mediation creates these oppositional binaries, as well as the potential for a collectively experienced and heightened performance made possible by the enhanced connection provided by headphones in recording studio practice.

Paula Wolfe        Sib Records / Liverpool University  
Self Producing and the Home Studio

The distance between 'capability' and 'ability' is a given. Although it has been well documented that developments in digital technology continue to facilitate both the production and promotion of music, such access, of course, does not necessarily guarantee that either will be done well or that the art will not suffer in the face of the pressures of placing it in the marketplace.
As Mercury Prize nominee Kathryn Williams points out with reference to myspace: "...there is so much out there because anyone can do it and get heard but that does not mean it is any easier to break into a market. You still have to have people  wanting to buy your records, you have to be making good music. Just because there is an outlet for everyone, doesn't mean that everyone can get a career...or indeed should ! " ( Interview April 2007)
DIY is no longer unusual and given the rise in numbers in the last year of AIM (Association of Independent Music) members who are artists running their own labels, the indications are that increasing numbers of individuals are embracing the opportunities that technology affords, learning how the industry works and following the  advice of Jeremy Lascelle (CEO Chrysalis Music) at London City Showcase 2006 to create their own careers.
In interviewing Jane Pollard (Head of Creative Strategy Beggars Group) last year on how far she thought an artist could go without a label, her response was, "If they can find new ways, they can go as far as they want. It really is a simple as that." (Interview May 2007)
Rather than a subjective matching of 'ability' to 'capability', then, perhaps a more pertinent question to ask here is what constitutes a career in today's digital age? If an artist is producing her/his own work and it is 'good enough' to appeal to an audience, what realistic and feasible objectives can an individual artist hope to gain from that fan base?
In the light of these questions, this paper will consider the experiences of a selection of self producing and self releasing artists at different stages in their careers in order to examine the impact of such career choices as part of a wider industry context and to consider the role that the home studio continues to play for those artists working on its peripheries.

Alexa Woloshyn    University of Toronto
Imogen Heap as Musical Cyborg: Renegotiations of Power, Gender and Sound

Imogen Heap became a widespread name in popular music after the popularity of “Let Go,” the first song off Frou Frou’s Details (2002).  She followed that album with a solo electronica album Speak for Yourself (2005), written and produced on her own. Heap’s current status as artist-producer corresponds to both the nature of the electronica genre and the history of the artist-producer in general. We can observe an increasing role of the producer since the development of multi-track recording in the 60s. With MIDI sequencing developed in the 80s, the home studio became a commerically viable and useable space.  Heap recognizes her dependency on technology in this latest album:
    I couldn’t have made my first record or this record ten years ago with the technology that existed.  I can make any single sound on the planet; I can just download a sound.  I can make any record I want.  There’s no limitations now.

Heap believes that what she has done as an artist and as a woman is part of a larger trend facilitated by an increased access to technology.  Trial downloads and packages such as iLife allow amateur composers and producers to make their own music.  Imogen offers her forecast for the future:
    And I think we’ll see a lot of young ladies in the future, because in the past it was quite difficult for a girl to get into a studio, to be a tea girl or anything, to help around the studio.  And that won’t be a problem anymore because you can employ yourself to work in your bedroom!

In this paper, I analyze Heap’s artist output, first in Frou Frou, and then in her solo work to demonstrate the increasing nature of her cyborg musical identity – an identity that demonstrates renegotiations of power, gender and sound. 

Simon Zagorski-Thomas        London College of Music
The Medium In The Message: Phonographic Staging Techniques That Utilise The Sonic Characteristics Of Reproduction Media.

A recurrent theme is emerging in scholarly activity relating to record production: the description and analysis of mediation techniques used in the recording process that produce sonic characteristics with culturally constructed, associative meaning. This paper examines how the aural ‘footprint’ of particular forms of mediation associated with audio reproduction media have been used to generate meaning within the production process. The postmodernist slogan ‘The Medium Is The Message’ is stretched a little further to accommodate the fact that the medium is continually referenced within the message itself and becomes part of the creative palette of meaning creation.
Recorded examples and recent scholarly analyses will be used to illustrate three proposed categories of these media based staging techniques:
1.    Historical meaning – the evocation of period or nostalgia based resonances.
2.    Authority based meaning – authenticity that stems from mediation that is technologically appropriate and suggests culturally appropriate expertise.
3.    Dilettante based meaning – deliberate amateurism, low audio quality or distortion.
These will be examined with reference to contemporary cultural theory such as Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital and discussions of authenticity, subcultures and identity within popular music studies.
I will conclude with a brief survey of how this type of mediation relates to other forms of phonographic staging.
 
Albin Zak    State University of New York at Albany
“Mitch the Goose Man”

In a Metronome editorial of July 1950 entitled “Mitch the Goose Man,” Barry Ulanov likened Mitch Miller’s production style to camouflage: “Borrowing a trick or two from the army engineers, Mitch applied camouflage to the efforts of singers willing to lose their identity to the sound-effects man.” Miller was the hottest producer of the day, and he was changing the sound of pop records. His choices of song, arrangement, and sonic treatment were aimed at creating what he called a sense of “excitement,” some kind of sonic thrill that might cut through the din of the crowded pop marketplace. The conventions of musical form, melody, and harmony manipulated with deftness and  subtlety by the masters of Tin Pan Alley were increasingly replaced by a simpler, more straightforward kind of song—unambiguous and instantly hummable. In the place of the big bands that had accompanied so many pop singers of the 1930s and 40s, he invented ad hoc groups, one-off ensembles put together in a recording studio for a particular session, or even a single song. His records increasingly sounded like novel sound worlds, with exaggerated reverb, overdubbing, odd sound effects, and instrumental balances entirely dependent on recording engineers’ intervention at the mixing console. The storied A&R man, John Hammond, called it “phony effects” and “electronic fakery.” But popular music has followed Miller’s example ever since. This paper examines many of Miller’s innovative tracks of 1949-1955 as a contribution to the historical dimension of the Art of Record Production project.