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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.
Le Guern, Philippe
Université d’Angers and Laboratoire Georges Friedmann,
Paris 1-CNRS
Getting a home studio equipment : An illustration of
the economic theory of uncertainty ?
The discourse on the home-studio
- based on the idea of a significant decrease in the cost of equipment and of
access to training and ease of use - contributed to the creation of an ideology of the «democratic» art of
recording production : the home studio as an emancipation in respect to the industry (symbolized by
the “big studios” and the figure of the producer dispossessing the artist of
its subjectivity) and with regard to the technical and economic constraints.
Described - undoubtedly rightly - as a central element of the change in the
ways of recording and renewal of esthetics, its reality is however more
complex.
In fact, the home studio does not
present a homogenous reality (the configurations can vary significantly in
quality and in costs), from the audio-digital sound card equipping a room of an
«amateur» musician to the studio offering professional results. In addition, the home studio can be
used as a sort of traditional multi track facility or alternatively offer truly
innovative applications. Finally, with the multiplication of equipment
(software, plug ins of sounds or effects...) and websites of online sales (of
which Thomann is a good example in Europe) that allow reducing the cost of
purchase of equipments, the “amateur’ consumer finds himself in a position well
described by classic economic theories of uncertainty: that where supply
is is plentiful, where information
on the quality of the goods is imperfect, where the experience of the goods is
done a posteriori, where the prices are not symmetrically correlated with
quality (slight differences of quality can produce big price differences, which
is showed notably with microphones or the preamplis).
To compensate for this lack of
information on the quality of goods purchased, the consumers will deploy various strategies: use of
informational signals (reading of specialised reviews, or websites which test
equipment such as audiofanzine in France) or also mimetic behaviors (one buys
what the others buy). It can also see, to take an example, that the reference
to the “vintage” became a very effective marketing argument (one can take the
example of préampli TG2 of Chandler who praises oneself to be a reproduction of
a section of console EMI of Abbey Road Beatles time, or Audiopacifica which
asserts filiation with the material formerly used by Pink Floyd).
Within this framework, my purpose
is to describe the acquisition strategies used by home studio users : from
which sources of information and which criteria are refereed the choices in
favor of this or that equipment
and of such or such a brand? What are the priorities of the home studio users
(computer, software, microphones,speakers, etc)? How are finances invested in
various equipment? Which criteria determines the choices of equipment (standard
of practised musical esthetics? /position in the career: amateur or
professional? etc…)
My survey is based on data established with one of the
more important suppliers of home studio equipment in France (physical and online
sale) and in discussions with about twenty home studio users.
Thomas MacFarlane
New York University
Revolution 1: Splitting The Definitive
The Beatles’ White Album (1968) contains a curious
track entitled, Revolution 1,
which functions as an alternate version of the B-side of the group’s 45rpm
single release, Hey Jude. In addition to marked
differences in both mix and performance, there is an intriguing disparity
evident in the lyrics. While the single features the line “when you talk about
destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out,” Revolution 1 contains the far more ambivalent phrase, “when
you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out – in.”
During interviews from the
period, John Lennon expressed uncertainty regarding the need for violent
revolution, and could not decide whether brutality was a necessary aspect of
social change. Thus, in the
version of Revolution that appears
on The White Album he
includes both possibilities. While the single release seems to resolve this
paradox (“count me out”), the mix and performance are far more aggressive,
perhaps suggesting that Lennon had found a way to couch his ambivalence within
an elaborate interplay between music and text.
The
following discussion will compare the album and single versions of Revolution from the standpoint of production technique and
performance. Particular attention will be paid to opposing sentiments within
the works’ musical and lyrical structures. The intention is to explore the ways
in which Lennon’s creative process challenged the visual bias inherent in
Western philosophical discourse. The resulting data will then be examined in
light of the epistemological shift that was taking place in the cultural
mindset of the late 20th century.
Phillip McIntyre
University of Newcastle, NSW
Songwriting and Studio Practice: The Systems
Model of Creativity Applied to ‘Writing Records’.
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
claimed that ‘we don’t write songs, we write records’ (in Palmer, 1996: 35).
This studio based approach to creating records has had, and continues to have,
a number of implications for the role of songwriters. For example, at the more
general level it can be seen that the move away from writing songs to writing
records has contributed to the alteration, advent and development of a variety
of musical styles. However, for those directly involved in studio practice, the
reconfiguring of the traditional role of the songwriter in favour of the record
writer has implications not only at the point of composition but also at the
level of arrangement, production and, inevitably, copyright. Drawing on data
from an extended ethnographic study of songwriting the author hopes that, by
looking at these issues and changes through the lens of the systems model of
creativity, a fresh perspective may not only be bought to the current
understandings of creative studio practice but a contribution may be made to
the musicological knowledge available to those engaged in researching the art
of record production.
Kirk McNally
University of Victoria
New tools for use in the
musicology of record production
This paper introduces a stereo 3-D
panning visualization tool based on methods borrowed from the field of Music
Information Retrieval (MIR). This
tool will help to illustrate and quantify production decisions and recording
practices used in record production.
The tool is also valuable for pedagogical purposes, providing students
with a visual feedback of what they are (or are not) hearing in recordings as
they develop their critical listening skills.
The
stereo 3-D panning visualization tool allows users to visualize the panning of
different elements in a recording, with panning graphed on the x-axis,
frequency on the y-axis, and the real-time component creating a waterfall-type display. The tool computes the panning index, a
frequency-domain source identification system based on a cross-channel metric
as described in Avendano [1]. This
panning index allows for the mapping of the individual frequency components in
different FFT (Fast Fourier Transfrom) or MFCC (Mel Frequency Cepstrum
Coefficient) bins along the left-right panning dimension. In order to generate the data required,
we will be using the Marsyas, Music Information Retrieval framework (http://marsyas.sness.net).
[1] Avendano, C. “Frequency-domain
source identification and manipulation in stereo mixes for enhancement,
suppression and re-panning applications. In Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on
Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics (WASPAA), pages 55–
58, 2003.
Professor Allan Moore
University of Surrey
Aspects
Of Embodied Meaning
This paper comes out of an AHRC project on the
development of a hermeneutic approach to spatialisation in recorded song.
Through consideration of key details of Annie Lennox’s ‘Walking on broken
glass’, I shall demonstrate the import of certain concepts drawn from the field
of cognitive science, specifically cross-domain mapping, conceptual blends and image schemata, and will use them to elucidate
aspects of both musical content and its spatial realisation.
Justin Morey
Leeds Metropolitan University
“Breaking the Fourth Wall” –
The Effect of Acknowledging the Studio on Staging and Perception.
The studio can be used to locate a recording in settings
other than the actual recording space, either realistic or imagined. What is
the effect on this staging of the inclusion of acknowledgements of the
production process, such as verbal interaction between the musicians, or from
one side of the glass to the other (such as David Bowie’s treated conversation
with producer Ken Scott at the beginning of Andy Warhol), that can be found in finished recordings?
It will be argued that this practice is analogous to the
cinematic device of “breaking the fourth wall”, where protagonists step out of
the scene they are enacting, either by addressing the audience, or by
acknowledging the presence of the production team, simultaneously making the
viewer complicit in the events, and highlighting the artificiality of the
medium delivering them. Given that much popular music, particularly rock music,
is often appreciated with the assumption that the protagonists are addressing
the listener directly, how does the inclusion of these interactions on the
final master affect audience perceptions?
Using a range of examples from
artists including Arctic Monkeys, David Bowie, The Libertines and Led Zeppelin,
it will be proposed that these interactions serve to “break the fourth wall” by
revealing the mediation involved in a recording to the audience. However, while
these moments can draw the audience in and give them a sense of complicity in
the production, as is often the intention in the cinematic device, the
intention diverges from the use in cinema in that it reinforces rather than
subverts the authenticity of the recording by locating it in a believable
space, i.e the studio, and promotes a sense in the audience that the events
around these interactions are more immediate or live as a result. As such, it
will be suggested that the inclusion of such interactions in the final master
can be viewed as an attempt by the producer(s) to inscribe a recording with
authenticity.
Mynett, , Mark (Dr Jonathan P Wakefield, Dr
Rupert Till)
University of Huddersfield
The
Use Of Click Tracks For The Extreme And Modern Metal Genre
This
paper explores the use of click-tracks and the benefits they enable for drum
production within the extreme metal genre. The paper will focus on the drum
production of ‘Sink’, the second album by French act Kaizen which was produced,
engineered and mixed by the first author of this paper and released through
Sony in 2005.
This paper will reflect the first
author’s eight years experience producing within the metal genre including
releases through Sony and Universal. He has worked with the likes of Colin
Richardson, Andy Sneap and Jens Bogren and contributions with these, as well as
other producers will be included in this paper.
For extreme metal acts, accuracy is more important than vibe, feel or
groove in the drum performance. The kick drum work and the beats, patterns,
subdivisions and syncopation involved demands the very highest standard of
precision and accuracy to facilitate the tightest possible production. The use
of a click track provides an essential central reference point in forcing a
drummer to tighten up his beats and parts and allows the producer to accurately
assess as such. This enables a precise standard of drum performance.
However, to take advantage of these benefits, the use
of a click needs to be a central aspect of pre-production. Here, a producer
will often need to be involved, for example in the mapping out of the song’s
tempos, and recording of the guide tracks for the drummer to rehearse to. The
drummer’s rehearsal time to the clicks and guides is a vital element of
pre-production and its importance cannot be overstated.
Additionally, due to the particularly fast kick
drum patterns involved (whereby double kick drums/double kick pedals are a
prerequisite) and the often rhythmically intricate and complex nature of the
drum parts, it is normal for the drum tracks heard on a finished production to
not entirely be as performed. Often a variety of kick-pattern building and drum
editing/quantisation methods will have been employed to produce very tight, almost
super-human drum performances. Creating this is one of the particular
production challenges of the genre and ultimately the use of clicks when
recording the drums facilitates these methods and the tools involved.
This paper looks at these issues in the context
of the drum production of the album ‘Sink’, by Kaizen
and additionally covers challenges specific to that production. On commencing
recording of the drum tracks it became obvious that the drummer was unable to
perform the vast majority of the double-bass drum work for the often complex
parts. Measures were therefore taken to minimise any bleed of the kick drums
onto the other microphones, so that the entire performance of the footwork
involved could be built with samples. In essence, this could not have been
achieved without the use of a click-track during tracking.
Ribac, Francois
University
Paul Verlaine of Metz
What’s The Social Meaning Of
Recording Devices?
Recording(s) play(s) a central role in popular music. On
one hand, popular musicians view recording, less as a form of duplication, than
as a fundamental stage of the creative process. On the other hand, recording
technologies and sound reproduction devices, including domestic equipment,
function as apprentice musicians’ instructors. In the domestic sphere, especially in their rooms, teenage musicians absorb and emulate the music they love
and, thus, acquire its stylistic
vocabulary and simultaneously become familiar with the process through which
records are made (Bennett 1980, Green 2001). The absorption and emulation of a
musical repertoire, thus, lay the ground for a process of individuation. The
advent of house music and scratch, in which musicians perform with turntables,
small mix desks, and samples, has further demonstrated that listening/recording
devices and the (often neglected) domestic sphere play a central role in the
ways in which music is learned and created.
In order to examine these processes, I undertook a study,
between 2005 and 2007, of the circulation and the uses of recordings in
Île-de-France (Paris and its suburbs). I tried to trace the different stages in
the learning process of thirty young rock, hip-hop and techno musicians (women
and men) who are carrying out their work in the Internet age. I examined the
repertoires that they imitated, loved, and shared, as well as the recording
tools – including domestic equipment – they used and where these came from
(i.e., I identified the sources – people and objects – of these tools). I also
studied the processes through which musicians appropriated them, the objects
they had recourse to, the places they went to, and how they recorded their own
music (most of the time with other musicians). (see note)
In this paper, I would like to focus on the tools and/or
interfaces the people of the panel used. The research I made showed that,
first, the men and women of the panel didn’t use the objects and repertories in
the same way nor in the learning process neither in the practise. Secondly, the
interfaces and representations were strongly connected with the musical
style(s). In particular, those differences were clearly expressed by the choice
and use of the softwares (for instance : Guitar Pro, Cubase, Logic, Reason).
While
examining how sound is represented, manipulated and exchanged, one can
therefore, firstly, contribute to a musicology of the recording
practises, and, secondly, precise how musical
technologies express social relations.
To
represent these multiple spaces/places and itineraries, I relied on schemes and
network mappings (with the software RéseauLu).
Note: This
report, entitled “la circulation et l’usage des supports enregistrés en
Île-de-France”, was commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the local
council of the Department of the Seine-Saint-Denis and the programme “Cultures
et Territoires [Cultures and Territories]” (jointly sponsored by various
French ministries). The report may be downloaded here : http://culture-et-territoires.fr/IMG/pdf/rapport_F_Ribac.pdf
Luis Adam Sanchez
University of Edinburgh
“Shiny and New”: Madonna and
The Bearings of Pop Practice
The history of Madonna as a pop
performer is often organized by the concept of re-invention. This has interesting
implications in a larger discussion about creativity and the creative practices
associated with pop as a genre category, where the distinction between
performer and producer tends to be well-defined. Madonna’s work, in its
emphasis on process and the self-reflexive aspects of creative practice, makes
for a valuable study of pop as a category in which an ideology based on
accessibility and standardization must contend with the unanticipated life
trajectories of pop product and the irrationality of taste. Drawing from Jason
Toynbee’s suggestive model of creativity as it operates in the world of popular
music making and from Simon Frith’s writings on popular music aesthetics, this
paper examines Madonna’s career as a pop performer by focusing on the dynamic
between her creative and performing practices and what the relationship between
the two suggests about the aesthetics of pop. The questions I am asking are:
How do we make sense of the relationship between Madonna and the musical work
that bears her name? What values and practices organize her approach to making
pop records and performing? What do we hear when we hear a Madonna record? What
do we encounter in a Madonna performance? What is it about Madonna that Madonna
re-invents? In her case, taste in producers, interrogation of nostalgia and the
politics of dance are applied to a creative process that, on one hand, clearly
involves studio recording and a live performance imperative, but which, on the
other hand, complicates the flow of cultural production. My simple argument is
that an understanding of pop as a genre category needs to account for the way
creative activity is indicated and valued in terms of pop’s own aesthetic
logic.
Paul Sanden
University of Western Ontario
Listening to Gould: Embodied Performances on
Record
In this
paper I will present the concept of corporeal liveness, and apply it to a discussion of
Glenn Gould’s solo piano recordings. Thornton (1995) and Auslander (1999) argue
that the concept of live musical performance emerged historically as an
oppositional category to recorded performance. Since its emergence, the concept
of liveness has been invoked repeatedly to connote a sense of human production
different from that found in mediated music, or at the very least resistant to
the transformative powers of mediatization. I propose that liveness is
perceived from various perspectives: we experience spatial liveness when we are
present in the same space as a performance, and temporal liveness when we
witness a performance at the time of its utterance. The term corporeal liveness
refers to a perception of the physical process of making music—of bodies moving
to create sound—and is a particularly useful concept with which to confront
notions of disembodied sound so often thought to be represented in recordings.
Gould’s
recordings, considered in light of Gould’s common image as an ‘intellectual’
musician—which often overshadows the role the rest of his body plays in making
music—present a fascinating opportunity to address these issues. For despite
the overwhelming discursive focus on Gould’s intellectual abilities, his records are as much evidence of
his performing body as of his brilliant mind. In addition to Gould’s constant
humming, we also hear evidence of Gould’s body in the act of performance. Due in large part to the
close-microphone recording techniques favoured by Gould and his recording
studio collaborators, one hears in many of Gould’s recordings the physical
process of piano performance—the creaking of his chair as he moves, and the
‘non-musical’ sounds the piano makes as it responds to the motions of his hands
and feet—all of which are far more difficult to discern in recordings for which
a more resonant ‘room ambience’ was captured.
This paper, then, employs a
discussion of corporeal liveness for two main purposes. First, in joining with
other recent scholars who call for a ‘carnal musicology’ (Le Guin 2006), I
present a reading of Glenn Gould—the quintessential cerebral musician—that
focuses on the role of his body in creating significance in his recorded
performances. Second, I present a reading of recordings—those so-called agents
of disembodiment—in which a body still sounds. Contrary to Phelan’s claim that
once a performance enters the realm of reproduction it becomes ‘something other
than performance’ (1993), I argue that these recordings present real
performing moments.
References
Auslander,
Philip. 1999. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London: Routledge.
Le Guin,
Elisabeth. 2006. Boccherini’s Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Phelan, Peggy. 1993. “The Ontology of Performance.”
In Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge.
Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club
Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital.
London: Routledge.
Savage, Steve
San Francisco State University
The Scrubber Tool: Analog
Antecedents in the DAW
Virtually all music today is
produced in the digital domain and the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) has
brought a seismic shift in capabilities for the creation of music. Yet, the working model in the DAW
remains the analog interfaces that are now primarily obsolete. The basic tools
of recording working environments, such as mixers and transport controls, have
been ported almost directly from the analog model into graphic representations
in the computer. These analog antecedents in current audio production
technology hold considerable sway in structuring our musical activity. In this paper I explore the reasons for
this condition, questioning its value and relevance along the way. Is it necessary for the mixing
functions in the computer to be modeled on the analog mixer? Have operators found ways to bypass the
analog models to find more innovative ways to work? Does anyone use the scrubber tool in Pro Tools? Did the analog model support a smooth
transition from analog to digital?
Does it enhance the working environment, supporting the creative renewal
inherent in the expanded functionality of the digital domain; or is it a relic
that has limited the explosive capabilities of digital audio production?
Simonsen, Tore
Norwegian Academy of Music
The Classical Recording as a
Work of Phonography
Through the development of audio recording techniques in
the 20th century, classical recordings have gained a new position as
analyzable works of art and given rise to a new interest in the interpretation
itself, its historical development and its position within the concept of the
musical work. At the same time, studio production practices have established a
new kind of musical art, where interpretation in its original meaning has
disappeared, establishing instead the studio production as both the artistic
point of departure as well as the working method. Lee Brown names this kind of
art a Work of Phonography, but reserves its use
to the studio-based pop recordings (Rock Music
in Theodore Gracyk’s parlance) and to studio recordings of jazz.
However, a classical recording is also a studio product,
where manipulation of time (through highly specialized editing) and space (with
frequent adjustments of internal balance as well as other acoustical qualities)
have been part of the industry’s normal, but not always well-documented
practice. Here John Culshaw’s productions from the seventies are more the exception
than the rule, perhaps because an opera production needs to transcend a mere
interpretation document to compensate for the missing visual element.
I would contend that any classical recording also may be
understood as a Work of Phonography, linked to its
studio practice. In this view, interpretation and production are combined into
one unique work of art; becoming what Nelson Goodman has called an
autographic work of art — it can never be
duplicated in another recording. We are used to thinking about classical music
as allographic — all kinds of performances (as
long as they are regarded as authentic representations of the work in question)
are equally genuine instances of the work.
One of the consequences of this
view is that a studio production no longer may be regarded as a picture of a
performance. The production is no longer a more or less transparent view of an
acoustical event, but rather opaque, with great consequences for any
discographic work. Like Philip Auslander, I would also claim that it becomes
non-historical — during playback it will be experienced as present, not past,
regardless of its actual recording date. In this way the historical dimension
for classical recordings may be looked upon as being diminished or distorted:
all recordings presents themselves as contemporary (to us), they are parallel
representations of the same composition
and at the same time different works of art.
Stobart, Henry
Royal Holloway, University of London
Constructing Community In The
Home Studio: Indigenous VCD (DVD) Production In The Bolivian Andes
This paper examines the
processes and politics surrounding the production of low budget indigenous
music VCDs by the Bolivian musician and cultural activist Gregorio Mamani.
Brought up a in a rural community, Mamani’s career as a recording artist has
led him to move to the city where in 1990 he pioneered the commercial recording
of indigenous rural music. His recordings, which tend to be scorned by middle
class Bolivians, are consumed by economically disadvantaged rural peasants and
urban migrants. From around 2003 the digital video disc (VCD) began to be
adopted by indigenous musicians, but high levels of piracy (around 95%) have
led the retail price of discs to plummet; this means that Mamani works within
immensely tight budgetary constraints.
Based on research in North
America, Paul Théberge has argued that “the home studio is, above all private
space”, where studios are usually tucked away in bedrooms, dens or basements,
“separate from family life in almost every way”. In the Mamani household, by
contrast, family life is in many respects dominated by and revolves around the
spaces allocated to the studio and video editing; the production process also
regularly spills out into the other areas of family space. Here, VCD production
and distribution emerge as a form of cottage industry which involves most of
the family, but also as one which often brings to light the challenges of
musically and visually evoking community participation and specific indigenous
rural knowledge, values and aesthetics. This paper considers some of the ways
that Mamani, who now lives far from the rural community of his youth, exploits
digital technology to face the challenges of cultural isolation, complex social
relations, and economic constraints in producing his indigenous music videos.
Subramaniam, Divakar
University of Glamorgan
Producing Kollywood Songs:
Digital Technology And Creative Practice
This paper attempts to explore
the role of creative music technology in Kollywood or South Indian Tamizh film
songs to gain a deeper understanding of the Tamizh film music industry’s
production aesthetics. The research strategy includes a study of past and
present production practices, field interviews, a comparative study with
Western counterparts and professional practice. The research methodology cuts
across scientific and cultural platforms.
The South Indian Tamizh film
industry caters to a Tamizh audience in the state of Tamizh Nadu and abroad,
and is commonly known as “Kollywood”. The name is partly derived from
“Kodambakkam”, a Chennai locality, which houses most of the popular cine
production facilities and Kollywood’s popular Western counterpart “Hollywood”.
Kollywood produces around 100 films every year and has earned a significant
place in the Indian music industry, especially after the introduction of
digital music technology in the early 1990s.
Thanks to its theatrical origin,
Tamizh films contain songs that have become an integral part of the Tamizh
musical tradition. These songs can be categorized into specific genres, which
have evolved musical and technical guidelines that inform cultural aesthetics.
These guidelines can be viewed as the creative boundaries that music producers
strive to expand and thereby contribute to their redefinition.
Digital
technology has played a critical role in the evolution of Kollywood songs. It introduced the Tamizh audience to increased
musical “perfection”, in terms of quantization and pitch. Although this
arguably lacked the complex nature of human performance, it enhanced clarity of
sound and thereby, the listening experience. The multicultural world influences
in Tamizh cinema necessitated the need for music producers to draw from varied
musical, cultural and technical resources that have debatably altered the
creative aesthetics of Tamizh film songs. Music producers now adopt a
compartmentalized approach to production that facilitates synchronization from
multiple musical resources. This change has resulted in a philosophically
divergent traditionalist and modernist Tamizh audience.
This study aims to highlight the
musicological components in a Tamizh film song; understand their significance;
examine the role of digital music production tools such as sequencing,
synthesis and sampling in the generative process; analyse the inter-dependency
between musicological and technological aspects and identify specific
aesthetics that apply to creative practice within the Tamizh film music
industry.
The research
method involved a comprehensive literature review, case studies, comparative
studies, professional practice and personal field interviews with leading
Kollywood music composers; lyricists; film directors; dance directors; actors
and public, to document first hand information about past and present Kollywood
music composition and production practices, audience expectations and cultural
aesthetics.
Using audio examples, the
presentation will scrutinize the significance of inter-dependency between
musicological and technological aspects of producing Tamizh film music, debate
the progressive nature of this relationship and its impact. The discussion will
focus on the influence of digital production tools (such as sequencing,
synthesis, sampling and looping) on Tamizh film songs; evolution of production
roles (including music composers, music producers and musicians); and its
impact on the target Tamizh demographic and the wider global community.
Supper, Alexandra
Maastricht University
“Tape Hiss and Other
Imperfections”
This paper will deal with
practices of music recording from a perspective of science and technology
studies (STS). While much of the work in this vein has centred on new
innovation`fgv.,n,h nm s in music
and recording technologies, the focus here is on technologies that by many are
considered outdated or obsolete, yet continue to be used by some musicians and
recordists, often under the heading of 'lo-fi' approaches that deliberately set
themselves off from state-of-the-art high-fidelity recording technologies. The
paper investigates the rationale behind such lo-fi approaches, including issues
of cost and sound quality, but also the particular notions of authenticity,
spontaneity, and creativity that are entangled with these practices. It shows
that lo-fi recording is often linked up to a distrust of notions of recording
transparency (the belief that a recording can accurately capture sound, without
altering it in any way) and an acknowledgment of the role of technology in
shaping recorded results. In doing so, the recording technology is promoted from
a mere machine to a musical instrument in its own right, adding a sonic
character to the performance, or even to the role of a co-performer next to the
human performers. Building upon work by Jonathan Sterne, the paper will argue
that lo-fi aesthetics are not merely about the usage of certain technologies or
the presence of certain artefacts in the recordings, but about 'audile
techniques' and modes of listening: Lo-fi is an approach of recording that is
intended not to let the listener indulge in the illusion of a transparent
recording, a mode of listening in which one doesn't listen past, but for the
hiss, distortions and imperfections present in a recording.
Empirically, the paper draws
upon an analysis of liner-notes and existing interview material with musicians
and recordists, as well as of articles published in TapeOP ('the creative music
recording magazine'). Additionally, a few e-mail interviews with relevant
musicians/recordists were conducted.
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