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Songs of the Dove and the Nightingale: Sacred and Secular Music c.900-c.1600 (Musicology #17)
by Greta Mary Hair Robyn E. SmithFirst Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Songs of the Factory: Pop Music, Culture, and Resistance
by Marek KorczynskiIn Songs of the Factory, Marek Korczynski examines the role that popular music plays in workers' culture on the factory floor. Reporting on his ethnographic fieldwork in a British factory that manufactures window blinds, Korczynski shows how workers make often-grueling assembly-line work tolerable by permeating their workday with pop music on the radio. The first ethnographic study of musical culture in an industrial workplace, Songs of the Factory draws on socio-musicology, cultural studies, and sociology of work, combining theoretical development, methodological innovation, and a vitality that brings the musical culture of the factory workers to life. Music, Korczynski argues, allows workers both to fulfill their social roles in a regimented industrial environment and to express a sense of resistance to this social order. The author highlights the extensive forms of informal collective resistance within this factory, and argues that the musically informed culture played a key role in sustaining these collective acts of resistance. As well as providing a rich picture of the musical culture and associated forms of resistance in the factory, Korczynski also puts forward new theoretical concepts that have currency in other workplaces and in other rationalized spheres of society.
Songs of the Unsung: The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscott
by Horace TapscottSongs of the Unsung is the autobiography of Los Angeles jazz musician and activist Horace Tapscott (1934-1999). A pianist who ardently believed in the power of music to connect people, Tapscott was a beloved and influential character who touched many yet has remained unknown to the majority of Americans. In addition to being "his" story, Songs of the Unsung is the story of Los Angeles's cultural and political evolution over the last half of the twentieth century, of the origins of many of the most important avant-garde musicians still on the scene today, and of a rich and varied body of music. Tapscott's narrative covers his early life in segregated Houston, his move to California in 1943, life as a player in the Air Force band in the early fifties, and his travels with the Lionel Hampton Band. He reflects on how the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (the "Ark"), an organization he founded in 1961 to preserve and spread African and African-American music, eventually became the Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension--a group that not only performed musically but was active in the civil rights movement, youth education, and community programs. Songs of the Unsung also includes Tapscott's vivid descriptions of the Watts neighborhood insurrection of 1965 and the L. A. upheavals of 1992, interactions with both the Black Panthers and the L. A. P. D. , his involvement in Motown's West Coast scene, the growth of his musical reputation abroad, and stories about many of his musician-activist friends, including Billy Higgins, Don Cherry, Buddy Collette, Arthur Blythe, Lawrence and Wilber Morris, Linda Hill, Elaine Brown, Stanley Crouch, and Sun Ra. With a foreword by Steven Isoardi, a brief introduction by actor William Marshall, a full discography of Tapscott's recordings, and many fine photographs, Songs of the Unsung is the inspiring story of one of America's most unassuming twentieth-century heroes.
Songs the People Love
by Kurt Liffman Patricia LiffmanAt the start of World War II, Eric Liffman, a refugee from Nazi Germany, is imprisoned and transported from London to Australia on the infamous troop ship HMT Dunera. After imprisonment in Hay and Tatura, he, in a strange twist of fate, is invited to join the Australian Army, whereupon he restarts his musical career as a gifted tenor and becomes a celebrity performing to packed concert halls and raising large sums of money for the war effort. After the war, he returns to Germany to search for surviving members of his family. A unique account of wartime London, Melbourne, pre and post war Germany from a refugee/prisoner, who became the most celebrated tenor in Australia during the Second World War.
Songwriters of the American Musical Theatre: A Style Guide for Singers
by Nathan HurwitzFrom the favorites of Tin Pan Alley to today’s international blockbusters, the stylistic range required of a musical theatre performer is expansive. Musical theatre roles require the ability to adapt to a panoply of characters and vocal styles. By breaking down these styles and exploring the output of the great composers, Songwriters of the American Musical Theatre offers singers and performers an essential guide to the modern musical. Composers from Gilbert and Sullivan and Irving Berlin to Alain Boublil and Andrew Lloyd Webber are examined through a brief biography, a stylistic overview, and a comprehensive song list with notes on suitable voice types and further reading. This volume runs the gamut of modern musical theatre, from English light opera through the American Golden Age, up to the "mega musicals" of the late Twentieth Century, giving today’s students and performers an indispensable survey of their craft.
Songwriting For Dummies
by Dave Austin Jim Peterik Cathy LynnProven techniques for songwriting successThis friendly, hands-on guide tackles the new face of the recording industry, guiding you through the shift from traditional sales to downloads and mobile music, as well as how you can harness social media networks to get your music "out there." You get basic songwriting concepts, insider tips and advice, and inspiration for writing -- and selling -- meaningful, timeless songs.Songwriting 101 -- get a grip on everything you need to know to write a song, from learning to listen to your "inner voice" to creating a "mood" and everything in betweenJaunt around the genres -- discover the variety of musical genres and find your fit, whether it's rock, pop, R&B, gospel, country, or moreLet the lyrics out -- master the art of writing lyrics, from finding your own voice to penning the actual words to using hooks, verses, choruses, and bridgesMake beautiful music -- find your rhythm, make melodies, and use chords to put the finishing touches on your songWork the Web -- harness online marketing and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and others to get your music heard by a whole new audienceOpen the book and find:What you need to know before you write a single noteTips on finding inspirationWays to use poetic devices in lyricsComputer and Web-based shortcuts and technologies to streamline songwritingA look at famous songwriting collaboratorsWriting for stage, screen, and televisionHow to make a demo to get your song heardAdvice on how to make money from your musicLearn to:Develop your songwriting skills with tips and techniques from the prosUse social networking sites to get your music out to the publicBreak into the industry with helpful, how-to instructions
Songwriting For Dummies (For Dummies Ser.)
by Dave Austin Jim Peterik Cathy Lynn AustinProven techniques for songwriting success This friendly, hands-on guide tackles the new face of the recording industry, guiding you through the shift from traditional sales to downloads and mobile music, as well as how you can harness social media networks to get your music "out there." You get basic songwriting concepts, insider tips and advice, and inspiration for writing — and selling — meaningful, timeless songs. Songwriting 101 — get a grip on everything you need to know to write a song, from learning to listen to your "inner voice" to creating a "mood" and everything in between Jaunt around the genres — discover the variety of musical genres and find your fit, whether it's rock, pop, R&B, gospel, country, or more Let the lyrics out — master the art of writing lyrics, from finding your own voice to penning the actual words to using hooks, verses, choruses, and bridges Make beautiful music — find your rhythm, make melodies, and use chords to put the finishing touches on your song Work the Web — harness online marketing and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and others to get your music heard by a whole new audience Open the book and find: What you need to know before you write a single note Tips on finding inspiration Ways to use poetic devices in lyrics Computer and Web-based shortcuts and technologies to streamline songwriting A look at famous songwriting collaborators Writing for stage, screen, and television How to make a demo to get your song heard Advice on how to make money from your music Songwriting For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781119675655) was previously published as Songwriting For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9780470615140). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product.
Songwriting Without Boundaries: Lyric Writing Exercises for Finding Your Voice
by Pat PattisonInfuse your lyrics with sensory detail!Writing great song lyrics requires practice and discipline. Songwriting Without Boundaries will help you commit to routine practice through fun writing exercises. This unique collection of more than150 sense-bound prompts helps you develop the skills you need to: • tap into your senses and inject your writing with vivid details • effectively use metaphor and comparative language • add rhythm to your writing and manage phrasingSongwriters, as well as writers of other genres, will benefit from this collection of sensory writing challenges. Divided into four sections, Songwriting Without Boundaries features four different fourteen-day challenges with timed writing exercises, along with examples from other songwriters, poets, and prose writers.
Songwriting für Dummies (Für Dummies)
by Dave Austin Jim Peterik Cathy LynnVon der Song-Idee zur Hitsingle: In diesem Buch finden Sie alles, was Sie wissen müssen, um mit Ihrem Song in der Musikindustrie Erfolg zu haben. Finden Sie den Stil, Rhythmus und Reim, der zu Ihrem Genre passt, und fesseln Sie Ihre Zuhörer mit eingängigen Texten und unvergesslichen Melodien. Mit vielen Übungen und Beispielen unterstützen die Autoren Sie bei den grundlegenden, kreativen Elementen des Songwriting, aber auch bei dem, was danach kommt: Demotape, Online-Marketing, digitale Downloads, Urheberrecht, Verträge, Agenten und Plattenfirmen - so lernen Sie, wie Sie mit Ihren Werken die größten Erfolge erzielen können.
Songwriting: Methods, Techniques and Clinical Applications for Music Therapy Clinicians, Educators and Students
by Felicity Baker Tony Wigram Amelia Oldfield Jeanette Tamplin Jeanette Kennelly Lucanne Magill Emma DaviesThis comprehensive and groundbreaking book describes the effective use of songwriting in music therapy with a variety of client populations, from children with cancer and adolescents in secondary school to people with traumatic brain injury and mental health problems. The authors explain the specific considerations to bear in mind when working with particular client groups to achieve the best clinical outcomes. All the contributors are experienced music therapy clinicians and researchers. They provide many case examples from clinical practice to illustrate the therapeutic methods being used, together with notated examples of songs produced in therapy. Particular emphasis is placed on how lyrics and music are created, including the theoretical approaches underpinning this process. This practical book will prove indispensable to students, clinical therapists, music therapists, educators, teachers and musicians.
Sonic Art: An Introduction to Electroacoustic Music Composition
by Adrian MooreWritten by an active composer, performer and educator, Sonic Art: An Introduction to Electroacoustic Music Composition provides a clear and informative introduction to the compositional techniques behind electroacoustic music. It brings together theory, aesthetics, context and practical applications to allow students to start thinking about sound creatively, and gives them the tools to compose meaningful sonic art works. In addition to explaining the techniques and philosophies of sonic art, the book examines over forty composers and their works, introducing the history and context of notable pieces, and includes chapters on how to present compositions professionally, in performance and online. The book is supported by an online software toolkit which enables readers to start creating their own compositions. Encouraging a ‘hands on’ approach to working with sound, Sonic Art is the perfect introduction for anyone interested in electroacoustic music and crafting art from sounds.
Sonic Bodies: Text, Music, and Silence in Late Medieval England (Sound in History)
by Tekla BudeWhat is the body when it performs music? And what, conversely, is music as it reverberates through or pours out of a performing body? Tekla Bude starts from a simple premise—that music requires a body to perform it—to rethink the relationship between music, matter, and the body in the late medieval period.Progressing by way of a series of case studies of texts by Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Margery Kempe, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and others, Bude argues that writers thought of "music" and "the body" not as separate objects or ontologically prior categories, but as mutually dependent and historically determined processes that called each other into being in complex and shifting ways. For Bude, these "sonic bodies" are often unexpected, peculiar, even bizarre, and challenge our understanding of their constitutive parts.Building on recent conversations about embodiment and the voice in literary criticism and music theory, Sonic Bodies makes two major interventions across these fields: first, it broadens the definitional ambits and functions of both "music" and "the body" in the medieval period; and second, it demonstrates how embodiment and musicality are deeply and multiply intertwined in medieval writing. Compelling literary subjects, Bude argues, are literally built out of musical situations.
Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records, from Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince
by Peter Ames CarlinFrom journalist Peter Ames Carlin—the New York Times bestselling music biographer who chronicled the lives and careers of Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, the Beach Boys, and Paul Simon—Sonic Boom captures the rollicking story of the most successful record label in the history of rock and roll, Warner Bros Records, and the remarkable secret to its meteoric rise.The roster of Warner Brothers Records and its subsidiary labels reads like the roster of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Prince, Van Halen, Madonna, Tom Petty, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers, and dozens of others. But the most compelling figures in the Warner Bros. story are the sagacious Mo Ostin and the unlikely crew of hippies, eccentrics, and enlightened execs who were the first in the music business to read the generational writing on the wall in the mid-1960s. By recruiting outsider artists and allowing them to make the music they wanted, Ostin and his staff transformed an out-of-touch company into the voice of a generation. Along the way, they revolutionized the music industry and, within just a few years, created the most successful record label in the history of the American music industry.How did they do it? It all goes back to the day in 1967 when the newly tapped label president Mo Ostin called his team together to share his grand strategy for the struggling company: “We need to stop trying to make hit records. Let’s just make good records and turn those into hits.”With that, Ostin ushered in a counterintuitive model that matched the counterculture. His offbeat crew reinvented the way business was done, giving their artists free rein while rejecting out-of-date methods of advertising, promotion, and distribution. And even as they set new standards for in-house weirdness, the upstarts’ experiments and innovations paid off, to the tune of hundreds of legendary hit albums.It may sound like a fairy tale, but once upon a time Warner Bros Records conquered the music business by focusing on the music rather than the business. Their story is as raucous as it is inspiring, pure entertainment that also maps a route to that holy grail: love and money.Includes black-and-white photographs
Sonic Design: Explorations Between Art and Science (Current Research in Systematic Musicology #12)
by Alexander Refsum JenseniusThis open access book offers a historical context and an overview of the field's current artistic and scientific research. Sonic design includes the construction and performance of acoustic instruments but also recording, editing, mixing, and synthesizing sounds using analog and digital electronic devices. This book explores sonic design from the perspectives of music theory, music perception, embodied cognition, phenomenology, soundscape studies, acoustics, new interfaces for musical expression, sound and music computing, and music information retrieval. The chapters are selected contributions from an international seminar organized to celebrate the achievements of Professor Rolf Inge Godøy at the University of Oslo. As a composer, researcher, teacher, and supervisor, Professor Godøy has been central in developing a holistic approach to sonic design, from theory to practice. This book offers a comprehensive overview of the field's current state, making it essential reading for students, practitioners, and researchers across a wide range of disciplines.
Sonic Experience
by Henri Torgue Jean-François AugoyardIn a multidisciplinary work spanning musicology, electro-acoustic composition, architecture, urban studies, communication, phenomenology, social theory, physics, and psychology, Jean-François Augoyard, Henry Torgue, and their associates at the Centre for Research on Sonic Space and the Urban Environment (CRESSON) in Grenoble, France, provide an alphabetical sourcebook of eighty sonic/auditory effects. Their accounts of sonic effects such as echo, anticipation, vibrato, and wha-wha integrate information about the objective physical spaces in which sounds occur with cultural contexts and individual auditory experience. Sonic Experience attempts to rehabilitate general acoustic awareness, combining accessible definitions and literary examples with more in-depth technical information for specialists.
Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds
by Henri Torgue Jean-François AugoyardIn a multidisciplinary work spanning musicology, electro-acoustic composition, architecture, urban studies, communication, phenomenology, social theory, physics, and psychology, Jean-François Augoyard, Henry Torgue, and their associates at the Centre for Research on Sonic Space and the Urban Environment (CRESSON) in Grenoble, France, provide an alphabetical sourcebook of eighty sonic/auditory effects. Their accounts of sonic effects such as echo, anticipation, vibrato, and wha-wha integrate information about the objective physical spaces in which sounds occur with cultural contexts and individual auditory experience. Sonic Experience attempts to rehabilitate general acoustic awareness, combining accessible definitions and literary examples with more in-depth technical information for specialists.
Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics
by Christoph CoxFrom Edison’s invention of the phonograph through contemporary field recording and sound installation, artists have become attracted to those domains against which music has always defined itself: noise, silence, and environmental sound. Christoph Cox argues that these developments in the sonic arts are not only aesthetically but also philosophically significant, revealing sound to be a continuous material flow to which human expressions contribute but which precedes and exceeds those expressions. Cox shows how, over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, philosophers and sonic artists have explored this “sonic flux.” Through the philosophical analysis of works by John Cage, Maryanne Amacher, Max Neuhaus, Christian Marclay, and many others, Sonic Flux contributes to the development of a materialist metaphysics and poses a challenge to the prevailing positions in cultural theory, proposing a realist and materialist aesthetics able to account not only for sonic art but for artistic production in general.
Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments (Human–Computer Interaction Series)
by Stefania Serafin Michele GeronazzoThis open access book tackles the design of 3D spatial interactions in an audio-centered and audio-first perspective, providing the fundamental notions related to the creation and evaluation of immersive sonic experiences. The key elements that enhance the sensation of place in a virtual environment (VE) are:Immersive audio: the computational aspects of the acoustical-space properties of Virutal Reality (VR) technologies Sonic interaction: the human-computer interplay through auditory feedback in VEVR systems: naturally support multimodal integration, impacting different application domainsSonic Interactions in Virtual Environments will feature state-of-the-art research on real-time auralization, sonic interaction design in VR, quality of the experience in multimodal scenarios, and applications. Contributors and editors include interdisciplinary experts from the fields of computer science, engineering, acoustics, psychology, design, humanities, and beyond. Their mission is to shape an emerging new field of study at the intersection of sonic interaction design and immersive media, embracing an archipelago of existing research spread in different audio communities and to increase among the VR communities, researchers, and practitioners, the awareness of the importance of sonic elements when designing immersive environments.
Sonic Life: A Memoir
by Thurston MooreFrom the founding member of Sonic Youth, a passionate memoir tracing the author's life and art—from his teen years as a music obsessive in small-town Connecticut, to the formation of his legendary rock group, to thirty years of creation, experimentation, and wonder"Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston Moore has unearthed the missing links, the sacred texts, the forgotten stories, and the secret maps of the lost golden age. This is history—scuffed, slightly bent, plenty noisy, and indispensable." —Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Underground Railroad and Harlem Shuffle Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan&’s East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music. He wanted to be immersed in downtown New York&’s sights and sounds—the feral energy of its nightclubs, the angular roar of its bands, the magnetic personalities within its orbit. But more than anything, he wanted to make music—to create indelible sounds that would move, provoke, and inspire.His dream came to life in 1981 with the formation of Sonic Youth, a band Moore cofounded with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo. Sonic Youth became a fixture in New York&’s burgeoning No Wave scene—an avant-garde collision of art and sound, poetry and punk. The band would evolve from critical darlings to commercial heavyweights, headlining festivals around the globe while helping introduce listeners to such artists as Nirvana, Hole, and Pavement, and playing alongside such icons as Neil Young and Iggy Pop. Through it all, Moore maintained an unwavering love of music: the new, the unheralded, the challenging, the irresistible.In the spirit of Just Kids, Sonic Life offers a window into the trajectory of a celebrated artist and a tribute to an era of explosive creativity. It presents a firsthand account of New York in a defining cultural moment, a history of alternative rock as it was birthed and came to dominate airwaves, and a love letter to music, whatever the form. This is a story for anyone who has ever felt touched by sound—who knows the way the right song at the right moment can change the course of a life.
Sonic Mobilities: Producing Worlds in Southern China (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)
by Adam KielmanA fascinating look at how the popular musical culture of Guangzhou expresses the city’s unique cosmopolitanism. Guangzhou is a large Chinese city like many others. With a booming economy and abundant job opportunities, it has become a magnet for rural citizens seeking better job prospects as well as global corporations hoping to gain a foothold in one of the world’s largest economies. This openness and energy have led to a thriving popular music scene that is every bit the equal of Beijing’s. But the musical culture of Guangzhou expresses the city’s unique cosmopolitanism. A port city that once played a key role in China’s maritime Silk Road, Guangzhou has long been an international hub. Now, new migrants to the city are incorporating diverse Chinese folk traditions into the musical tapestry. In Sonic Mobilities, ethnomusicologist Adam Kielman takes a deep dive into Guangzhou's music scene through two bands, Wanju Chuanzhang (Toy Captain) and Mabang (Caravan), that express ties to their rural homelands and small-town roots while forging new cosmopolitan musical connections. These bands make music that captures the intersection of the global and local that has come to define Guangzhou, for example by writing songs with a popular Jamaican reggae beat and lyrics in their distinct regional dialects mostly incomprehensible to their audiences. These bands create a sound both instantly recognizable and totally foreign, international and hyper-local. This juxtaposition, Kielman argues, is an apt expression of the demographic, geographic, and political shifts underway in Guangzhou and across the country. Bridging ethnomusicology, popular music studies, cultural geography, and media studies, Kielman examines the cultural dimensions of shifts in conceptualizations of self, space, publics, and state in a rapidly transforming the People’s Republic of China.
Sonic Rebellions: Sound and Social Justice
by Wanda CantonSonic Rebellions combines theory and practice to consider contemporary uses of sound in the context of politics, philosophy, and protest, by exploring the relationship between sound and social justice, with particular attention to sonic methodologies not necessarily conceptualised or practiced in traditional understandings of activism.An edited collection written by artists, academics, and activists, many of the authors have multidimensional experiences as practitioners themselves, and readers will benefit from never-before published doctoral and community projects, and innovative, audio-based interpretations of social issues today. Chapters cover the use of soundscapes, rap, theatre, social media, protest, and song, in application to contemporary socio-political issues, such as gentrification, neoliberalism, criminalisation, democracy, and migrant rights. Sonic Rebellions looks to encourage readers to become, or consider how they are, Sonic Rebels themselves, by developing their own practices and reflections in tandem to continue the conversation as to how sound permeates our sociopolitical lives.This is an essential resource for those interested in how sound can change the world, including undergraduates and postgraduates from across the social sciences and humanities, scholars and instructors of sound studies and sound production, as well as activists, artists, and community organisers.
Sonic Ruins of Modernity: Judeo-Spanish Folksongs Today (SOAS Studies in Music)
by Edwin SeroussiSonic Ruins of Modernity shows how social, cultural and cognitive phenomena interact in the making and distribution of folksongs beyond their time. Through Judeo-Spanish (or Ladino) folksongs, the author illustrates a methodology for the interplay of individual memories, artistic initiatives, political and media policies, which ultimately shape “tradition” for the past century. He fleshes out in a series of case studies how folksongs can be conceived, performed and circulated in the post-tradition era – constituting each song as a “sonic ruin,” as an imagined place. At the same time, the book overall provides a unique perspective on the history of the Judeo-Spanish folksong.
Sonic Sovereignty: Hip Hop, Indigeneity, and Shifting Popular Music Mainstreams (Postmillennial Pop)
by Liz PrzybylskiHonorable Mention, 2024 Alan Merriam Prize, given by the Society for EthnomusicologyWhat does sovereignty sound like?Sonic Sovereignty considers how contemporary Indigenous musicians champion self-determination through musical expression in Canada and the United States. The framework of “sonic sovereignty” connects self-definition, collective determination, and Indigenous land rematriation to the immediate and long-lasting effects of expressive culture. Liz Przybylski covers online and offline media spaces, following musicians and producers as they, and their music, circulate across broadcast and online networks. Przybylski documents and reflects on shifts in both the music industry and political landscape over the course of a decade: as the ways in which people listen to, consume, and interact with popular music have radically changed, extensive public conversations have flourished around contemporary Indigenous culture, settler responsibility, Indigenous leadership, and decolonial futures.Sonic Sovereignty encourages us to experiment with temporal possibilities of listening by detailing moments when a sample, lyric, or musical reference moves a listener out of normative time. Nonlinear storytelling practices from hip hop music and other North American Indigenous sonic practices inform these generative listenings. The musical readings presented in this book thus explore how musicians use tools to help listeners embrace rupture, and how out-of-time listening creates decolonial possibilities.
Sonic Synergies: Music, Technology, Community, Identity
by Gerry BloustienSonic Synergies: Music, Technology, Community, Identity focuses on the new and emerging synergies of music and digital technology within the new knowledge economies. Eighteen scholars representing six international perspectives explore the global and local ramifications of rapidly changing new technologies on creative industries, local communities, music practitioners and consumers. Diverse areas are considered, such as production, consumption, historical and cultural context, legislation, globalization and the impact upon the individual. Drawing on a range of musical genres from jazz, heavy metal, hip-hop and trance, and through several detailed case studies reflecting on the work of professional and local amateur artists, this book offers an important discussion of the ways in which the face of music is changing. Approaching these areas from a cultural studies perspective, this text will be a valuable tool for anyone engaged in the study of popular culture, music or digital technologies.
Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (Technologies of Lived Abstraction)
by Steve GoodmanAn exploration of the production, transmission, and mutation of affective tonality—when sound helps produce a bad vibe. Sound can be deployed to produce discomfort, express a threat, or create an ambience of fear or dread—to produce a bad vibe. Sonic weapons of this sort include the “psychoacoustic correction” aimed at Panama strongman Manuel Noriega by the U.S. Army and at the Branch Davidians in Waco by the FBI, sonic booms (or “sound bombs”) over the Gaza Strip, and high-frequency rat repellants used against teenagers in malls. At the same time, artists and musicians generate intense frequencies in the search for new aesthetic experiences and new ways of mobilizing bodies in rhythm. In Sonic Warfare, Steve Goodman explores these uses of acoustic force and how they affect populations. Traversing philosophy, science, fiction, aesthetics, and popular culture, he maps a (dis)continuum of vibrational force, encompassing police and military research into acoustic means of crowd control, the corporate deployment of sonic branding, and the intense sonic encounters of sound art and music culture.Goodman concludes with speculations on the not yet heard—the concept of unsound, which relates to both the peripheries of auditory perception and the unactualized nexus of rhythms and frequencies within audible bandwidths.