Capturing Sound, w. Audio-CD: How Technology has Changed Music - Softcover

Katz, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520243803 ISBN 13: 9780520243804

Verlag: University of California Press, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

There is more to sound recording than just recording sound. Far from being simply a tool for the preservation of music, the technology is a catalyst. This is the clear message of Capturing Sound, a wide-ranging, deeply informative, consistently entertaining history of recording's profound impact on the musical life of the past century, from Edison to the Internet.

In a series of case studies, Mark Katz explores how recording technology has encouraged new ways of listening to music, led performers to change their practices, and allowed entirely new musical genres to come into existence. An accompanying CD, featuring thirteen tracks from Chopin to Public Enemy, allows readers to hear what Katz means when he discusses music as varied as King Oliver's "Dippermouth Blues," a Jascha Heifetz recording of a Brahms Hungarian Dance, and Fatboy Slim's "Praise You."

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mark Katz is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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"This thoughtful and well-written book goes to the front rank of publications on the phonograph and other sound reproduction technologies. Employing a wide variety of methodologies and sources and covering a broad range of music and practices, Katz provides a model of how studies of music and technology should be done."—Tim Taylor, author of Global Pop: World Music, World Markets and Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture

"I only wish I had put as much thought into making records as Mark Katz does in appreciating and analyzing them. I've always said that what I do is not rocket science but critiques like this make it sound like it has a place in modern culture."—Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, composer, producer, DJ

Aus dem Klappentext

"This thoughtful and well-written book goes to the front rank of publications on the phonograph and other sound reproduction technologies. Employing a wide variety of methodologies and sources and covering a broad range of music and practices, Katz provides a model of how studies of music and technology should be done."—Tim Taylor, author of Global Pop: World Music, World Markets and Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture

"I only wish I had put as much thought into making records as Mark Katz does in appreciating and analyzing them. I've always said that what I do is not rocket science but critiques like this make it sound like it has a place in modern culture."—Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, composer, producer, DJ

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Capturing Sound

How Technology Has Changed Music with CD (Audio)By Mark Katz

University of California Press

Copyright © 2004 Mark Katz
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780520243804

Chapter One

Causes

Anytown, U.S.A., 1905: a family and several neighbors stand in the parlor of a modest home, staring with equal parts curiosity and skepticism at one of the technological marvels of the day. Staring back at them is the unblinking eye of a megaphone-shaped brass horn. It protrudes about two feet from a small wooden cabinet with a crank on one side and a felt-covered metal plate on top. The marvel is a phonograph, or "talking machine," as it was commonly called.

The gentleman of the house takes a heavy black disc, grooved on one side and smooth on the other, and places it over the spindle with the label facing up. He turns the crank several times, gingerly sets the needle on the outermost groove, and hurries back to his chair. Everyone stares at the phonograph in eager anticipation. The disc spins quickly, and above the whooshing and crackling the machine begins to sing. It sounds to them like actual voices and instruments, albeit in miniature. It is hard to believe that little more than a needle and a record can bring the performers to life, just as if they were right there in the parlor.

After three minutes of rapt attention, the small audience breaks into spontaneous, unselfconscious applause and calls for more. Before the man can replay the record, a small child runs to the machine, peering under the table and jumping up to look into the horn. Everyone laughs when it becomes clear that the boy is looking for the musicians! After each record is played several times, the crowd disperses, with everyone wondering if wonders will never cease.

This quaint vignette may seem unremarkable, but it reveals a revolution in the making. Those gathered around the phonograph were experiencing music in ways unimaginable not so many years before. They were hearing performers they could not see and music they could not normally bring into their homes. They could listen to the same pieces over and again without change. And they ultimately decided what they were to hear, and when, where, and with whom. All of this was made possible by the distinctive characteristics of sound recording technology. This is a crucial point, for as I explained in the introduction, if we understand the nature of recording, we can understand how users have adapted to, compensated for, and exploited the technology. It is in these actions that we discover the influence of recording; it is here that we find phonograph effects.

Each of the following seven sections examines a distinctive and defining trait of sound recording technology. This chapter is intentionally broad, moving quickly and often between written and oral musical cultures, East and West, popular and classical, the late nineteenth century and the early twenty-first. Such breadth is imperative, for the impact of recording is strongly shaped by the time, place, and context in which the technology is used. As we will see, phonograph effects are not simply technological phenomena.

Tangibility

Before even setting needle to groove, the operator of the phonograph in that Anytown parlor encountered one of the most remarkable characteristics of recorded sound: its tangibility. Taking the disc out of its paper sleeve, he held the frozen sound in his hands, felt the heft of the shellac, saw the play of light on the disc's lined, black surface. He was holding a radically new type of musical object, for whereas scores prescribe or describe music, and instruments generate music, recordings preserve actual sounds.

This tangibility has allowed extraordinary changes in the way music can be experienced. Prior to the invention of the phonograph, Karl Marx observed what must have seemed to be an unchangeable truth about music. "The service a singer performs for me," he noted, "satisfies my aesthetic need, but what I consume exists only in an action inseparable from the singer, and as soon as the singing is over, so too is my consumption." When sound is recorded and preserved in a physical medium, however, the listener's consumption need not end when the singing is over, for the music can be separated from the performer and be replayed without the artist's consent. Indeed, the portability and repeatability of recorded sound-two of the technology's crucial attributes to be discussed in this chapter-derive from its tangibility. Yet tangibility is not simply a "meta-trait." In itself the material preservation of sound-"the stockpiling of music," in Jacques Attali's arresting phrase-deeply influences the consumption and production of music. To illustrate this point I want to explore briefly the impact of recording's tangibility as revealed in, first, record collecting and, second, the physical characteristics of cassettes and compact discs.

As Evan Eisenberg has pointed out, "For the listening public at large, in every century but this one [now two], there was no such thing as collecting music." Certainly, enthusiasts sought out instruments, manuscripts, program books, autographs, and the like. Record collecting, however, represents a new relationship with music, for these collectors seek neither the means to create sound nor mementos of it, but sound itself.

This new relationship is most vividly illuminated in its pathological extremes. Record collecting has long been described (affectionately, for the most part) as an illness or addiction. In 1924 the British magazine Gramophone playfully warned of "gramomania," alerting readers to its "insidious approach, its baneful effects, its ability to destroy human delights." Two years later, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Phonograph Monthly Review asked readers to recount their most dire sacrifices in the name of grooved shellac. One contestant, with the self-deprecating pseudonym "Adam Pfuhl," spun a woeful tale of spending all the money for his family's Christmas presents on records; another told of literally selling his shirt to support his habit. Appropriately-or perhaps not-the winning contestants received gift certificates for records. Nick Hornby's 1995 novel High Fidelity demonstrates that the disease is far from eradicated. Rob, the owner of a second-hand record shop and a passionate collector of pop music discs, sympathetically observes the habits of his more obsessive customers:

You can spot the vinyl addicts because after a while they get fed up with the rack they are flicking through, march over to a completely different section of the shop, pull out a sleeve from the middle somewhere, and come over to the counter; this is because they ... suddenly sicken themselves with the amount of time they have wasted looking for something they don't really want. I know that feeling well: ... it is a prickly, clammy, panicky sensation, and you go out of the shop reeling. You walk much more quickly afterward, trying to recapture the part of the day that has escaped.

In the world of hip-hop, hunting for LPs is known as "digging in the crates," a reference to the way in which discs are typically stored and displayed in second-hand stores and thrift shops. As we will see in chapter 6, digging is a way of life among hip-hop DJs, for their creativity is judged in part on their ability to find rare, unusual, and catchy tracks. The 1992 rap song "Diggin' in the Crates" by Showbiz and A.G., makes it clear that this activity is as addictive as any form of collecting: "Buying old records is a habit/You know I've got to have it." The darker side of this...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520243803
• ISBN 13: 9780520243804
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 276
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar