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Wired for Sound
Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures
Music / Culture
Edited Paul D. Greene, Thomas Porcello
Sales Date: 2004-12-20
Ethnographically-grounded studies of technology in global music.
Winner of the Society for Ethnmusicology's Klaus Wachsmann Award (2006)
Wired for Sound is the first anthology to address the role of sound engineering technologies in the shaping of contemporary global music. Wired sound is at the basis of digital audio editing, multi-track recording, and other studio practices that have powerfully impacted the world's music. Distinctions between musicians and engineers increasingly blur, making it possible for people around the globe to imagine new sounds and construct new musical aesthetics. This collection of 11 essays employs primarily ethnographical, but also historical and psychological, approaches to examine a range of new, technology-intensive musics and musical practices such as: fusions of Indian film-song rhythms, heavy metal, and gamelan in Jakarta; urban Nepali pop which juxtaposes heavy metal, Tibetan Buddhist ritual chant, rap, and Himalayan folksongs; collaborations between Australian aboriginals and sound engineers; the production of "heaviness" in heavy metal music; and the production of the "Austin sound." This anthology is must reading for anyone interested in the global character of contemporary music technology.
CONTRIBUTORS: Harris M. Berger, Beverley Diamond, Cornelia Fales, Ingemar Grandin, Louise Meintjes, Frederick J. Moehn, Karl Neunfeldt, Timothy D. Taylor, Jeremy Wallach.
Introduction: Wired Sound and Sonic Cultures – Paul D. Greene
Reaching "Overseas": South African Sound Engineers, Technology, and Tradition – Louise Menitjes
"The Disc is Not the Avenue": Live and Studio Aesthetics in Samba Recording – Frederick J. Moehn
Nigel Pegrum, "Didjeridu-Friendly Sections," and What Constitutes an "Indigenous" CD: An Australian Case Study of Producing "World Music" Recordings – Karl Neuenfeldt
Music Mediated as Live in Austin: Sound, Technology, and Recording Practice – Thomas Porcello
Media as Social Action: Native American Musicians in the Recording Studio - Beverley Diamond
Engineering Techno-Hybrid Grooves in Indonesian Sound Studios – Jeremy Wallach
Short-Circuiting Perceptual Systems: Timbre in Ambient and Techno Music – Cornelia Fales
"Heaviness" in the Perception of Heavy Metal Guitar Timbres: The Match of Perceptual and Acoustic Features over Time – Harris M. Berger and Cornelia Fales
Mixed Messages: Unsettled Cosmopolitanisms in Nepali Pop – Paul D. Greene
The Soundscape of the Radio: Engineering Modern Songs and Superculture in Nepal – Ingemmar Grandin
Music and the Rise of Radio: Technological Imperialism, Socialization, and the Transformation of Intimac y – Timothy D. Taylor
Afterward – Thomas Porcello
PAUL D. GREENE is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Pennsylvania State University. THOMAS PORCELLO is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vassar College.
"In the growing literature on the relationship between technology and music, this book stands out by virtue of the sheer diversity of its subject matter and approach: from North America to South Africa to Nepal, from Indigenous music to Techno."
~Paul Théberge, author of Any Sound You Can Imagine
"Wired for Sound is essential reading in the new cultural study of music and sound. The essays give us clearly grounded theory and compelling ethnography."
~Steven Feld, Professor of Anthropology and Music, University of New Mexico
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