709 research outputs found

    Mercy Mercy Me (the Media Ecology): Technology, Agency, and Cleavage of the Musical Text

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    This thesis explores changes that occurred in popular music during the 1960s and early 1970s through case studies involving three significant albums released in 1971 and 1972: Marvin Gaye\u27s What\u27s Going On, Sly and the Family Stone\u27s There\u27s a Riot Goin\u27 On, and Stevie Wonder\u27s Talking Book. These albums deserve attention particularly because, as this thesis argues, existing research on the cultural significance of popular music has focused largely on the periods before or after the 1970s and research on music-making technologies has focused largely on white artists or groups from the late 1960s. Addressing this blind spot, the thesis seeks to illuminate this time period and its place as a significant bridge to the digital era that followed. Moreover, by employing media ecology and practice theory as a framework, the thesis argues that these albums exemplify a cleavage of the recorded musical text from live performance, akin to that of the written text from oral-styled manuscripts to closed literary works. Drawing upon the tradition of the history and phenomenology of recorded sound, this thesis therefore aims to contribute to media ecological understandings of how human agency, industry structures, and technological affordances worked together to redefine the structures and the relationships with which they were associated

    Impact of new instrumentation on advanced turbine research

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    A description is presented of an orderly test program that progresses from the simplest stationary geometry to the more complex, three dimensional, rotating turbine stage. The instrumentation requirements for this evolution of testing are described. The heat transfer instrumentation is emphasized. Recent progress made in devising new measurement techniques has greatly improved the development and confirmation of more accurate analytical methods for the prediction of turbine performance and heat transfer. However, there remain challenging requirements for novel measurement techniques that could advance the future research to be done in rotating blade rows of turbomachines

    Audio Mastering as Musical Practice

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    This thesis examines audio mastering as musical communication. Tasks including loudness management, harmonic balance, denoising, phase alignment, monitoring, effects application, and administrative responsibilities are of central importance to mastering engineers. With the exception of administrative responsibilities, each of these tasks significantly shapes a record’s aesthetic character and physical makeup. These contributions – the final creative steps before an album’s release – demonstrate the mastering engineer’s role as a collaborative auteur in recorded musical communications

    Lonely Sounds: Recorded Popular Music and American Society, 1949-1979

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    Abstract: Lonely Sounds: Popular Recorded Music and American Society, 1949-1979 Lonely Sounds: Popular Recorded Music and American Society, 1949-1979 examines the relationship between the experience of listening to popular music and social disengagement. It finds that technological innovations, the growth of a youth culture, and market forces in the post-World War II era came together to transform the normal musical experience from a social event grounded in live performance into a consumable recorded commodity that satisfied individual desires. The musical turn inward began in the late 1940s. Prior to the postwar era, the popular music experience was communal, rooted in place, and it contained implicit social obligations between the performer and the audience and among members of the audience. Beginning in the late 1940s, technological, social, and cultural innovations, including new radio formats, automobile radios, and an expanding recording industry liberated popular music from some of the restraints of place and time. Listeners in the 1950s acquired expanded opportunities for enjoying music in ways that were more private, mobile, and intensely personal. Not only did the opportunities to listen alone expand enormously, but so also did the inclination. The postwar youth culture that grew up around the Top 40 radio format and 45-rpm singles stood at the vanguard of this revolutionary change in the musical experience. For many young listeners, rock and roll records represented a singular authentic experience. By the middle 1960s, these listeners believed that correctly listening to rock records not only revealed a unique self but also reintegrated alienated individuals into supportive communities. The isolated nature of the listening experience, however, poignantly frustrated such hopes. The dream of social renewal through rock records collapsed in the early 1970s. In its place came a more aggressive emphasis on self-sufficiency and personal control. In the subsequent decade devices such as the Sony Walkman successfully colonized public space, shielding listeners from other sounds while enclosing them in a private sonic environment of their choosing. This revolution in the musical experience, I contend, reflected and contributed to the pervasive sense of loneliness associated with the postwar era

    Electrecord, cultural policy and the phonographic industry in socialist romania (1965-1989)

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    This dissertation explores the relationship between music, cultural policy, and the phonographic industry in communist Romania between 1965 and 1989. The main object is the state-owned record company Electrecord, the only of its kind during the analyzed period. On the one hand, I aim to identify the production phases, from the initial selection of artists and repertoire to be released, to the distribution and selling of phonograms, and analyze which political decisions influenced this process and to what extent. On the other hand, I will consider which musical genres were encouraged or censored by the company and on what grounds. With its 88-year history, Electrecord became a crucial institution to understand the history of recorded music in Romania, playing a fundamental role in many critical moments of social, economic, and political transformation. The company's participation in the state's cultural politics also offers an interesting case study on the relationship between music and nation-building but also on the mediation between economic, political and cultural aspects in the phonogram production process

    2011 - The Sixteenth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars

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    The full program book from the Sixteenth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 26, 2011. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/sssprograms/1010/thumbnail.jp

    The Ballads of Marvin Gaye

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    This article focuses on Marvin Gaye’s involvement with music related to the “middle of the road” (MOR) market within the American music business between 1961 and 1979. From 1961 to 1966, in addition to his work as a teen idol, Gaye performed regularly in supper clubs, released four albums of standards material, and recorded dozens of other related songs that were eventually shelved. In a fascinating turn, he worked extensively on a series of unreleased tracks between 1967 and 1979, using experimental techniques to revise, reinterpret, and recompose melodies over already completed backing music. Gaye’s interest in ballads connects to a different tradition of American music from his soul hits, drawing on the legacy of 1920s crooning, mainstream swing vocalists like Frank Sinatra, and African American forebears such as Nat “King” Cole and Sam Cooke. This article makes a number of new claims about Gaye’s career trajectory: that his method of composing with his voice in the studio—building up complex textures from multiple takes and composing lyrics and melody directly to tape—began as early as 1967, well before his better-known experiments for What’s Going On in 1970; that the popular, sexuality-charged music of his final decade was an extension of his work with romantic balladry in the 1960s; and that his interest in standards continued much farther into his career than is suggested by his official discography

    Queen Esther: The Life of Esther Gordy Edwards and Her Contributions to the Building of Motown Records

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    Esther Gordy Edwards was called the “First Woman of Motown Records.” She was a thirty-year music executive veteran of Motown Records’ label. Edwards was a woman of many capabilities. She served as a mentor, personal manager of artists, Senior Vice President, Corporate Secretary and International Director. Motown Records was founded in 1959, with a loan from a family fund she established. The Motown Museum and her work as the “keeper of culture” helped to seal the Motown Record label into the world’s historical consciousness. Edwards was a true renaissance woman. She established herself as a business owner, historian, civic leader, political leader and philanthropist. Edwards received numerous awards, commendations and accolades for her work. Even so, the “great man” narrative has been used consistently within the existing history of Motown Records. Berry Gordy is presented as establishing the label alone; a narrative which has stood the test of time, while simultaneously erasing Edwards from historical memory. This narrative has minimized the influence of women, such as that of Esther Gordy Edwards. Her contribution to the building of Motown Records has been understudied and overlooked. In this scholarship, I will use a historical lens to showcase the contributions of Esther Gordy Edwards and present some of the challenges in unearthing this long overdue narrative of a woman whose work helped to solidify the musical legacy of Motown Records

    Creating Information-Literate Musicians in the Academic Library

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    For musicians, the act of creation is multifaceted: musicians perform, analyze, write, speak, and teach in highly collaborative and diverse environments. Information-literate musicians require training to understand and engage with the myriad kinds of content and materials inherent to the contemplation, study, creation, and enjoyment of music. The various information needs of musicians requires creators to make many choices--from selecting a particular score edition or recording from many similar options, to employing a specific scholarly or pedagogical methodology to their work, musicians require the skills to critically evaluate information and determine its usefulness. Music’s ubiquity adds a further layer of intricacy, as music-related research happens in both the concert hall and the classroom, and is not limited to music programs. Disciplines from anthropology to psychology to literature to media studies employ music as a lens through which to examine art, culture, and social structures. As in other creative fields, the history of music scholarship has been heavily influenced by its focus on Western art music and has resulted in the prioritization of Euro-centric musical traditions in study and performance, making research on non-Western and popular music trickier for creators and researchers to conduct. Each of these elements contributes to a complex landscape for librarians planning information literacy instruction activities in support of music-related research and creation. Because of this complexity, students pursuing academic projects that involve music may need support for a range of creative endeavors, and information literacy instruction might seem like a complicated feat for the librarians who work with these creators. By defining what information literacy is for music students and exploring the ways that academic research and creation in music intersects with other disciplines, the authors provide a framework to help librarians contribute to the development of information-literate musicians
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