What Studios Do

This essay is focused around a seemingly simple question – what do recording studios do? First, a clarification. I am not primarily asking “what are studios” or “what do people do in studios,” two comparatively straightforward questions that are tangentially addressed in academic and trade writing. Rather, I wish to consider some of the ways in which the studio itself shapes the kinds of social and musical performances and interactions that transpire within. I contend that studios must be understood simultaneously as acoustic environments, as meeting places, as container technologies, as a system of constraints on vision, sound and mobility, and as typologies that facilitate particular interactions between humans and nonhuman objects while structuring and maintaining power relations

The World Map of Music: The Edison Phonograph and the Musical Cartography of the Earth by Ulrich Wegner

The Berlin Phonogram-Archive was founded in 1900 by Carl Stumpf and Otto Abraham with a collection of twenty wax cylinders of a Siamese theatre ensemble. Erich Moritz von Hornbostel became the head of the archive in 1905, and ever since, the archive—and its archivists—have held an important place in the histories f folklore, ethnomusicology, and recorded sound. Recognized in 1999 by UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” project, the archive now holds over 150,000 music recordings and recently released a comprehensive catalogue (Ziegler 2006) and the CD-ROM The World Map of Music: The Edison Phonograph and the Musical Cartography of the Earth

Dancecult Bibliography: Books, Articles, Theses, Lectures, and Films About Electronic Dance Music Cultures

Dancecult is a forum for the electronic dance music culture (EDMC) research network, whose doors opened in April, 2005. Presently, Dancecult manifests as a mailing list and rich informational website. With around 180 members (and growing) worldwide, Dancecult-l is an interdisciplinary mailing list for graduate students, scholars, and other parties interested in the study and documentation of EDMCs from proto-disco through post-rave formations. As a critical information exchange hub, Dancecult-l enables resource sharing and collaboration between international researchers of club cultures, raves, techno, electronica, doof, digital arts and other manifestations of EDMC. Members come from various different disciplines, operating in many different global locations, and employing diverse methodologies

Ron’s Right Arm: Tactility, Visualization, And The Synesthesia Of Audio Engineering

Most scholarship on audio engineering analyzes practices and practitioners in terms of musical and technical knowledges. The few references to sensory perception typically center on critical listening practices (“golden ears” engineers), audiophilia, and technologies of audition. However, particularly in light of computer-based workflows, the practice of audio engineering features carefully developed synesthesias of critical listening, visualization of digital audio, and tactile manipulations of interfaces, which can’t adequately be explained as cognitive processes or as conscious knowledge. I draw on literature in the emerging field of sensory scholarship, in particular Brian Massumi’s theorization of synesthesia and affect and Charles Hirschkind’s analyses of cultivated “sensoriums” in order to show how practices of audio engineering can be productively theorized as a strategic retraining of the senses. I draw diverse examples from field research conducted in the US and Turkey. One example – Ron’s right arm – explores how one audio engineer uses his right arm to “feel” when the bass is right in a rock mix. Another example explores the creation of “büyük ses” (big sound) in Anatolian “ethnic” music and the use of the Protools edit window to “visualize” bass. In both cases, bass is something that is felt or seen, but not immediately audible. Through an attention to differing kinds of synesthesias, we can better understand how audio engineers perform their craft

Technological Encounters in the Interculturality of Istanbul’s Recording Studios

Este artículo se pregunta qué es cultural en un estudio de grabación y en qué medida la interculturalidad resulta útil para examinar los encuentros en un estudio y, por extensión, en otras formas de trabajo artístico-tecnológico. Voy a demonstrar que cuando el concepto de interculturalidad se usa, raramente está acompañado por un concepto de “cultura” suficientemente matizado, y que, generalmente, depende de la suposición de que el prefijo “inter” describe el encuentro entre individuos que representan unidades culturales discretas, típicamente definidas en términos demográficos reduccionistas. La interculturalidad podría ser recuperada parcialmente, con una conceptualización más flexible y realista de la cultura que responda a las especificidades de las prácticas y los discursos locales y mediante un involucramiento sostenido con la materialidad de mundo vivido. En este estudio de caso voy a reflexionar sobre estudios de grabación profesional asentados en Estambul que estuvieron activos entre 2004 y 2011. Más allá de la compleja y poli-étnica identidad de muchos de los individuos participantes, las diferencias culturales estaban típicamente enmarcadas por arreglistas, ingenieros de audio y músicos de estudio en relación con sus profesiones específicas, particularmente en consideración con las formas en las que las personas habitan el espacio del estudio, con los sistemas de entrenamiento y conocimiento y con las distintas maneras en que los participantes se relacionan con los objetos tecnológicos.Este artigo questiona o que é cultural dentro de um estúdio de gravação, e até que ponto a interculturalidade poderia ser uma lente útil para examinar encontros em estúdio e, por extensão, outras formas de trabalho artístico-tecnológico. Como mostrarei, quando o conceito de interculturalidade emerge, este raramente é acompanhado por um conceito suficientemente matizado de “cultura”, e, adicionalmente, baseia-se na suposição de que o “inter-” está mapeando um encontro entre indivíduos representando unidades culturais discretas, tipicamente definidas. em termos demográficos reducionistas. A interculturalidade pode ser parcialmente recuperada, no entanto, através de uma conceitualização mais flexível e realista de cultura que seja mais sensível às práticas e discursos locais específicos, e por meio de um envolvimento mais sustentado com a materialidade do mundo vivido. Como estudo de caso, explorarei estúdios profissionais de gravação em Istambul ativos entre 2004 e 2011. Além da identidade complexa e poliétnica de muitos dos indivíduos participantes, as diferenças culturais foram tipicamente categorizadas em arranjadores, engenheiros e músicos de estúdio em relação às profissões específicas, particularmente no que diz respeito às maneiras pelas quais as pessoas habitavam o espaço do estúdio, treinamento e sistemas de conhecimento; e distintos modos dos participantes se engajarem com objetos tecnológicos.This essay questions what is cultural within a recording studio, and the extent to which could be a useful lens for examining studio encounters and by extension other forms of artistic technological labor. As I will show, when the concept of interculturality surfaces it rarely is accompanied by a sufficiently nuanced concept of “culture,” and additionally relies upon an assumption that the “inter” is mapping an encounter between individuals representing discrete cultural units, typically defined in reductive demographic terms. Interculturality may be able to be partly recuperated, however, through a more flexible and realistic conceptualization of culture that is more responsive to specific local practices and discourses, and through a more sustained engagement with the materiality of the lived world. For a case study, I will explore professional Istanbul recording studios active between 2004-2011. Beyond the complex and polyethnic identity of many of the individual participants, cultural differences were typically framed by arrangers, engineers, and studio musicians in relation to specific professions, particularly in regard to ways that people inhabited the space of the studio, training and knowledge systems, and participants’ distinctive modes of engaging with technological objects

You Better Work : Underground Dance Music in New York City by Kai Fikentscher

You Better Work!: Underground Dance Music in New York City is arguably the first ethnography of electronic dance music culture; it is also one of the first ethnomusicologically-influenced monographs on mediated dance music. Kai Fikentscher deftly avoids the wealth of music industry genre tags (such as deep house or two step garage ) that plague many writings on electronic dance music, instead focusing on a specific dance community in New York City which began its social dance practice in the days of disco and continued the practice well into the 1990s. His study took place over the course of thirteen years, during which period he had contact with club promoters, record labels, and DJs (as well as developing his own DJ chops). The work is not entirely ethnographic, however, as he connects the practices with African American church contexts, gay pride and the Civil Rights move ment, and most notably the disco era, ultimately using these connections to theorize the disco experience and the play between autonomy and interdependence in music and dance

Popular Music Studies and the Problems of Sound, Society and Method

Building on Philip Tagg’s timely intervention (2011), I investigate four things in relation to three dominant Anglophone popular music studies journals (Popular Music and Society, Popular Music, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies): 1) what interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity means within popular music studies, with a particular focus on the sites of research and the place of ethnographic and/or anthropological approaches; 2) the extent to which popular music studies has developed canonic scholarship, and the citation tendencies present within scholarship on both Western and non-Western popular musics; 3) the motivations for two scholarly groups, Dancecult and ASARP, to breakaway from popular music studies; 4) the forms of music analysis and the kinds of musical material commonly employed within popular music studies. I suggest that the field would greatly benefit from a true engagement with anthropological theories and methods, and that the “chaotic conceptualization” of musical structuration and the critical discourse would likewise benefit from an attention to recorded sound and production aesthetics

What Studios Do

Studios resist reductive analyses. Although isolated, they have their own frontstages and backstages, and like the laboratories studied by Knorr-Cetina, function as more than simply “internal environments.” The placeness of studios leaves both audible traces (the early reflections of sounds) and visible ones, if we think of those studios that become shrines or pilgrimage sites, or photo or video documentation of studios that provide the outside world a brief glimpse into the interior isolation of recording studio life. It would seem that major facilities such as Abbey Road, Ocean Way or Sun Records are emphatically not “placeless place[s]” (Gieryn 2008), nor are they decontextualized from their immediate geographic surroundings. Although atomized project studios (including bedroom studios, garages, and barns) may not immediately appear to be embedded within the social relations of a bounded local culture, many such studios are embedded within the social relations of specific online networked cultures,20 as is evinced by the vibrant online recording engineer communities that support everything from amateur acoustician pedagogy to advanced mixing techniques and even online mixing/remixing competitions. Such studios can be considered as “local anchoring points in the cultural metropolises of the global urban network” (Watson, Hoyler and Mager 2009). Knorr-Cetina (1992) suggests something similar when she discusses how laboratories function not just as “internal environments” but rather as “a link between internal and external environments, a border in a wider traffic of objects and observations”. Like their larger counterparts, project studios are acoustic environments isolated from various perceived outsides, use the very same technologies of audition to make up for the constrained paths of audibility, and similarly shape the kinds of musical and social practices that can transpire within (even if this shaping process effectively restricts the studio’s usage to a single musician at a time). I argue that the more we wish to understand the vibe and sound of the studios, the more we may wish to consider the studio as an active agent in the process of recording production, an actor in the social worlds that inhabit its very wombs and bunker

The social life of musical instruments

Accordion Crimes, a novel by E. Annie Proulx, traces the life of and routes travelled by a green diatonic button accordion: its birth in Sicily in the workshop of “The Accordion Maker,” its numerous changes of ownership in the Americas during encounters between various immigrant communities, and its death when it finally falls into disrepair in the town of Old Glory, Minnesota. There are other accordions in the book, and many temporary human owners, but it is one particular green accordion that is the book’s protagonist. We meet and experience other characters largely through their interactions with the green accordion, a character whose voice, we learn, “sounded hoarse and crying, reminding listeners of the brutalities of love, of various hungers” (Proulx 1996:22). This green accordion is not only central to human social networks, but is also itself an actor with agency. Seeing the extent to which Proulx’s human characters succumb to ill fate (while the accordion lives on), it would not be a stretch to suggest that the green accordion was one of the only characters with agency