Sonic Markers:
Sound as a compositional
tool in pop production
MUS4605
03.09.2014
Foreleser: Eirik Askerøi
epost: [email protected]
En liten endring i timeplanen:
Simon Reynolds
Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past (2011)
Garage-punk resurgence: The Hives, The White Stripes, The Vines
Simon Reynolds
Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past (2011)
Vintage soul-style: Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Adele
Simon Reynolds
Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past (2011)
Eighties synth pop: La Roux, Little Boots, Lady Gaga
Simon Reynolds
Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past (2011)
What do these tunes have in common?
Production aesthetics become a question of class? «...where retro truly reigns as the dominant sensibility and creative paradigm
is in hipsterland, pop’s equivalent to highbrow» (Reynolds 2011: xix)
«At the start of that period [1977 and onwards], and right in the heart of
mainstream with artists such as Kate Bush, The Police, Bowie and Peter
Gabriel, musicians were spurred by the desire to create something never
heard before. But from the mid-eighties onwards, gradually but with
increasing momentum, that changed into an impulse to create something
very much heard before, and moreover to do it immaculately, accurately in
every last detail»
sonic product
textures and timbres
recording and production techniques
formal properties
rhythmic syntax
harmonic idioms
POP PRODUCTION
reviews
interviews
star narratives
journalistic writings
music videos
biographies
record covers
POP PRODUCTION:
CLOSE READING
• “a
move between the structures of the music alone and the
broader context within which the music is located” Hawkins
(2002: 2).
• In
other words: the effect of the music (text) in a given
context
• But
how?
POP PRODUCTION AND GENDER IN A TRANSCULTURAL CONTEXT
Textual analysis
the unity of a text is not in its origin,
it is in its destination
- Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” (1977)
Textual analysis
•
Text: any form of media that conveys meaning (TV-shows,
recordings, movies, books, videos ect.)
•
By textual analysis we identify aspects of the sonic product:
textures and timbres, formal properties, harmonic idioms,
recording and production techniques, rhythmic syntax,
•
Allan F. Moore says: “This also implies a degree of involvement
with the experiencing of a musical text, which also, may not be
part of the explicit experience of many listeners, but is normally
part of the implicit experience - the way in which listeners
construct their identity, in part, on the basis of the music they
use, attests to that. The interpretation does not need to be
conscious, nor does it need to be involved, but is something
that we are inevitably engaged in” (Moore 2007: xi).
•
Intertextuality: The idea that the text - or details within this text communicates meaning in relation to other texts (Stan Hawkins,
Julia Kristeva, Serge Lacasse, Allan F. Moore a.o.)
Textual analysis
•
Stan Hawkins - ’Musicological Quagmires in Popular Music’:
•
Explores the potential quagmires (hengemyrer) in connection with
reading musical details for meaning:
•
As a "cultural insider," the analyst needs to carefully seek sets of
characteristics and details that make the logic of statements
possible. Yet, despite the arguable expertise of such acquired
competence, the rendering of results through music analysis can
never guarantee the ‘fit'.
•
To read a pop text is to conjecture about the discursive moments
that are produced by conglomerations of sound-patterns. Here
there is a speculative lineage that is granted by music's effect and
its constitutive role within a dizzy network of rhetorical and
creative correspondences that provide the potential for
dialogue” (Hawkins 2001)
Discursive analysis - some basic premises:
•
Poststructuralism (as a counter weight to and critique of
structuralism)
•
The most important influence on cultural studies: antiessentialism
•
Essentialism: Based around the notion that words and
expressions have universal and stable referents, and that social
categories somehow reflect an essential, underlying identity that there are stable, constant truths connected to gender, race,
sexuality, ethnicity, age etc.
Otto Robsahm aka “Sinnasnekker’n”:
“Damer er bedre på interiør og farger enn menn. Menn skal ikke bry
seg med det. (…) Menn er i utgangspunktet ikke interessert i farger,
gardiner og sånne ting (…) Det er forskjell mellom kjønnene. Mannen
er sterkere, og moren er bedre egnet til å ta seg av barna, i alle fall når
de er små. Sorry Mac, sånn er det bare!”
!
Women are better at interior and colors than men are. Men are not
supposed to care about that (…). Essentially, men are not interested in
colors, curtains and things like that (…). There is a difference between
the sexes. The male is stronger, and the mother is more capable of
taking care of the children. At least when they are small. Sorry Mac,
that’s just the way it is.
!
Discursive analysis - some basic premises:
•
Poststructuralism - as a counterweight to and critique of
structuralism - as represented by french thinkers such as Roland
Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida a.o.
•
One of the most important influence on cultural studies: antiessentialism
•
Essentialism: Based around the notion that words and
expressions have universal and stable referents, and that social
categories somehow reflect an essential, underlying identity - that
there are stable, constant truths connected to gender, race,
sexuality, ethnicity, age etc. •
Anti-essentialism - temporary stabilisation of categories.
Subjectivity: a subject is never a universal and stabil unity, but
rather an effect of language and actions that constitutes an “I”.
Discursive formations
•
According to Michel Foucault, discursive formations take place according to three rules:
•
Surfaces of emergence: social and cultural areas through which discourse appears,
e.g. the family, work group or religious community
•
Authorities of delimitation: institutions with knowledge and authority, like the law or
the medical profession
•
Grids of specification: a system by which different forms of a phenomenon, for
example madness, can be related to each other in psychiatric discourse !
•
In other words:
•
How we communicate about (speak, write, sing about, paint etc.) a phenomenon will to a great
extent form our understanding of that phenomenon - contribute to the formation of the
discourse of commercial pop music for example.
•
Style/rhetoric - representation
•
Temporary stabilisation of meaning through different forms of representation
How, then, does the
concept of ‘sound’ come
into the picture?
Some starting points for how we can understand sound:
•
Sound and time - when a specific sound is ascribed to a decade
(1960-, 70-, 80s-sound etc.)
•
Sound and place/space - when a specific sound is ascribed to places
(Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Seattle) or spaces/studios (Motown,
Stax etc.)
•
Sound and agency - when a specific sound is ascribed to a producer
(Rick Rubin, Phil Spector, Timbaland, George Martin, Martin Hannett
etc.)
• “It [sound] is not just a sound image, but also a
particular concept of sound, that results from the
creative handling of recording technology” (Wicke
2009: 149)
Sonic markers as analytical concept
Sonic markers are musical codes that have been historically grounded through a specific context, and that, through their appropriation, serve
a range of narrative purposes in recorded music
Sonic markers as analytical concept
•
Sonic potential: Close readings of the musical text in
the interest of identifying musical codes of potential
significance!
•
Contextual influence: The identification of those
historical and biographical aspects that form the sonic
marker’s contextual framework!
•
Discursive formation: A description of the ways in
which the sonic marker constructs, and is constructed,
to serve a narrative purpose in recorded popular music
Sonic potential: Musical codes
•
“In the end, the adaptability of cultural forms depends on an ‘irregular
chain of historical transactions’ involving countless negotiations,
exchanges, and competing representations, which come into prominence
or recede based on fluctuating power relations” (Brackett 2000: 9).
•
Stylistic and technical codes (Hawkins 2002: 10)
•
Interaction: “It is through their arrangements within the recorded audio
space . . . that stylistic and technological codes are blended into the
compositional design” (ibid.).
•
“Without the concept of the ‘code’, there can be no connotation, meaning,
or ‘communication’, which throws the emphasis from meaning back to
structure” (Brackett 2000: 11).
•
“the reductionist processing of musical codes is only the first stage in
discoursing on how codes function” (Hawkins 2002: 10).
Contextual influence
•
The role of recording history
•
Using the effect of culturally coded musical sound in
pop composition
•
Retro wave: constructing authenticity and forming a
popular music canon by representing socio-cultural
values of the past
•
Use of sonic markers in new contexts: recontextualisation and appropriation
•
Re-coded - sonic markers with a narrative purpose
Narrative purpose: discursive formation
•
Historical grounding - evocation of historical or geographical
origin when set in a new musical context
•
Intentionality
•
Ascribing socio-cultural values to musical sound
•
Textual analysis - involving the listener
•
Sounds become almost uncritically laden with value
•
Categorisation and relative ‘distance’ to the music
•
‘Sound’ as a result of the collaborative act of music
production
Some historical background
Some historical background
(Toynbee 2000, chapter 3)
•
Ca 1920-50: Ventriloquism (buktalerkunst) through recording
(invention of the electrical microphone) - describes the gradually
increasing distance between sound source and the experienced
performance
•
Crooning forbidden by the BBC in 1936 (a style of singing made
possible by the electrical microphone)
•
Ex: Bing Crosby: «Pennies From Heaven» (1936)
Some historical background
(Toynbee 2000, chapter 3)
•
•
Ca 1920-50: Ventriloquism
Ca 1940/50: Tape technology - Recording onto magnetic tape leads
to new possibilities for constructing virtual spaces (i.e. tape echo), but
also multi track recording and better sound quality. • Elvis Presley sounding ‘larger than life’ (Middleton 1990: 89) due to Sam
Philips’ experimentation with slapback echo on Elvis’ voice.
• Ex: Elvis Presley: «Baby, Let’s Play House» (1954)
• «In the case of Phillips’ slap echo the effect was indeed so effective that it
started to be used by other producers and engineers, and became so widely
present that some musicologists have ‘elevated’ the effect to the status of an
‘official’ stylistic feature of early rock’n’roll music» (Lacasse 2000: 124).
Tape technology
- a new technological discourse
•
The term ‘live’ appears for the first time in the 1950s as an
opposite to ‘recorded’ music
•
Gradual normalisation of the record during the 1950s
•
Musicians experience increasing challenges in their attempts to
emulate recorded musical expressions live. •
The Beatles, for example, quit playing live around 1966:
Example:
Beatles: «Tomorrow Never Knows», Revolver (1966)
We did a live mix of all the loops. All over the studios we had people spooling them onto
machines with pencils while Geoff [Emerick] did the balancing. There were many other
hands controlling the panning.
!
It is the one track, of all the songs The Beatles did, that could never be reproduced: it
would be impossible to go back now and mix exactly the same thing: the 'happening' of
the tape loops, inserted as we all swung off the levers on the faders willy-nilly, was a
random event. (Lewisohn 1988: 72)
•
How does ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ as text contribute
to the formation of the discourse on The Beatles?
•
Sonic potential: Close readings of the musical text in
the interest of identifying musical codes of potential
significance!
•
Contextual influence: The identification of those
historical and biographical aspects that form the sonic
marker’s contextual framework!
•
Discursive formation: A description of the ways in
which the sonic marker constructs, and is constructed,
to serve a narrative purpose in recorded popular music
Some historical background
(Toynbee 2000, chapter 3)
•
Ca 1920-50: Ventriloquism (buktalerkunst) through recording
(invention of the electrical microphone) - describes the gradually
increasing distance between sound source and the experienced
performance
•
Ca 1940/50: Tape technology - Recording onto magnetic tape leads to
new possibilities for constructing virtual spaces (tape echo), but also
multi track recording and better sound quality. •
Ca 1980: The digital age: The possibilities for new forms of
manipulation of time and space are strengthened by new digital
technologies (MIDI, Lexicon reverbs, digital sampling, digital
synthesizers etc)
Three examples:
Beck: “The New Pollution” (1996)
The Chemical Brothers: ‘Let Forever Be’ (1999)
Rockettothesky: ‘A Cute Lovesong, Please’ (2006)
•
How, then, does these songs connect with ‘Tomorrow Never
Knows’ as text and with the discourse on The Beatles?
•
Sonic potential: appropriation of certain characteristic codes in the
‘original’ tune - looped drum beat, repeated bass hook, mixolydian
tonality in the melody, vocal staging through various effects, !
•
Contextual influence: Who are these artists, and to what extent is
it relevant for them
•
Discursive formation: What kind of narrative purpose does the
sonic markers hold in these examples? How do they contribute to
the meaning of the different tunes?
•
In all the examples so far, we are presented with sonic
characteristics that are specific to recorded music and that have
become different parts of what we now regard to be traditions.
Concluding points:
•
Sound forutsetter et dialogisk forhold mellom mennesker og teknologi (man/
machine interaction)
•
Methods in the recording studio, whose output become recognized as
signatures/codes associated with studios, producers, epochs and so on
•
Sonic markers are intended to described the re-contextualisation/
appropriation of such signatures - meaning use of sound as a compositional
tool
•
Theoretically, we are now in the situation that we can choose sound for our
recordings,
Concluding points:
•
Dominating understandings of popular music are constructed through
selective interpretations of history. Such understandings are in turn
governed by certain interests and groups (gate keepers - music
journalists, cultural institutions, record labels etc.)
•
It is not up to the researcher to simply sum up and underpin governing
trends or notions, but to critically scrutinize how such ‘truths become
fabricated and produced
•
Remember! The researcher’s task is not to have opinions about how
people use music, or to judge what kind of music that is more or less
valuable, but rather to interpret patterns and relations concerning how
the music is used, and how meaning becomes ascribed to the music
Concluding points:
•
The navigation between textual and discursive analysis forms the
methodological fundament in popular musicology.
•
Text: any form of communication that can be read for meaning.
•
Discourse (= language): Production of knowledge and categorical
negotiations through (musical) texts
•
As Stan Hawkins puts it: “[W]hether one moves outward from the
musical atoms or inward towards the whole it is always a question
of considering the balance between the autonomy of the detail and
the discourse that describes the whole. Discourse, metalanguage,
narratology, music theory, dialogics, and so on, all testify to the
complicity of the aesthetic and the historical” (Hawkins 2001: 4)