The Relentless Pursuit of Tone

Timbre in Popular Music

Bibliographic Data

ID23782896
EditorsRobert Fink (Professor of Musicology, University of California Los Angeles), Melinda Latour (Rumsey Family Assistant Professor of Musicology, Tufts University), Zachary Wallmark (0000-0001-9498-778X, Assistant Professor and Chair of Musicology, Southern Methodist University Meadows School of the Arts)
Year2018
Publication date2018-10-25
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueRelentless Pursuit of Tone (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780199985227.001.0001
OpenAlexW2650931159
ISBN9780199985227
LanguageEN
Citations received15

The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music assembles a wide spectrum of contemporary perspectives on how sound functions in an equally wide array of popular music. With subjects ranging from the twang of country banjos and the sheen of hip-hop strings to the crunch of amplified guitars and the thump of subwoofers on the dance floor, this volume attempts to bridge the gap between timbre, the purely acoustic characteristics of sound waves, and tone, an emergent musical construct that straddles the borderline between the perceptual and the political. The book’s chapters engage with the entire history of popular music as recorded sound, from the 1930s to the present day, under four large categories. The chapters in Part I, “Genre,” ask how sonic signatures define musical identities and publics; Part II, “Voice,” considers the most naturalized musical instrument, the human voice, as racial and gendered signifier, as property or likeness, and as raw material for algorithmic perfection through software; Part III, “Instrument,” tells stories of the way some iconic pop music machines—guitars, strings, synthesizers—got (or lost) their distinctive sounds; and Part IV, “Production,” puts it all together, asking structural questions about what happens in a recording studio, what is produced (sonic cartoons, rockist authenticity, empty space?), and what it all might mean. The book includes a general theoretical introduction by the editors and an afterword by noted popular music scholar Simon Frith.

Art · Audiology · Literature · Tone (literature) · History · Medicine · Music Technology and Sound Studies

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