Read more
The Relentless Pursuit of Tone investigates the many ways tone and timbre function in popular music. From the twang of the banjo to the thump of subwoofers on the dance floor, the authors engage with the entire history of popular music as recorded sound, from the 1930s to the present day.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Chasing the Dragon: In Search of Tone in Popular Music
- Robert Fink, Zachary Wallmark, and Melinda Latour
- I. Genre
- Chapter 1
- Hearing Timbre: Perceptual Learning Among Early Bay Area Ravers
- Cornelia Fales
- Chapter 2
- The Twang Factor in Country Music
- Jocelyn R. Neal
- Chapter 3
- The Sound of Evil: Timbre, Body, and Sacred Violence in Death Metal
- Zachary Wallmark
- Chapter 4
- Below 100 Hz: Toward a Musicology of Subbass
- Robert Fink
- II. Voice
- Chapter 5
- Timbre and Legal Likeness: The Case of Tom Waits
- Mark C. Samples
- Chapter 6
- "The Triumph of Jimmy Scott": A Voice Beyond Category
- Nina Sun Eidsheim
- Chapter 7
- Auto-tune, Labor, and the Pop Music Voice
- Catherine Provenzano
- III. Instrument
- Chapter 8
- Hearing Luxe Pop: Jay Z, Isaac Hayes, and the Six Degrees of Symphonic Soul
- John Howland
- Chapter 9
- Santana and the Metaphysics of Tone: Feedback Loops, Volume Knobs and the
- Quest for Transcendence
- Melinda Latour
- Chapter 10
- Synthesizers as Social Protest in Early 1970s Funk
- Griffin Woodworth
- Chapter 11
- Crossing the Electronic Divide: Guitars, Synthesizers, and the Shifting
- Sound Field of Fusion
- Steve Waksman
- IV. Production
- Chapter 12
- Clash of the Timbres: Recording Authenticity in the California Rock Scene, 1966-68
- Jan Butler
- Chapter 13
- The Death Rattle of a Laughing Hyena: The Sound of Musical Democracy
- Albin J. Zak III
- Chapter 14
- The Sound of Nowhere: Reverb and the Construction of Sonic Space
- Paul Théberge
- Chapter 15
- The Spectromorphology of Recorded Popular Music:
- The Shaping of Sonic Cartoons Through Record Production
- Simon Zagorski-Thomas
- Afterword
- Simon Frith
About the author
Robert Fink is Professor of Musicology at UCLA and a past President of IASPM-US. He focuses on music after 1965, with special interests in minimalism, popular music, and the intersection of cultural and music-analytical theory. He has published widely in musicological journals, and is the author of Repeating Ourselves (2005), a book-length study of the minimal music of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and others as a cultural reflection of American consumer society in the mass-media age.
Melinda Latour is Rumsey Family Assistant Professor of Musicology at Tufts University. She has received numerous awards, including the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, and the Newberry Library École nationale des chartes Exchange Fellowship. Her work appears in the Journal of Musicology (2015), the Revue de musicologie (2016), and the Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music (forthcoming).
Zachary Wallmark is Assistant Professor of Musicology at SMU Meadows School of the Arts.
His research explores the contribution of timbre to affective response, aesthetic judgment, and empathy in popular music and jazz, using methods from musicology and the cognitive sciences.
He is currently at work on a monograph tentatively titled Nothing but Noise: Timbre and Musical Meaning at the Edge (Oxford). Wallmark is the recipient of an NEH Fellowship (2017-18).
Summary
The Relentless Pursuit of Tone investigates the many ways tone and timbre function in popular music. From the twang of the banjo to the thump of subwoofers on the dance floor, the authors engage with the entire history of popular music as recorded sound, from the 1930s to the present day.
Additional text
The Relentless Pursuit of Tone assembles a kaleidoscope of methods for studying timbre in popular music. Its chapters offer new approaches to the study of instruments, voices and technologies; studio production; listening practices and audience reception; music making - whether composed or improvised; performance; aesthetics; and music law. If you are interested in the relationship between sound and music, this collection is essential reading.
