Digital Signatures - The Impact of Digitization on Popular Music Sound

How sonically distinctive digital “signatures”--including reverb, glitches, and autotuning--affect the aesthetics of popular music, analyzed in works by Prince, Lady Gaga, and others. Is digital production killing the soul of music? Is Auto-Tune the nadir of creative expression? Digital technology has changed not only how music is produced, distributed, and consumed but also--equally important but not often considered--how music Combining technical and historical knowledge of music production with musical analyses, aesthetic interpretations, and theoretical discussions, Brøvig and Danielsen offer unique insights into how digitization has changed the sound of popular music and the listener''s experience of it. For example, they show how digital reverb and delay have allowed experimentation with spatiality by analyzing Kate Bush''s “Get Out of My House”; they examine the contrast between digital silence and the low-tech noises of tape hiss or vinyl crackle in Portishead''s “Stranger”; and they describe the development of Auto-Tune--at first a tool for pitch correction--into an artistic effect, citing work by various hip-hop artists, Bon Iver, and Lady Gaga.

Product details

• Authors: Ragnhild Brovig, Ragnhild Brøvig, Anne Danielsen, Danielsen Anne
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.10.2023
• EAN: 9780262549639
• ISBN: 978-0-262-54963-9
• No. of pages: 200
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > Miscellaneous; TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Electronics / Digital, TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Acoustics & Sound, MUSIC / Recording & Reproduction, Music recording & reproduction, Electronics engineering, Acoustic & sound engineering, Acoustic and sound engineering, Music recording and reproduction