Aesthetics And Consumer Influence
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Section Headings:
1. How much do audiences hear and do they care?
2. Concert Halls and Clubs – the norms of audience reception
3. Authenticity – performance
4. Authenticity – creative control
5. Authenticity - politics
How much do audiences hear and do they care?
John Dougan's 2005 paper on Blues record collecting and canon formation
Francis Rumsey's 2005 paper on psychoacoustics and sound quality (PDF)
Andrew Gwilliam's 2008 paper on rock audience's preferences for unedited and edited performances
Concert Halls and Clubs – the norms of audience reception
How this is related to staging? Needs a slightly wider definition of staging that recognises the functional use of staging as a way of highlighting textual elements that are important in defining the functional meaning of the music e.g. percussion is highlighted to make dancing easier. Can I think of another example aside from percussion and dance? Other forms of functional music – religious music and clarity of lyrics, flamenco and using staging to reinforce the importance of the guitar’s role by making space for its full frequency range in the mix.
Functionality – from norms of reception.
1. Concert Hall – compression and ambience. Replacing ambience with tape compression and EQ. How are these related? Getting warmth and retaining clarity.
2. Intimacy and private listening – close microphone placement and EQ. The balance of performance intensity and volume (Moylan)
3. Functional staging – spotlighting:
a). Dance and clarity – the opposite mixing aesthetic to rock. Proximity and clarity in rhythm section mixing and the live aesthetic applied to vocals and melodic instruments.
b). Lyrics and clarity – a practical consideration that may interfere with other forms of technological mediation related to norms of reception.
c). Foregrounding of culturally important instruments – flamenco guitar in canto chico mixing.
4. Creativity and invention – the creative use of staging for highlighting foreground and background in an artificial way.
Simon Zagorski-Thomas' 2006 paper on Functional Staging and the norms of audience reception
Eliot Grasso's 2008 paper on folk music production and the notion of transparency
Authenticity – performance
Mats Johansson's 2005 paper on performance authenticity in recorded Scandinavian folk music
Colin Lawson's 2005 paper on performance authenticity in classical Early Music recordings
Steve Savage's 2008 paper on performance authenticity: 'It could have happened'
Stephen Frost's 2006 article on editing classical music and authenticity
Authenticity – creative control
Dietmar Elflein's 2005 paper on synthesiser pre-sets and the cultural meaning of sounds
Authenticity - politics
Andy Arthurs' 2005 paper on music, identity and forms of consumption
Becky Shepherd's 2006 paper on nostalgia and authenticity in contemporary rock music production
Becky Shepherd's 2007 paper on the White Stripes and the 'retro' sound
Authenticity – culturally constructed by the micro-cultures of musical styles – is balanced against perceptions of quality and modernity. How are these negotiated between and amongst consumers and producers. Consumers range from the barely interested through fans to culturally appointed spokespeople (listings magazines, critics, academics) but also include fans that have more cultural clout – may be rulers, the rich and powerful, the famous, famous musicians etc. Producers include musicians, technicians, economic interests (record companies, publishers, management, media companies etc.)
Media – based staging: LoFi and HiFi – cheap and expensive sounding recordings. LoFi as rebellion in various forms: against commercialism and against technological mediation as opposed to performance authenticity.
Editing and postproduction – creative control and authority. Ragnhild and Portishead. Michael Haas and Gavrilov, Glen Gould, Miles Davis.
Wallach and Indonesia – 1
Analogue tape use in the performance based form of dangdut. Do they follow other contemporary forms of production practice that I would interpret as simulating some of the important perceptual cues that indicate live performance?
Moehns and Brazil – 1 & 3a
The use of analogue tape and the previous practice of recording ‘live’ albums has been replaced by greater clarity in the percussion by studio recording. Email Moehns to see if the producers talked specifically about changes in the mode of consumption as opposed the general statements about modernity – check text first!
Meintjes and South Africa – 1
The live sound = African sound as far as using bass amplification instead of DI. How does the deliberate use of ‘rough’ or ‘raw’ sound relate to the artists identifying themselves as rebellious? Is this about the sound of ‘liveness’ as authenticity or about rejecting commercialism i.e. the association of good quality recording with the commodification of music and more specifically as aiming the product for an MOR or mass market. Interviews with punk and low fi producers. How does this relate to the stuff I had to say on ‘inappropriate’ use of technology in African records – mixing contemporary practice with less developed forms? Also relevant to Congolese and Rai recordings that haven’t been made in Europe with western engineers with an eye on the European market. Thus, the use of heavily processed drum samples or electronic drum machine sounds in early to mid 1980s South African Mbaqanga or Maskanda and artificially high levels of hall reverb on the female choir vocals were inappropriate in the western world music market but popular and desirable in South Africa. In South Africa they were perceived as modern and performed the same function as in western popular music: clarifying and defining the rhythmic pattern. In most cases this aesthetic wasn’t combined with the thickening of the bass line with compression and EQ and sounded like an inexpert and unsophisticated use of the technology. It didn’t fit into our perceptual timeline of technological development in audio production. It was a hybrid of 1960s and 1980s production techniques.
The Austin sound and Porcello – 1
The ‘live’ aesthetic is mostly reduced to the drum sound as a cipher for it so that there can be artificial clarity in other areas and thus a nod towards the norms of contemporary studio practice. Email Porcello about the use of subtractive EQ and bass compression (and analogue tape use) as further pointers towards a ‘live’ sound aesthetic. Listen to some examples of the Austen sound.
Robert Philip and the Israeli experiment – 1 & 2
Constrasting the aesthetic of ‘in your face’ contemporary recording with the gentle compression/distortion of 40s equipment. One area that seems common to most, if not all, forms of technological mediation as live is the use of bass compression. In a posting on the Musical Performance on Record discussion list last December (2004), Robert Philip described how two recording of the same performance, one on contemporary digital equipment and the other on a 1940s system:
‘The modern stereo recording, compared with the mono 40s-style, put the audience in a much less comfortable relationship with the singer. Because of its clarity and impact - qualities characteristic of modern recordings – the singer seemed somewhat overbearing, right there just in front of us, and yet still singing as if we were a more distant audience in a concert hall. The 'old' recording seemed to place the singer at a more appropriate distance (though we were told that the microphones were very close together). The relationship seemed more 'natural'. One could relax and enjoy the performance, instead of cowering from somebody who was singing insistently in one's face.’
The tape compression on the analogue recording would alter the balance of low frequency to high frequency sound in the same way that increased ambience would in a hall (low frequency reverb lasts longer than high frequency) and thus the recording would reduce the impression of proximity by simulating one characteristic of hall ambience. The other main characteristic of hall ambience is the reduction of clarity through the ‘smearing’ of one sound into the next by the reverberation. Various musical genres use this compression in one form or another to create some of the characteristics of a live performance without the lack of clarity that natural ambience would create. In chapter seven, Wallach mentions that live dangdut recordings in Indonesia still prefer to use analogue tape in the same way that Moehn confirms that it is still preferred medium for recording the Samba de Enredo albums despite the fact that tape costs are enormously expensive in relation to digital recording. Concomitant to this is the practice in popular music forms of using electronic compression on bass parts and mixing them with drums which have real or artificial ambience added. The ‘smearing’ of the ambience is confined to non-pitched sounds and therefore doesn’t cause any perceptual problems about pitch recognition and yet a strong indication of live ambience is present. Contact more of the people involved and review the thread as it appeared in Mus_Rec_Dist.
Flamenco – 1, 3a & c
Flamenco recordings – intimacy in a large space. The standard modern production style for flamenco recordings in the cante jondo styles is to emphasise features which suggest intimacy and proximity whilst adding a long (-ish) reverb at a relatively low level which suggests being close to the performers in a large space. Cante chico forms have a similar recording ethic but the more extensive arrangements and fuller instrumentation impose some restrictions. The basic format is still to have the guitar and voice as the focal points and percussion is mainly EQ’d to have the same hi-mid frequency range of the traditional jaleo claps, castanets and finger snaps. Where bass and bass drum are added they are usually mixed back and EQ’d so as not to impose on the full frequency range of the guitar. The dance aesthetic of flamenco styles requires that the jaleo is the prominent rhythmic characteristic and the adoption of rock instrumentation and fusion with rock styles has relied on this: once the rock beat becomes dominant it ceases to be flamenco and is rock with a flamenco ‘colour’ – very often with a salsa or bossa nova beat. Whilst the cante jondo format (both instrumentation and production techniques) have become more or less fixed (although the transparency of production is not a requirement although it may have a certain stigma denoting a lack of sophistication), the cante chico styles have embraced recording technology to provide novelty and interest in the same way that mainstream western commercial music has.
Rai & Offra Haza:
Monodic and heterophonic music traditions have wrestled with the problem that pop music records should sound a particular way and part of that sound relies on the sonic density imparted by chordal backing. One response has been to superimpose a chord structure on existing musical styles and the other is to thicken the monodic lines with technology – EQ, compression and reverb. Talk to Paul B about the mixing style and how it compares to N. African mixes.
Salsa – 1 & 3a
Cuban son – interestingly most son recordings since the 70s and 80s have adopted a relatively standard mixing style with very dry, close mic’ed percussion at the ‘front’ of the mix and the rest of the instruments in a more naturalistic ambient space (RG Cuban Son track 1). Buena Vista Social Club on the other hand was recorded in a much more ‘retro’ manner to give a more ambient ‘live’ feel to the percussion (despite additional overdubs in Los Angeles and mixing in London and Los Angeles). There was no acoustic screening between the musicians to improve separation, it was recorded in a room three times larger than was needed to accommodate the musicians and general overhead, ambient microphones have been used to give the recording a more 40s or 50s feel whilst the close mics and mastering compression have been used to add clarity to the bass end whilst retaining the full, ‘modern’ sound (as opposed to RG Cuban Son tracks 5 & 6). Also BVSC combines the ambience of a dance hall with the energy of a more intimate venue / performance: a more modern performance ethic (as opposed to the more energetic, night club based 40s and 50s sound) with an older, more nostalgic recording ethic. The recording techniques produce just the right character for the record – a mix that is transparent because it totally in keeping with the musical aesthetic and with the image portrayed by the story.
As an example I’m going to play 2 extracts of Cuban son: in the first example you can hear that the percussion has been recorded in the same ambient space as the rest of the band. Beny More. In the second example the percussion has been close mic’ed in an acoustically treated studio. It sounds as if the percussionists are very near in a small space and the rest of the band are much further away and in a larger environment. Afro Cuban All Stars. This accentuates the musically relevant characteristics of each sound: the high frequency attack transients of the percussion, the blending character of the ambience on the brass. The production techniques are reinforcing the gestalt grouping techniques that we use to distinguish one sound from another and to attribute musical meaning to them.
Another obvious aspect of these two recordings is one sounds more modern than the other. I mentioned before that antiquity can be equated with authenticity in some styles of music and this can also be used as a production tool. The Buena Vista Social Club album was recorded in a ‘retro’ manner to give a more ambient ‘live’ feel to the percussion (despite additional overdubs in Los Angeles and mixing in London and Los Angeles). There was no acoustic screening between the musicians to improve separation, it was recorded in a room three times larger than was needed to accommodate the musicians and general overhead, ambient microphones have been used to give the recording a more 40s or 50s feel whilst the close mics and mastering compression have been used to add clarity to the bass end whilst retaining the full, ‘modern’ sound. I’m going to play two exerpts from the song Chan Chan, the first by the Familia Valera Miranda and the second by the Buena Vista Social Club. Whilst they both have a more retro sound than the Afro Cuban All Stars we just listened to, the Buena Vista Social Club recording uses compression on the double bass and overall mastering compression to give a fatter, bassy sound that’s more in line with the sound of western commercial music. It also accentuates the very high frequency content of the track in a similar way. Familia Valera Miranda. Buena Vista Social Club. Also the Buena Vista Social Club recording combines the ambience of a dance hall with the energy of a more intimate venue or performance: a more modern performance ethic (as opposed to the more energetic, night club based 40s and 50s sound of Beny More) with an older, more nostalgic recording ethic.
Prog rock and 1970s Afro-American music – 1, 3a & 4
Peter Doyle and ‘My Blue Heaven’ article – 4
Becky Shepherd, Steven Street and Retro or Nostalgic Production Sounds
Authentic recording venues in world music (Jerry Boys, Nick Gold and Ry Cooder). Using vintage and classic equipment and methodology.
Singer songwriters – 1, 2 & 3b
Meintjes recording a Calbash with 17 microphones.
This makes the question of whether western record companies impose production values onto non-western artists slightly more complex. Western popular culture has become the benchmark sound for record production to emulate and this often means that non-western musicians want that sound as much, if not more than the record company executives: hence the vogue for recording African music in France, Belgium and Germany using western producers. The World Music market for western countries has a slightly different agenda. Part of the attraction of these musics is the fact that it sounds different from western popular music: the new Mori Kante album is an entirely acoustic recording of Koras and Balafons and that will be a major selling point. Having said that we have to return to the earlier point I made about the audience wanting something that conforms to its perception of what constitutes a high quality recording: it will be an entirely acoustic album using close microphone placement, digital editing, compression, EQ and sophisticated mastering techniques. This type of distortion has become our signifier of modernity and sophistication in just the same way that the background noise and restricted dynamic and frequency range of Robert Johnson’s 1936 recording has become a signifier not just of antiquity but also of a type of authenticity. We can see the same belief that age bestows authenticity in the way that hip hop producers sample the surface noise from vinyl records to add crackle and hiss to their digital recordings in an attempt to sound ‘Old School’.
From Musicology article:
The final category that I am proposing examines the audience listening aesthetic and its influence on technology as a mediating force. It seems obvious to me that every style in recorded music is the result of a culturally constructed perception of what constitutes authentic recording practice; this perception is based on many different factors, including historical precedent, attitudes to different forms of technology, attitudes to performance practice, and the characterization of auteurship. Differing amounts and types of technological mediation will be considered to be authentic and acceptable by the different audiences affiliated to different styles of music. In a posting on the Musical Performance on Record discussion list in December 2004 Robert Philip evaluated two recordings of the same performance, one on contemporary digital equipment and the other on a 1940s system:
The modern stereo recording, compared with the mono 40s-style, put the audience in a much less comfortable relationship with the singer. Because of its clarity and impact – qualities characteristic of modern recordings – the singer seemed somewhat overbearing, right there just in front of us, and yet still singing as if we were a more distant audience in a concert hall. The ‘old’ recording seemed to place the singer at a more appropriate distance (though we were told that the microphones were very close together). The relationship seemed more ‘natural’. One could relax and enjoy the performance, instead of cowering from somebody who was singing insistently in one’s face.
The tape compression on the ‘old style’ recording altered the balance of low- to high-frequency sound in the same way that increased ambience would in a hall (low-frequency reverberation lasts longer than high-frequency), and thus the recording would reduce the impression of proximity by simulating one characteristic of hall ambience. Another characteristic of hall ambience is the reduction of clarity through the ‘smearing’ of one sound into the next by the reverberation. There seem to be a great many styles of recorded music that have developed the first characteristic without the second. Jeremy Wallach mentions that the preference in live dangdut recordings in Indonesia is still to use analog tape, just as (as Moehn confirms) it is the preferred medium for recording the Samba de Enredo albums, despite the fact that tape costs are much higher than those of digital recording. There is a similar practice in popular music of using electronic compression on bass parts and mixing them with drums that have real or artificial ambience added. The ‘smearing’ of the ambience is confined to non-pitched sounds and therefore doesn’t cause problems of pitch recognition, and yet a strong sense of live ambience is maintained.
This may require a slightly wider definition of the concept of staging that recognizes the practical use of staging as a way of highlighting textual elements that are important in defining the functional meaning of the music; for example, percussion might be highlighted to make dancing easier. This functionality is closely related to the norms of reception in the style of music. When the concert hall is accepted as the culturally ‘normal’ forum for a musical style, then we tend to see the use of compression and ambience in recording techniques. Natural ambience is often replaced by tape or electronic compression and EQ and a selective application of artificial ambience to higher-frequency and/or non-pitched musical components to avoid ‘muddiness’. Some of the characteristics of live sound are used to suggest ‘the real thing’, while unwanted side effects are eschewed. This allows the warmth or fullness of the concert experience but with an added clarity that is impossible to attain in the natural world.
An alternative aesthetic that has developed in contemporary recording practice is the exaggeration of intimacy. Through close microphone placement and the boosting of high-frequency content (which disperses more quickly than low-frequency content over distance), an impression of the performance being ‘up close and personal’ is created. Recording practices such as these are surely the result of an audience aesthetic that evolved out of changes in audio reproduction technology. In a process that began with the development of cheaper record players and the long-playing record, listening patterns moved from group listening (juke boxes and family gramophones) to bedroom listening and, more recently, to the personal stereo’s soundtrack-for-life in headphones. The development of audio staging techniques, which started with crooning and progressed to emphasizing every breath of a vocal performance and every scrape of finger movements on a guitar, has created the expectation that we will be addressed personally in certain styles of music. Moylan discusses this conscious manipulation of performance intensity and volume in contemporary record production in terms of the generation of meaning, both in the suggestion of intimacy and in the creation of foreground and background.
While these two forms of staging fall more naturally within Lacasse’s original definition of the term, the concept of functional staging may be useful in describing mixing techniques that spotlight certain functionally important musical features in ways that do not create specific musical meaning (such as highlighting an emotion or creating an illusory space) but which make the music function more efficiently. Two widespread examples of this spring to mind. The first is the mixing of popular dance music during the past thirty years and more. Despite dance music being primarily aimed at an audience listening in group-based contexts such as clubs, the production aesthetic has moved away from a concert-based sound towards proximity and clarity in rhythm-section mixing and with the live aesthetic applied only to vocals and melodic instruments. It would seem that the ‘muddiness’ of concert-like recordings, which may give a desirable impression of power in rock music, is counterproductive when the function of the music is primarily to engender dance. Within a few short years dance music production has developed from the Motown and Stax sounds in the 1960s, which highlighted the rhythmic aspects of the track from within broadly the same live-sounding mix aesthetic as rock, to a mixing style that reflects the differing approaches of the audience: the functionality. Not only do we find drums getting louder and guitars getting quieter in dance music mixing (and the opposite in rock), we also find that production techniques that strengthen attack transients and clarity rather than power are also gaining favour. The music is shaped to make the rhythmic subtlety easier to perceive, the better to facilitate dancing (the function the music was created for).
The second example is the artificial boosting of vocal volume or clarity to make the lyrical content more audible. In fact this is so widespread that it interferes with other forms of technological mediation that are related to norms of reception. Thus, even in a style in which the mixing aesthetic in general is based on live performance, the vocal will often be made prominent to ensure that the lyric is intelligible, even if this reduces the impact of the instrumental performance. Other forms of functional staging might include, for example, the way that canto chico flamenco tracks were mixed in the 1970s and 80s. Drum kits were EQ’d very thinly in a manner suggestive of the palmas (hand claps) and pitos (finger snaps) of traditional flamenco. More than this, though, the low-frequency content of the kick drum and bass was reduced in a manner that seems to be making space for the full-frequency content of the acoustic guitar to shine through. The culturally determined ‘important’ instruments are given artificial prominence in the mix. Presumably it wouldn’t sound like flamenco to the target audience if the relative perceptual balance of musical components was upset. Percussion must be less prominent than the guitar, even when the percussion is transformed from the quiet finger snaps and hand claps to the louder kit drums, which would normally drown out an acoustic guitar.
Serge Lacasse has highlighted several examples of the way in which staging can be used creatively to subvert or exaggerate our perception of musical elements in a recording. He has concentrated on ways that suggestions of embodied meaning can be treated, such as using distortion on a vocal recording to suggest anger, pain, or fear. There are also many examples in various popular music styles of mixing techniques that subvert, exaggerate, and/or parody conventions that have arisen for functional reasons. The Flying Lizards’ 1979 single ‘Money’ is an extreme example, in which the mix has a deliberately thin and weak quality to support the mannered ineptitude and weakness of the recorded performances.
