Art of Record Production 2019

(Sylvain will be presenting remotely via Google Hangout)
For nearly thirty years, the various sectors of culture have been confronted by a radical reconfiguration of the processes of creation, production, distribution and reception of cultural works and products. The music industry is often described as the first sector that has been impacted by the various changes related to technological developments, as well as economic and political ones. This comes from a multitude of factors that shape an evolving context: territorial boundaries have opened;
new artistic forms are developing outside known frames;
public policies integrate culture and creativity in the development of territories; consumption habits are changing, as are the rules governing cultural industries.
This has led to the emergence of new roles and professions and has had a lasting impact on the conditions of practice of music workers.

Our work proposes to mobilize the point of view of artists, creators and cultural workers in order to recognize their role as a participative group while documenting their experiences of these transformations. The presentation will be based on 15 individual interviews and 2 collective ones with music workers and artists from Montréal, Québec. This presentation will be focused on the impact of digital technologies upon the creative process and everyday work.

When recorded sounds are described as intimate, it is often a proximate-sounding, non- reverberated, soft-sung voice that is referred to. In popular music research (see, e.g., Moore, 2012; Zagorski-Thomas, 2014), intimacy has largely been understood in terms of Hall’s (1990) idea of intimate distance, that is, the closest of four categories of distance at which people communicate. If we look outside of music research, however, familiar places like the home and specific parts of the home are often regarded as spaces of intimacy. In this paper I propose an alternative to the traditional idea of intimate sound by exploring the notion of intimate domestic space and the ways in which such space can be represented in recorded music.

A possible way to approach the idea of intimate domestic space in recordings is to look at the extent to which a recorded space realistically resembles an actual intimate space. Several records from at least the last two decades have shown a move towards an aesthetics of recorded spatiality previously associated with the technological limitations of home recordings, by incorporating home-like reverberation simulating small rooms. A similar tendency is also seen in recording technology, with reverb plugin presets being called things like “Bedroom” or “Warm Living Room”. This paper explores the ways in which home-like sound spaces can provide a sense of intimacy in a recording, by arguing for a connection between realism, vulnerability and intimacy, while also acknowledging the important role of technology in the conveyance of such spatialities.

References
Hall, E. T. (1990). The Hidden Dimension: Man’s Use of Space om Public and Private. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
Moore, A. F. (2012). Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song.
Farnham: Ashgate.
Zagorski-Thomas, S. (2014). The Musicology of Record Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This paper focuses on music technology and production techniques that predate the Internet but which, nonetheless, have contemporary relevance. The role of digital sampling in the development of hip hop, and other subsequent genres based around the use of 'breakbeats', is widely acknowledged and has been explored from various scholarly perspectives. This paper argues that the creative interplay between the contemporary producer who samples and the instrumentalist whose performance is sampled can be read as a process of virtual collaboration in the creation of groove, albeit one which may feel somewhat imbalanced in comparison with traditional models.

To date, groovology has typically addressed the musical interaction between two or more performers playing concurrently and co-presently, dealing primarily with rhythmic aspects of this relationship. My research builds on these ideas by extending the concept in such a way that a single musician can be said to groove when playing solo, by interacting with various contextually-nuanced senses of time, a process which I call 'solo groove'. Recent research has also explored the potential for rhythmic control which music technology offers the contemporary producer, highlighting a burgeoning aspect of production wherein computer-based manipulation of microtiming contributes significantly to the listener’s perception of groove.

By considering solo groove and the use of sampled breakbeats in examples from hip hop, jungle and other breakbeat-based music, this paper argues for a contemporary, virtual manifestation of Small’s ‘musicking’ concept (1998), wherein collaboration and musical sharing become possible for performers and producers working across temporal, geographical and stylistic boundaries. Fundamental to the role of the breakbeat, here, is Shaviro’s notion of a musical environment in which the digital ‘rebecomes analogue’ (2003: 45), a characterization of sampling that is integral to a contemporary understanding of groove and collaborative music-making.

The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates a major paradigm shift through the development of ubiquitous interconnected devices, where electronic devices across the world can be connected over wired and wireless computing networks to accept, collect, and exchange data; enabling, for example, smart homes and the sharing of environmental data from remote locations. To date, IoT has not been substantially developed or evaluated with respect to creative applications, and even less so with respect to music and music production applications.

Given that early and traditional music production techniques were largely applied with use of analogue audio hardware, the IoT paradigm presents a unique opportunity to maintain past (and perhaps lost or disappearing) music production processes. With IoT connected hardware, for example, it is possible to enable remote digital connectivity to rare, expensive and bespoke audio systems, as well as unique spaces for use as reverb and echo chambers. Furthermore, the IoT paradigm allows the possibility of a ‘virtually-extended music studio’, where a producer may work remotely on a project whilst still accessing processors and devices that are located in their personal studio. IoT for music production could therefore revolutionize the equipment hire market, enable new forms of creative collaboration, and redefine the technical boundaries for software plugins and audio equipment design.

This research investigates novel IoT-based approaches to physical and analogue music composition and production, exploring how hardware audio systems can be controlled in a hybrid manner, bringing the ‘best of both worlds’ in terms of analogue and digital benefits, and presenting new opportunities for music production, by virtually extending these devices into personal workspaces. The research is practice based, including the development of an IoT- enabled music processing system, which has been utilized to gather qualitative and quantitative feedback from music production professionals and focus groups of creative practitioners.

The process of recording a band or ensemble in the studio relies on many kinds of collaborative efforts across a wide range of professionals such as musicians, recording engineers, producers, record label staff and managers. Engineers and producers collaborate directly with the musicians, but part of their job description is also to facilitate a fruitful collaboration between the musicians themselves, enabling them to perform at their peak, both individually and as a collective. This paper takes a closer look at how cue-mix or foldback affects musical interplay and the collective performance, with a particular focus on jazz and other musics heavily reliant on interplay and improvisation - i.e., "in-the-moment" musical collaboration. This is investigated through 8 semi-structured interviews with professional producers, recording engineers and musicians with a combined experience of more than 200 years of making records. Selected findings from the interviews are discussed in light of research and writings on interplay and improvisation, including the seminal works of Monson, Berliner and Bailey. As these are preliminary findings from an ongoing PhD research project, no hard conclusions are drawn. There are however several interesting commonalities found in the interviews, which point to some possible recommendations.

This paper presents the culmination of a three-part inquiry into the phenomenon of Transnational Flow (TNF). TNF is an amalgamation of Csikszentmihalyi’s (1995) flow theory, Sawyer’s (2007) group flow theory, and Karl Weick’s (1995) sensemaking theory that encompasses the unique logistical challenges associated with transnational collaboration. We examine the creative and logistical affordances related to writing and recording a song when group members live in Australia and North America. Our previous song recordings placed specific environmental boundaries to test the validity of our theory and to inform our creative approach (see Pratt, Hoose, Gordon, 2018). In this third paper, we consider what changes occur when we add a new member to act as a remote producer. To achieve the outcome of a finished song we employ Dropbox, Reaper, and Skype. We network our expertise and studio facilities using the distributed creativity theory of Sawyer and DeZutter (2009). Such an assemblage of creative facilities transforms our home studios into a more complex negotiated recording environment with four specialised engineers. In this paper, we aim to challenge our previous assumptions on international collaboration by adding a new perspective to our group and test the socially dynamic boundaries of TNF.

I am a producer of mainly song-based music, who has worked for the past two decades outside of the mainstream studio system. I have undertaken a large number of recording projects in unconventional recording spaces including churches, community halls, and houses in rural areas, which has resulted in many well reviewed and commercially successful releases.

The artists would typically come from the city and stay in the country while the recordings were made. These building were lacking professional acoustic treatment and isolation therefore allowing a noticeable amount of external sound inside. While these sounds were not always welcome, I began to notice that this bleed had the potential to give extra contextual information about the lyrics, the music, or the sounds themselves within the finished track. For many artists, these sounds had the ability to function as a sort of “place stamp” - a lovely reminder of the time and space in which the recording was made, and also for the listeners whose headphone listens would take them deeper into the experience. This idea that they actually belong to the composition aligns with John Cage’s concept of the inclusivity of environmental sound and also connects to compositional practice in musique concrete, field recording and sound art.

I investigated these connections in a research project which aimed to include techniques and theories from these fields to create and frame a work in a remote desert church in Australia. My hope to was to bring these sounds into the recording space as an intentional part of the composition.

The Pella Desert Church album is the result of a project that I undertook this year whereby I placed microphones inside and outside the site of a 100 year old German Lutheran stone church on the periphery of the desert in rural Victoria, Australia . I created an inflow of sound by feeding the outside microphones into transducers (speakers) inside the church where they were mounted to the floor and church pews. Inside the church I played a 130 year old pipe organ in direct engagement with this reamped outside sound resonating within the church and used a broad range of microphones to document it. I wasn’t certain of what sound the outside mics would bring in but over the five day session I was amazed by what occurred and the recordings are a tangible and readable document of site and song.

Introduction:
Accent is an important issue in piano performance, which is loudness, realized in increasing volume (also referred to as dynamic accent) (Thiemel 2001; Cook 2013) or an increase in dynamic level on a given time point as an accent mark (Bocanegra 2001). Accent
is prominence, realized as pitch inflection of a melodic note (pitch accent) (Thiemel 2001), harmonic change (Cheryl 2001) or the approach by leaps in lines (Berry 1976); also realized as a change to a faster tempo and/or more intense timbre (Berry 1976). Accent is emphasis, realized as a stimulus which is a mark for consciousness in some way (Cooper & Meyer 1960; Cook 2013) an event that capture a listener’s attention (Drake & Palmer 1993). This can be realized as the point of initiation (Lester 1986) or new
motive or texture (Cheryl 2001) of a musical event.However, phrase accent in piano music has received little scholarly attention, although it is necessary to performing teaching.

Main Contribution:
Using random selected 287 two-phrase recordings, this study analyzed phrases' accent which might be partially or wholly caused by loudness, pitch, harmony and boundary.Accent experiment is in progress, it is found that the time of accent appears to be tendentious and needs further investigation.

Conclusion:
The highest and loudest sound is the accent in nearly half phrases. No obvious difference between first and second phrase was found. Nearly quarter phrases have no distinct accent.

Implications:
Performers might prefer to select the highest and loudest sound as phrase accent.

Acknowledgements:
This study is funded by Project of Basic Scientific Research in Central Universities, Southwest University (Grant no. SWU1809348 )

This paper will analyse the musical affordances of mobile technologies and apps using ‘Music Interaction’ studies (Holland et al. 2013) as a critical framework. This paper presents qualitative and analytical enquiry featuring two primary case studies collected during 2015-2017. The first case study details the perspectives of key personnel within music software company Ableton AG during the release of Ableton Link, a networked audio software protocol which allows musicians to play in-time with each other across compatible apps. This case study reveals the design choices, user testing protocols, and user feedback cycles which contribute to audio software development. The second case study documents experiences of university students performing in a mobile device ensemble. These students primarily considered themselves repertoire performers, but were asked to sustain a collaborative music creation project that culminated in an original performance involving unfamiliar networked musical apps and devices. The students reconfigured their musical identities to encompass composition, improvisation and production skills. The experience of student musicians is compared to the user testing and design protocols of software developers to identify the ways apps and mobile devices are recasting aspects of ensemble music performance including time, gesture, co-ordination and the related musical concepts such as notation and arrangement.

Reference:
Holland, S., Wilkie, K., Mulholland, P., & Seago, A. (2013). Music and Human-Computer Interaction (Springer Series on Cultural Computing). London: Springer London.

Record production no longer needs a large recording facility for the duration of a recording project and record producers now routinely collaborate with musicians, artists and songwriters via remote and online means. The ‘tracker’ production process is a growing trend in music production where topline songwriters work with music programmers and music producers. In this case, production, songwriting and recording often happen concurrently and the creative process is flexible and typically influenced by the unique approaches of the various individuals involved. The tracker’s role involves the synthesis of ideas, musical negotiation and expertise in using digital technologies to keep the recording project on track. The tracker process underlines how the traditional model of record production has been modified and updated in light of the development, availability and affordability of digital audio technologies and diminishing budgets for recording projects.
Record production no longer needs a large recording facility for the duration of a recording project and record producers now routinely collaborate with musicians, artists and songwriters via remote and online means. The ‘tracker’ production process is a growing trend in music production where topline songwriters work with music programmers and music producers. In this case, production, songwriting and recording often happen concurrently and the creative process is flexible and typically influenced by the unique approaches of the various individuals involved. The tracker’s role involves the synthesis of ideas, musical negotiation and expertise in using digital technologies to keep the recording project on track. The tracker process underlines how the traditional model of record production has been modified and updated in light of the development, availability and affordability of digital audio technologies and diminishing budgets for recording projects.

In providing ‘real world’ learning activities, HE institutions delivering audio education face a number of logistic, musical and social challenges when facilitating a ‘tracker’ assessment; particularly where much of the communication and collaboration is undertaken online. The following paper reports on the experiences of a cohort of Bachelor of Popular Music students who undertook a tracker process assessment at an HE institution. Students’ perceptions of ‘engagement’ and ‘learning’ were captured via a creative synthesis and online survey. A thematic analysis of the findings indicates that this form of teaching and learning can help to more adequately prepare graduates for the realities of a career in contemporary music production. In this landscape much of their work may be highly collaborative, rely both on specialist and non-specialist knowledge and involve the extensive use of digital communications between the collaborators.