ABSTRACT
The production of recordings is a field of study in its own right. The practice of making recordings is understood, and repeatedly addressed;1 the quality of production decisions is also addressed in various ways2 and technological developments thereby considered. The aesthetics of production have a very obvious voice, in that productions are valued (or not) by virtue of the fact of being heard, but they seem to have no evaluative voice, other than through discussion of the normative practices associated with particular genres,3 practices which are frequently taken for granted4 and can be (but are not necessarily) based on technological limitations. None of these areas of study would qualify as musicology, however, for musicology addresses musical decisions which have been, or can be, made, and the consequences of such decisions within one or another frame of reference. A musicology of production, then, would need to address the musical consequences of production decisions, or the consequences attendant on the shifting relationship between production decisions and the decisions of musicians about their performative practice. Production decisions are made principally by producers (who may also be the musicians involved in a production), and secondarily by engineers who are responsible for the decisions which mediate what musicians do to what listeners hear. It is with the (musical) results of these decisions that a musicology of production would be concerned.
