ABSTRACT
Research on record production almost always reproduces a crucial misunderstanding about the material nature of recorded musical communications, namely, that when we listen to records we hear distinct acoustic phenomena-like kick drums, electric guitars, sequenced claps, singing, et cetera-rather than a single acoustic phenomenon, produced by speaker and headphone technology, designed to trick the human hearing apparatus into believing it detects the presence of distinct acoustic phenomena. Hearing Led Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’ (1971), for instance, one might think they hear a kick drum, a snare drum, hi-hats, cymbals, rack and floor toms, an electric guitar or two, electric bass, some blues harp and Robert Plant’s plaintive vocal wails. But what they actually hear is a single acoustic phenomenon, a single sound, produced by speakers and headphones, designed to trick their auditory apparatus into believing it detects the presence of numerous distinct acoustic phenomena (like kick drums, and snare drums, and a blues harp, and so on). And the same goes for less figurative records, of course. Listening to Deepchild’s ‘Neukoln Burning’ (2012), for instance, we probably think we hear a sequenced kick, design-intensive synths, slowed vocals and numerous other ‘non-veridic’ sounds.1 What we actually hear, though, is a single sound that portrays those sounds. In overlooking-or, perhaps, in simply not realizing-this basic fact, analysts mistake the subject of a recorded musical communication (i.e., the performances and broader musical contents recordists use sound to portray) for communication itself. In turn, the artistry of recording practice-the myriad musical things that recordists do-are kept from the scholarly record, except perhaps as a mere ‘technical support’ for the ‘true arts’ of performance and composition. It’s as though an exciting new field has emerged that wants to study, say, fashion photography, but only in terms of how models pose.
