Let me place on your radar screen an issue that for most people goes by unnoticed. Every day it is there for all of us to see and hear? if we can just notice it for that first time. This is the rising use of media, the use of media in abusive, penetrating ways. Our freedom to choose whether or not we consume that media is taken away from us. & br / & br /With their business model coming under pressure from shrinking audiences, media companies seek to regain their footing by forcing people to consume TV and other digital content outside the home by turning public and private settings into captive-
The first book devoted to power electronics, written by artists, fans, and critics. Power electronics is a genre of industrial or 'noise' music that utilises feedback and synthesizers to produce an intense, loud, challenging sound. Fight Your Own War is the first ever English-language book primarily devoted to power electronics, bringing together essays and reviews that explore the current state of the genre, from early development through to live performance, listener experience, artist motivation, gender and subcultures, such as 'Japanoise'.
In 1915, Thomas Edison proclaimed that he could record a live performance and reproduce it perfectly, shocking audiences who found themselves unable to tell whether what they were hearing was an Edison Diamond Disc or a flesh-and-blood musician. Today, the equation is reversed. Whereas Edison proposed that a real performance could be rebuilt with absolute perfection, Pro Tools and digital samplers now allow musicians and engineers to create the illusion of performances that never were. In between lies a century of sonic exploration into the balance between the real and the represented. Tracing the contours of this history, Greg Milner takes us through the major breakthroughs and glorious failures in the art and science of recording. An American soldier monitoring Nazi radio transmissions stumbles onto the open yet revolutionary secret of magnetic tape. Japanese and Dutch researchers build a first-generation digital audio format and watch as their "compact disc" is marketed by the music industry as the second coming of Edison yet derided as heretical by analog loyalists. The music world becomes addicted to volume in the nineties and fights a self-defeating "loudness war" to get its fix. From Les Paul to Phil Spector to King Tubby, from vinyl to pirated CDs to iPods, Milner's Perfecting Sound Forever pulls apart musical history to answer a crucial question: Should a recording document reality as faithfully as possible, or should it improve upon or somehow transcend the music it records? The answers he uncovers will change the very way we think about music.
(Book). The digital revolution has enabled the creation and distribution of music in ways previously unimagined. Paradoxically, it has also made possible better and better recordings of less and less substance. Artists, engineers, and producers have begun to raise questions about the balance between the profoundly human undertaking that is the creation of music and the ever-more-antiseptic means by which it is translated into recordings. Less Noise, More Soul: The Search for Balance in the Art, Technology, and Commerce of Music brings together original essays by a select group of industry professionals, many of them award winners, who share a wealth of experience, passion, and insight into where popular music has been, where it currently finds itself, and where it's going. The book is designed to be a portable vehicle for generating discussion: not too long, and replete with the poignant, thought-provoking commentary of many "brand-name" players in the industry. Perfect for the office or the college classroom, Less Noise, More Soul will enhance the understanding of music as a medium and a business for students, artists, producers, and other industry professionals. Contributors include Bob Ludwig, Adam Ayan, Kenny Aronoff, Lydia Hutchinson, and more.
The contributors to Sound Alignments explore the myriad forms of popular music in Asia during the Cold War, showing how it took on new meanings and significance as it traveled across the region and forged and challenged alliances, revolutions, and countercultures.
George Lucas was a rebel, refusing to make films in the style of the dying studio system, relentlessly pushing the technology of the day, and almost alone in understanding the potential of merchandising; but he was a rebel who built an empire. From the staggering unexpected success of the original Star Wars in 1977, when cinema attendances exceeded 20 million for the first time since 1963, through The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, then the 'dark times', the 16 years leading to the blockbusting prequel trilogy - this is the fascinating story of how it all happened. Life-long Star Wars fan and movie journalist Brian J. Robb edited the official Star Wars magazine for a decade and visited the sets of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in Australia (observing director George Lucas at work), as well as the famous Skywalker Ranch. He has interviewed many of the stars and crew of all six Star Wars movies.
Gross explores the playright's fascination with dangerous and disorderly forms of utterance -- rumor, slander, insult, vituperation, and curse -- and how this generates an immense verbal energy in the poetry and on the stage. More broadly, it also reflects a cultural obsession with the power of defamation in Renaissance England.
Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Winner of the Acoustical Society of America's 2023 Science Communication Award “[A] glorious guide to the miracle of life’s sound.” —The New York Times Book Review A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animal groups and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. In mammoth ivory flutes from Paleolithic caves, violins in modern concert halls, and electronic music in earbuds, we learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans, and loud city streets, and shows that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, just, and beautiful. The appreciation of the beauty and brokenness of sound is therefore an important guide in today’s convulsions and crises of change and inequity. Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, belong, and act.
Classical music in 1940s America had a cultural relevance and ubiquitousness that is hard to imagine today. No other war mobilized and instrumentalized culture in general and music in particular so totally, so consciously, and so unequivocally as World War II. Through author Annegret Fauser's in-depth, engaging, and encompassing discussion in context of this unique period in American history, Sounds of War brings to life the people and institutions that created, performed, and listened to this music.
