Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Victoria Malawey
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Music Analysis ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Spectrographic Analysis ◽  
Linguistic Approaches ◽  
Music Recordings

Arguing for the importance of vocal delivery in music analysis to better understand signification in popular music recordings, this chapter presents a conceptual model for analysis, places vocal elements along a continuum of dimensionality, and argues for the use of transcription and spectrographic analysis. It provides an overview of various disciplinary understandings of voice, ranging from the sonic materiality of sound, literal phonological and linguistic approaches, to more abstract philosophical and literary approaches. Finally, complexities to understanding the signification of voice, while vexing, also compel a systematic investigation of the ways in which we understand voices, and the elements that contribute to the richness of vocal signification.

Popular music reaction videos: Reactivity, creator labor, and the performance of listening online

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482091854
Author(s):  
Byrd McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Affective Experience ◽  
Music Recordings

In popular music reaction videos, performers on YouTube—called “creators”—record their reactions to popular music, filming themselves as they listen to music recordings and watch music videos. The profitability and appeal of popular music reaction videos can be explained by a quality I call reactivity. Reactivity describes the approach that creators take to listening, as they heighten and exaggerate their affective experience of music media. Reactivity also describes their goals for creating these reaction videos, which they hope will provoke subsequent reactions among viewers. Reactions among their viewers translate into more views, shares, and ultimately more power for the creators. By drawing on observations and interviews with nine creators, I demonstrate how reactivity can enable creators of color and queer creators to counter problematic and dominant forms of listening to popular music, while also enabling privileged creators to treat exploitative listening as a kind of virtuosic act of consumption.

Synthesis, or Why Covers of Elliott Smith Songs Don’t Work

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Victoria Malawey
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Singing Voice ◽  
Technological Mediation

As a means of synthesis, this chapter applies elements from the conceptual model (engaging elements of pitch, prosody, quality, and technological mediation) in analyses of three recordings by Elliott Smith—“Between the Bars” (1997), “Twilight” (2004), and “Roman Candle” (1994)—and their respective cover versions by Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield (2015). For some songs recorded by artists whose voices connote a particular brand of longing or desperation, the same quality of emotion becomes impossible to convey through other singing voices, suggesting that the quality of emotion is inextricably linked to the alterity of the singing voice. Furthermore, the connection between quality of singing voices and quality of emotion informs listeners’ constructions of authenticity in popular music.

The Establishment of the Virtual Performance Space in Rock

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALLAN F. MOORE ◽  
RUTH DOCKWRAY
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Sound Sources ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
Temporal Continuity ◽  
Music Recordings ◽  
Geographical Locations ◽  
The Way

AbstractAnalysis of the spatial elements of popular music recordings can be made by way of the ‘sound-box’, a concept that acknowledges the way sound sources are perceived to exist in four dimensions: laterality, register, prominence, and temporal continuity. By late 1972 producers working across a range of styles and in different geographical locations had adopted a normative positioning of sound sources across these dimensions. In 1965 no such norm existed. This article contextualizes the notion of the sound-box within academic discourse on popular music and explores the methodology employed by a research project that addressed the gradual coming-into-existence of the norm, which the project defined as the diagonal mix. A taxonomy of types of mix is offered, and a chronology of the adoption of the diagonal mix in rock is presented.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document