The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making RecordsAfter a hundred years of recording, the process of making records is still mysterious to most people who listen to them. Records hold a fundamental place in the dynamics of modern musical life, but what do they represent? Are they documents? Snapshots? Artworks? Fetishes? Commodities? Conveniences? The Poetics of Rock is a fascinating exploration of recording consciousness and compositional process from the perspective of those who make records. In it, Albin Zak examines the crucial roles played by recording technologies in the construction of rock music and shows how songwriters, musicians, engineers, and producers contribute to the creative project, and how they all leave their mark on the finished work. Zak shapes an image of the compositional milieu by exploring its elements and discussing the issues and concerns faced by artists. Using their testimony to illuminate the nature of record making and of records themselves, he shows that the art of making rock records is a collaborative compositional process that includes many skills and sensibilities not traditionally associated with musical composition. Zak connects all the topics--whether technical, conceptual, aesthetic, or historical--with specific artists and recordings and illustrates them with citations from artists and with musical examples. In lively and engaging prose, The Poetics of Rock brilliantly illustrates how the musical energy from a moment of human expression translates into a musical work wrought in sound. |
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... sound of Little Richard's manic howl . The problem with Pat Boone's cover ... drum machine , " writes Sting about introducing a new song to his fellow ... sound and listeners experience both simultaneously , songwriting and recording have ...
... sound of Little Richard's manic howl . The problem with Pat Boone's cover ... drum machine , " writes Sting about introducing a new song to his fellow ... sound and listeners experience both simultaneously , songwriting and recording have ...
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Contents
5 | |
28 | |
Sound as Form | 52 |
Places and Tools | 101 |
Tracking and Mixing | 132 |
Engineers and Producers | 167 |
Resonance | 188 |
Notes | 203 |
Glossary | 225 |
Engineer and Producer Credits | 229 |
Recordings Cited | 241 |
Bibliography | 245 |
Index | 251 |
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acoustic guitar aesthetic album ambience ambient image arrangement artists associations Atlantic aural band bass Beatles Brian Brian Eno Capitol capture character Columbia compositional compression compressor configuration console create creative Daniel Lanois demos develop drum sound dynamic echo effect electric electronic elements engineers and producers example frequency Geffen George Martin groove Ibid idea instruments interaction Jackson Jerry Wexler Karl Wallinger layer Lennon listener live performance Love McCartney ments microphone Mitchell Froom musical performance musicians overall overdubbing particular Paul Pet Sounds Peter Gabriel Phil Spector play recording process Recording Sessions recordists relationships resonant rhetorical rhythm rhythmic Rick Rubin rock and roll rock records Rolling Stones Sam Phillips says sense shape signal simply snare song song's songwriters sonic sound recording space stereo Steve studio style stylistic tape techniques textural thing timbral timbre tion track vocal voice Warner Bros Wexler York
Popular passages
Page 18 - The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced.
Page 18 - Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.
Page 40 - Why can't music go out in the same way it comes in to a man, without having to crawl over a fence of sounds, thoraxes, catguts, wire, wood, and brass? Consecutive fifths are as harmless as blue laws compared with the relentless tyranny of the "media.
Page 18 - ... the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.
Page 45 - Ideally, it is possible to elude the interpreters in another way, by making works of art whose surface is so unified and clean, whose momentum is so rapid, whose address is so direct that the work can be ... just what it is.
Page 96 - Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me; I once was lost but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see.
Page 214 - The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram," in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory and The Film Sense, ed.
Page 18 - ... for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic
Page 39 - It is the most romantic of all the arts — one might almost say, the only genuinely romantic one — for its sole subject is the infinite.