Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music

Author:   Joanna Demers (Associate Professor of Musicology, Associate Professor of Musicology, Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
ISBN:  

9780195387650


Pages:   216
Publication Date:   05 August 2010
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
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Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music


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Overview

"Electronic music since 1980 has splintered into a dizzying assortment of genres and subgenres, communities and subcultures. Given the ideological differences among academic, popular, and avant-garde electronic musicians, is it possible to derive an aesthetic theory that accounts for this variety? And is there even a place for aesthetics in twenty-first-century culture? This book explores genres ranging from techno to electroacoustic music, from glitch to drone music, and from dub to drones, and maintains that culturally and historically informed aesthetic theory is not only possible but indispensable for understanding electronic music. The abilities of electronic music to use preexisting sounds and to create new sounds are widely known. This book proceeds from this starting point to consider how electronic music changes the way we listen not only to music, but to sound itself. The common trait in recent experimental electronic music is a concern with whether sound, in itself, bears meaning. The use of previously undesirable materials like noise, field recordings, and extremely quiet sounds has contributed to electronic music's destruction of the ""musical frame"", the conventions that used to set apart music from the outside world. In the void created by the disappearance of the musical frame, different philosophies for listening have emerged. Some electronic music genres insist upon the inscrutability and abstraction of sound. Others maintain that sound functions as a sign pointing to concepts or places beyond the work. But all share an approach towards listening that departs fundamentally from the expectations that have governed music listening in the West for the previous five centuries."

Full Product Details

Author:   Joanna Demers (Associate Professor of Musicology, Associate Professor of Musicology, Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.40cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 15.60cm
Weight:   0.476kg
ISBN:  

9780195387650


ISBN 10:   0195387651
Pages:   216
Publication Date:   05 August 2010
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction Part One: Sign Chapter One: Listening to Signs in Post-Schaefferian Electroacoustic music Chapter Two: Material As Sign In Electronica Part Two: Object Chapter Three: Minimal Objects In Microsound Chapter Four: Maximal Objects in Drone Music, Dub Techno, and Noise Part Three: Situation Chapter Five: Site in Ambient, Soundscape, and Field Recordings Chapter Six: Genre, Experimentalism, and the Musical Frame Conclusion Notes Glossary Bibliography Discography

Reviews

a thought-provoking and significant contribution to our understanding of the aesthetics of electronic music. * Peter Manning, Music and Letters *


<br> A well-written, detailed, and thought-provoking reflection on the nature of a wide variety of contemporary electronic experimental works/ genres, and the theories of perception and listening that connect them. -Richard Chartier, sound artist <br><br> Lucid and surprising, Listening Through the Noise deftly traverses the eclectic world of experimental electronic music. Demers engages central problems in the aesthetics of electronic sound: To refer or not to refer? To mean or be? To situate or dislocate? It will change the way you listen. -Brian Kane, Yale University <br><br>


Author Information

Joanna Demers writes on aesthetics, technology, and intellectual property in post-1945 music. She is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Southern California.

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