Gear

Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies

Eliot Bates, Samantha Bennett

$150

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

MIT Press
24 June 2025

Technology: general issues

A critical examination of the twenty-first century fetishization of professional audio technologies, and how it led to a new social formation- gear cultures.

A critical examination of the twenty-first century fetishization of professional audio technologies, and how it led to a new social formation- gear cultures.

Gear- mixing consoles, outboard effects processors, microphones. These are professional studio recording-related technological objects-the tools of the recording industry-yet their omnipresence in the broader music industries and prosumer markets transcends the entrenched pro audio engineer guild. In Gear- Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies, authors Eliot Bates and Samantha Bennett ask- How does gear become gear? Why is it fetishized? And how is it even relevant in the predominantly digital twenty-first-century music technology landscape?

This multisited, multicountry, multiplatform, and multiscalar study focuses on gear in the present day. The authors trace the life of gear from its underlying materialities, components, and interfaces to its manufacturing processes, its staging in sites including trade shows and message fora, and its reception through (gear) canons, heritage, and obdurance. This book implements a meticulous multimode methodology drawing upon more than twenty-five firsthand long-form interviews with audio industry professionals-including gear designers, users, and publishers-as well as new findings drawn from multisited fieldwork, online discourse analysis, and visual ethnography.

Gear examines the present-day prevalence of gear and the existence of its surrounding passionate, competitive, and sometimes bizarre gear cultures.

By: Eliot Bates, Samantha Bennett
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262551854
ISBN 10: 0262551853
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 24 June 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Acknowledgments Part I: Gear Cultures 1 Gear 2 Fetishization Part II: Materializing Gear 3 Extractivism 4 Manufacturing 5 Interface Part III: Staging Gear 6 Event 7 Print 8 Online Part IV: Encountering Gear 9 Agency 10 Testing 11 Organization Part V: Gear Attitudes 12 Secrets 13 Heritage 14 Obdurance 15 Conclusion Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

Eliot Bates is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the CUNY Graduate Center. They have contributed as a performer, composer, and/or recordist/engineer to more than ninety albums produced in the US, UK, Turkey, and Italy, as well as several TV series and feature films. Samantha Bennett is Chair of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) and Professor of Music at the Australian National University. She is the author of Modern Records, Maverick Methods and Peepshow and coeditor of Critical Approaches to the Production of Music and Sound