The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music

— —

Robert Fink (Professor of Musicology, Professor of Musicology, University of California Los Angeles) Melinda Latour (Rumsey Family Assistant Professor of Musicology, Rumsey Family Assistant Professor of Musicology, Tufts University)

The Relentless Pursuit of Tone

Timbre in Popular Music

Robert Fink (Professor of Musicology, Professor of Musicology, University of California Los Angeles), Melinda Latour (Rumsey Family Assistant Professor of Musicology, Rumsey Family Assistant Professor of Musicology, Tufts University), Zachary Wallmark (Assistant Professor and Chair of Musicology, Assistant Professor and Chair of Musicology, Southern Methodist University Meadows School of the Arts)

$304

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Oxford University Press Inc
09 October 2018

Theory of music & musicology; Easy listening, MOR music; Rock & Pop music

"The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music assembles a broad spectrum of contemporary perspectives on how ""sound"" functions in an equally wide array of popular music. Ranging from the twang of country banjoes and the sheen of hip-hop strings to the crunch of amplified guitars and the thump of subwoofers on the dance floor, this volume bridges the gap between timbre, our name for the purely acoustic characteristics of sound waves, and tone, an emergent musical construct that straddles the borderline between the perceptual and the political. Essays engage with the entire history of popular music as recorded sound, from the 1930s to the present day, under four large categories. ""Genre"" asks how sonic signatures define musical identities and publics; ""Voice"" considers the most naturalized musical instrument, the human voice, as racial and gendered signifier, as property or likeness, and as raw material for algorithmic perfection through software; ""Instrument"" tells stories of the way some iconic pop music machines-guitars, strings, synthesizers-got (or lost) their distinctive sounds; ""Production"" then puts it all together, asking structural questions about what happens in a recording studio, what is produced (sonic cartoons? rockist authenticity? empty space?) and what it all might mean."

Edited by: Robert Fink (Professor of Musicology Professor of Musicology University of California Los Angeles), Melinda Latour (Rumsey Family Assistant Professor of Musicology, Rumsey Family Assistant Professor of Musicology, Tufts University), Zachary Wallmark (Assistant Professor and Chair of Musicology, Assistant Professor and Chair of Musicology, Southern Methodist University Meadows School of the Arts)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 160mm, Width: 236mm, Spine: 31mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780199985227
ISBN 10: 0199985227
Pages: 408
Publication Date: 09 October 2018
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Robert Fink is Professor of Musicology at UCLA and a past President of IASPM-US. He focuses on music after 1965, with special interests in minimalism, popular music, and the intersection of cultural and music-analytical theory. He has published widely in musicological journals, and is the author of Repeating Ourselves (2005), a book-length study of the minimal music of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and others as a cultural reflection of American consumer society in the mass-media age. Melinda Latour is Rumsey Family Assistant Professor of Musicology at Tufts University. She has received numerous awards, including the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, and the Newberry Library École nationale des chartes Exchange Fellowship. Her work appears in the Journal of Musicology (2015), the Revue de musicologie (2016), and the Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music (forthcoming). Zachary Wallmark is Assistant Professor of Musicology at SMU Meadows School of the Arts. His research explores the contribution of timbre to affective response, aesthetic judgment, and empathy in popular music and jazz, using methods from musicology and the cognitive sciences. He is currently at work on a monograph tentatively titled Nothing but Noise: Timbre and Musical Meaning at the Edge (Oxford). Wallmark is the recipient of an NEH Fellowship (2017-18).

Reviews for The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music

All in all, the contributions of this groundbreaking volume are extremely inspiring. Because of its variety of topics and historical information as well as approaches and concepts, it is likely that the book will be used as a compendium to the study of tone, timbre and sound in popular music that, at the same time, will stimulate manifold new research. -- Martin Pfleiderer, Transposition This wide-ranging and ear-opening collection explores the often rich and dynamic space between tone and timbre. Engaging diverse repertories from a variety of interpretive angles, this volume provides a wonderful survey that demonstrates how pursuing the tone can be crucial to understanding popular music. -- John Covach, Director, University of Rochester Institute for Popular Music, Professor of Theory, Eastman School of Music The Relentless Pursuit of Tone assembles a kaleidoscope of methods for studying timbre in popular music. Its chapters offer new approaches to the study of instruments, voices and technologies; studio production; listening practices and audience reception; music making - whether composed or improvised; performance; aesthetics; and music law. If you are interested in the relationship between sound and music, this collection is essential reading. -- Jonathan Sterne, author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format and The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction