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  • Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures
  • Simon Zagorski-Thomas
Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures. Ed. by Paul D. Greene and Thomas Porcello. pp. viii + 288. (Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Conn., 2005, $65.95/$24.95. ISBN 0-8195-6516-4/-6517-2.)

This book is yet another welcome pointer to the recognition of the study of record production and music technology in contemporary musicology. Whether it's the funding of CHARM (Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music) by the AHRC in the UK, the success of the Art of Record Production (ARP) Conference in London in September 2005, or the proliferation of articles, conference reports, and books on the technological mediation of music, it's gratifying to see that musicologists of all disciplines are moving beyond simplistic characterizations of technology in music. While ethnomusicology has acknowledged the complexities of technological mediation, it has tended to do so by reference to opposite extremes. The cliché of music technology as the choice-flattening weapon of the forces of globalization is contrasted with it as the empowering tool of localized communities via the global village on the internet.

The book is an example of a growing trend that seeks to draw attention to the subtleties and complexities of the effects of technological changes on music in the past century or so. The range of ethnographic studies extends across six continents (although Europe is only approached tangentially through Harris Berger and Cornelia Fales's examination of heavy metal guitar timbres) and offers some fascinating insights into the ways that electronics are used to manipulate sound in various culturally specific musical environments.

Several chapters seek to develop terminology and conceptual models that can be applied more broadly. Some, notably Ingemar Grandin's concept of the 'extended stage', seem to be extremely useful analytical tools that may help to prevent oversimplified explanations of the way that commercial pressures and technological developments affect musical activity in different musical cultures. Paul D. Greene, in his introduction, proposes a wider definition of sound engineering: 'as the practice—by individuals, groups, institutions, corporations, or governments—of using sound technologies to engineer meanings, functions, and social strategies in musical cultures and in the world at large for strategic, cultural, aesthetic, political and economic ends' (p. 4). This definition of sound engineering would presumably include all human-generated sound (music, speech, audible paralanguage) in all possible forms (recordings, broadcasts, and live performance) that involves any technology from a log drum to a computer. While I can see his point, it may be counter-productive to propose this extension to a term with a pre-existing and useful meaning when expressions such as 'technological mediation' and 'musicking' create less ambiguity.

Many of the authors in the book have developed ideas that should be considered with reference to Serge Lacasse's concept of 'staging'. Greene describes this as using technology 'to enact corporeal simulations in the form of [End Page 694] technologically constructed or technologically inflected spaces, bodies and voices.' (p. 14). This is an intriguing aspect of these studies, but there is a further dimension to this approach that I feel provides a potentially rich vein of further research. While the staging of a voice in an intimate 'space' in a recording through close microphone placement and the use of compression and EQ will obviously be used to enhance the expressive meaning in the music (e.g. whispering a love song in my ear), staging is just as often used to facilitate the functionality of recorded music. Thus, the decision in Brazil to record the percussion for the Sambas de Enredo album with a smaller group of percussionists in a studio rather than with the entire bateria in a circus tent (the standard practice before the 1998 carnival) also creates a more intimate sound. The reasoning, though, is functionality: to make the recording work better in clubs and parties by making the rhythmic pulse clearer.

Different musical traditions will develop recording and mixing practice in different ways to highlight functional elements. The forward staging of percussion can be seen to be occurring with culturally inflected variations in many forms of music...

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