Strange Sounds

Music, Technology and Culture

By: Timothy D Taylor

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Paperback | 12 October 2001 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
292 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.55

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Digital technology may be the most fundamental change in the history of Western music since the invention of music notation in the ninth century. Sounds can now be recorded with no "performance"-at least in a conventional sense-and then perfectly pieced together as a music composition and endlessly reproduced with no loss of quality. In Strange Sounds, Timothy D. Taylor explains the wonder and anxiety provoked by a technological revolution that began in the 1940s and gathers steam daily. Taylor discusses the cultural role of technology, its use in making music, and the inevitable concerns about "authenticity" that arise from electronic music. Along the way, he provides an excellent introduction to the bewildering plethora of electronic music genres-past and present-from musique concrete to Space Age pop to techno. In the work of artists and composers such as Pierre Henry, Esquivel, Dick Hyman, Stereolab, and Muslimgauze, Taylor finds that human agency is alive and well in electronicmusic. Counter to the claims of anti-technology naysayers, technology, he argues, is always fundamentally and profoundly social, shaped by human desires and practices. Informative and highly entertaining for both music fans and scholars, Strange Sounds is a provocative look at how we perform, listen to, and understand music today.

Industry Reviews

"Tim Taylor deftly and insightfully brings concepts from science and technology studies to bear on contemporary world music and its antecedents. This book makes the machinery of music speak." -- Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley
"This is one of the first books to demonstrate how sound technologies are socially embedded and reappropriated in a variety of musical cultures. Taylor shows that throughout the esoteric history of electronic music up to modern rave, the common issue remains how humans give meaning to technology. Strange Sounds is a fascinating, wide-ranging, and provocative account of the incorporation of technology into one of the most important human social activities--music making.." -- Trevor Pinch, Cornell University
"Weaving together a richly interdisciplinary theoretical Trevor Pinch, Cornell Universityrounding, close attention to musical developments-- including Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrete, "space age" pop, world music sampling, electronic dance music, and the MP3 phenomenon--together with a commitment to understanding how musicians and listeners actually use technology, Strange Sounds will be stimulating and engaging reading for anyone with an interest in the ways culture and technology interact." -- Joseph Auner, SUNY-Stony Brook
"Tim Taylor always makes music social, but never simply replaces the powerful materiality of sound with its sociology. Strange Sounds is not simple ideological readings of musical texts but critical cultural studies of music at its best--work that brings a complex and serious piece of musical history out of the closet and into the lived foreground of music as social practice." -- Steven Feld, New York University
"...Itrange Sounds is a book both ambitious in concept and interesting to read, and it offers many new insights on a fascinating topic." -- Hans-Joachim Braun Universitat der Bundeswehr Hamburg
"Even those without an explicit interest in popular music, digital technology, or subcultures will find his book a satisfying and thought-provoking volume." -- American Historical Review
Volume 16, No. 1
"Strange Sounds is an enjoyable read. The book's user-friendly format is further aided by its organization into various case studies, grouped under three main headings." -- Joanna Demers, University of Southern California, Journal of Popular Music

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