Popular music

Mixing as a performance: creative approaches to the popular music mix process

A common goal when mixing popular music is to entice an emotional response from the listener, this is intriguing as the actuality of mixing is varied and dependant on personalised technological preferences. This paper theorises that a mix as a performance practice facilitates a connection to more creative paradigms of mixing, and technological development influences possible creative practices. Subsequently, historical and professional evidence of the mix as a performance state is presented and the reader is informed of process via videos of the author’s professional mixing practice. To triangulate the approach, rationales regarding creativity and kinaesthetic imagery are referenced throughout.

Meanings of Spatial Formation in Recorded Sound

This paper investigates the importance of forming the virtual space in recorded music. With a production-analytical model called the sound-space I seek to draw attention to the ways in which spatiality in recorded sound affects interpretation of meaning in music. The sound-space comprises both the four-dimensional spatiotemporal organization of previous models for sound analysis, and the ways in which that organization emphasizes meanings in recorded music. In order to demonstrate how the sound-space can be applied in production I have recorded and mixed a song and compared it to a previous version that was produced before the work on the sound-space concept started.

Technostalgia in New Recording Projects by the 1980s ‘Dunedin Sound’ Band The Chills

This article explores the confluence of nostalgic discourses about popular music and recording and production in practice. It draws on the authors’ involvement in recent recording projects by the band The Chills, whose 1980’s and early 1990’s outputs are credited as being highly influential in the indie rock genre. The article offers new perspectives on the broader context through which technical decisions are made in recording processes, and articulates how these decisions can be understood as compromises that reflect tensions between nostalgic ideological rhetoric, and the demands of production practices in contemporary commercial contexts.

From LA to Lisbon: the “LA Sound” as a referential production sound in Rui Veloso’s recording career

In the 1980s, a distinctive production sound came to be associated with musicians, producers and sound engineers working in Los Angeles, including, notably, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan. The “LA Sound” became a reference for musicians and sound technicians around the world. Rui Veloso, a Portuguese singer/song-writer, tried to emulate it in his records over three decades, facing several difficulties because of the lack of studio technology and professional experience. This article regards performance in the studio and the relations involved in the construction of distinctive conceptualizations of production sound in popular music when displaced.