Call for submissions - Organised Sound 27/1 Commercial Music and the Electronic Music Studio: Influence, Borrowings and Language
Ricardo Dal Farra
ORGANISED SOUND
Call for Submissions - Volume 27, Number 1
Issue thematic title: Commercial Music and the Electronic Music Studio: Influence, Borrowings and Language
Date of Publication: April 2022
Publishers: Cambridge University Press
Issue co-ordinators: Jason Fick, Oregon State University jason...@oregonstate.edu
Margaret Schedel, Stony Brook University margaret...@stonybrook.edu
Brandon Vaccaro, University of Massachusetts, Lowell brandon...@uml.edu
Deadline for submission: 19 May 2021
In the twenty years since Organised Sound first dedicated an issue to investigating relationships between music technology and popular music, critical interdisciplinary research and practice has uncovered ample cross-pollinations between electroacoustic and commercial media. When we consider and document these influences, we draw on a variety of analytic methods and approaches to the semiotics of music in general, and electronic music, in particular, that have emerged and developed in parallel for electroacoustic music, popular music, audio pedagogy, and sound in film/television/games. The emphasis on timbre and sonic identity in electroacoustic music has long been a style-defining characteristic, and forms of popular music and sound design today, now more than ever, rely on timbre morphing through the use of technology, making electroacoustic musicology applicable across genres, and presentation formats. How do these approaches to analysis and semiotics shape our discussion of these borrowings and influence between electroacoustic music and more commercial music?
As we strive for inclusive practices among these disciplines, how have limitations and powers of oppression affected electroacoustic and popular media? What does a social justice approach to the study of electroacoustic music and commercial media production look like? How can education/training in both areas strive towards diversity? Stated otherwise, are there any stigmas/limiting factors for the hip hop artist to break into electroacoustic music or vice-versa? Do we need to reconfigure our definition of electroacoustic in order to recognize people with similar creative instincts, much as George Lewis redefined black experimental artistry that had previously been confined to jazz?[1]
The ubiquity of software and hardware for music technology has not only extended the range of possibilities, but increased access to music making with technology. As a result, we see increased borrowing between electroacoustic and pop music. Children make beats and soundscapes on iPads using found sounds, Nine Inch Nails uses Tom Erbe’s VST Spectral Shaper, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith performs on a Buchla Easel, Stevie Wonder writes three albums on the Tonto Synth, and Radiohead samples Paul Lansky. A large percentage of sales of GRM Tools is within the popular music industry, and this year the band Soul Wax released Deewee Sessions, an album created entirely on the EMS Synthi 100 that they borrowed from the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM) in Ghent.[2]
Recording engineers are often simultaneously well versed in experimental and commercial audio practices. Mainstream visual media incorporate gesture-based sound sequences; and TV, games, and VR platforms depend on immersive audio strategies developed in more academic settings. Artists today freely move between writing popular music, sound design, intermedia art, and electroacoustic music, defying boundaries between the older definitions of modern composer, songwriter, technologist, sound designer, etc. As these influences are expected to increase, the lines between commercial and experimental, music and art, art and science, and cultural studies and practice will continue to cross-pollinate.
We are especially interested in collaborative articles that pair electroacoustic-musicologists and practitioners of commercial music, or musicologists who focus on popular music with electroacoustic composers.
Suggested themes include but are not restricted to:
- The ways in which issues like intention, authenticity, and tradition have influenced approaches and models to electroacoustic and commercial music
- How technologies available to electroacoustic composers and to popular musicians shaped or limited models and analysis
- Impact of critical listening and application of electroacoustic terminology on commercial music and vice versa
- Collaborative processes and interdisciplinary research facilitating new genres and approaches to listening and producing, particularly on overcoming these differences in language and musical abstractions
- Raising electroacoustic music’s impact on pedagogical practices in commercial media training
- Fostering collaborative models of practice and critical analysis
- A cultural organology of pedals, euro-rack modules, etc. and their use in EA and commercial music
- Incorporating social justice in electroacoustic music/pop culture/education
- Academic or retro technology in electroacoustic music/pop applications today
- With so many analytical paradigms to talking about sound, what comes with it when we develop blind spots within our own expertise
Furthermore, as always, submissions unrelated to the theme but relevant to the journal’s areas of focus are welcome at any time.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 19 May 2021
SUBMISSION FORMAT:
Notes for Contributors and further details can be obtained from the inside back cover of published issues of Organised Sound or at the following url:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayMoreInfo?jid=OSO&type=ifc (and download the pdf)
Properly formatted email submissions and general queries should be sent to: o...@dmu.ac.uk, not to the guest editors.
Hard copy of articles and images and other material (e.g., sound and audio-visual files, etc. – normally max. 15’ sound files or 8’ movie files), both only when requested, should be submitted to:
Prof. Leigh Landy
Organised Sound
Clephan Building
De Montfort University
Leicester LE1 9BH, UK.
Accepted articles will be published online via FirstView after copy editing prior to the paper version of the journal’s publication.
Editor: Leigh Landy; Associate Editor: James Andean
Founding Editors: Ross Kirk, Tony Myatt and Richard Orton†
Regional Editors: Ricardo Dal Farra, Jøran Rudi, Margaret Schedel, Barry Truax, Ian Whalley, David Worrall, Lonce Wyse
International Editorial Board: Marc Battier, Manuella Blackburn, Joel Chadabe, Alessandro Cipriani, Simon Emmerson, Kenneth Fields, Rajmil Fischman, Eduardo Miranda, Rosemary Mountain, Garth Paine, Mary Simoni, Martin Supper, Daniel Teruggi
[1] Lewis, George E. A power stronger than itself: The AACM and American experimental music. University of Chicago Press, 2008.