Awards

• Winner of Certificate of Merit in category Best Historical Research in Record Labels or General Recording Topics, Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence.

Overview

Building on ideas from cognitive metaphor theory, Making Sense of Recordings offers a new perspective on record production, music perception, and the aesthetics of recorded sound. It shows how the language about sound is intimately connected to sense-making - both as a reflection of our internal cognitive capacities and as a component of our extended cognitive system. In doing so, the book provides the foundation for a broader understanding of the history of listening, discourses of sound quality, and artistic practices in the age of recorded music. The book will be of interest to anyone who asks how recorded music sounds and why it sounds as it does, and it will be a valuable resource for musicology students and researchers interested in the analysis of sound and the history of listening and record production. Additionally, sound engineers and laptop musicians will benefit from the book's exploration of the connection between embodied experiences and our cognitively processed experiences of recorded sound. The tools provided will be useful to these and other musicians who wish to intuitively interact with recorded or synthesized sound in a manner that more closely resembles the way they think and that makes sense of what they do.

Full Product Details

9780197533901

Table of Contents

Reviews

Walther-Hansen persuasively argues that metaphors, as linked to embodied cognitive processes, are reflective of the actual auditory experience; they thus function as effective tools with which to conceptualize and communicate the nature of sound itself. Thanks to its thorough and insightful examination and systematization of the rich vocabulary of metaphors used to describe recorded sound,Making Sense of Recordings is a go-to book for anyone grappling with articulating the abstruse qualities of sound. * Ragnhild Brovig-Hanssen, Associate Professor of Music, University of Oslo * What do we mean when we talk about the character of recorded sound-its hue, its weight, its feel? In Making Sense of Recordings, Mads Walther-Hansen unpacks the language of recording with insight and clarity. A deft blend of scholarly theory and practical know-how, this book is a boon to both researchers and recordists seeking a deeper understanding of the listener's art. * Albin Zak, Professor of Music, University at Albany *

What do we mean when we talk about the character of recorded sound * its hue, its weight, its feel? In Making Sense of Recordings, Mads Walther-Hansen unpacks the language of recording with insight and clarity. A deft blend of scholarly theory and practical know-how, this book is a boon to both researchers and recordists seeking a deeper understanding of the listener's art. * Walther-Hansen persuasively argues that metaphors, as linked to embodied cognitive processes, are reflective of the actual auditory experience; they thus function as effective tools with which to conceptualize and communicate the nature of sound itself. Thanks to its thorough and insightful examination and systematization of the rich vocabulary of metaphors used to describe recorded sound,Making Sense of Recordings is a go-to book for anyone grappling with articulating the abstruse qualities of sound. * Ragnhild Brovig-Hanssen, Associate Professor of Music, University of Oslo *

Author Information

Mads Walther-Hansen is Associate Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. He writes on music listening, music production, sound technology, and sound analysis, and he has published several articles, chapters, and conference papers on cognition and language in relation to music production that examine the conceptualization of sound and the effect of recording technology on the listening experience. He is editor of the Music Journal Danish Musicology Online and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Imagination (Oxford University Press 2019).

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