#theorycomp tag

[caroloftheshells]

lit masterpost

as “a music theorist” a lot of what i read is basically a really specific slice of sociology, which may be of interest to folks here, so: here’s my reading list for comprehensive exams (skimming / intros & conclusions for now and i’m going to try and do more of a deep dive later). starred stuff is on zee lib btw (which, if you recall, still exists but under that new format where you sign up for a personal domain link). non-starred stuff might be on there too; idk (haven’t checked yet; i have some of these in physical form from my library). this stuff is all about genre theory, popular/classical crossover, music recording/production, and economics.

*adorno - current of music

*adorno - introduction to the sociology of music

*attali - noise: the political economy of music

*benjamin - “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” [a classic!]

born - rationalizing culture: ircam, boulez, and the institutionalization of the musical avant-garde

born & haworth - “from microsound to vaporwave: internet-mediated musics, online methods, and genre” [really good. plenty of old vaporwave bloggers on tumblr.edu make cameos, which is entertaining, but it’s basically about the construction of diff electronic genres around diff aesthetic values, methods of file-sharing, & community organizational properties]

brackett - categorizing sound: genre and twentieth-century popular music

burgess - the history of music production

chapman - “the one-man band and entrepreneurial selfhood in neoliberal culture”

*drott - “the end(s) of genre”

echard - psychedelic popular music

*eisenberg - the recording angel: music, records, and culture from aristotle to zappa

fabbri - “a theory of musical genres: two applications”

fellezs - birds of fire: jazz, rock, funk, and the creation of fusion

frow - genre

gjerdingen & perrott - “scanning the dial: the rapid recognition of music genres”

holt - genre in popular music

johnson - “analyzing genre in post-millennial popular music”

*kittler - discourse networks 1800/1900

*kraft - stage to studio: musicians and the sound revolution, 1890-1950

kronengold - living genres in late modernity: american music of the long 1970s

moore - “neoliberalism and the musical entrepreneur” [side note. spellcheck did not recognize the term “neoliberalism,” lol??]

negus - music genres and corporate cultures

*ritchey - composing capital: classical music in the neoliberal era

robin - “balance problems: neoliberalism and new music in the american university and ensemble”

robin - industry: bang on a can and new music in the marketplace

sterne - the audible past: cultural origins of sound reproduction

waksman - this ain’t the summer of love: conflict and crossover in heavy metal and punk

*williams - marxism and literature

#theorycomp tag #carol overreacts to life

[caroloftheshells]

the thing is. it is indeed nprcore, and not JUST because of what music the individual tastemakers at npr/tiny desk happened to like at the time, and not JUST because npr is public radio whose money comes from the corporation for public broadcasting + whose member stations are owned by nonprofits w/educational ties, but ALSO because classical instrumentalism and presentational format and no audience noise and Verified Check Mark sound-source mapping and loop pedal grooves and "this performance contains explicit language and may not be suitable for all audiences" and concert black and jeans/flannel and travel mugs and left the camera running but also cut to somebody's hands shredding a flute etc.

#this is also music pedagogy #carol overreacts to life #theorycomp tag

[caroloftheshells]

i think the thing about arcade fire is i find almost all of their music that i've heard to be ridiculously corny with a few tracks being, like, ok enough to transcend the inherent corn for me (sprawl ii). but they seemed to be the most iconic early/mid 2010s musicians to like successfully exist at the nexus of mumfordish stompclap, singer-songwriter-"literary"-bon-iver/fleetfoxism that was still commercially distributed (pitchfork/nprcore), and the thing people typically mean by "indie classical" which was individual orchestrators/arrangers/composers getting employed in the brooklyn-centric ymusic cinematic universe (or sort of the next wave of That Stuff after bang on a can - "cool" and "daring" classical musicians with portfolio careers getting booked in traditional concert venues).

generalizing here, but i think the majority of artistic projects* in the latter two categories would not touch stompclap with a ten foot pole for pretty clear reasons (metric & formal inflexibility, communal participation vibes, incompatibility with venue, lower emphasis on virtuosity, boomy wall-of-sound mixing, anthemic/prescriptive affect vs. idiosyncratic/expressive affect, etc). and even if the musical "type of thing" was similar in some fashion like body percussion or chorused vocals etc they would go about it in a way that was broadly uncharacteristic of stompclap. if you're tune-yards for example (someone i would situate in the npr-core part of this fake continuum) then you're not going to actually use a choir effect that mimics a big singalong with indistinct/anonymized voices; instead you're going to multitrack yourselves and hire roomful of teeth to do the backing vocals. actually multitracking and live looping are/were Huge... also i feel like collegiate a cappella had its moment around this same time (?) on the poppier side of things... hence stuff like the ben folds record that was all collegiate a cappella versions of his music. hm. anyway

#yes; they did get roomful of teeth for vocals much like dirty projectors got ymusic to do their backup strings on swing lo magellan #you find the weirdest shit on discogs! newmusic celebrities in the credits of each other's &/or 'art rock' stuff everywhere #but yeah. thinking about this some more. almost every person in comments/tags of that earlier post i made was like 'you mean arcade fire?' #despite how non specific it was and i think that is why #the dessners were also hugely involved in this 'scene' but were largely 'indie rockers' who had nothing to do with stompclap so #by that metric arcade fire is a bit of an odd case. also inextricably tied to 2010s hipsterism imo #which itself has the whole.... retro tumblr / craft beer / whatever attached to it #which isn't UNrelated to indieclassical at the level of craft beer but was certainly a more Known / mainstream thing #ugh anyway. spitballing here #you also have to wonder at the extent to which 'that stuff' on the us-canadian stompclap/nprcore/ymusic continuum #was conversant with jazz. i feel like it broadly wasn't or at least this was not an acknowledged part of the influence #theorycomp tag

[caroloftheshells]

so many things to grade in the next ~24 hours and i am SO tired from teaching as well as the makes-you-tired disease but we're going to do the bare minimum of grading and call it a day ig

#just glad it's today and not yesterday when i could barely make it over to the table to host zoom office hours #i like bare minimum grading anyway; last year all i did was give out 100s on homework #it definitely is something that our supervisor expects me & other person w my job to have 1 day turnarounds on 30-40 #written/qualitative assignments via a long rubric while we are both actively very sick #idk. worst of both worlds you are in charge of everything about the class on paper but not the materials or the grading scheme #or the lesson plans or the course structure. etc. #good thing is you get to be the ultimate grade-enterer for a core class & pass everybody #but yeah. this place is so reliant on grad labor; now that 4(?) of us are sick &still doing our jobs but slower the world is in turmoil etc #theorycomp tag #carol overreacts to life #like; breaking news: a covid surge at the beginning of the semester when maskless undergrads are moving in means ppl will get sick #also: tried getting another person in the theory teaching force to cover one of my classes last friday and my supervisor was like #'they haven't been here long enough; they're not qualified' & like. idk #not allowed to cancel our own classes bc we have to keep up with her class but there aren't enough qualified ppl to get subs so ??? #wack. truly wack situation #so called progressives/liberals when the pandemic isn't over and we aren't 'back to normal' etc

[caroloftheshells]

charles kronengold, living genres in late modernity: american music of the long 1970s (2022)

#theorycomp tag #will transcribe this in a reblog but i just thought it was neat so i'm posting here

[caroloftheshells]

[ID: side-by-side screenshot of the titles and authors of two texts: Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture by Philip Auslander, and “Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane” by Jason Stanyek and Benjamin Piekut. end ID]

choose your fighter. lol

#carol overreacts to life #theorycomp tag

[caroloftheshells]

it’s not my favorite music theory textbook, but it’s free and on the internet, so here is tonal harmony with an intro to 20th-century music if you want it. featuring such gems as “the role of percussion was greatly expanded in the twentieth century” (lol)

#idk who all uses this one..... ik calarts does bc i'm doing some research on their aural skills curriculum #but it is fairly widely-ish used so you might save yourself some money if you're either going to music school or not doing that #cannot really vouch as i've never used this one to learn or teach anything #percussion?? fucking percussion?? the uh. first instrument type to exist since the firs person who whacked anything That percussion?? #they mean those large ensemble pieces for floppy metal and guiros and break drums and timpani and toasters etc. but still what a sentence #theorycomp tag #carol overreacts to life

[caroloftheshells]

down from like 3-4 mask wearers last semester to zero (0) this semester and i have more students...... we shall see how it all goes in my classes-i’m-taking but lol

#like dude. you are a young college-educated musician and you & your peers all flew in two days ago from winter break in who-knows-where #the classroom is small enough that we had to borrow desks from down the hall to fit everybody #and you're not even using your instrument in my class you're sitting around & talking & taking notes so...... #whatever! it's whatever but common sense be upon ye maybe #theorycomp tag #carol overreacts to life #luckily(?!?!?) i had covid not long ago so might be @ lower risk of contracting the version currently going around #but still. lol

[caroloftheshells]

the levels of intertextuality this is on

#cover of let me go 2011 maverick sabre; which samples glory box 1994 portishead; which samples ike's rap ii 1971 isaac hayes #...and in this cover the pitch-shifted glory box sampled vocals are reinscribed as continuous w/the lead vocal melody #...AND the glory box string riff; which is a splice-and-dice of the ike's rap ii string riff; is reinscribed as continuous on vibes #this comes to mind bc i just found out st vincent(???) covered glory box live the other day (month) #and did sort of a similar move in making the portishead edits into a continuous string line #rly interesting considering the glory box edit branch of ike's rap ii sample genealogy vs. the ones w/o that edit #(of which there are multiple; see e.g. hell is round the corner tricky 1995 or alessia cara here 2015) #and the ig 'naturalization' of that edit as its own point of origin/reference in some cases #truly a wild scope/reach; feels almost like a recorded-idiom version of lament bass schemata #considering pitch ofc but also the associated affect w/all these tracks #which isn't surprising given the original lyrics & subsequent trip-hop/downtempo 'origin points' in portishead & tricky but yeah #Youtube #carol overreacts to music #carol overreacts to life #theorycomp tag #<<< I Guess.

[caroloftheshells]

done with coursework ?????. wild!

#ie have turned everything in. i still need to enter in final grades for one more section of my class (that i'm teaching) but then #all is done!! off to comps land / prospectus land / diss land...... yeehaw (?) #theorycomp tag #carol overreacts to life

[caroloftheshells]

music that is structurally/sonically pedagogical (introducing digestible modules, using repetition, slowly layering in timbral & textural complexity, teaching the listener about itself as it unfolds), and that harnesses this pedagogical sound as a complement to political lyrics, including & especially as satire/critique of political doctrine (i.e., mimicking political pedagogy by mock-immersing the listener in such, but in such a way that you can feel yourself becoming immersed and can hear the mechanics of your own immersion)

#theorycomp tag #carol overreacts to life

[caroloftheshells]

henry kingsbury, music, talent, and performance: a conservatory cultural system

#transcription forthcoming in a reblog i'm having issues w alt text rn #theorycomp tag #kinda/ish/etc #carol overreacts to life

[caroloftheshells]

about to go road tripping w/my friends to the “people in business casual presenting a zillion and a half music papers” fest. only partially joking on the numbers as it looks like there are 337 multi-paper sessions on the schedule not including the keynotes and interest group meetings lol. did not submit a presentation to this one, so i will just be wandering around inhaling takes / ~networking~ / etc and seeing if i can secure a mug or magnet or car decoration from the endeavor

#will be my first in-person academic conference so i am really enthused #and seems like plenty of good talks. posttonal theory pedagogy; vocal timbre; groove based music; marxism panel; etc etc. should be a blast #theorycomp tag #carol overreacts to life

[caroloftheshells]

students are writing a cantus firmus (which is a melody you use for the basis of bigger pieces of music, basically a musical line to write other lines against later). and so far they’re great! but it is also so funny how many of them have autocorrected to “cactus” in the title / file name. even in my own notes app i have “grade cactus firms” as a to-do item

#carol overreacts to life #theorycomp tag

[caroloftheshells]

i feel like, when you are holding a class on the third floor of a music building and someone working on the same floor of the same building at the same school has published extensively on the topic of your class sesh in the main journals for your field, you might be expected to acknowledge their existence? idk. musicology / music theory divide continues to mystify me. but anyway here’s music as a technology of surveillance again now that i’m thinking about it lol

#theorycomp tag #carol overreacts to life #it's so bizarre. like. timbre theory/musicology people borrow from each other all the time bc there aren't enough of them #if you're scholarly discoursing about vocal timbre and you don't cite nina sun eidsheim then you fucked up even if you're a 'theorist' lol #or like. what if you studied historical english literature and the cultural norm was you can't ever quote said literature in your papers #like 'this was almost a cool paper on shakespeare; but then they started talking about grammar and syntax and style :/' #obviously that is not the only good line of inquiry but there's so much goofy intracommunity bullshit about such things #+grinds my gears when musicologists brush off the whole idea that an aesthetic choice might have intentionality baked in + be worth studying #ie let's disregard the text (score recording etc) altogether in favor of what real people do (bc composers/songwriters are not real people) #same as when theorists ignore the obvious social implications of a thing #in favor of some random 'we did a corpus study and this band uses the ii chord a lot' stuff #real forest for the trees nonsense in both camps depending on who you look at

[caroloftheshells]

experimentalmeowsiclesbian said:

i read a paper last year that said that music in the west is treated as a science, only accessible to specialised practitioners with appropriate training, and i think the heavy criticism of theory teaching is a response to that attitude, that you "need to know the rules to break them" kind of thing, rather than seeing theoretical knowledge as part of a personal relationship w/ art

i’m replying to your replies as a post lol bc this got long-- but yeah that makes sense! thank you for adding these and especially your points re: spirituality, which i hadn’t thought about in that light. what i was trying to get at was a specific attitude towards wam in particular and how i’ve seen people use “theory isn’t always helpful” to mean that this music is too special/precious/transcendent to analyze, or that it doesn’t have just as specific a cultural context as any other music (e.g., bach is just obviously good bc he was a genius individual, there are no shared aesthetic preferences governing his decisions or trends his music falls into). i should have used more precise language there though, bc i think having a personally spiritual &/or otherwise non-theoretical relationship w/music is great when cultivated on your own terms. i’m also coming from a background of choral singing in the southern u.s., which i have found to be fraught about this even in nominally secular contexts. you can’t get through a typical voice degree here w/o singing casually xian music, sometimes church gigging, etc, so that is informing my use of the term “spiritual”

#carol replies to things #theorycomp tag #thank you!! been away from tumblr for a while so had to reread this whole convo to remember what i meant at the time #i think also just to clarify my issue is less with critique of western theory ed which does almost unilaterally suck rn #than with critique thereof by wam stans who are like very invested in the purity and universality of Their musical traditions #& get uncomfortable when wam is analyzed because they don't like the idea of said music as having a specific context & being made by people #like idk my own circle of music theorists irl is mainly people interested in musical/cultural studies of timbre & genre which are v social #and which show up basically nowhere in formal curricula because of a larger investment in getting people to exclusively study wam #ie 'useful' music for performers to know and 'useful' parameters thereof #(which is common to private lessons; ensemble rep; history classes...) & is job training for conservative opera/orchestra spots etc #so it's funny to me how some ppl otherwise very ok with western music ed & wam culture are also very against theory for like #revealing the weirdness & specificity & rules of said music that was 'supposed' to be transcendent & universal etc. is what i mean i guess #like there are bigger fish to fry but instead people are stuck on 'put more women in theory textbooks' or w/e which does not solve The Issue #if any of this makes sense. idk