Series: California Studies in Music, Sound, and Media

Stories about new musical instruments are often told as quests for new kinds of sounds. The Composer's Black Box asks, what happens when new musical instruments produce not only new sounds but also new dynamics of musical agency and control? And what consequences do those new dynamics have for musicality beyond sound? With a focus on five key figures—Morton Subotnick,...

Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fit shows how Hollywood studios have instead been implementing surround-sound techniques for the past century and argues that their endurance owes primarily to the long-standing economic tension between stereophonic and monophonic sound. Throughout the book,...

Musicians have access to an ever-growing array of technological tools, creating a world rich with new artistic possibilities. Yet, the incursion of automation technology into creative pursuits has long sparked panic about the threat to human creativity and authenticity. Relating a 120-year history of automation in music, this book provides a timely historical demonstration of how older technologies of automation...

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Everyone speaks with an accent, but what is an accent? Thinking with an Accent introduces accent as a powerfully coded yet underexplored mode of perception that includes looking, listening, acting, reading, and thinking. This volume convenes...

Key is one of the simplest building blocks of music and is among the foundational properties of a work’s musical identity—so why isn’t it a standard parameter in discussing film music? Key Constellations: Interpreting Tonality in Film is the first book to investigate film soundtracks—including original scoring, preexisting music, and sound effects—through the lens of large-scale tonality. Exploring compelling analytical...