Item Details

“The Pro Tooling of the World”: Digital Music Production, Democracy and Environmentality

Issue: Vol 7 No. 1 (2020)

Journal: Journal of World Popular Music

Subject Areas:

DOI: 10.1558/jwpm.37489

Abstract:

The “Pro Tooling” of the world and the democratization of recording technologies, made possible by the affordances of the internet and technological innovation, have been praised for the ways in which prohibitively expensive production tools have been made available to anyone with an internet connection and a laptop. The echoes of a utopian, perhaps even Marxian, tune can be heard in the positivist accounts of the affordances of such technologies: finally, the means of production have been made available to the masses. And not only the means of production, but also dissemination: one can use a “free” digital audio workstation (DAW), download a multitude of “free” plug-ins emulating expensive analogue and digital gear of the past, and upload their song to SoundCloud or a number of different streaming services for consumption by anyone around the globe with an internet connection. However, the overly positivist accounts of the democratization of recording technologies often obscures the anxieties concerning the material conditions and environmentality of these newer technological forms. The digital realm is often (mistakenly) set against the material, a realm of infinite creative and even political possibilities. However, the digital realm is thoroughly material, and inherently dependent on material resources. The explosion in music production made possible through the development of digital technologies disseminated as affordable commodities, has also produced deplorable social and environmental conditions that significantly undermine any utopian narrative. This article thus critically examines the environmentality of contemporary music production technologies and argues for the vital relevance of an ecomusicological approach to all stages of the production process.

Author: Brent Keogh, Ian Collinson

View Original Web Page

References :

Agrawal, A. 2005. Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822386421

Akinbinu, Tope R. and Y. J. Mashalla. 2014. “Impact of Computer Technology on Health: Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS)”. Medical Practice Review 5: 20–30.

Allen, Aaron S. 2012. “‘Fatto di Fiemme’: Stradivari’s Violins and the Musical Trees of the Paneveggio”. In Invaluable Trees: Cultures of Nature, 1660–1830, edited by Laura Auricchio, Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook and Giulia Pacini, 301–315. Oxford: SVEC.

Arditi, David. 2016. “Disturbing Production: The Effects of Digital Music Production on Music Studios”. In The Production and Consumption of Music in the Digital Age, edited by Brian J. Hracs, Michael Seman and Tarek E. Virani, 34–46. New York: Routledge.

Avid. 2018. http://www.avid.com/pro-tools (accessed 25 October 2018).

“Avid and the Environment”. 2013. http://mengela.com/US/about-avid/environment.htm (accessed 20 March 2018).

Baldé, Kees, Vanessa Forti, Vanessa Gray, Ruediger Kuehr and Paul Stegmann. 2017. The Global e-Waste Monitor—2017. Bonn/Geneva/Vienna: United Nations University (UNU), International Telecommunication Union (ITU) & International Solid Waste Association (ISWA).

Barber, Simon. 2012. “Soundstream: The Introduction of Commercial Digital Recording in the United States”. Journal on the Art of Record Production 7.

Bauler, Tom. 2013. “Environmental (In)Justice”. Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade. http://www.ejolt.org/2013/02/environmental-injustice/ (accessed 20 March 2018).

Bennett, Joe. 2011. “Collaborative Songwriting: The Ontology of Negotiated Creativity in Popular Music Studio Practice”. Journal on the Art of Record Production 5.

Berry, F., L. Wynne and C. Riedy. 2014. “Changing Tune: Scoping the Potential of the Australian Music Industry to Address Climate Change”. [Report prepared for Green Music Australia]. Sydney: Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS.

Buell, L. 2005. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Campelo, Isabel and Mike Howlett. 2013. “The ‘Virtual’ Producer in the Recording Studio: Media Networks in Long Distance Peripheral Performances”. Journal on the Art of Record Production 8.

Carvalho, Alice Tomaz de. 2012. “The Discourse of Home Recording: Authority of ‘Pros’ and the Sovereignty of the Big Studios”. Journal on the Art of Record Production 7.

Casemajor, Nathalie. 2015. “Digital Materialisms: Frameworks for Digital Media Studies”. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 10/1: 4–17. https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.209

Code, Lorraine. 2007. Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cubitt, Sean. 2017. Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373476

Dahlberg, Lincoln. 2011. “Re-constructing Digital Democracy: An Outline of Four Positions”. New Media and Society 13/6: 855–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444810389569

Dawe, Kevin. 2013. “Guitar Ethnographies: Performance, Technology and Material Culture”. Ethnomusicology Forum: Guitar Ethnographies: Performance, Technology and Material Culture 22/1: 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2013.774158

Devine, Kyle. 2015. “Decomposed: A Political Ecology of Music”. Popular Music 34/3: 367–89. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026114301500032X

—2019. Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Drucker, Johanna. 2013. “Performative Materiality and Theoretical Approaches to Interface”. Digital Humanities Quarterly 7/1.

Durant, Alan. 1990. “A New Day for Music? Digital Technologies in Contemporary Music Making”. In Culture, Technology and Creativity in the Late Twentieth Century, edited by Phil Hayward, 175–96. London: John Libbey.

Gibson, Chris and Andrew Warren. 2016. “Resource-Sensitive Global Production Networks: Reconfigured Geographies of Timber and Acoustic Guitar Manufacturing”. Economic Geography 92: 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2016.1178569

Hague, Graeme. 2015. “Guerrilla Guide—Music Production: A Comprehensive Introduction to Producing and Recording Music”. Audio Technology: The Magazine for Sound Engineers and Recording Musicians. Ballarat: Alchemedia Publishing.

Hajimichael, Mike. 2011. “Virtual Oasis: Thoughts and Experiences about Online Based Music Production and Collaborative Writing Techniques”. Journal on the Art of Record Production 5, Conference Papers.

Hanson, Howard. 1941. “The Democratization of Music”. Music Educators Journal 27/5: 14. https://doi.org/10.2307/3385962

Hugunin, Marc. 1979. “ASCAP, BMI and the Democratization of American Popular Music”. Popular Music & Society 7/1: 8–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007767908591144

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Kirschenbaum, M. 2008. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Cambridge: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7393.001.0001

Leyshon, Andrew. 2014. Reformatted: Code, Networks, and the Transformation of the Music Industry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572410.001.0001

Lundgren, Karen. 2012. “The Global Impact of e-Waste: Addressing the Challenge”. Geneva: International Labour Office, Programme on Safety and Health at Work and the Environment (SafeWork), Sectoral Activities Department (SECTOR).

Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. 2012. Greening the Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McGuigan, Jim. 2014. “The Neoliberal Self”. Culture Unbound 6: 223–40. https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.146223

Milner, Greg. 2010. “Tubby’s Ghost”. In idem, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music, 293–346. London: Granta.

Needhidasan, Santhanam, Melvin Samuel and Ramalingam Chidambaram. 2014. “Electronic Waste: An Emerging Threat to the Environment of Urban India”. Journal of Environmental Health, Science & Engineering 12/1: 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1186/2052-336X-12-36

Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674061194

O’Grady, Pat. 2014. “Studio Hubs: Changing Recording Environments”. In Communities, Places, Ecologies: Proceedings of the 2013 IASPM-ANZ Conference, edited by Jadey O’Regan and Toby Wren, 103–111. Brisbane: International Association for the Study of Popular Music.

Patel, Ray and Jason W. Moore. 2018. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. Carleton, Ottawa: Black Inc. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520966376

Pellow, David N., and Lisa Sun-Hee Park. 2002. The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy. New York: NYU Press.

Plumwood, Val. 2009. “Nature in the Active Voice”. Australian Humanities Review 46: 1–10. https://doi.org/10.22459/AHR.46.2009.10

Price, Jeff. 2008. “The Democratization of the Music Industry”. Huffington Post, 24 March. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-price/the-democratization-of-th_b_93065.html (accessed 19 March 2018).

Ryan, Robin Ann. 2015. “‘Didjeri-doos’ and ‘Didjeri-don’ts’: Confronting Sustainability Issues”. Journal of Music Research Online 6: 1–24.

Sheller, Mimi. 2014. Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9626.001.0001

Taylor, Timothy. 2001. Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture. New York and London: Routledge.

Théberge, Paul. 2004. “The Network Studio: Historical and Technological Paths to a New Ideal in Music Making”. Social Studies of Science—Special Issue on Sound Studies: New Technologies and Music 34/5: 759–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312704047173

Weber, William. 1989. “London: A City of Unrivalled Riches”. In Man and Music: The Classical Era: From the 1740s to the End of the 18th Century, edited by Neil Zaslaw, 293–326. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20628-5_11

Yamane, Luciana Harue, Vivianne Travares de Moraes, Denise Crocce Romano Espinosa and Jorge Alberto Soares Tenório. 2011. “Recycling of WEEE: Characterization of Spent Printed Circuit Boards from Mobile Phones and Computers”. Waste Manage 31: 2553–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2011.07.006

Young, Sherman and Steve Collins. 2010. “A View from the Trenches of Music 2.0”. Popular Music and Society 33/3: 339–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007760903495634