’80s-inspired music

LASER by Igor Fuentes. https://flic.kr/p/fwv1K5

How do we make something sound ’80s? When today’s millennials—who were only infants or children in the ’80s—recreate an ’80s sound, how does it compare to an authentically ’80s sound? What elements of the ’70s or the ’90s get misremembered as an ’80s phenomenon? All these questions are discussed in the the latest Pop Unmuted episode.

Are We Not New Wave?

Today I finished reading Are We Not New Wave?: Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s by Theo Cateforis. Cateforis focuses (among other things) on the significance of irony and of an alternative white masculinity in new wave culture, and I see parallels between that and today’s millennial-hipster culture.

GSIM 2016: Music and Radicalism, Radicalism in Music

The 19th Annual Graduate Students in Music conference, for which I was a co-chair with Tom Johnson, was held this past weekend (April 22–23). The conference is entirely organized by graduate students within the department of music at the Graduate Center, CUNY. The theme was “Music and Radicalism, Radicalism in Music”, and our keynote speaker was Jonathan Pieslak of City College of New York.

“Any accurate analysis of rock music must therefore ultimately account for its timbre and studio production at least as much as on the traditionally analyzed parameters of tonality, harmony, and meter; in other words, how the song sounds is as important—if not more so—than what is sounding.”

 

Kevin Holm-Hudson, “The Future Is Now … and Then: Sonic Historiography in Post-1960s Rock”

Trying out a new post format today—posting a quote from a recent reading and reflecting on it a teensy weensy bit.

Holm-Hudson’s idea of sonic historiography, tracing the history of rock music through the sound of that music, is integral to my approach and my (still under construction) thesis statement for my dissertation. Part of what I want to do is define the “’80s sound” through its technology, analyze the timbres of those technologies, and finally raise issues of aesthetics and reception and how they relate to those timbres/technologies.

MTSNYS 2016 reflections

Another energizing and inspiring conference is past: Music Theory Society of New York State’s annual meeting. This year it was held at Mannes’s new campus–beautiful space. And a lot of really wonderful papers! I actually found the conference short, I think because I only saw two full sessions, and the other was a “lightning round”… Continue reading MTSNYS 2016 reflections