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University of California Press

Capturing Sound

How Technology Has Changed Music
by Mark Katz (Author)
Paperback eBook
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Oct 2010
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780520947351
Endowments:
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About the Book

There is more to sound recording than just recording sound. Far from being simply a tool for the preservation of music, the technology is a catalyst. In this award-winning text, Mark Katz provides a wide-ranging, deeply informative, consistently entertaining history of recording's profound impact on the musical life of the past century, from Edison to the Internet. Fully revised and updated, this new edition adds coverage of mashups and Auto-Tune, explores recent developments in file-sharing, and includes an expanded conclusion and bibliography.

Illustrative sound and film clips can be found on the Media tab of the www.ucpress.edu product page.

About the Author

Mark Katz is Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the author of the forthcoming Groove Music.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Causes

2. Making America More Musical:
The Phonograph and “Good Music”

3. Capturing Jazz

4. Aesthetics Out of Exigency:
Violin Vibrato and the Phonograph

5. The Rise and Fall of Grammophonmusik

6. The Turntable as Weapon:
Understanding the Hip-Hop DJ Battle

7. Music in 1s and 0s:
The Art and Politics of Digital Sampling

8. Listening in Cyberspace

Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
List of Supplementary Web Materials
Index

Reviews

“A creative and highly original examination of the countless ways in which recordings . . . have transformed our understanding of what we listen to and for. Katz is at home in every musical genre.”
— Washington Post Book World
“Capturing Sound is an interesting, insightful, and informative journey into the origins of recording technology.”
— Music Educators Journal
“Katz’s Capturing Sound represents an emerging musicology that is equally at home with the popular and the classical. . . . The book concisely covers an astonishing range of topics linked to the rise of recording technology over the last century. . . . Katz’s approach is primarily historical, drawing on an impressive array of documentation from recording archives, advertising, and literary sources.”
— Institute For Studies In American Music
“Mark Katz’s Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music is a timely read. As the Supreme Court tackles issues relating to downloading music and file-sharing, Katz . . . examines how recording technology has influenced the ways we make and listen to music. Katz’s discussion of the topic is far-ranging and illuminating. . . . As Katz progresses from the development of the phonograph to turntablism and digital sampling, giving examples along the way, attentive readers will likely want to hear some of the pieces cited. Well, there’s no need to visit iTunes because the book comes with a CD of recordings. The disc makes Capturing Sound a good read and a good listen.”
— Baltimore Mag
“Of a number of recent books on the history of recording. . . .Katz’s book is the most approachable. . . . In lucid, evenhanded prose, it ranges all over the map, from classical to hip-hop.”
— New Yorker
"In Capturing Sound, Mark Katz focuses on the overwhelming technological transformation that changed music from a medium of elite and canonical performances to a mass-consumed fashion-object experienced privately. Underneath the wealth of scholarship and insight about how new recording techniques continue to change our experience of music, Katz wonders how we ourselves have been changed by the successive recording technologies that emerged since Edison. This is a one-of-a-kind book. It will change your mind about why and how we listen to music."—Giles Slade, author of Made To Break

"I only wish I had put as much thought into making records as Mark Katz does in appreciating and analyzing them. I've always said that what I do is not rocket science, but critques like this make it sound like it has a place in modern culture."—Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, composer, producer, DJ

Awards

  • Certificate of Merit for the Best Research in General History of Recorded Sound, ARSC Awards for Excellence 2005, Association for Recorded Sound Collections
  • Choice’s Outstanding Academic Titles 2006, Emery-Pratt
  • Sally Hacker Prize 2007, Society for the History of Technology

Media

21. Fatboy Slim, "Praise You," 1998 (excerpt) (page 154)
18. DJ Dopey, Allies All Star Beatdown routine, 2001 (page 133)
17. DJ Dexta, DMC battle routine, 1999 (page 133)
8. The Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow," 2009 (page 51)
6. Elvis Presley, "Blue Moon of Kentucky," outtake, 1954 (page 49)
3. The McGurk Effect (page 25)
2. Violinist Jascha Heifetz in performance (page 25)
1. Violinist Itzhak Perlman in performance (page 24)
4. Milli Vanilli, "Girl You Know It's True," 1989 (page 26)
7. Cher, "Believe," 1998 (page 51)
22. Camille Yarbrough, "Take Yo Praise," 1975 (page 154)
10. Joe "King" Oliver, Dippermouth Blues," 1923 (page 89)
5. Elvis Presley, "Blue Moon of Kentucky," released version, 1954 (page 49)
23. Public Enemy, "Fight the Power," 1990 (page 160)

Supplementary Materials