Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music

by Mark Katz

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 product page.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Technology, History, Research, Academic

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Christopher Dalla Riva · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book about the intersection between technology and music and have both the former and the latter affect one another. The only chapter that wasn’t a page turner was chapter 4 about violin vibrato. It’s worth noting that the tone of the book is more academic than most other books about popular music.

[Jürgen De blonde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful book. Covers a broad scope of musical styles and genres that have been shaped, influenced or simple come into existence because of recording technology. Very intriguing to read about 'gramophonmusik' and how the phonograph and phonautograph affected social and musical life in the early days. I was also quite fond of the author's stance towards copyright and his open-minded discussion of that particular subject. That soundfiles that can be consulted via the publisher's website are a nice addition, enriching and illustrating the many anecdotes and reviews in the book. It is clearly a book written from an American perspective, and it would be interesting to read a similar book from a different angle.

All in all, this book is very much recommended if you want to contemplate the huge impact recording technology has had, and still has, on how we consume sound and music nowadays. The impact goes a lot deeper than one might expect, shaping the sound and structure of jazz, for example, or stimulating the use of vibrato in classical music.

Thumbs up!

[Stefanie Lubkowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

good basic overview of topics explored in sound studies in very accessible prose.