Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900-1960

by Peter Doyle

The untold story of acoustic effects in popular music.

Winner of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections' (ARSC) Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research (2006)

Echo and Reverb is the first history of acoustically imagined space in popular music recording. The book documents how acoustic effects―reverberation, room ambience, and echo―have been used in recordings since the 1920s to create virtual sonic architectures and landscapes. Author Peter Doyle traces the development of these acoustically-created worlds from the ancient Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus to the dramatic acoustic architectures of the medieval cathedral, the grand concert halls of the 19th century, and those created by the humble parlor phonograph of the early 20th century, and finally, the revolutionary age of rock 'n' roll.

Citing recordings ranging from Gene Austin's 'My Blue Heaven' to Elvis Presley's 'Mystery Train,' Doyle illustrates how non-musical sound constructs, with all their rich and contradictory baggage, became a central feature of recorded music. The book traces various imagined worlds created with synthetic echo and reverb―the heroic landscapes of the cowboy west, the twilight shores of south sea islands, the uncanny alleys of dark cityscapes, the weird mindspaces of horror movies, the private and collective spaces of teen experience, and the funky juke-joints of the mind.

Genres: Music

304 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2005

About the author

Peter Doyle was born in Maroubra, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. He worked as a taxi driver, musician, and teacher before writing his first book, "Get Rich Quick", which won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel. He has published two further books featuring protagonist Billy Glasheen, "Amaze Your Friends" and "The Devil’s Jump", and a fourth, "The Big Whatever", is slated for publication in October 2014. He is also the author of the acclaimed "City of Shadows: Sydney Police Photographs 1912–1948" and "Crooks Like Us". In 2010 Doyle received the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unlikely topic that I stumbled upon while looking for some titles related to the history of the phonograph. Very interesting premise - that the use of reverb and echo in recordings creates a sense of space that has much greater emotional significance than consciously perceived. Sounds like a musicological term paper, but the scope of the book and the comments make for interesting and thought-provoking reading. Not for everyone’s taste, but if you have any serious interest in the history of recorded music it’s an unusual and entertaining book.

[Cana McGhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

full of case studies to elucidate how echo and reverb techniques evoke and signify diff kinds of spaces/places. organized chronologically, super easy to get through, full of easy to grasp case studies.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kudos to the author for his ability to fill a book about the use of of echo and reverb in music and film. Theres a lot of fluff and opinion here that could have been edited better. The author is well versed in many styles of music and quotes some of the best music writers. A key theme of the book is the concept of spatial recording to evoke a sense of place or to enhance lyrical content. I enjoyed the Robert Johnson/Ry Cooder theory and the chapter on the commercialization of Hawaiian music.

[Mills College Library]

781.64149 D7547 2005